2nd world-wide community survey for ALL Totalwar fans

[alQamar]

Salve all you fans of the TotalWar franchise!

Welcome to the concilium plebis secundum, the second world-wide community based survey made by the TW community for the TW community.
This one is designed for all fans of the franchise, not just limited to TotalWar: Rome 2

Intro:

It has been a long time since we held the last “concilium plebis”. This one was also posted here on totalwar.org
Last time Fredrin was in charge to setup a community survey and it did quite well. Nearly 4400 people all over the world answered about 20 questions about Rome 2, in just 8 weeks of time.
Now nearly 8 months later and in expectation of the 1st Rome 2 release anniversary, I asked the community on TWC if they like to have another survey. I haven’t got a massive amount of replies, yet the vast majority voted for a “yes”.
So decided to setup a new survey together with friends from the TW community. This survey will be considerably longer and more in-depth than it was in December, for good reason:
The first survey was merely focused on the user satisfaction with the game, features, issues and questions about DLCs. A lot of people, mainly on totalwar.com, complaint that the survey Fredrin made, also with community help, was quite biased and so they also neglected the quite negative results of it.
However having that amount of participants, even a lot outside the forums, made a good sample, but never a community survey is able to reflect a representative result, like a professional made survey that is done by specialists.
Nevertheless the “concilium plebis secundum” I now kindly ask you to participate in, has a much more neutral and professional drive, I hope.
This belongs how questions being asked and answers can be given, to address the quite valid complaints we had in the past. Still I also included very vital question from the old survey with the quite same phrasing, so it is possible to make comparisons to the results we had in December. I hope you won’t mind the phrasing of these few questions then. All recurring questions are intentionally marked.
The “concilium plebis secundum”, as said, is much more complex, it handles a lot of aspects and addresses a wider player base, than just the single player community:



Those are the main topics included:

small hardware survey
general questions about TW
TW multiplayer community questions about multiplayer battles (optional)
TW multiplayer community questions about multiplayer campaign (optional)
TW modding community questions (optional)
TW Rome 2 (optional)
TW community / ideas
TW future / your wishes


Please do not be too disappointed that there still may be some questions not being included or handled with more detailed, such as historical authenticity, the latest DLC et cetera et cetera, as this survey is already very long and we need avoid distracting people with shorter attention spans taking part in this survey.

The survey asks you a minimum of 32 questions and maximum of 80 questions, which are easy and quite fast to answer, but please take your time.
According to our many beta testers you need ~15-35 minutes to complete. (Ofc also depending on your own level of understanding of the english language)

Here is a little appetizer for you. Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdC_NWX_j2I
For comments, likes and reps to the video please use the direct link above.

Enough of the words, now raise your own voice:
http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=dacuet04yi9nunt406511

[alQamar]

- placeholder for results

[Kamakazi]

done... but I would have liked a comments section....

[alQamar]

done... but I would have like a comments section....

Hi Kamakazi,

unfortunately this function is not possible with a free account on kwiksurveys.

[Kamakazi]

Shame, I needed somewhere to complain about skirmishing being totally broken lol

[Nikodil]

done... when do we expect to see the results?

[easytarget]

Are there going to be results along the way or only after some set amount of time and when the survey has ended?

[alQamar]

done... when do we expect to see the results?

Are there going to be results along the way or only after some set amount of time and when the survey has ended?

Hi guys,

the survey will be running for a few more weeks as we expect that people might come back on this topic as soon CA announce their next major DLC, probably with the release anniversary of Rome 2, so in about 7 days.

We still haven't crossed the next milestone of 2000 participants, it would be very helpful to keep the thread on totalwar.com in the focus. Meanwhile 12% of all participants came from totalwar.com (1% from forums.totalwar.org), so we are still missing loads of people we saw involved in the first survey.

For anyone interested here is the geographical spread of both surveys, so basically the reach of all measures seem to be quite sufficent. I got a good news meanwhile and we will see at least one or two youtubers involved to promote the survey in the very next days so I still think that the survey has not run its course yet. As soon those videos are up I will link them.


2013


2014

[Riekopo]

That was a long ass survey and a lot of the questions seemed biased.

[oorestis]

.....

[easytarget]

That was a long ass survey and a lot of the questions seemed biased.

All surveys are biased, where exactly have you been all your life not to of noticed this rather obvious fact?

[al Roumi]

That was a long ass survey and a lot of the questions seemed biased.

Yep, pretty amateurish and far from impartial. Who honestly expects this to be taken seriously?

