2nd world-wide community Total War survey [RESULTS]

[stevehoos]

This entire one shouldn't even be a poll. The wording of the question is already biased, by stating such features are 'barely' implemented.

Would you prefer a more accurate description, like "not implemented at all." "Barely" does this game a favor when talking about such musings as the political absense in this game. There is more content in some phone apps. Paying money to stop adoptions and make adoptions, and the civil war.... wow, there's the gist of the depth right there.

[Sebidee]

Would you prefer a more accurate description, like "not implemented at all." "Barely" does this game a favor when talking about such musings as the political absense in this game. There is more content in some phone apps. Paying money to stop adoptions and make adoptions, and the civil war.... wow, there's the gist of the depth right there.

The problems with that one was that it suggested an answer. If I ask you 'what do you think of barely implemented features' then you are going to give an unfavourable answer simply because of the word barely. Similarly there was a question asking you what you think of 'poor immersion' and the only answer you could give to that is 'it was poor'. I'm sure if there was a question asking about 'fantastic graphics' or 'great immersion' then you would be up in arms about that.

But they have been changed. The question asking your opinion of 'barely implemented features (politics, civil wars, vassal states)' has been changed to 'features such as politics, civil wars, vassal states, etc' and the one asking about 'poor immersion' is just asking about 'immersion'.

You may have a specific opinion about features or immersion but you should express that opinion with your answer, not with the question. When you suggest an answer then it's called a leading question and those are inherently biased. It's not as if you forgot that immersion was poor for you, and if you did forget then it's obviously not a big enough issue for you to answer. Most af all making small changes like that and removing all the adjectives removes the appearance of bias from the survey. If krissalanza is able to point something out then other people are going to think the survey is biased too and the survey's results will lose it's power by being discredited. SO neutral questions and answers are what's needed.

Of cooooooourse, you may desire the questions to be against Rome 2 and think that someone like me shouldn't have a part in it since I like the game but then what's the point in even having the survey if a chunk of the community is going to be ignored?

[baptistus]

the survey's results will lose it's power by being discredited.

I am sure of one thing : the poll will be discredited by the pure fans of rome 2, whatever if the survey is good or not. They will say for example : "2000 votes to 1 000 0000 sales ? pfff it show nothing exept the vocal minority and the silent majority".
They already did it about every other polls so it will not be new.
And don't forget some people absolutly contest there was a lot of problems with the siege AI and they said they never read anything about it except on TWC.
And this people come here to talk about "biaised" things ? Some people have no honor , really.

[Sebidee]

I am sure of one thing : the poll will be discredited by the pure fans of rome 2, whatever if the survey is good or not. They will say for example : "2000 votes to 1 000 0000 sales ? pfff it show nothing exept the vocal minority and the silent majority".
They already did it about every other polls so it will not be new.
And don't forget some people absolutly contest there was a lot of problems with the siege AI and they said they never read anything about it except on TWC.
And this people come here to talk about "biaised" thing ? Some people have no honor , really.

The survey is never going to be done by a million people so there's nothing you can do about that. You may as well remove any doubt about bias too, and there were some biased questions - you can ask al-Qamar. We FIXED it and now the survey is better.

Yes there are plenty of people who are biased in favour of CA but you can't say there isn't anyone who's biased against CA. Ignoring one and vilifying the other is biased itself. You say that the poll will be discredited by pure fans of Rome 2, so does that give permission to pure haters of Rome 2 to run and rate the survey and create questions for their own agenda? (or at least appear that way, as was the case with this survey).

NO. The only way the survey could possibly accomplish anything and be worth the hours put into it if it is completely neutral and bias free (which it is now because of the complaints and because of al-Qamar's willingness to listen to those complaints and willingness to alter the survey because of them). When you argue over that point and say that people shouldn't mention bias and shouldn't scrutinise the questions, that I shouldn't be involved and that the questions shouldn't be neutral then are you saying that the survey should be intentionally anti-Rome 2?

