Roughly every six months, we ask players which stories they liked and which they didn’t like. We did the last survey in September 2017 and since then eight new stories have been published. Hopefully, the results will provide a good guide which stories are worth purchasing and which stories you might want to avoid.
[ul][li]At first glance this might look overwhelming but answering all questions will not take all that long. You should be able to finish this in less than 5 minutes.[/li][li]Please only rate stories that you have actually played. I’ve added an "N/A"-option in case you misclicked and accidentally voted on a story you didn’t play. Voting "N/A" has the same effect as not voting at all.[/li][li]Feel free to skip anything you would prefer not to answer.[/li][li]You’re required to have a Google account to do this to ensure that everyone only votes once. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be a problem.[/li][li]Voting is completely anonymous. I just get your answers to the questions.
[/li][/ul]
You will be able to see the overall results once you have voted. We will also post the results here on reddit in about two weeks. It depends a little on how long new votes are coming in.
As always, if you have any ideas what to do better next time, please let me know.
I would like to thank phryne for originally coming up with the idea. Many thanks also to dov, idyl, Peridigital, Optimatum and Gallmarch for doing some beta-testing, coming up with lots of useful suggestions and finding way to many mistakes that I made.
My one suggestion is to clarify the difference between the first section of the survey and the rewards-only section. It’s not clear exactly what the first section is asking, so either note that it’s asking about the story alone or that it’s asking about the quality of story and rewards combined.
Also, the Sinking Synod has a small permanent reward: one ending unlocks a new mode of address.
Aw, shucks … you’ve said that before and I wanted to make a note but forgot.
Originally, I hadn’t mentioned anything because I wanted the overall impression for a story (i.e. whatever your gut tells you to vote). The rewards section is basically for stories where you might say that independent of how much liked them or not, it’s worth buying them anyway (coughvelocipedesquadcough).
I’ve added a lot more stories to the rewards-section (mostly the ones you suggested last time ;)) but at some point I had to draw the line. Like, “Lost in Reflection” adds an option to the Finishing School. Is it reasonable to assume that players would buy that story just for that reward? I figured “Sinking Synod” is a similar case. If you’re roleplaying someone extremely devoted to the Church you might consider playing the story just for that quality. But 99% of players wouldn’t consider it. Maybe I misjudged that because someone on reddit made a similar comment. Or you’re just a very vocal minority :)
Just interested in how many people are excluded by the need to have a Google account. I presume it weighs non-Google-users concerned about their privacy against those willing to game the questionnaire. Interesting.
That was one of my concerns, too. When I did the first survey in February 2017 I tested a lot of services and you’d be surprised how difficult it is to find something meeting my requirements. I.e. something that supports the type of questions I use, is free and actually gives you any results. I settled on SurveyMonkey, which is pretty good in theory. However, without subscribing you only get results from the first 100 data sets. That meant I had to clone my survey and replace the link after a day or two, lost some votes in the process and had to cobble it all together afterwards. I would even have been willing to pay a little money, but prices start at 40 Euro per month. And that package still has some limitations that Google doesn’t have.
The only service I found that does everything I want and gives a complete table of all votes turned out to be Google Forms. I’ve used this the first time in September last year. Surprisingly I got not a single complaint concerning the requirement for an account. You are the first one mentioning it at all. I can absolutely understand that you’re being concerned.
All I can say is that I have switched off everything that would give me any information about you. I end up with timestamp and a set of votes in a CSV-file. Completely anonymous.
If you have a suggestion for a different service, please let me know and I’ll take look.
@rahv7
Thanks for your courteous reply. I am not really worried about you having information about me! It’s more that I try to avoid using Google directly.
Unfortunately, surveymonkey is the only service I have come across personally, so no help there. And a monthly fee of 40 euros seems steep.
I looked at your survey last time around and didn’t do it then, either, but didn’t say anything at the time. I do realise many other people aren’t bothered. Still, I look forward to seeing the results.
I did a post concerning the results of April’s survey over on reddit. It’s rather long so I decided not to repost here. I hope you don’t mind.
Take a look here:
If you are just interested in the numbers you can also take a look at this Google Spreadsheet.
I hope the results are interesting for some of you. And maybe they’ll help you decide which story to play next :)
If you have any comments or questions, I’ll see them both here or on reddit. edited by rahv7 on 5/15/2018