"Sources of wisdom like TWcenter.net" LOL

[easytarget]

I expect it'll go the same place almost all feedback to CA goes.

[alQamar]

Yep, pretty amateurish and far from impartial. Who honestly expects this to be taken seriously?

"Sources of wisdom like TWcenter.net" LOL

salam al Roumi, you got it right a LOL is an appropriate reaction for small joke beside the many lines people have read. Don't take things too seriously. However 2 jokes amount many pages will not harm the "professionality" or the "results" of the survey.

I think the people that worked on the survey are amateurs so there is nothing wrong when it is amateurish.


Regarding the claim that this survey is biased, could you please give more precise examples so we can have a look at those parts you and others found?
Thank you very much for your help!

By the way we have reached 2700 participants today. Thanks for your time everyone.

I expect it'll go the same place almost all feedback to CA goes.

Well I guess CA has got a digital archive and many things need time to grow. How many "wonders" have been found in scrolls of the ancient, right?

[rory_20_uk]

The question asked was would I buy the next version of the game and the short answer of the game is yes... But as the series have gone on, I have moved from purchasing the game as soon as it comes out to viewing the latest game as something that might be ready after... well, this time frame is increasing by the release as I'd rather play a game that works rather than have something with 100 new features of which 60 work, 30 sort of do and 10 are utterly broken.

[al Roumi]

Regarding the claim that this survey is biased, could you please give more precise examples so we can have a look at those parts you and others found?

I've probably swallowed your sarcasm hook, line and sinker but I hope this will be helpful...

Anything to do with perceptions of the game needs to be balanced - you should not pre-judge people's opinons in your questions (especially if the consensus among angry internet people is one way). For example, the questions about "would you play RTW2 more if...", and "which of the following features are broken in RTW2?" asserts that the game is not good enough yet. Instead, you should ask: "Are you content with RTW2?" "What features are you content with?" "what features could be improved?".

When you make a biased survey (i.e. one where your questions dictate a certain set view in their answers) you discredit your questions and the answers to them. You make it very easy for anyone who wants to to ignore them, because they aren't balanced and hence valid. Hence why this survey, which pretty much assumes R2 is broken, looks like just another angry forum thread and hence a bit of a waste of time for CA.

[alQamar]

Hello al Roumi,

thanks for the examples, so now we can discuss the matter in detail.

Anything to do with perceptions of the game needs to be balanced

I need examples of the questions to discuss this.

would you play RTW2 more if...

Here you point out the question 66

The family tree is maybe the most passionately discussed and missed feature in Rome 2 compared to earlier TW games.
Would its re-introducing in Rome 2 affect your playing habits?
-
This question is required to be compared with the survey results from December 2013.

At the start of the Rome 2 questions there is a remark:

Please do not consider the questions that are marked as "asked also back in December" to be biased. They are particularly biased as the first survey was in many aspects. Intentionally we decided not change the questions to avoid any influence on the results.

We want to compare the December results with the current results of this survey for this particular questions.

"which of the following features are broken in RTW2?

This is quite an accusation, as this question does not even exist. Given the question would be phrased like that or in that context it would be strongly biased.

Actually the question you likely refer from your mind is question number 49:

What issues / lack of implementation still affect you and how much?
Please DO NOT rate issues prior to the latest patch you actually use or the game as it was at release.

5 stars = affects my game very negatively
1 star = does not affect my game at all

As answers you can actually rate a given set of a set of features.

You need to rate them with 1-5 stars, where 1 star represents you are not affected by this feature and 5 stars imply this feature affects your gameplay still very negatively.

The features we choosed have been extensively reported by the community and also majorly acknowlegded by CA.

At the moment, from your given your examples, there are no biased questions in the survey. We have the disclaimer for the few that actually are biased, but for a certain reason.

what features could be improved?

Given in question 74

Are you content with RTW2?

Given in questions 44 and 45

I know it might look awkward that I defend the survey from being biased but I think when there is a canon starting to raise a problem without giving valid examples people might think it is wasted time to take this survey, which it is honestly not.

Very much people were involved into this project and the beta testing and they cannot be all wrong. On the other hand we handle all valid criticsm very quickly and ironed out many issues with unintentional biased questions. The TW modder Sebidee has done a good work here in particular.

Can anyone still recall some other examples of questions you found to be biased? @Hooahguy or rory?

[al Roumi]

which of the following features are broken in RTW2?
This is quite an accusation, as this question does not even exist. Given the question would be phrased like that or in that context it would be strongly biased.

