TFS Survey #1: Results

Back in March, I asked for your opinions, though TFS Survey #1. Until recently, it has been open for responses, but now it is closed, and I will share the results.

The manner in which I constructed the survey has the answers laid out in some pretty awkward ways. For example, the first question, “How many characters do you have in total?” was a text response question. As such, the answers are presented through Google Surveys like this.



The same goes for most of the questions, simply due to my inexperience with the Google Surveys platform and lack of thought put into this portion of the process, and how the data would be displayed and such. I’m wiser for it, but the data is still messy. As such, I’m going to be summarizing some of the results with my words.

A few quick things to note before I begin, as context.

• There were 14 responses to the survey.
• There were 17 questions on the survey.
• The last response was collected on March 21st. Since then, TFS has changed quite a bit, and many of these replies, especially toward the end, are outdated. Consider this “a look at March,” rather than “what people think right now,” because this data is not current.
  

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Question #1: How many characters do you have in total?

20ish
Hella
1
25-30
2
Less than five, not sure how many specifically
29
34
2, but I plan to make at least 2 more
87
More than 10
18
About 15
9

The results here aren’t particularly compelling; I don’t think. I put the question down as the first question because it seemed easy, and expected the results to be more impressive than they were. If I enumerate the text responses, order them ascending, and then put them in a scatter chart real quick, we get this.

And we can see that the “standard” range for characters goes up to about 30, and some people have an awful lot more than that, to the tone of “87,” and “Hella.”

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Question #2: How many of those characters do you play on a semi-regular basis?

Responses varied here but were almost all small numbers. I made the text responses into numbers, and ten of the responses were less than five. Four said five or above. Two respondents stated that they only play one character actively.

3-4
3
5
10
3
5
One regularly, the rest sporadically
2
Few ;_;
1
2-4
10-15
2
2

It’s interesting but unsurprising to see that the usual number of characters a player plays actively is quite small, while the number of characters that players have is perhaps somewhere around twenty.

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Question #3: How often do you make new characters?

I’ve modified the given chart to be displayed more clearly, with the full answers right next to the corresponding parts of the pie, and with the number of responses underneath.

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Question #4: Who or what is your favorite character?

Ignoring those responses who declined to answer the question, the responses are as follows.

Empress Naoki
Anyone BUT Royal Fletcher
“The Vikings,” referring to the group Systkin Ragnarok
Grandma
Tommy
Lady Genevieve St. James
Royal Fletcher
The Misty Woods
Neva-Svir-Suna, Wavewarden
Empress Naoki

This is another wholly unsurprising result. I, Madame Naoki, am undeniably TFS’ Favorite Character by a wide margin.

I didn’t expect any real information out of this, but it’s interesting to see regardless. I’m going to follow this up in the next survey with, “What traits do you like to see in other players’ characters?”

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Question #5: Do you consider TFS more of a 'writing' thing or more of a 'game' thing?

I asked this question, as TFS is often termed as a “writing game” or something along those lines, and I wanted to see what people thought.

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Question #6: Do you think that there should be more...

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Question #7: Do you think that there should be a larger variety of open settings for characters to use on TFS?

Some of the “Other” responses are as follows.

• Fine as is.
• I think there are plenty, pretty much just make them as they're needed.
• Whatever people have fun doing!

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Question #8: Do you create quests/content/settings for other players?

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Question #9: How much would you consider yourself (the player) to be part of a group or government on TFS?

This question, I asked to see how much of a sense of ‘belonging’ players had to a faction. It wasn’t worded very well, and I don’t think this was an excellent way to collect the information, in hindsight.

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Question #10: Do you think that there is enough variation, theme-wise, in the currently active groups and governments?


Some of the “Other” responses are as follows:

• Yes if certain nations would actually do stuff.
• I guess?
• I have no idea.

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Question #11: How much would you be interested (generally speaking) in taking part in a tournament style event?

I put this question on the survey in an attempt to gauge how interested TFS might be in another Tournament like the last one I put on. Responses varied, but seem pretty good.

