Hey everyone, Hawkhammer here, and today, I'm bringing you the results of the recent community survey.
The three topics for this survey have generated a lot of discussion within the development team, and the 72 responses from this survey have been extremely helpful in determining what we need to do next. This analysis will give you a window into how weve interpreted the data, and what well be doing in response to it.
The first question, as always, was whether the respondent was still playing.
Thankfully, the majority of respondents still are still playing, which is always a good thing to see. With that confirmed, the breakdown of where people are playing is the main focus. The majority of players seem to be playing at kitchen tables, with online play also being a significant portion of how the playerbase plays the game. Play at organized venues is the smallest portion, and while it is unfortunate to see, it does make sense given the game isnt on shelves anymore.
Regardless of whether it be at a kitchen table or an LGS, the majority of the playerbase seems to be playing in-person. And while some of that comes as a result of personal preference, there are other reasons people are playing in-person and not online, which we'll touch on later.
Next is a dive into when the respondents started playing. Unsurprisingly, the majority of players came into the game before July of 2020, but its the reason behind that that's helping to guide our next moves. Only 13.9% of players started after the game was canceled, and while you could attribute that to a lack of interest from bystanders, given the foot traffic and subsequent interest from that foot traffic weve seen in the TCG room at the past 5 TFcons, I attribute that more to there not being an up-to-date how to play guide that players can access on their own time. However, I am working on resolving that issue.
We also wanted to know how people wanted to be playing the TFTCG one year from now. The percentage of people who aren't playing right now and aren't planning to play in a year is the exact same, which is at least a good sign the community isn't shrinking. As for the rest of the data, there's a good mix of people who want to be playing in-person, whether that be at kitchen tables, LGSs, or conventions like TFcon, as well as people interested in online play, whether it be casual or competitive.
And this brings me to the first response to the data, specifically regarding those interested in playing at conventions. This has been something we've looked at constantly to ensure were doing things right, and at this time, weve determined our best strategy is to focus on having a presence at TFcons. At least 1 community personality has been at every TFcon since Baltimore in 2021, and I can confirm that will continue for both Toronto and Orlando this year, as I will be at both. We've had discussions about having a presence at larger gaming conventions like GenCon, but we feel that isn't a feasible strategy at this time. Could that change in the future? Absolutely, but right now, it just doesnt fit into our strategy to grow the game. So if you're looking for games at conventions, TFcons are going to be your best bet.
Speaking of growing the game, one crucial aspect of that is the release of new cards, and an overwhelming majority of the respondents either use the community continuation (Waves 6-8, plus Ark Wave 1, which is soon to be rebalanced as Wave 9), or have interest in using it.
In terms of how people are using the continuation cards, it's slightly all over the place. Professionally printed cards are the most common, but only just slightly over printing them via ones own resources. There's then a small gap between that and use via online clients, with printing them at somewhere like Staples being the least common. Though keep in mind that respondents could pick multiple options, so there is some overlap here between how people are using the continuation. Using myself as an example, I've used all of these methods this year except for printing at an office supply store.
Then we come to one of the biggest questions we wanted to know: If people werent using the continuation, what was the reason(s) why? And there were three core reasons: The largest was not being sure how to print them, followed by not being sure where to find them, and not having the means to play at this moment. All of these are issues we can, and will, take action on through more accessible guides on how to print the community continuation, as well as making it more clear where everything can be found, and addressing the issue I've mentioned but not named twice now (We'll get to it, I promise).
The next section focused on TFTCG content, and as one of the few people still producing TFTCG content on Youtube, the results of this were extremely important for me.
First up was a poll on where people mostly engaged with the community? Unsurprisingly, Discord is the most popular, followed closely by Facebook, then Youtube holds a decent margin, with Reddit and Twitter barely even showing up. Regardless of this though, all of these platforms are valuable in terms of interacting with the community, and we're continuing to find ways to ensure that interaction stays.