By the way, this opposition to actually discussing the survey is quite ironic from people who will discuss and expose every aspect of a game and fight to the death for their right to do it. Shouldn't we have the same right over a survey that could potentially alter the way we think about the game and use the forum? Banning people from talking about the possibility of bias could even lead them to believe that you are worried that the survey could expose positive opinions of the game.

[alQamar]

Hi seb and krisslanza, I sent you a PM containing a link to a copy of the survey. We could try to sort some issues out as far this is possible without making the results invalid.
The ongoing discussion about the "bias" in the survey is really not very fortunate, neither here or on totalwar.com but as the one that was in order to create this survey and has access to the tool, I do acknowledge some of your problems.

The reason why there are examples in the questions you enlist krisslanza is easy. You can either see it as biased to inform people about weaknesses on the particular feature before they rate it. On the other hand despite the information given the people to not rate majorly "bad" just because the examples. The survey primarly ask for your personal experiences. The intention why the examples are given on a few particular example, that you also identified above is, that the people should know what kind of problems they have to rate now. This was intentionally made to prevent people rate their technical issues worse, as they are not asked to rate graphical issues.

We have to admit that not all players are ABLE to understand the difference between the one and the another question, as they are problably no forum users, and probably no users with much technical background to seperate both things.
This is the main reason why the examples are stated, not to influence them.

I took a lot of professional made surveys in my life, and there are sometimes explainations or examples given by the interviewer on the questions. Also you can ask the interviewer about questions if you like, for example if you are unsure how the intention of the question is. This service cannot be ensured on kwiksurveys, so the examples are needed.

This is exactly what is done by these examples. I would not consider this to claim this as bias in this context.

If you follow the instructions and "answer honestly" and regarding your "own experience" you will not see a bias in this question.

If someone ask you a question like "Tell me a color you like (e.g. black)" this is not biased. Same it is not bias to give examples what "streamlined features" are or what is meant by graphical issues as they are not limited to glitches or just an optical emphasis.

"Barely implemented features", is some sort of bias I have to agree. Unfortunately we cannot change the wording of particular answers without loosing the current result of the whole question. Still we can refine the question itself.
Let's do this together if you like.


Can anyone please take care / responsibility about these questions on totalwar.com. As you might know I have no way to answer on the feedback myself.

Edit: when is the survey finished? and i assume the results will be presented here on the forum?

The survey results will be published on totalwar.com as well. Basically it will be a copy of the results I will publish on TWC, and someone has to post in future on totalwar.com

All done, as those before me stated...many questions that were asked twice or more

Can anyone please explain that there may be repetitive questions but those are very very limited. Either they are duplicate because the questions to compare them with the December survey or then there might be few questions that are appear duplicate to check the consistence of a previously given answer. This is a legitimate tool in surveys.

Other than stated by two users on totalwar.com there are no questions asked more than 2 times, afaik.

[Sebidee]

Hi seb and krisslanza, I sent you a PM containing a link to a copy of the survey. We could try to sort some issues out as far this is possible without making the results invalid.
The ongoing discussion about the "bias" in the survey is really not very fortunate, neither here or on totalwar.com but as the one that was in order to create this survey and has access to the tool, I do acknowledge some of your problems.

Ok I sent a PM back with some suggestions. I actually found some questions with (unintentional) pro-Rome 2 bias and suggested you change those too I think only a couple of small changes would make the survey perfect and free from any accusations of bias.

[daelin4]

To echo krisslanza's remarks, if you wish to draw attention to things you consider important enough to be include in the survey (ie missing textures or lack of anti-alias or whatever), you can make an actual question out of it. An example would be:

-Have you heard of X problem in the game and have you experienced it yourself? How would you describe the priority of this issue, if any?

If they never experienced it they can just say no; if they have they can say yes. If they have they can offer their opinions via the survey answers as whether they considered important or trivial. Some parts of the survey however include information that just didn't seem very important to the questions I was dealing with, so I was left wondering what was the purpose of including it. It comes off as suspicious, no doubt that is why some people harbour similar feelings of bias.

