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Input on an MMORPG Player Preference survey - Art Style and Avatars
esc-joconnor
Member RarePosts: 1,097
Hello all!
I’m
planning on running a few surveys on player preferences for MMORPGs. I’m aware
of the Daedalus project, and I am getting data there where available, but there
are some areas that haven’t been covered (to the best of my knowledge) and I’d like
to have the data set to do my own analysis. It’s also quite likely that the
gamers and their opinions have changed in the last 10 years. 
I have created a survey before, invariably after I have started the survey someone points out something that would be great to have included, or suggests a better way to ask a question. To create a better survey from the start I’d like to get some feedback on the questions before hand!
The first one I’d like to do is on graphic/art style, primarily for player avatars. The goal is to determine which art styles have the greatest appeal, what facets of a graphic and art style are game breaking to different people, and cross reference that with the types of games people like to play. It would be good to know for example that people who like Modern or Sci-fi games prefer more realistic graphics than those who like fantasy games. (Not implying that is true, just an example of what could come out of the survey)
The results of all surveys, including all data, will be publicly available. I’m not interested in demographical information, so no personal information will be requested, only opinions.
I'm looking for general input, suggestions, as well as addition questions and items that I may have missed.
I'd like to keep each survey reasonably short and to the point.
Game Art Style and Player Avatar Preferences
To Start: Game Preferences
The initial questions will be about the number of hours spent per week on different types of games. A Scale of hours will be selectable for each type of game.- MMORPGs - World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XIV, Lineage 2
- RPGs - Fallout, Witcher, Skyrim, Borderlands
- FPS - Call of Duty, Battle Field, Counter Strike, Payday
- MOBA - League of Legends, DotA 2, Heroes of the Storm
- ARPG - Diablo, Divinity: Original Sin, Torchlight
The next set of questions will ask how much the player spends per month on the types of games above.
And a basic genre preference question for reference.
How do you like the genres below for games? (Scale, Love to Hate)
- High Fantasy
- Ancient Historical
- Recent Historical
- Modern
- Post-apocalyptic
- Cyberpunk
- Sci-Fi
Impact of Art Style
This section will ask general questions regarding the impact of a game's art style on the player.
How much does art style affect your interest in a game? (Multiple Choice)
- Not at all. I will give any style of game a shot.
- Minimally. If I really don't like the style of a game it might turn me off.
- Moderately. If I don't like the style, the game had better be good.
- Majorly. I'm not likely to play a game if I don't like the art style. I might try a game just for the art style.
- Totally. I only play games with art styles I like. I would play a game just because it looks good.
- Not at all. I will give any game a shot, regardless of animation quality.
- Minimally. If I really don't like the animation quality of a game it might turn me off.
- Moderately. If I don't like the animation quality, the game had better be good in other ways.
- Majorly. I'm not likely to play a game if I don't like the animation quality.
- Totally. I only play games with acceptable animation quality.
- Retro: Minecraft, Hero's Song, (other examples?)
- Cartoony: WoW, (other examples?)
- Pixarish: Wildstar, (Others?)
- Comic: Borderlands, Champions Online, (Others?)
- Anime(Full blown): Elsword Online, (Others?)
- Asian/Anime("Realistic"): Final Fantasy XIV, Blade and Soul, Black Desert, Skyforge
- "Realistic": Elder Scrolls Online, Age Of Conan, Secret World, SWTOR
- Artificial(Helmets for everyone!): Warframe, Destiny
How important is the appearance of your avatar in game? (Multiple Choice)
- Not at all. I don't care what my avatar looks like.
- Minorly. It would have to be pretty bad looking to turn me off.
- Moderately. I can accept a sub par avatar if the game is good.
- Majorly. I'm not likely to play a game if I don't like look of my avatar.
- Totally. I only play games with avatars I really like.
- Not at all. I don't care what my avatar looks like.
- Minorly. I like to have at least a few options.
- Moderately. As long as I can get my avatar looking halfway decent I'm good.
