Driver/gunner survey.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Flaropri

I've posted quite a bit on this topic in the past, so I'll just put in a few thoughts that came up as a result of the survey.

1. Is this linked into the official forums? In any event, I as a general rule dislike these types of surveys. While more in-depth than polls posted on say, CNN's website, it still has the problems of being specific to the people on the website, who are interested enough to take it, etc.

It's been posted on reddit, by now the responses hold more non-PS1 than PS1 players, so the sample pool is pretty diverse. It's linked in those forums somewhere, but not explicitly in a separate thread... it'd prolly get canned then.

It's also something that people could theoretically do multiple times if they wanted to weight it.

IP locked it. It's possible to bypass of course, but really, it's just a poll.

Essentially, there's no way to say if the results are actually representative of the full demographic.

That's never the case though, it's unfortunate but you can't control these populations. ^_^ *cough*zerg*cough*

That said, it is put together well enough, and for a general feel it would be interesting to see the results after a good few hundred votes (at a minimum) and I did it myself to contribute. The poll is slightly slanted, but not appreciably so, it's mostly well put together, except perhaps the first question which has such a short list.

Ta. I tried to cover as much of the arguments as possible. To be fair, the pro-solo side simply has less arguments, though they do make the most claims about what populations want (typically I've found they claim it's what they want themselves though...). I've seen no evidence in the polls sofar that suggest people today are as anti-social, individual gamers in a MMO as some make them out to be.

I put the survey together in about 2,5 hours. Should have tested, expanded it and refined a bit more if it would have been truly scientific. Alas, I have a real life graduation study as well, so I just went with the most obvious. xD

Interestingly though, there's hardly any that claim to come from CoD. I'd expected that fraction to be larger. Chances are people play CoD anyway, but consider that a very casual game compared to whatever they dubbed their "main" game. Do note the high degree of RTS and RPG players.

Anyway, interesting poll, as I said, I'd be very interested in seeing the results with an appreciable amount of entries.

Currently have around 140 respondents. Going to wait for around 200 till I check the results again. Then we can see how big the differences are with a small and big pool too.

[Flaropri]

Originally Posted by Figment

It's been posted on reddit

IP locked it. It's possible to bypass of course, but really, it's just a poll.

Sounds good.

That's never the case though, it's unfortunate but you can't control these populations. ^_^ *cough*zerg*cough*

Well, someone could... it'd just be very difficult, and probably require the expenditure of more resources than most people would be comfortable with (including real world resources).

Ta. I tried to cover as much of the arguments as possible. To be fair, the pro-solo side simply has less arguments, though they do make the most claims about what populations want (typically I've found they claim it's what they want themselves though...). I've seen no evidence in the polls sofar that suggest people today are as anti-social, individual gamers in a MMO as some make them out to be.

It's been my experience that the "anti-social" nature of gamers is largely a stereotype. Although, to be fair, anti-social people are most likely not going to participate in polls as much as others.

I put the survey together in about 2,5 hours. Should have tested, expanded it and refined a bit more if it would have been truly scientific. Alas, I have a real life graduation study as well, so I just went with the most obvious. xD

You could always change your study to statistics

More seriously though, I doubt we have enough data to really do a proper survey anyway, including sending/posting it to a representative sample instead of relying on pure brute force (aka, number of entries) to get anything close to reasonable.

Interestingly though, there's hardly any that claim to come from CoD. I'd expected that fraction to be larger. Chances are people play CoD anyway, but consider that a very casual game compared to whatever they dubbed their "main" game. Do note the high degree of RTS and RPG players.

Agreed. It's also how the question was worded. For example, I was originally going to chide you for not having TF2 up there, since that's what I'd been playing recently, but when I thought more about it WoW was still the "primary" online game I've played (by number of hours). Even so, I've played a lot of other games, League of Legends, Poxnora, Dawn of War 1&2, Shadow Era, etc.

I think a lot of people have played COD (I actually haven't but I know people who have, and the sales records speak to it's use), but for whatever reason they might consider BF3 or WoW or something compeletely different to be the "main" game they've played.

Currently have around 140 respondents. Going to wait for around 200 till I check the results again. Then we can see how big the differences are with a small and big pool too.

Neat. Although considering how many people are already in the Beta (let alone who may play after release) it's still a relatively small number. Still, it's progress, and slowly becoming significant if with a wide margin for error.

[Crator]

Forums polls rarely hold much weight in regards to what everyone in the world thinks. However, they are usually good for determining how your local peers feel about things and sparks discussion about subjects in the polls.

[MrBloodworth]

Originally Posted by Crator

Forums polls rarely hold much weight in regards to what everyone in the world thinks. However, they are usually good for determining how your local peers feel about things and sparks discussion about subjects in the polls.

Its not a forum poll. Its a poll system on a 3ed party provider that has been linked to at-least 3 different communities.

You do not need to be a user here, or logged in here, to take the poll. That goes for all the other locations.

[Crator]

Originally Posted by MrBloodworth

Its not a forum poll. Its a poll system on a 3ed party provider that has been linked to at-least 3 different communities.

You do not need to be a user here, or logged in here, to take the poll. That goes for all the other locations.

I never claimed that this was a single forum poll. Even it being linked to multiple forums it's still limited scientifically. Having more sites involved does give a good view of opinions since there's more that participate. No doubt.

