Battlefield: Europe - The Survey

[McGuba]

Hi all,

While waiting for the next version of this mod to arrive, here you have the chance to have your voice heard and have an effect on the future development of the Battlefield: Europe MOD.

Over the years direct feedback given by the players have greatly contributed to improve and shape this mod for which I am exteremely thankful. It has been a fantastic journey, and it still has not reached its end.

I am fully aware though, that the large majority of the players of this mod have never made any comments here, just always downloaded the latest version and played it. Which is all good of course, because it is just the way it is, and I am no exception as I have also tried numerous mods in the past for other games and rarely ever gave any written feedback. However, to make this mod even better in the future it might be beneficial to get a better understanding of how the majority of the players actually play it and it requires to learn the opinion of the "silent majority".

Therefore I have decided to launch a survey which might help to get some much needed information on the various needs of the players. The survey itself is a very short one, should not take more than 2-3 minutes to finish and of course anonymous so no one will know how you answered one or another question. So please give honest answers as that is what we are looking for. Also it will only accept one feedback from one device, but even though you might be able to finish it more than once by using more devices, in order to get a valid result please do so only once otherwise the result will be distorted.

Thank you for your time for reading all this and hope to learn your opinion here:
https://eSurv.org?u=Battlefield_Europe_Survey

[PeteMitchell]

Thanks to all that took the time to respond so far!

... and just a quick FYI to all others: this survey is still open, so you are still very welcome to share your views as well!

Thanks!

[McGuba]

OK, so since the number of feedbacks has become very low in last couple of days/weeks I think it is time to share some of the results. Although I was hoping for a few more, I understand that (sadly) a lot of players have moved to other games/interests in the last one year or so (as it is also indicated by the much reduced activity here at the PzC forums). Nevertheless, I think enough results came in to have a large enough sample so that some conclusions can be drawn.

But before doing so I would like to thank everyone who took the time to complete this survey and of course to PeteMitchell_2 who made it all possible.





As we can see most players play at the recommended difficulty level, which is General. But there is of course no problem at all if someone wants to try it at another difficulty level and about one third of the players did so. The main aim of this question was to find out if the difficulty of the mod is set right, i.e. if most players are able to achieve some kind of victory playing at the recommended level. Obviously it is not possible to make it ideal for everyone, but if the majority is OK with it, I think it is largely good as it is.





This one is probably more interesting. I thought that the "easy" version is more popular with the players but it looks like only a very few people played this version of the main Barbarossa scenario. And the "realistic" version appears to be two times more popular than the "medium" one. Which indicates that the majority of the players prefer higher challenges, even at the cost of more sleepless nights. Or maybe simply because most players want to experience the "real" historical experience, even if it means a higher chance of failure, which in my opinion is a good thing. Especially in today's world when game developers mainly aim at making games which are easy to win by practically everyone who is over 5 years old.

At the same time, a need emerged from a few veteran players for an even harder, even more "realistic" version. Therefore chances are high that in the next version of the mod the former "easy" difficulty will be dropped and a somewhat harder than realistic, "realsitic+" version will be added instead.





I must say that I am quite happy by the results of this one. It indicates that even though most players played the "realistic" or "medium" version of the mod at the recommended General or an even higher difficulty, the majority managed to achieve at least a draw and nearly half of the players had a total (decisive) victory. I am perfectly aware that this mod is not an easy one but it shows that most players found a way to beat it in the end. Again, it means that there might be a need for an even higher difficulty level for those who would like to have a greater challenge. At the same time, the considerable number of players who failed to achieve even a draw may make it necessary to give some more help to Axis players who are on the losing path. Moreso that the next version will be again a bit harder in general.






I find it hard to draw any conclusions here. Apart from what I already assumed: most players needed more than one attempt to play through (beat) the mod. The large majority needed several attempts or reloads to finish the mod.





Although I understand that most players are not interested in multiplayer games, it is indeed a lot of fun. I would certainly like to see more players trying the multiplayer version of this mod. After all, one of the main reasons to create this mod was to find out if there was any chance for the Axis to win the war from a strictly military point of view, or how things would have turned out had the Axis followed another strategy. Playing against the AI is somewhat flawed due to its limitations and only another human player can come up with new and creative solutions for an unexpected problem. On the other hand, it has been a lot of fun to try to script the AI to respond to virtually every strategy that players can come up with, even though the AI certainly needs some buffs to counter its tactical weaknesses.

However, it looks like there is some need for multiplayer games as more than a quarter of the players have at least an interest in it. But I understand that it requires a higher commitment as a multiplayer match lasts much longer and finding an opponent is not so easy when the activity of the PzC community is seemingly diminshing. Nevertheless, the next version will come with a much improved multiplayer version of the Barbarossa scenario so everyone will have the chance to give it a try. Apparently, many of the changes that I made in the next single player version were the result of a change introduced in multiplayer.

Right, so these are my first thoughts, feel free to make any comments, feedback, etc., and again, many thanks for everyone who took part!

[PeteMitchell]

By the way, we kept the survey open for now, so thanks to all new respondents that participated since the above results were published, your responses have been recorded and are not lost, same with any future responses, i.e. we will keep monitoring the survey on a frequent basis until further notice.

Thanks again and/or in advance for all your input!

[Uhu]

Tanks for the survey!
May I ask, how many participants filled it out?

[PeteMitchell]

Tanks for the survey!
May I ask, how many participants filled it out?

Hi Uhu, actually not as many as we had expected/hoped for (although the survey is very short) but the number equaled approximately 8-10% of the views of this thread (at any point in time so far) and it is still growing.

However, most interestingly, the relative distribution (i.e. the percentages) of the responses hasn’t changed anymore since/once we had crossed the mark of around 30 respondents… So wow, my statistics professor was actually right back in the old days…