- Majorly. I like a lot of customization options for avatar.
- Totally. I need to be able to tweak all aspects of my characters appearance.
- Not at all. I don't care what other avatars looks like.
- Minorly. I wouldn't like it if f other characters in the game to too bad or crazy.
- Moderately. I think other characters in the game should conform loosely to my preferences.
- Majorly. Bad looking characters in game annoy me.
- Totally. I won't play a game where the other players and NPCs look bad.
Thanks for taking the time to read this far. Any input is appreciated!
JO
Comments
However, when I do come across a good game, that 3-6 hours jumps to 15-20hrs a week.
I also haven't found a good MMO in ages. Back when I was hooked on MMOs, I averaged 4 hours a day for nearly 5 years. But, I haven't found a good MMO for the last 3 years.
So, you might want to change the wording on your question to ensure it says "on average", or you might want to include an additional question along the lines of "does the amount of time gaming differ when you find a great new game to play, and if so, by how much?"
If you are specifically listing "HIGH" fantasy, I'd include low fantasy too. High fantasy is things like final fantasy, wildstar, wow etc, whereas low fantasy is things like game of thrones.
Also, these genres should be matched against game genres if possible.
For example, when playing an RPG, I prefer high fantasy, but I wouldn't want to play a high fantasy FPS. Similarly, I love modern guns, so for FPS I prefer modern and recent historical, so post-apoc, cyber etc would feature low when talking about FPS, but that doesn't hold true for other game genres.
"Interest" is a vague term. Might want to split this out into two questions:
1) How much does art style affect your purchasing decision for a game?
2) How much does art style affect your enjoyment of a game?
For example, art style massively affects my decision to buy a game. Its one of the main reasons I avoid most asian MMOs / games in general and is also a reason why I avoid a lot of RPGs in general (I hate the generic fantasy look / 80s fantasy look, e.g. rift).
However, if I've gotten past the purchase point, art style stops becoming a factor.
So, for me, art style is a barrier for entry, but not for retention.
Same as previous question, "interest" is vague.
Game style is probably wrong term here, but I can't really think of the right term as it is generally confusing. Its more like what technology is the art style trying to replicate.
So, retro is trying to mimic the low-tech games of the 80s and early 90s when it was the technology that limited the art in games, rather than a genuine preference.
I'm not sure what the difference is between anime and asian/anime.
With realistic, again, not sure what this really means. I think you mean something along the lines of "If this place existed in real life, make the graphics look like real life". However, regardless of what you mean by realistic, SWTOR should not be an example here as it is a cartoony art style and was never meant to be realistic.
Hopefully you are more knowledgeable than me about proper artistic terminology and so can figure out the right way to word this one to make it more obvious what it means.
E.g. I couldn't give a crap about appearance in an FPS because being first person, you can never see your character so it doesn't matter. However, in an RPG is becomes majorly important for me as connection to my character is a big part of role-playing games. If I look like a twat, I'm not going to care about my character and am thus less likely to want to log in.
Something you might also want to work in, but I don't know what you'd call it, is to do with how "messy" the screen is.
For example, when I tried Wildstar in beta and after F2P conversion, I enjoyed the amount of customisation you could make to your avatars and I enjoyed the style. However, when actually playing the game, you had to be massively zoomed out in order to track telegraphs, numbers etc. Combined with the flashy animations and fast paced combat, you never actually saw you character, you just knew the blog in the middle of the screen was yours.
Anyways, good luck with your survey, hope this input helps!
That's great input @cameltosis ;! Thank you!
I hear what you are saying about the current market for games affecting play time. I'll have to think about changing that to a list of game types you rank in order of preference, or perhaps a follow up question like you suggested.
For the Genre's I wanted to add some examples, but I added that last, and I was fading but wanted to get the post out. I had Low Fantasy on the list, but was thinking to was too close to historical, so I removed it, but you are correct it should have it's own category.
Good point about Genre/Game Type. I'll see if I can setup some kind of cross reference table, that would only leave a binary option for each combination though, compared to a scale of interest.
