Elite: Dangerous Mega Survey Results

Sorry - I fell into the same trap as the OP - missing out a rather small proportion of possible answers....

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Sorry - I fell into the same trap as the OP - missing out a rather small proportion of possible answers....

To be fair, it's not the margin, it's collecting the data points to begin with. A good survey will remain neutral, not lead questions, ask a mixture of open and closed questions, and present a series of iterative statements for response. Surveys however are open to gaming, can have all manner of campaigns raised to stack the results and so I tend to treat every, single, one, with a grain of salt.

Huh, there's probably a joke/pun in there, somewhere.
 
I didn't even know there was a survey being done!

But then again I only very rarely use Reddit, so if it was only announced on there then I wouldn't have seen it. Also I'm used to cherry picking what thread's to read on the ED forum's, so if it was announced on here then I'd have skipped over it with a '...not another survey!'.

So I went on Reddit but stopped reading when I got to this...

'....My guess is: on average Elite players who are also active on Reddit tend to be more “engaged” or “hardcore” than Elite players who are not on Reddit. Why? Because, as we all know, quite a lot of Elite-related stuff happens out of the game (think Thargoid discoveries, news about third party tools, community-organized events, faction politics, and so on). So the “engaged” Elite player (as opposed to a more “casual” one) needs to get online to get more info. Sure, there is the Forum, but my guess is that the 3 subreddits combined get a larger number of hits per day than the Forums do...'

What a load of tosh!

My game clock stands at 45weeks+. Iv played Elite since day 1 & never ever got so involved with a game as this, playing hour on hour, day after day, week after week. I'd certainly call myself a hardcore Elite player & not a 'casual' one.

But then again, I'm actually playing the game itself rather than reading the that's posted on Reddit.

Sorry OP, but I didn't even get to the survey stuff, there was too much Reddit fanboy stuff in the way for me! Other's will see it different, but there you go!
 
It's meaningless. You could also argue that 73% don't play in solo. so those that dont play in solo have a massive majority. It doesnt mean anything. Oh and its what 76% dont play in private group's or some thing like that.

Saying 51% don't play in open is utterly meaningless in regards to the poll.

Et voilà:

76% do not Play in group-mode
73% do not Play in solo-mode
51% do not Play in open-mode

This means, most People don't Play in Group- or solo-mode. [big grin]

Don't take that too much seriously! :D:D:D
 
Thanks OP,
Two
1) I wholeheartedly agree this survey should have been promoted by Frontier. The information, wards and all are invaluable to those who want the game to succeed.
2) It would have nice if an FD employee acknowledged your efforts. That does not appear to have happened, which is unfortunate. As previously stated this research is invaluable to those who wish to prolong the life of the game.
 
Now combine yellow and red; which is what you are supposed to do to ascertain a majority and you'll see that yellow and red hold 51%; 50% + 1% = majority.

Combine yellow and green and you can see that a large majority of ED players like to play with other people. [heart]
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
To be fair, it's not the margin, it's collecting the data points to begin with. A good survey will remain neutral, not lead questions, ask a mixture of open and closed questions, and present a series of iterative statements for response. Surveys however are open to gaming, can have all manner of campaigns raised to stack the results and so I tend to treat every, single, one, with a grain of salt.

Huh, there's probably a joke/pun in there, somewhere.

Indeed.

.... and the question regarding the modes only serves to categorise those that voted - as Frontier already have access to game analytics that would show clearly which modes players choose to play in, how often and for how long.
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Hardly surprising that we were forgotten by the surveyor, We'd previously been forgotten by FD

To be fair Mac wasn't forgotten by FD, it was made clear many times where the limitations and barriers were. Doesn't mean it doesn't suck for you though.

To be fair, it's not the margin, it's collecting the data points to begin with. A good survey will remain neutral, not lead questions, ask a mixture of open and closed questions, and present a series of iterative statements for response. Surveys however are open to gaming, can have all manner of campaigns raised to stack the results and so I tend to treat every, single, one, with a grain of salt.

Huh, there's probably a joke/pun in there, somewhere.

Especially when the OP and creator admits they put an answer in to bait one particular group of players, and at the same time get lots of others choosing it for what it actually means rather than what they OP wanted it to mean.
 
