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MMO Preferences Survey/Census
sunandshadow
Member RarePosts: 1,985
Inspired by this:
Originally posted by theAsna Ask 100 people what they want and you'll probably get 100 different answers. Now take this wish list and compile it into concrete specifications. Take these specifications and implement them as software. Now let those 100 people evaluate the result...
I decided to make a survey. This survey is anonymous and about 30 questions long. It asks your preferences about types of gameplay and other content in MMOs. Results will be public. Obviously this is not a random sample of MMO players, but it will give some interesting data about what percent of the group that responds likes what type of MMOs, and which design choices would make the theoretical most popular MMO for this group. So please respond. 
Sunandshadow's MMO Preferences Survey
The questions about "less or more than 100%" have to be answered, just put NA if the question does not apply to your situation. Sorry about that, I forgot those would be mandatory.
Please excuse any typos (I'm sure there are some) and please let me know of any survey-breaking problems ASAP.
There is some rough teaser data on page 2, don't read it before you take the survey please!
Comments
You could post the link to some other forums as well as this one to get more results, ask people to spread it around kind of thing.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Yeah I was posting it to GameDev just now.
I would be happy for anyone to post the link anywhere (well, not at one of those places where people team-troll things, lol). Facebook, twitter, other game-related forums, wherever.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I'm going to post them here after responses taper off. There isn't an automatic way for me to make the results viewable to people other than me, I have to export them by hand.
So far 12 people have responded
An interesting survey. Some of the examples for the choices I did not for "sure" what they were, but I think I took an educated guess
It would have helped if in the very first part, you explained that we should try to answer the "percentage questions" as a part of 100% total. I still went over 100%, but I did adjust some of my answers after the follow-up questions
Done
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Yes. I would be very interested in seeing the demographic breakdown and results. Might want to wait awhile so that we get more than 21 results though. :-)
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Yeah, I am myself super interested in analyzing the results, but I'm trying to hold off until people are mostly done replying. Since I only have a free account I'll have to extract all the data myself, and if you want pie charts I'll have to make them - what I get is numbers. I don't mind doing that, but I'd rather do it once than repeatedly. Currently 49 people have responded so it more than doubled in the last 12 hours, lol. Of those responses 39 have been from here at MMORPG.com, 8 from GameDev.net, 1 from Facebook, and the last one is me, I put other for myself.
Do you all want teasers of the data (the few bits that stick out as notable when I glance over it), or do you want to wait for the full data set to get less bias and prettier presentation?
Whatevs. Updates might be interesting, if nothing else to keep the thread alive and attract more responses.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
One thing I'm kind of shocked by is that spellbar/cooldown WoW-style combat is winning as both acceptable to the largest percentage and favorite of the largest percentage. By a pretty large margin. Second place is FPS (where S can mean shooting, stealth, and/or spellcasting). Fighter/Arcade is third, again by a pretty big margin. Then the rest are all small percentages. This category will have to be corrected for "Other" entries, as some of the write-ins actually go in some of the official categories, lol.
Solo or small group PvE is the favored MMO activity, with an average of 35%. Below that it's a 4-way tie between team PvP, raiding, sim gameplay, and talking to other players (all around 18%). This data will probably look quite different when I see if respondents can be grouped into archetypes.
The drops people want from killing these monsters are mainly experience, followed by crafting ingredients.
Player shops are slightly more popular than marketplaces/auctionhouses. (Which irks me, but that's the data, I knew my opinions weren't going to win them all, lol). People who want player shops tend to also want in-person trading between online players only, while people who want marketplaces/auctionhouses tend to also want long-distance trading between both online and offline players and have no objection to searchable barter lots. So there are 2 clear archetypes there.
Fantasy semirealism is considered an acceptable art style by a whopping 92% of people who have responded so far, and is the favorite of 47%, more than twice as many people as the runner-up, which is sci-fi semirealism.
The most popular setting is currently non-earth fantasy, but the numbers are close so that could change.
Humans and mostly-human fantasy or sci-fi races are running away with the playable race category.
If there's a question I didn't mention here it's because the data is (currently) ambiguous. The PvP preferences showed a bathtub curve yesterday but that vanished today, now the distribution is almost flat between ALL categories. o.O;
It's probably premature to draw conclusions, but what it really looks like is that people favor what they've already played. If you put together all the favorites, you get one of the most common types of MMO:
- Non-earth fantasy with semirealistic graphics and humanoid characters.
- Major activity is killing monsters for XP and crafting ingredients, which is done with a spellbar/cooldown combat system.
