17 réponses à ce sujet

[Andraste_Reborn]

This came up in another thread, and I was curious: quite some time ago, a developer (I think it was David Gaider?) mentioned that data from DAO showed that only a small percentage of players ever played as anything other than a human, and that dwarves were especially neglected. Does anyone remember what the stated percentage was, or what thread that was in?

As for the relevence of this question to the DA2 forum: I realise this is not the only factor behind the human protagonist in the sequel - most players play warriors, and they're not taking out the other classes, and most players play male characters but they're not taking out the women. However, I think it was probably one factor in the choice to make the single more personal origin of DA2 revolve around a human rather than, say, a dwarf. If the metric had shown that 80% of players were choosing to be elves, it's possible that we might all have pointy ears now.

Modifié par Andrastee, 24 janvier 2011 - 04:04 .

[David Gaider]

errant_knight wrote...
Well, I think many people played more than one origin and gender, but I also think that people tend to have a 'personal canon' playthrough that tends to be their own gender (hence more male PCs in that more males play) and favorite origin. For me, that personal canon playthrough was human warrior (love playinig warriors) and female, and I think that was the case for many--the human part, not the female. Not sure how many people played warriors. Seemed like there were more rogues to me.

The thing is, elves were also very popular, and I don't think that the dwarf origins were less played because they were dwarves, but because dwarven culture is so immensely unpleasant. Some people really liked the level of emotion that evoked, but for others, it just wasn't very fun and the politics was vastly annoying. So it's really hard to say. Did people dislike dwarves or their politics? Did that many people really play only once or only play one origin? What a waste of an awesome game, if true!

I suspect that most people, when selecting their race/origin, didn't really have much to base that decision off of other than their base preference for how a race looks and the written blurb-- if they read it.

As for the figures we have, our telemetry is able to break down unique accounts that play the game more than once or restart-- and the figures I quoted for DAO are the number of unique accounts that ever played an origin, whether it was all the way to the end or not. I'm not going to start rattling off figures (since I don't have them in front of me, and wouldn't be at liberty to start handing them out even if they were) but I do recall the dwarven origins being 5% of the total (3% dwarf noble, 2% dwarf commoner). The elven figure was higher, but still a fair distance from the human noble and human mage.

Again, is that indicative of anything? There are a lot of reasons a player might choose to do something and you don't want to make assumptions about their motivation. And just because a minority of players finish a game doesn't mean you don't put in an ending. Still, it's better to work from hard data than conjecture or anecdotal evidence when citing preferences of the player base as a whole.

Modifié par David Gaider, 24 janvier 2011 - 04:25 .

[David Gaider]

errant_knight wrote...
So, does this data come from people logging in when they play? If so, I think your data may be wildly flawed. I don't log in when I play, and if that's how the data is gathered, I'm probably in these statistics as someone who didn't finish even once, when I've actually finished about nine times.

Not everyone is included in the aggregate totals from telemetry-- there are going to be people like yourself who aren't logged in, for instance, or people who opt out entirely (which is an option). As with any statistical collection of data, there's a margin for error that's going to be based on the sample size... and in this case it's pretty large. I don't think we're too worried about it not being representative.

[David Gaider]

Russalka wrote...
But how much will this knowledge shape any games developed in the future?

Hard to say. Just because, say, only 5% of players ever played a dwarven origin does that mean we shouldn't do one again? Does that mean we couldn't perhaps do them better, make it more appealing? It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg argument. Looking at the data, however, I would think it'd be reasonable to say our efforts would have been more rewarded had we done, say, only one dwarven origin and did another human origin instead (ignoring the hindsight aspect entirely, of course). Such figures are beneficial only in terms of not talking about what the players will do or not do based on assumptions (a lot more players played the same-sex romances than we had originally assumed, for instance), while at the same time recognizing that it shouldn't form the entirety of the basis for our decisions.

[David Gaider]

Seagloom wrote...
You also need to have "upload gameplay data" or whatever it's called toggled on.

Unless I'm mistaken, I believe you had to toggle it off in order to not be counted. By default you sent your telemetry in.