Actually the question you likely refer from your mind is question number 49:


As answers you can actually rate a given set of a set of features.

You need to rate them with 1-5 stars, where 1 star represents you are not affected by this feature and 5 stars imply this feature affects your gameplay still very negatively.

The features we choosed have been extensively reported by the community and also majorly acknowlegded by CA.

At the moment, from your given your examples, there are no biased questions in the survey. We have the disclaimer for the few that actually are biased, but for a certain reason.

Sorry, you're right, my second example was not a quote from the survey but my interpretation of what certain questions were asking and their tone. I'm afraid it was enough for me to stop completing the survey and I should have gone back through it for you in order to provide a better response but frankly, I didn't have the time or inclination.

I'd argue that Q49 is still biased: you assert that something is broken - the point of the survey ought to be to see if other people think it is, without first telling them that it is. I'm sorry if that's still not clear to you, I'm only saying this to try to help you avoid wasting your time. Read up on avoiding bias in statistics and surveys if you are serious about this sort of polling.

[dge1]

I wonder at times what the ultimate purpose of these type things are.

[Hooahguy]

Just went through the survey again, some questions do seem a bit biased against the game. Doesnt mean CA will ignore the survey results, but some things could be changes. The Rome 2 section seems to be the worst of this, otherwise it seems pretty ok to me. Ill have to look into it more.

[alQamar]

Thanks for investing the time hooahguy. Would be glad and interested to know which questions you find still biased.
Based on the stats and user behaviour I've made some changes to the front page of the survey and the question 5 about Steam. Both pages are now more compact and readable, I hope.

[easytarget]

I wonder at times what the ultimate purpose of these type things are.

Busy work in the vein hope someone is listening. I take them for what they ultimately do provide, testimony to the fact that CA creates games that instill passion in their audience.

[alQamar]

more than 2800 participants by today. Thanks for your time lads and keep fresh fans coming.

[alQamar]

Our prayers have been heard. Lionheart and Gamedudster aside some other Youtubers joined our mission and helped to advertise the survey in the name of Rome!

New participants are flooding the gates: 3700 at the moment and counting! Just WOW.


CREDITS:
Very much thanks to all that contributed in refining the survey content, the patient and helpful editors that ironed out a lot of my mistakes, the people that offered their time for testing the beta survey and anyone that contributed with valuable feedback to help this survey gets as whole as possible.
Thank you to all people from the TWC staff that were involved in organisational questions and other things.
Last but not least: Thank you to Fredrin, who once had the original idea for doing a community survey and obviously The Creative Assembly, as without their game and their patches to it, there would be quite none reason for a new survey at all.


very special thanks to these contributors, their feedback an/or help in organisational matters (random order):
m_1512 (TWC Content Director)
Finlander (TWC Moderator)
BunnypoopCereal (TWC Gaming Staff)
Omnipotent-Q (Hexxagon Council Admin)
Marshall of France (TWC User)
Hetairos (TWC User)
SP4 (TWC User)
Sebidee (TWC User)

very cordial thanks to the following editors (random order):
Stocker (TAoW Clan)
Plantagenet Rex (OTD Clan)
You did a great and restless job on the typos!

a very cordial thanks also to the machinima team for this awesome trailer (random order):
Kaisa88TotalWAR
The Wolfman

and many other I simply cannot list here due the amount. You were important each of you deserved a kudos and a rep!

A very special thanks you to Fredrin (totalwar.com user) for the original idea and who setup the first survey in December 2013.
Also a very special thanks to GERULA666 for the cool artwork and permission to use it.


Many thanks to these websites and communities for their help:
TWcenter.net
Total War Türkiye (Turkish TW news page and community)
Total War Rome 2 (German TW news page and community)
HeavenGames / TW Heaven
The Org
Total War Network (TW Community hub)
The Best of Total War (Russian TW Steam Community)
Rome Total War World Players (International TW Steam Community)
BETA Flash Tournament (International TW Community for competitive multiplayer)
Honga.net (most comprehensive encyclopedia for Total War)
Cosmic Contrarian (TW youtuber)
LegendofTotalWar (TW youtuber)
GameDudester (Youtuber and TW fan)
Lionheart10x (TW youtuber)


Yours respectfully,
al Qamar (spokesman / organisator of the survey, TWC User)


Let your reps flow to all mentioned and kudos to about 30 more unmentioned due the lack of not having a TWC account.

[alQamar]

we passed the amount of 4600 participants today. Thanks to everyone!