- Secondary activities are team PvP, team PvE, chatting, and playing with sandbox elements
- Players can set up personal shops or trade in-person with other players.
Except for that last point, that's WoW and all it's clones.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I was a bit limited by the survey maker software. There wasn't any way to force people to make their answers add up to 100%, which is what I really wanted to do, although I wanted to allow a write in to be associated with a percentage. Also people are telling me I actually needed one more category, exploring/wandering.
If you want to make it simple, I suggest this:
1. Imagine your ideal MMO.
2. Take your 100% of time you would spend playing that ideal MMO and break it into what you would be doing.
3. Now go to the survey and plug your own numbers into the most appropriate places, just put 0 for everything else.
Happy to see someone familiar with actual survey based research methodology (applicability to participant population). Will fill this out when I get home from work. Good luck
Edit: oh and I'd suggest Google forms for free unlimited data responses in then future. It's what I and many often other folks I work with use . Answers are auto exported into their spreadsheet which you can then export into SPSS or whatever statistical program.
I do not like your survey, because it misses a lot of important points:
1. Does an MMO have to be gear-oriented.
2. Do you prefer a endgame-gear-treadmill.
3. Do you prefer PvP where everybody is equal (lvl and gear does not matter).
4. Do you prefer a combat system that is more action-oriented with fewer skills and things like parry or dodge.
5. Should time invested into the game be the most important factor.
6. Should swords and armor pieces have stats?
7. Should players be able to rise their basic stats like health?
etc. etc. etc.
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
This is asking about mechanics of a game rather than features, the things you listed other than #4 are a different subject. Also, most of those are pretty much what make an MMO an MMO instead of of an action RPG etc.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
It's always possible to make a second survey with different questions. 31 questions is already pretty long for one survey, I think adding more technical and in-depth questions like this would have made it so long that the length put people off.
Thank you ^_^ And ok I'll look at Google's survey tools. I wasn't sure they'd allow anonymous responses from people with no Google accounts.
So far this is exactly as I expected. My own real world survey show that 90% of online gamers like WoW, and 10% like CoD. I refer to this 10% as the vocal minority who clamber on about hating WoW & its clones. What they hate is non-FPS.
As a programmer Tab targeting and action bar (ie MMORPG combat) is the simplest, fairest, and most reliable method to implement in an MMO setting. For a true FPS that ends at 32 players, above that number and you have to start implementing WoW techniques & tricks. Then you don’t have a true FPS, you have a WoW clone with action combat. The players start to see non-FPS behavior on screen or in videos, and they complain about hacks. These non-existent hacks can’t be fixed because they are the only thing that makes the game playable. So players leave.
As for PvP, I see it as people are playing what they prefer. Not what they played before.
Player shop is prefered by players who don’t what to compete and prefered and uninformed public, think used car salesmen. Auction houses are prefered customer who want to see what's out there without have to travel and or be swindled. SWG is looked at as the last real implementation of Player shops (even though we seen then in F2P games since). But the player feedback regarding shops lead to a global view of all player shops, basically an auction house. To the industry the player auction house is an bug that a segment of the player base wants to exploit.
What you might consider is a publishing your data once a week over three months, if we can keep this alive that long. Google Drive has free spreadsheet to make pie charts with, if you need one.Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
When you read this kind of post to you get the feeling that they would prefer a FPS? To me:
This is the definition of FPS. I know some FPS now allow gear to be modified and enhanced, this is the reason so many fans of FPS have left those game, and now cry WoW clone.
When they say dodge, think cover. They want two skills shoot & cover. These players look back at doom death match with fondness.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Did the survey.
Some feedback: given how critically important the question of grouping is, i think choosing a random number like "more or less than 5 people" was a big mistake. I mean, if the game's group size is 6 (EQ2, etc.), i'll spend a lot less time in groups of 5 or less. If the game's group size is 4 (ESO, etc.), i'll spend a lot more time in groups of 5 or less. To answer this question properly a person needs to know what the game's "default" group size is. Othewise, you should have used terms like "single group", "multiple group" and "solo/duo".
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
You would have to normalize their answer by hand or spreadsheet if the total was over 100%. The math would be:
X% = (Answer% / Total%) * 100%
If their total was 180%, and they liked to spend time doing RTS or tower defense activities against AI opponents was 45%.
X% = (45 / 180) * 100% = 25%Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
True, but the real cut off was small group (2-10) vs big raid group (20-60). They may have said 5 but you should have know they implied small groups like EQ2’s. Simply because you felt something was wrong with the question as written. This is a case of “do as I mean and not as I say.”
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.