[alQamar]

ok daelin. Thanks for that. Well basically I can agree with your proposal but then we would have even more questions to answer and more questions to read. We are certainly out of balance regarding the length. If you might have a look on the survey that was made by fredrin, you will see that he did use another approach to let the people "order" the answers in terms of their importance. The issue was that is was impossible to read the results afterwards as the presenting was horrible. This is why the decision was made to use the star rating instead, and further not to ask even more questions as initially we only had a bunch of 50 questions, then after the many feedback people gave on that beta we reached the 80. Again for the next time of a survey, as you already said one survey will be never enough to reflect a result, we will consider to make the survey again more focused. Also I expect that the most issues, that originally are the reasons for the questions to be asked, may be already fixed - insha allah (if it is gods will) - as the arabs use to say.

Please know I take all your feedback serious and it will be used for the next survey, at least I will pass it on, if I will not be the one that sets it up.

Just about the speculation we had earlier, that people meanwhile stay off the game or forums at all and thus not taking the survey. I do not think this is the only truth, if we have a look how popular some threads are on totalwar.com or TWC regarding the amount of answers and views. But certainly the lower participation might be also a reason that Totalwar is not anymore as present in the minds as it was in December. Who knows. At least the results are coming in again, but slowly at the moment. I think we still should be able to reach 2000 participants soon.

[Sebidee]

If you might have a look on the survey that was made by fredrin, you will see that he did use another approach to let the people "order" the answers in terms of their importance. The issue was that is was impossible to read the results afterwards as the presenting was horrible. This is why the decision was made to use the star rating instead.

I remember that ordering system in the last survey. It was horrible. The 5 star system is much better.

Just about the speculation we had earlier, that people meanwhile stay off the game or forums at all and thus not taking the survey. I do not think this is the only truth, if we have a look how popular some threads are on totalwar.com or TWC regarding the amount of answers and views. But certainly the lower participation might be also a reason that Totalwar is not anymore as present in the minds as it was in December. Who knows. At least the results are coming in again, but slowly at the moment. I think we still should be able to reach 2000 participants soon.

If you are going to correct some questions then a lot more people have to take the survey to counter any effects of unintentional bias. I would recommend contacting some of the modders who currently have mods featured in the top 3 or first page of the workshop. They could add a short note and link in their mod description. I have a new unit pack coming out next week and I'll certainly do it. Workshop mods get thousands of views and would be a good way to reach out to Rome 2 users who aren't forum members, I've used it to advertise tutorials and its very effective.

Of course, I wouldn't recommend modders do this if it is going to get them in trouble with CA. Daelin, do you think this would be a problem?

[daelin4]

ok daelin. Thanks for that. Well basically I can agree with your proposal but then we would have even more questions to answer and more questions to read.

That's why I suggest making separate surveys on specific subjects.

Let's face it, a survey titled "2nd community wide survey for ALL TW fans" is rather vague. The video matter of fact is just 2 minutes of game footage montage, the only text is that i's a survey, and at the end its made by people at TWC. It's little wonder there isn't much interest in it. In fact I never bothered to take it until someone said that it was long, boring and/or prejudiced; I asked myself what exactly is this survey about?

Now if you had a survey that dealt with the technical elements of Rome2, you're damn sure to get tons of people who want to give their opinions to the matter.

Number of survey questions IMO isn't the real problem; if they knew that there were 80 questions but all of them are about certain elements of a subject (ie, technical issues with Rome2), they can expect to encounter those sorts of questions and respond with the subject in mind. But if you're suddenlty bouncing between questions of multiplayer, technical issues, between this game and that, in a LONG survey, people don't have that much of an attention span. It also drains them of trying to think what and how they can answer. This yet lends itself to another accusation of trying to manipulate results.

Analogically speaking, it's like taking a math exam, but you're not allowed to know what subjects, so you cannot prepare yourself as to whether they are mostly algebra or polynomials, or mere multiplication questions. Then next thing you know it's really just statistics.
Personally I would also take the lack of interest, indirectly, as reflecting a lack of interest in Total War period, at least outside of mods.

[Humble Warrior]

This is just my opinion, but this interference into the poll by Daelin and sebedee into what they `think` is right is wrong in my opinion.