You want a true poll about this? Only way I can think of to cover entire player-base is to prompt players to answer the poll after logging out of the game.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Crator

I never claimed that this was a single forum poll. Even it being linked to multiple forums it's still limited scientifically. Having more sites involved does give a good view of opinions since there's more that participate. No doubt.

You want a true poll about this? Only way I can think of to cover entire player-base is to prompt players to answer the poll after logging out of the game.

Pop quizes every time you cert something!

"Why are you certing this!? WHY!?! D: "

(Why did I cert PS2 on the Sunderer list for instance, WHY!?)

[Flaropri]

Originally Posted by Figment

Pop quizes every time you cert something!

"Why are you certing this!? WHY!?! D: "

(Why did I cert PS2 on the Sunderer list for instance, WHY!?)

SOE, get on it!

[Galron]

Originally Posted by Sunrock

Also the lighting is more efficient as solo tank then a so called MBT (though I have no clue what's medium about them) .

Main, not medium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_battle_tank

[PredatorFour]

I think everyone apart from smed , higby and the crew want to see it return to the old planetside method of vehicles. Playing together will always beat playing solo.

[Sunrock]

Originally Posted by PredatorFour

Playing together will always beat playing solo.

That is how it works not too

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Sunrock

That is how it works not too

Not really. A single crew or AV tank getting the first shot in on another tank can usualy win before the other has time to react due to the TTK being so low. I've hit enough tanks from behind to realise that. They are relatively easy to take out, since the driver in both cases often stands still to fire along.

I can drive and gun a tank solo, but I'm not dumb enough to tell someone to gun for me if they can grab their own tank and give us an endurance advantage. I don't like having to do that to optimize our power as a duo.

It isn't even a consideration to crew the tank with more people, where in PS1 you made choices between what was best to get with three crew: tank + something else, three crew APC or one Prowler. Now? Three tanks, always and preferably MBTs since cost is irrelevant. That is dumbing down the game and reducing the validity of other choices. Teamwork vehicles are irrelevant and obsolete when you can get your own transport and firepower at all times.

So yes, it doesn't mean we're not using teamwork, it just means we're a bunch of solo farmers moving together and relatively quickly lose track of each other since we don't see when someone behind us stops to fire or sees a shiny object and fails to inform us.

The teamwork is less obvious, less consistent and less coordinated. It is of significant lower quality and longevity. It is now like ES aircav in PS1: you can group, but chances are you run off on your own and lose group cohecency.

[Flaropri]

Originally Posted by PredatorFour

I think everyone apart from smed , higby and the crew want to see it return to the old planetside method of vehicles.

Last numbers Figment published show'd there's an appreciable number (within the less than significant value of input, looked about 40/60) that don't. Even a lot of people that want dedicated drivers don't want to go all the way back to PS1 methods.

Playing together will always beat playing solo.

You can still play together. I think Figment's post above does a good job of covering options, however I personally think the issue lies with costs being unimportant and balance issues, rather than with the positions. However this is based purely on what I've seen/read, as I am still not yet in Beta personally, so I can't look into things.

(The following is an Aside On the other hand, I do also recall seeing posts about people being unhappy with being cut off from resources, since there's no way to get them without controlling relevant territory. It seems like it may be that resource gains are overly binary. Where if you control any territories, it's not a real problem for the given resource, but if you don't have them you can easily run out if you don't manage to capture them. Or maybe that's just the natural hyperbole of the forums and complaints. *shrug*

(Back to the topic at hand I also think that lack of organization isn't something that's going to be fixed by having more people in the same vehicle. Location-wise you become more concentrated, and that sort of helps for random people, but if there's a lack of coordination that's its own problem. You'll still have other tanks going off on their own, and that's because of poor/no communication or because they want to.

To put it another way, my ideal would be that resources/availability of multi-crew vehicles would encourage far and away actually multi-crewing them. However, either way, whether you're working with multiple tanks or with fewer multi-crewed tanks you'll still have the same opportunities and challenges with playing with others. I also think that you'll have the same number of balancing challenges (albeit some slightly different ones) whether your force at least 2-crew in MBTs or not.

In any event, those are just my thoughts, I'm sure Bloodworth and Figment (and several others) remember them well enough, so I won't continue on it much more.

Mostly I'm just eager to find out the results of the poll. For example, I fully expect several answers to be very one-sided that might otherwise have been seen as split between both sides of the issue. For example, threat detection and target acquisition I'm sure will remain primarily viewed as a job for both gunner and driver. Likewise I expect that most will continue to state that Lightnings should be the ideal choice for solo tankers.

While some lines of thought are not worded as well as they could: "Should the Driver have access..." for example. It isn't clear (at least in the order of when it's asked) if that is "access at all" or "access while driving" or "access if giving up drivers seat" though obviously it's tied into the later questions regarding position changes. I'm curious how those lines of questioning will mix, and what sort of interpretations can be gleaned from the survey overall.

Like I said, it's not perfect, but it is interesting, and it's one of the better forum polls out there.

[ringring]

Originally Posted by PredatorFour

I think everyone apart from smed , higby and the crew want to see it return to the old planetside method of vehicles. Playing together will always beat playing solo.

Speaking as a ps1 TR, I much prefer the ps1 magrider. It was the most fun, not to mention very effective.

Given the choice I'd like similar in PS2, gunner has main gun, driver has something to keep him happy.

[shamE]

Tanks requiring both a gunner and a driver.

[Figment]

Alright got ~170 responses in now.

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