For purchasing decision vs enjoyment that's tricky, do you think there would be people that would accept a game's art style, buy the game, but then lose interest because of the graphic style later?
For simplicity's sake I may have to go with the more general questions.
It was tough trying to categorize the "game style" (definitely not the best description, I will change that) I couldn't think of one successful full on Anime MMORPG. Borderlands is very Comic style, so Anime would look like actual Anime or Manga. (One Piece). Asian MMORPGs tend to have an Anime influenced look, but more realistic, hence the 2 categories. For realistic you are correct, I quoted "Realistic" because it is definitely not the 100% accurate meaning of the word. I added SWTOR in that list as the characters facial and body proportions are for the most part realistic, I think the game engine does make it look more Comic style than Cartoon though, so I’ll move that there.
Another good point on the avatars. I think a chain of questions that starts with general opinions, then goes into more depth based on the previous answers might work there. If you answered generally that you don’t care about your avatar no more questions. If you say it depends on the type of game, then it would go to ask how you feel about which type of game. Or simply making it a question for each type of game might do the trick. Then a different list of games may be more appropriate. Instead of MMORPG, RPG, FPS, make it more related to the situation. First Person, Third Person, Online, Single Player.
It’s obvious I do need to make the definitions and questions clearer.
Thanks again for your input!
1. A question about how much graphics / animations affects a first impression of a game. For example, if a game has bad graphics / animations I am much less likely to try it in the first place so I'll never know how amazing the game play potentially is. An exception to this would be if it got good reviews and was in a genre that interested me.
This is in contrast to how likely I would be to continue playing a game if I enjoyed the game play despite the graphics (FYI I would probably keep playing).
2. A question about what defines 'good graphics' personally. For example, the latest flashy lighting effects vs. just being visually clean. For example I am not a big fan of chaotic / messy looking games, or games that have 'realistic' textures on on low poly models, while far more simple / clean looking games (e.g. your average 1990's JRPG) I would say does have good graphics.
3. With regards to character customisation, I may have missed it, but is there a question in there about everyone looking 'the same'. i.e. How much does it bother you if you can't be a special little snowflake (even if you're character otherwise looks good).
4. As cameltosis pointed out, the perspective of a game is a big influence on how much my avatars appearance affects my enjoyment of the game. For example, if the game is first person and I never really see my avatar then I don't really care, but if the game is third person (or has significant / frequent third sections, e.g. the hub in Destiny) then an ugly / ungainly avatar is far more likely to put me off.
For 1 I see your point, instead of a scale a few different multiple choice options might work better.
For 2 I can agree with you there as well. I am totally not interested in trying Minecraft, but I can play Trove :chuffed:
For 3 I think lack of customization is the same as looking the same. I'll try to work that into the question/info to make that clear.
4 it seems I need to look at how I present that question.
@Gorwe ;
Thanks for taking the survey! It's still in the works though.
http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/406778/mmo-preferences-survey-results-finished#latest
Do you have the data saved per user? So you can see relationships, etc.
~~ postlarval ~~
Still in the works! I'm just asking here for input before launching it.
Ah, I didn't read the whole thread, I'll go back and have a read. Are you into Sci-fi at all Sunandshadow? Or just a fantasy guy?
Sounds just tend to get my attention more than looks. When i hear the wind blowing, the birds singing and wagonwheel squeking and so on, it just pulls me in more than grafics does. Once i get used to the grafics of a game i accept it as the style of the world.
I cant remember starting up a game and deciding to not give it a try based on grafics.
I didn't think there was much of a difference in Fantasy, I think war in general is the best way to justify all the killing that goes on in MMORPGs
I'm sure your opinion on character appearance isn't uncommon. I tend to worry about my characters whether I can see them all the time or not!
Sound is definitely important in a game, but for sound I don't think there is as much of a range of options, it's generally either well done or it isn't. For music sure, but I'm pretty sure any kind of survey on music will just tell you that a lot of different people like a lot of different stuff. No big surprises there!