WotC Wants You To Help Shape D&D

Wow - that took quite a bit of time!

 

[qstor]

I'm interested to see if any new campaign settings come out from the survey.

 

[Lanefan]

No, I was talking about asking similar questions with only slight differences in wording or perspective. It is done to help mitigate errors in self reporting.

The cynic in me says it's done to try and catch the respondent in a lie or inconsistency. The real cynic in me says that discovery of such would then invalidate the rest of that response.

The only real oddity was when I told it I'd only DMed 1e and 3e it then asked me when was the last time I DMed 5e and didn't allow "never" as a response.

And one question that, were I doing the survey, I'd have included would be something like: for each edition you have played check the situation(s) in which you have played it:
- home
- store or other public place
- online (e.g. roll20)
- convention
- other

This would serve to winnow out people like me: yes I've technically played 5e but only for two sessions, each at a convention.

Lan-"did anyone else find it difficult to remember exactly what was the first D&D-related thing you ever purchased or received?"-efan

 

[robus]

I don't really care about the speed, its not like I am going out and rush to buy a new D&D book on release.

I dunno Zard... isn't there another thread around here about how many books you just splurged on?

 

[QuestsandChaos]

I really enjoyed that i was able to answer the question about location with “my custom studio, set up for tabletop rpg streams”.

 

[GreyLord]

The cynic in me says it's done to try and catch the respondent in a lie or inconsistency. The real cynic in me says that discovery of such would then invalidate the rest of that response.

The only real oddity was when I told it I'd only DMed 1e and 3e it then asked me when was the last time I DMed 5e and didn't allow "never" as a response.

And one question that, were I doing the survey, I'd have included would be something like: for each edition you have played check the situation(s) in which you have played it:
- home
- store or other public place
- online (e.g. roll20)
- convention
- other

This would serve to winnow out people like me: yes I've technically played 5e but only for two sessions, each at a convention.

Lan-"did anyone else find it difficult to remember exactly what was the first D&D-related thing you ever purchased or received?"-efan

For me it was harder to remember WHEN I had gotten my actual first D&D thing. I started with OD&D, but it was friends running the show and I had no materials. It wasn't until a while later that I actually got stuff of my own. Remembering when exactly it was after so long I (and there is no way I could remember the month no matter how hard I tried to remember).

 

[schneeland]

I had a similar feeling. There is a reason for making surveys like that, but I can't remember the precise explanation.

If I remember my books about survey design correctly (that was for research, but I think marketing should be similar), the main reason behind this is that depending on the exact wording, people might answer differently, so you try to come up with multiple questions that refer to the same factor you are interested in and average them later (or calculate the median). So if you e.g. want to know how much people like to hit things with their axe, you might ask people to rate:

• I enjoy hitting things with large, sharp objects
• I am a peaceful man, I don't really care for weapons
• Imagining how my axe splits my foes in two halves brings me pleasure

Of course you really want to make sure that these items refer to the same thing, that's why they typically sound very much alike.

Other than that:
I am a little disturbed that they basically don't seem to care about other RPGs and automatically assume that D&D was the first TTRPG you ever played.

 

[Inchoroi]

I filled it out. Hopefully, we'll get good longer adventures and adventure paths, as well as shorter adventures that are of better quality than the ones in Adventurer's League. I also would like more player content, but don't see much need for anything new beyond the Artificer and Psion class, and maybe more spells (but also don't see what, if any, gaps are missing).

I'd love a book of adventures, short-ish (1-3 levels) that give a really detailed description on a specific area of the setting; I'd even be fine if it were Forgotten Realms. However, they'd have to be up to the standards of 5e, good art, maps, etc, so DMsGuild, as much as I really appreciate the system for putting more content out there, do not usually get up to the level of quality I like from my products that I don't just write myself.

 

[dave2008]

The cynic in me says it's done to try and catch the respondent in a lie or inconsistency. The real cynic in me says that discovery of such would then invalidate the rest of that response.

If I remember my stats class from 23+ years ago (which I don't) it has to do with increasing the odds of getting an answer closer to the correct one. It is easy to make a mistake once on a survey, but your not as likely to make the same mistake 3 or 4 times. So statistically they get better results if they ask a version of the same question multiple times.

 

[dave2008]

I dunno Zard... isn't there another thread around here about how many books you just splurged on?

But many of those were where quite a bit after they were published. No rushing there.

 

[dave2008]

I nearly stopped taking it because of that. I HATE when they do that, and while I understand why tests like that exist in other mediums, it makes absolutely no sense here. If they get conflicting answers within one survey, then in turn they will get erratic data across many surveys and...how does that help them? Very strange.

But the big questions were good, so hopefully...Planescape? ;-P

It is survey design 101 though. [MENTION=6900337]schneeland[/MENTION] explained it better than i did in post #36. But it gives them statistically more accurate results. You may not like it, but you can't fight the math man. Sabermetrics of D&D if you will.