[David Gaider]

marquiseondore wrote...
I wonder if the data is from completed playthroughs. 

As I already said, the data is collected from all playthroughs-- completed or not. We can tell how many unique accounts played the game, didn't finish, started several times, finished several times, etc. The parsing on the telemetry is pretty sophisticated, as I understand it, it just needs for us to ask the right questions.

Again, it's not the end-all and be-all with regards to future decisions-- but it does give us a pretty clear picture of what people are doing and not doing, if not why. A better picture, certainly, than simply the people that come to these forums. While many people here express an acknowledgement of the fact they are in the statistical minority when it comes to their play habits, I think there's a bit of a fishbowl effect going on at times... people on these forums (or on the internet, on other gaming sites) only see opinions similar to their own being reflected, so it reinforces their idea that they're the only ones that exist. This does not, by any means, make their opinions insignificant-- but I think it does offer some perspective for us as developers as well.

[David Gaider]

AlexXIV wrote...
Tbh. I don't like this 'gathering information' thing Bioware did with DA:O. I turned it off as soon as I learned it is there. My fav is female dalish warrior, but I played almost every origin. However my problem with this data collecting system is that it for example doesn't tell which playthrough was the most rewarding, most liked one. It's like watching people at what they do and then assuming it's what they want to do. I find that quite naive and superficial.

We're not making any assumptions about what they did and didn't like-- only what they did. They can't have a favorite if it's something they didn't play, after all. We can tell what choices people made at the various plot points, at what point people stopped playing the game... things like that can be very helpful, so long as you're not ascribing motivations to those players that may not hold up. What would be naive and superficial is basing one decisions completely on anecdotal evidence and assuming that holds true for the whole, or assuming that "those other players" don't count simply because they don't come onto the internet to sound off on their opinions. We can lead a horse to water, after all, but we can't make him think.

[David Gaider]

marquiseondore wrote...
I don't know about anyone else but I come here to complain critique, congregate and see if there is any news.  Forums are fishbowls but so are focus groups.  Except forcus groups are handpicked fishbowls.  

True. I'm not a big fan of focus groups, but they can provide useful information so long as they are broken down acording to ther interests... I'd much rather hear from focus groups that consist of "hardcore RPG players", "fans of action games", "MMO players", things like that. You can get a better representation of attitudes than simply random groups. And focus testing is becoming much more sophisticated in that way.

So, yes, I guess you could say the people on our forums are something like a very large focus group.

AlexXIV wrote...
But honestly I would rather have you guys realizing your own vision without too much thought about 'what people want'. After all Bioware has been pretty succeessful before.

And yet it would be naive for us to assume that because we've been successful, that we know everything. Information is always useful. I don't think we've ever been afraid of going by our vision, even if it's not what's considered popular.

I would probably prefer some sort of customer feedback in which I answer questions about the game instead of having someone looking over my shoulder while I play.

Traditionally speaking, questionairres lie. People answer according to what they think the answers are or what they want them to be, rather than how they actually act. This is, as well, the problem with focus groups. They sometimes give answers that they think we want to hear, or provide criticism that they might not otherwise feel if they weren't in a focus group where criticism was the end goal. Thus, focus groups are sometimes more useful for how they actually play the game rather than for the opinions they express-- not that opinions don't play a part. It wouldn't be an RPG, after all, if people didn't feel as strongly about what's going on in their head as what's going on in the game.

Modifié par David Gaider, 24 janvier 2011 - 05:52 .

[David Gaider]

agrocato wrote...
My point however was that I don't need to log onto the Bioware server to play DAO.

Unless I'm mistaken, my impression is that you don't need to specifically log into a Bioware server to send us telemetry. The only thing that would keep you from sending data is by unchecking the option box or not being connected to the Internet. I could be wrong, but the volume of telemetry we possess seems to indicate (to me, anyhow) that there weren't the issues you describe.

[David Gaider]

agrocato wrote...
By the way, I find this borderline big-brother-ish. I know that we sign terms of business, granting you the right to do so (provided these terms are actually valid). But it doesn't sit well with me if you mine your customer for information in such a hidden way.
When I log onto your server I am aware that I transfer data to your company and that is fine with me. If I unlog, I assume that I regain my privacy.