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Question #12: How difficult is it for you (the player) to find a good scene to take part in?

Here, and for all of the other 1-5 spectrum questions so far, I realize I’ve forgotten to specify which end of the spectrum is which. I intend, and I feel as if it is logical to assume that in this case, “1” means, “Not difficult at all” and “5” means “Very difficult,” but I ought to have said as much outright.

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Question #13: How many of your scenes do you set up with another player Out-Of-Character?

It seems as if none of the survey respondents think that they set up all of their scenes out-of-character, and I might be inclined to question that, personally, but the data does imply that a very significant portion of scenes on TFS are indeed set up in such a manner.

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Question #14: What sort of RP are you most interested in?

For this question, in the interest of expediency, I’m going to simply paste the results right here with a few grammatical edits.

• Slice of life, 1v1 (ish) combat, and just about anything else that seems fun at the time
• Bizarre Adventure
• It depends on the mood, hence why I make a number of characters to fill in those little plots I take an interest in - from slice of life and romance, to something more battle hardened.
• Quality scenes, could be anything as long as it's good.
• Inter-related, stories of different people coming together.
• Political and Grand Quest
• More wandering around/slice of life/general exploration and character development
• Political (especially long-term political), romance is always fun, just basic day-to-day life. All sorts, really.
• Pretty much all of it
• Romance + Questing
• Adventure, political, sword and sandal, epic journeys
• Character-focused role playing, or plots relying heavily on character-to-character interaction and development.
• Combatz or epic long quests or plots that span a long time and leave history after it is over.

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Question #15: What sort of RP would you like to be able to do on TFS, but cannot?

Again, here are the responses, with minor edits and the non-responses removed.

• More fast-paced/rapid-fire rp. People are usually busy though and I lose interest rather quickly most of the time.
• I'd like more horror-mystery style RP, but there isn't much of that on TFS
• Casual interactions - possibly more my own fault and the fault of my character's personality than anything.
• Small-scale war. The biggest nations are all friends.
• Longer and bigger quests, the kind that generates a sense of history or events in TFS. Ex: the Gems quest, as it could still be considered to be going on still.
• Political intrigue. Not many are into it, so it's few and far between.
• Political Intrigue
• Innovation and darker themes (a better style of evil)
• Other eras, but that is understandable

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Question #16: What do you think is the biggest problem on TFS right now?

(Keep in mind, these responses are from March.)

• Not enough taco-based content. That @badger guy really knows his way around a taco.
• Lack of activity/dispersed activity that is not concentrated enough.
• Lack of interaction between governments?
• I think the problems are starting to work themselves out for the most part. Still, there are some dead nations laying around that need to go IMO.
• Over-reliance upon certain people to continue plots, making their hiatuses awfully detrimental.
• Lack of proper nations besides Isra
• Lack of well-rounded villains, lack of open countries, lack of macro-conflict.
• Lack of diverse activity, and what it mostly around is a scene already set by a number of people engaging in some story, so it's really off limits to a new individual.
• Not enough people in the chat room
• There is a clique of people that just want to be isolated from all others. Sure, that's their prerogative, and you can't tell people to change how they want to play, but this is also supposed to be a sandbox where people can join in. There is an attitude where if someone new wants to join in on a setting they made that they must be there to fuck everything up and they should be made to feel as unwelcome as possible.

It’s my opinion that in the time between the time this survey was taken, and now, some of these issues have been resolved quite satisfactorily. Some of these concerns are still quite valid, and worth seriously considering as we move forward into the middle of the year.

The last question asked if the survey respondents would participate in another study, and none of them said no. (I’m not going to put another image in here.)

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So. With all of that in mind and the understanding between us being that I have indeed shared the results of that survey as I said I would, I’ll go ahead and invite comments on the survey, and discussion about the results. Good feedback and rational discourse are both swell. If you have any questions or any of that, have at it.

And then I’ll go on to ask the following: Do you have any ideas for questions to be put on TFS Survey #2? If so, go ahead and share them, and I may end up putting them on there.