Deleted, as my reply has been ninja'd by others.
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Elite: Dangerous Mega Survey Results
- Thread starter TheSynopticVision
- Start date
OP made quite clear that his survey can't be representative, therefore it doesn't really matter if someone voted twice.
I enjoyed reading the results (then again, I like stats) and from what I recall I think this might be the most replied to community survey, although happy to be corrected.
Do what you think is right and from all accounts you've learnt a lot from running it, so maybe in another year if/when you do another it'll be even better. Well done and thanks for your hard work, it is appreciated.
Direct quote from the Reddit OP which pretty much covers everything about representative results (seriously, read it, it was already there before you even started complaining!)
PS
Personally I disagree with the first paragraph, but it's meaningless since OP admitted that his poll isn't representative anyway.
Next, I want to highlight the limits of this survey. You might think that 12K respondents are not enough to offer a fairly accurate representation of a player-base that is (although we do not know for sure) of several million players. That is actually not true: there is a precise formula to derive how many respondents are needed for a given total population, and even for a population size of 10 Million -- and aiming at a 95% confidence level and at a 5% margin of error -- just about 400 respondents would be sufficient to be statistically significant. So, the number of replies is more than sufficient.
The real problem here is where the respondents came from, since it is there that we can find some selection bias. Frontier (through the moderators) did not allow me to post the survey invite on the official Forum (so if you are reading this on the Forum and this is the first time you hear about this survey, I am really sorry but there’s nothing I could have done) and of course even there the Forum members are only a fraction of the total players. Maybe having the survey sent out through the newsletter would have helped? I doubt that, since I guess that quite a lot of players do not read that either. Short of posting a link to the survey in the login screen of the game itself there is no way to make sure that your sample is perfectly representative of the total population.
So, essentially this should be interpreted as a survey regarding the opinions of Elite players who are also active on Reddit. [A self-proclaimed statistics expert in the comments chastised me, saying that this is a false claim and that even considered all my long explanation of hos this survey has limits, it still has no value whatsoever. Take what follows as little more than a creative exercise then]
The survey was advertised on the Eliteangerous, the EliteOne, and the ElitePS subreddits, and in the corresponding Discord servers (although I also saw it posted on a large FB group: “Elite: Dangerous Community”). Again, even though the total pool of people is much larger than the actual number of respondents (the E
[Note: if FDev would allow it to be advertised on the Forum (or even better in the newsletter!) I’d be willing to re-open the survey for a week or two, to get submissions from non-Reddit users. I doubt that will happen though]
So where’s the issue? Well, the issue is that the average Redditor does not exactly represent the average Elite: Dangerous player (all Elite Redditors are Elite players, not all Elite players are Elite Redditors). But how? Knowing exactly how would help giving this survey more meaning. 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 about the issue Forum user vs Reddit user? I know that there is a lot of regulars on the Forum who do not check Reddit (and vice versa). Usually the stereotype is that the population of the Forums is (on average) 1) older and 2) more PvE than PvP oriented. I am not endorsing this assumption, but I think that there might be a kernel of truth there (anecdotally, I know of “older” people who prefer the relatively more familiar format of an internet forum than that of Reddit).
So, although you are free to interpret the data as you see fit, my guess is that considering all of the above we can turn the survey’s limit into an insight, and consider these numbers as meaningful if referring to Elite: Dangerous players who are active online (mostly on Reddit) and therefore:
1) Slightly younger than average
2) More “engaged” than average
If this is true, some of the numbers below are pretty surprising, and (I think) they discredit some misconceptions about the preferences of the Elite player-base. Please keep in mind once again the these are imperfect numbers, not certain scientific results.
PS
Personally I disagree with the first paragraph, but it's meaningless since OP admitted that his poll isn't representative anyway.
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That's not really the point. It's that there's no way to control large scale duplications as part of an effort by a group or groups to deliberately skew the results. One or two duplicates is one thing. 1200 duplicates as a deliberate skewing is something else.
Oh, and what's the point of a non-representative survey?
Note, I deleted my post as it has been ninja'd by others.
In my opinion, this "survey" just shows some interesting aspects of Elite Dangerous players who are on Reddit (seems a number of Reddit users play Elite Dangerous in Open.) Sure, someone might have posted a link to the survey in Facebook, but only those who bothered to setup a Reddit account responded.
I myself never even knew this survey was conducted as I don't bother with Reddit. And I'm a predominantly PG player.
Take from this "survey" whatever you like. But only FD knows how active Open, Private Groups and Solo really are. All other opinions, including mine, don't matter biowaste.
Have fun, fly safe. o7
I myself never even knew this survey was conducted as I don't bother with Reddit. And I'm a predominantly PG player.
Take from this "survey" whatever you like. But only FD knows how active Open, Private Groups and Solo really are. All other opinions, including mine, don't matter biowaste.
Have fun, fly safe. o7
Why not have the man find every person who has ever played the game, and have every forum member challenge that individual, face-to-face?
The guy posted all the disclaimers he could. Frontier, with one exception, has never had an official poll.
And, they don't like talking.
The guy posted all the disclaimers he could. Frontier, with one exception, has never had an official poll.
And, they don't like talking.
Careless words cost lives!
Still wrong.
There is. And there wasn't. Like I said other three times.
As said above, representative surveys don't exist in my opinion, you are asking the wrong person
There are those who would say that if I had a big sack containing one of every kind of fruit in the world, and then I threw in an extra orange, that the majority of fruits in the sack would be oranges. But then there are those of us who use English properly too.
There is not, there may well have been but you'd not be able to tell. And three times you have been wrong.
Okay, say I'm in a group that wishes to skew your results. I simply get every member of the group and like minded groups to go to their nearest large city, London, Manchester Birmingham, New York, Adelaide or whatever, and using their laptop or mobile phone to connect to the free WiFi in a number of coffee shops and using a separate reddit account with throw away email accounts, enter the skewed results into your survey. They do this as many times as they have time for. Heck, I could walk down Old Street and not even need to buy a coffee there are so many open WiFi connections. Just 40 people posting the same results to your survey 30 time is 1200 duplications or 10% of your result set.
The result would be massive duplication that is undetectable. Each would have a separate IP address, email address and reddit account and you'd not be able to detect this.
And that's the problem. Undetected.
I can even do this without leaving the house. I just request a new DHCP certificate from my router and bingo, new IP address.
Now. I'm not saying that this has happened, nor am I saying that your survey is incorrect but I'm not saying that is has not happened or that it is correct either as you cannot tell. Your survey could be 100% accurate or 100% inaccurate or anywhere in-between but you have no idea of what that is. I have no confidence in your results.
So, an interesting exercise, and kudos to you for taking the time to do it, but an interesting exercise is all that it is.
More's the pity because I really would like to know the answers to these and a number of other questions with a high degree of confidence.
And there are words that have more than one meaning and majority is one of them.
As said above, representative surveys don't exist in my opinion, you are asking the wrong person
So lets have the true data. Let Frontier release some stats on time spent in each mode.
I realize it will be controversial no matter what but at least we can work out whats going on.. If it turns out I'm the least wanted customer then I can live with t hat.
They wont of course because it would likely upset the chosen ones... Still, I'd like to know
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