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Et voilà:

76% do not Play in group-mode
73% do not Play in solo-mode
51% do not Play in open-mode

This means, most People don't Play in Group- or solo-mode. [big grin]

Don't take that too much seriously! :D:D:D

You monster. You win all of the internets.
 
I guess there will be no "Atmospheric Planet" landings in near future, it is too complicated and expensive, there's no data for such things, here on Earth we have approx. mathematical model and physical laws, for drawing horizons with sun rays, sky and clouds, but on another planet with different atmosphere, gases, will be a lot of corrections to such models, and this is even without consideration of the weather effects. Only way to go is to draw hundreds of "Sky" templates and apply them to planets with some dynamic variations.
 
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Hello Commanders,

I have just released the results of the Elite: Dangerous Mega Survey. You can find all the links and my comments here: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/6stz53/elite_dangerous_mega_survey_results/

Enjoy!

An interesting exercise but it can only be regarded as deep flawed if you are using as a statistical analysis. These are the problems that I can think of off the top of my head:

There is no attempt to quantify the number of contributors that actually own and play a copy of Elite.
There is no attempt to ensure that the poll was answered only once by any respondent (i.e multiple Elite or reddit accounts).
There is no attempt to catch false answers by asking the same questions in different ways.
Although the the perceived bias of the non-official forums is mentioned there is no attempt to allow for that in the results.

There are more but this will do for a start.

So, when viewing the results you should bear in mind that the answers may not be unique per contributor, the contributors may not own or play Elite, the contributors may have answered falsely to bias the result the way that they want and that the source of the results is not neutral.

In short, a meaningless statistical exercise.

Now, if you could run a proper, statistically valid survey, then it would be very interesting to see the results.

Perhaps you should ask a statistician to set one up. I was going to say pollster but given then way they have failed to predict the last two elections that's probably not a good idea.
 
The results re open, solo, and pg fit with almost every poll (both here and on reddit) I've seen about it in the past.

Sort of dispels with myth Open is bereft of players, and more to the point it demonstrates that those endlessly whining about 'griefers' really are in the minority. Odd then that Frontier cater to them so much.
 
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So the most popular activity is exploration, and the most anticipated features are atmospheric planets, more ships and exploration enhancements.

Guess that pretty much guarantees we'll see more combat oriented patches from FD !
 
I guess there will be no "Atmospheric Planet" landings in near future, it is too complicated and expensive, there's no data for such things, here on Earth we have approx. mathematical model and physical laws, for drawing horizons with sun rays, sky and clouds, but on another planet with different atmosphere, gases, will be a lot of corrections to such models, and this is even without consideration of the weather effects. Only way to go is to draw hundreds of "Sky" templates and apply them to planets with some dynamic variations.

Have you taken a look at Space engine or outerra?

Sort of dispels with myth Open is bereft of players, and more to the point it demonstrates that those endlessly whining about 'griefers' really are in the minority. Odd then that Frontier cater to them so much.

I think everyone already knew that, it's only a small minority on this forum that complain about open being both empty yet full off gankers killing huge amounts of traders on a daily basis. You'll find these same experts on life in open also proudly claim to never log into open.
 
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Looking through the results a bit more carefully, and in particular the wonderful combined result graphs (e.g. Age vs. Playstyle, etc) the most surprising result for me is how little variation there is in ANY of the results! People have pretty much the same playstyle regardless of age, want pretty much the same future content regardless of playstyle. That's surprising isn't it?

So the most popular activity is exploration, and the most anticipated features are atmospheric planets, more ships and exploration enhancements.

Guess that pretty much guarantees we'll see more combat oriented patches from FD !

LOL/Grimmace.
 
Thanks, it was an interesting poll. Sources of bias in the statistical approach have been noted, but given the circumstances it would have been hard to overcome them. A lot of argument has focussed on the answer to one question, I guess because it's the question people here enjoy arguing about, and many didn't like the answer. (Whatever the answer had been, many wouldn't have liked it!) I hope OP isn't disheartened by this after putting in so much effort. Reading the whole sequence of results and his analysis of them is illuminating.

FD must have similar statistics (since they're commercially sensitive it's understandable that they don't publicise them), and we can expect those to influence the future game development directions. The interesting question is really, to what extent we believe FD's statistics mirror these, because that would enable us to guess about those future directions. I'm undecided on that.
 
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