But it's your poll Al Qamar, i'll say no more.

[daelin4]

This is just my opinion, but this interference into the poll by Daelin and sebedee into what they `think` is right is wrong in my opinion.

I am normally inclined to respect such opinions, but then most tend to have reasons explaining why these opinions are held. For my part, that is what I think makes a better survey than the one released to the public. It would be wrong if I was the ONLY one doing it, and I hope I am not. Then again my agenda is to produce a survey that would be effective and straight-forward.

@alQamar if you want someone to help test any future beta surveys I'd be the first to sign me up. This sort of critiquing is what I do IRL regularly.

[Humble Warrior]

I am normally inclined to respect such opinions, but then most tend to have reasons explaining why these opinions are held. For my part, that is what I think makes a better survey than the one released to the public. It would be wrong if I was the ONLY one doing it, and I hope I am not. Then again my agenda is to produce a survey that would be effective and straight-forward.

@alQamar if you want someone to help test any future beta surveys I'd be the first to sign me up. This sort of critiquing is what I do IRL regularly.

Since you replied.

Personally I believe you have a huge conflict of interests here and am amazed you continue to post here after recent events. I'm not sure what you're up to, but you should not be involved in this. Not at all.

[alQamar]

Thanks seb! I've mailed you back. Please add me on Steam so we proceed it with less time.

[alQamar]

Humble Warrior I am currently working out the matter the survey being "biased", with sebidee via voice chat for quite 2 hours. It should be fine for anyone including Seketh - no offence - after it.

But it's your poll Al Qamar, i'll say no more.

I am the lead and organisator but it is not "my" poll. It is a community work Humble Warrior. Sure I am thankful if the one or other reps me too, but not forget about the others. Many hands and minds were actually involved. I stopped counting them.

I'll say no more

You are welcome to post here, why not? Of course it might look bad for readers we discuss about the bias or not for pages and other issues. As for daelin and in general I already said we should definitely put up a longer beta for a next survey so hopefully the discussion about those aspects might be shorter in the next one.
Still I appreciate all feedback that is coming from anyone - including you.

[alQamar]

Hi guys, Sebidee was a great help and we both went through the survey now thoroughly for a couple of hours. Of course for this passion and time he invested into it and the intention to make this survey and its results a success as a whole, he is included in the named credits on the survey and on this thread.

I pray to the gods that the changes we made are now sufficient enough. While they should not influence the outcome of the results, we addressed all complaints about the survey being biased. If there is anyone that still says that this survey is biased, I kindly suggest her / him to design a survey for the community her/himself. Good luck. Any comments about still persistent issues with this particular topic are welcome via PM.
Hope the feedback about the survey will handle other aspects in future, and we might also talk about more positive aspects of the survey again. Sorry if I used the word "complaint(s)" but we found out that in the german language it has also a not so negatively touch than it has in the english language, as sebidee explained me.

Thanks for the time and the nice talk Sebidee!


edit: I won't be so available on TWC / Steam to answer comments or PM in the next days, also have to care for my real life. Maybe I am less here for a week. Keep up the thread, spread the word. Survey is hitting the mark of 2000 soon. Would be happy to see this mark passed when I return.

[Sebidee]

You're welcome! and thanks for including us

[Butan]

When Rome 2 apologists will be "okay" with this poll it will only have one question and one answer :

Do you like Rome II?
1) Yes



alQamar poll was as good as any unpaid non-professional work right from the start, but he's cool enough to listen to the "vocal minority" here and tailor it so that its 100% "unattackable" and we can move on to analyze the results.
If Rome 2 would have been directed by someone who listen to community input as much as he, we would have had no need to create our own community poll to show that there is a dire need of changes...

[tom_gr7]

I'm looking to see the results, specifically to the question.

"What is your Main OS Architecture? 64 bit or 32bit. I think it will be interesting to see how many players are still using older 32bit systems. I don't know much about game design, but isn't Rome II designed to run on 32bit systems? Therefore the game cant take advantage of 64bit architecture.

[The Wandering Storyteller]

They now allowed it on the official forums once more.