On first sight, this might look like an overreaction to you. But behaviour in an RPG potentially gives you tons of very personal information: Moral values, guesses as to the sexual orientation, etc.
You might find this data useful, but frankly it is none of your business!

I suppose. I could always be wrong in terms of how the information is obtained. As it is, the information doesn't come along with any identifiers, I believe, so it's not like we're aware of who a particular piece of data belongs to even if we cared to. But I'm not really the person to speak on such matters, obviously. To me, it's all black magic.

[David Gaider]

FellowerOfOdin wrote...
(btw David, any chance of revealing the data to the community? I love statistics!)

Doubt it, but I'm not the person to ask.

[David Gaider]

Xayasha wrote...
Of course it doesn't show our degree of appreciation for our different playthroughs, but it does mean something when 95% of players don't even try an origin...

I said this in an interview recently, but I think there's some appreciation among RPG players for knowing that a path exists-- whether or not they actually chose to take it. You do have to couple that with the knowledge of just how many people are actually making those choices, as well, but that's just one piece of the puzzle. So long as we're not making our decisions based solely on numbers, it's not a bad thing-- and we haven't, just to be clear. As someone else pointed out above, there are numerous factors that go into any major design decision, and info like that acquired from telemetry should be used as support only.

[David Gaider]

crimzontearz wrote...
Dean: b*tch
Sam: jerk

Castiel: How you two get anything accomplished is beyond me.

[David Gaider]

Xayasha wrote...
I do appreciate that there are many paths to choose from, like most players, and I'm glad you don't just look at numbers to make your decisions. But if I try to put myself in the shoes of a company who has to make profit/be successful and whatnot, I'd take such a strong statistic (5-95%) strongly into account; you don't want to spend too much of your budget on a feature most people won't get to enjoy, right?

To a degree, yes. Like I said earlier, it does raise the idea that maybe there should only have been one dwarf origin rather than two-- but it's hard to say. You can't play everything by the numbers.

AlanC9 wrote...
I hope every future Bio game fails as badly as ME2 did.

Sure... may they all fail as badly as ME2 with its excellent sales and near-universal critical acclaim. How terrible that would be, without a doubt.

Modifié par David Gaider, 25 janvier 2011 - 05:13 .

[David Gaider]

Bryy_Miller wrote...
Alan, it's no fun if even devs start reacting to you like you're in earnest. I think the experiment failed.

I failed my Detect Sarcasm roll? And here I thought I was fluent.

Modifié par David Gaider, 25 janvier 2011 - 05:49 .

[David Gaider]

Hmm. While I certainly appreciate the endorsements from people posting about the X number of times they played through the game, or the various origins, when the subject is the gross percentages of over three million players I'm not certain what that does more than seriously underline the kind of minority that exists on these forums.

Again, not that you all aren't aware of that on some level, but I think there's also an idea that because you only see people expressing the same viewpoint that this represents "the fan base" as a whole.

And not to discount that minority, either. The fact that anyone is willing to play the game more than once is certainly a plus from our end.

[David Gaider]

AlanC9 wrote...
My problem with this is that I can think of a few games with rabid fanbases that nevertheless failed to attract a mass audience.

The "rabid fanbase" can indeed act as an evangelist and be a boon-- potentially, since as you point out it's not always going to translate into actual sales, and I suspect at times a very rabid fanbase can be off-putting to some (who are no doubt undeserving orangutans, yes yes). There's also the double-edged sword of the anti-evangelist when members of the rabid fanbase turn feelings of investment and ownership into actual entitlement. I can think of a few titles with fanbases that would qualify as such.

At any rate, I'd be careful before someone declares such a group all sunshine and roses-- and characterizes everyone else as undiscerning and unwilling to parse their purchases intelligently. That's oversimplification either way.

EDIT: And this subject is indeed Off Topic. It's a very tenuous connection to try to tie this to the topic, so I'd suggest starting a new thread if you want to discuss it further.

Modifié par David Gaider, 25 janvier 2011 - 07:35 .

[Stanley Woo]

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