Surveyed!

I was pleasantly surprised the other day when I read that Broadsword has been sending out opinion surveys to players this week. I couldn't remember the last time I was asked to fill out one of these, but that's why I have a blog! This post from December 2016 mentions me completing a survey about Knights of the Eternal Throne. I'd completely forgotten about that... either way, it's been a while.

Presumably not every player is getting this survey (Jackie clarified on the forums that it's only available in English, so if you registered your game in French or German you might not get it for example), but it does look like it's going out to a pretty wide group as I've seen both guildies and people on social media talk about receiving it, plus they're staggering the email send over the course of the week (which is usually something you do when you're emailing a lot of people).

If you're unsure whether it's hiding somewhere in your inbox, look for an email from "The SWTOR team" with the subject line "You're invited to provide feedback on SWTOR". I received mine on Wednesday.

It consisted of a total of eighteen questions for me, though that number is clearly variable based on some of your answers, e.g. when I selected that I disagreed with a certain statement, a follow-up question suddenly popped up on the same page to ask me why.

I thought the first page was quite interesting as it basically asked about the new player experience: how much the first five hours of the game prepared you for what came later, and how hard you found different aspects of the game to get into. (I chose Galactic Starfighter as the most difficult to understand. Hell, I'm close to having played a thousand matches of that game mode and I still don't understand a good chunk of the kinds of things that happen to me in it.)

The next two pages focused on polling people about some general sentiments about the game, such as whether the graphics look modern, whether you like your companions, or whether you feel that your choices are meaningful, as well as asking about your favourite and least favourite story moments.

Then there was a question about whether you primarily play solo or with friends, and I desperately wanted a "both" option. As it was, I chose "with friends" since I guess that's the more unusual one... this only led to a single follow-up question about whether I considered my guild important to my gameplay experience, so I'm guessing the focus here was actually on the people choosing the solo option. Can anyone who completed the survey and went down that route confirm what sort of follow-up questions you got here? [EDIT: Pallais shared his survey with me and it appears that there were no special questions for solo players actually, just the guild one being limited to those of us who group a lot.]

Finally there was a section focused on monetisation that asked me to rate different subscriber benefits (not sure if this is different for people who aren't subscribed) as well as different types of Cartel Market purchases (e.g. hair styles, XP boosts, pets).

I was quite happy to complete this survey because I think it's in the interest of any good business to understand how customers interact with their product or service and while the devs obviously have some idea based on gameplay and transaction data, I'm almost willing to bet that there's going to be something in the results of this survey that's gonna make them go "huh, I never thought about that". (I say this as someone who finds customer surveys and focus groups extremely fascinating in her day job.)

I don't think any of our answers will trigger very specific changes - in fact, I thought it was funny that I first found out about this survey through someone posting about it on the PvP forum and asking others to please complain about premades in their survey responses... because my own version of the survey only included a single mention of PvP, and that was as one of the gameplay modes for which they asked whether it was initially hard to understand.

The way I see it, based on the questions I got to answer, they mainly seem to be looking for general guidance in three areas:

• How much to invest into improving the new player experience
• Which areas that are supposed to be core to the game do people find the least satisfying (e.g. if lots of people said they don't really care about their companions, that would be surprising and probably something they'd want to change)
• What else can they sell us that we'd actually like to buy

And I think those are some perfectly sensible questions.

My own answers to those three points were, in a nutshell:

I generally thought the game starts out teaching you the basics well, but there is a lot more to learn later. I rated GSF as the most confusing mode to get into, followed by space missions and strongholds. None of the "more standard MMO fare" like flashpoints or PvP ever gave me too much trouble from what I can remember.

I responded neutral to positively to pretty much all the things they asked about, except the question about whether SWTOR felt "modern", because I just don't feel like I can use that word to describe a tab-target MMO in the year 2023. That's not a complaint, mind you, just an observation of the zeitgeist. I also noted a couple of places where I personally feel the graphics could use a bit of sprucing up, even if the game is still gorgeous in many ways.

As for store items, I answered truthfully that I like anything that makes it more fun to create new alts, such as new species unlocks and hairstyles. Armours qualify sometimes, but weapons I care little about because they are too small to be well visible most of the time anyway, and I'm always mystified when people get excited about different lightsaber hilts. I did note that I also like pets but it's hard to get into them when they despawn after every loading screen (hint hint).

Feel free to share some of your own survey responses and observations in the comments!