ADT Survey results!
From question 1 it is quite obvious a lot of the people playing have been playing for a long time.
ADT action: We will aim to keep things fresh and interesting for our playerbase as playing for this amount of time may become tedious in terms of what we can provide.
From question 2 we can see the majority of you guys see yourself as primary RPers, prioritising your RP over most mechanical aspects.
ADT action: This will help balance what we want to provide people in terms of rewards, new content and future areas we may wish to implement.
From question 3 we can see most of you guys are satisified with our bug response times.
ADT action: Continue to see if we can push to get bugs solved faster, though if we continue at the rate we are, players see our response times as average.
From question 4 there's a clear trend in people using the Job system to add additional things to their character, which upon leading to question 5...
... shows there's a keen desire for Job system improvement. It is something we are already looking in to, though this will help focus our efforts. The scale on this graph is basically 2 is a complete neutral reaction, though the closer to 3 we are the more you guys want it. As you can see, the only one to dip below a neutral response is removing old job system jobs.
ADT action: We'll continue to look in to the Job system. We're trying to look and understand the complex scripts currently to revert to the old XP cap, though from this we can hopefully learn how to create new content. This graph will help with our direction when this happens.
Question 6, coupled with question 1, shows that obviously with time people will not only be playing the game with maxed characters but ultimately may enjoy it more. While there's quite an even trend from 1-29, the majority of our players enjoy the endgame aspects.
ADT action: Provide new content that appeals to level 30s when possible. We will not starve the 1-29 bracket of new content aimed for them, but there is a clear preference to being a level 30 character.
Question 7 provided a very strange trend. There's a clear divide in people who are comfortable soloing and those who are not. There's a gap between being able to solo nearly every boss + requiring a party for big bosses and struggling to solo or even kill a boss solo at all, with the least votes going in to the neutral category.
ADT action: Possibly think of new boss mechanics that certain builds can attempt to kill/loot. While we should not strive away from encouraging party play, some people may struggle to reach endgame items without partying, which may become a chore for players who play during quiet hours.
And lastly, the big one:
A good portion of these suggestions aren't planned, though it is evident from the already going-on class fluffing that you guys enjoy it and it may be something we can pour our efforts more in to.
Linking in to question 7, you guys want a skills-based dungeon, encouraging for certain skills and classes to be encouraged to be pivotal to the party as opposed to meatshields.
A lot of you want a new HAK pack, which is something we're not overly surprised with. While it may digress from the thread, the HAK pack would take a monumental effort let alone resourcing what we'd want to put in to it. With the desire for it so high, it may be something we invest some efforts in to soon, though I would very much like to make a thread explaining why HAK packs are an issue for those who don't know.
Player-owned boats was one I must admit I personally surprised to see above a lot of other suggestions. I have a framework in mind for performing this, though I am happy to see it received a lot of positive feedback. We will look in to this in the future.
The highest scoring expansion is the Sword Coast idea, which is not a surprise as we've had 3 plots very recently all involve settlements on the Sword Coast one way or another. While a full-on expansion would take a lot of effort (such as the Serpent Isle and Demonreach) we can discuss what we might potentially do. While typically "canon" settlements have not been actively included in the module in the past, it is an open possibility.
Epic items unique to bosses. It was an idea that would encourage people to fight certain bosses that aren't particularly popular, such as the bound omni-elemental. The idea is to, alongside the 5/100 epic table chance as well as their own Flawless Mythal chance to provide a new drop rate of, just as a random number, 1/100 of an item unique to that boss being dropped. This means there may be coveted items that can only be obtained from one boss which will encourage endgame diversity.
Hard modes of Amia Dungeons was one of the many on-the-spot ideas just to gauge interest. An idea was basically a placeable, such as a gong, you click on and verify you want to run the dungeon on a tougher difficulty. We have some really cool dungeon designs and I know a lot of players have grown up on the server with their favourites. The idea of being able to run the Blood Moon Dungeon with a perilous confrontation at the end is one of many that could happen. While this choice serves as the middle-point in terms of priority we have from this survey, it is "relatively easy" (in terms of actual development time) to implement.
I'm going to be honest, when I added this in I expected it dead last. Double XP events was an idea based on some other small communities I personally interact with (A Phantasy Star Online server I play on does them now and again) which have shown that these events can draw in a lot of players being online. It eases some stress (1 hour spent grinding on these days obviously equating to 2 hours spent outside of it) which when people take breaks during their hunts, means we get more people RPing. This is not so much of an ADT question but more of a DM one. It is something we can bring to the team and discuss and find a tasteful way to potentially implement, as well as it being a fair one.
I'm going to group the last 4 as one, as the other expansion ideas all fared quite badly overall. The Shadow Plane one was originally one of the leading ideas, though fell in popularity as the survey went on. Underdark was a bit surprising, though there may be a playerbase factor of the Underdark community being very quiet these days which may have lead to its falls. The Nexus was 2nd to last, which is a question I'm going to be putting in to the next survey asking if this is to do more with the current state of the area as opposed to the idea of simply expanding that area in particular. Lastly, we have the Korinn Archipelago expansion. I will be following this up to, to engage why it received a lack of popularity, though I have reason to believe it was simply extending Demonreach's PvP rules over.
As a note, you are welcome to discuss your opinions to ideas here however these will be asked in a future survey, so I do encourage that any of these opinions you wish to expand your answers on, you may wait for the next survey which won't be too far from being made.
Question 9, the final question, asked which updates did you guys like of 2018. Amarice's Epic Item overhaul which happened in the latter end of 2017 was by far one of the most popular choices as well as Demonreach which also came out in 2017. The only 2018 idea that was actively mentioned was the Class Fluffing overhaul. While we do not take this as a lack of quality being delivered in 2018, we believe that simply the former two have offered players new content that they can thoroughly enjoy.
Overall, the ADT will look through these results and discuss upcoming updates and we can get started on some project ideas. I'd like to personally thank everyone who has taken part and if you see idea(s) that you personally like/love that aren't doing too well in these results, nothing that has been mentioned has been explicitly confirmed to be happening nor has it be confirmed to be scrapped.