Switching gears, this is the first bit of data that caught me off guard. Only a slim majority of the community still watches/reads/listens to TFTCG content being produced. This immediately set off alarm bells on my end because in this day and age, having a solid content base for a game is crucial for its survival. To that end, lets look at what types of content people want the most:
Unsurprisingly, people really want gameplay videos. Almost every respondent was somewhere between wanting more gameplay, and wanting ALL the gameplay.
Next was game analysis content; stuff like Meta discussions, individual card analyses, etc. This was a much more broad range of answers, but the majority are interested. The "I don't want this at all" camp is larger here, but that makes sense; not everyone wants to dive into the nitty gritty optimization of the game, much less the competitive scene (Foreshadowing).
Player and creator interviews are even more all over the place. There's still a majority that want to see them, but it's more skewed towards a passing interest rather than absolutely wanting all of it. I will note here this one is challenging at the moment as the main source of this, that being the One Shall Stand One Shall Fall podcast, hasn't been active for quite some time. There have been some discussions about filling that void, but details still need to be worked out before that happens. Regardless, we'll figure something out.
For ranked content like top 10s and tier lists, the majority skewed towards not wanting it as much as gameplay and analysis, but this isnt too surprising. Ranked content tends to draw a lot of heated opinions, and many people would rather not dive head first into that. There still is some interest, and we're happy to give that audience what they want, but this type of content isn't going to pop up as often as others, which is a strategy we've already been doing ever since the first tier list that I did on my channel went up back in July 2021.
For the last question in this section, we asked how much people wanted to see articles discussing the game. And there is a large base that wants to see this, and we've recognized that for a while now. We just haven't been able to sort that out, but now that we have concrete proof people want written content, I'm certain that'll get that machine cranked into overdrive.
Finally, there was an open response box for people to suggest other types of content. I'm not going to go into every response since that would take forever, but I will bring up a few commonalities between responses that we're looking in to:
• Single player gameplay (Like with WnR Brians Predacon Module)
• More Deck Profiles
• More specialty and restrictive format gameplay
• A how-to guide on printing cards
The middle two are going to be fairly easy to meet, the latter of the four will require a bit more time, and the former is a bit challenging at this moment, but hopefully that isnt the case in the near future.
One more thing before we move on: There were a few responses in the open boxes that mentioned that some of the behavior on the community discord and in my videos was a bit over the top. Long story short: Changes will be made.
Next we have the questions regarding online play, and this was a main focus of this survey, as well as what prompted it in the first place.
Remember that issue I mentioned twice in the state of gameplay section but didnt name? This is that issue. Almost half of the community is not playing online in any capacity. And while some people just dont like online play (And I can understand the reasoning behind it), there were many more that wanted to play online, but didnt know how. More on that in a moment.
Looking at those that do play online, the majority of players use webcam, with TTS and OCTGN seeing similar numbers, a point that surprised me as TTS has always been more popular on discord from what we've seen. Keep in mind though that multiple options could be picked for this question, so some players use multiple formats.
But the "webcam is the most popular online method" takeaway is solidified by this question that asked what platform is most preferred. And once again, TTS and OCTGN are showing similar numbers.
Moving back to the section of the community that doesn't play online, there are two camps within this section. Either:
• They don't like online play due to there being less face-to-face interaction
• They want to play online, but aren't familiar with what they need to have/do to be able to do so.
To the latter group: We've had this identified as an issue for a while now, and a new series of guides are being produced to help you figure out which platform(s) is right for you and what you need to do to set them up and use them. But for now, there are guides on this very site on the "Playing Online" tab on the left.
Finally, there was an open response box for people to deposit any other feedback they wanted us to know. Like with the other open response boxes, I'm not going to go over every response as that would take way too long, but there were a few repeated responses I'd like to address:
• Where's Ark2?
I can confirm Ark2 is still in the works. However, due to its size, it's taking a bit longer to develop, and will be released as Wave 12.
• Whats the status with the Ark1 update?
For those not in the know, Ark1 is being updated as it was designed in somewhat of a bubble, and as a result, several cards feature a higher than desired power level compared to both WOTC cards AND W6-8 cards. We're still moving along with this as it gets rebranded as Wave 9: Ark Exodus, but our development team is only around 15 people, and unfortunately, we aren't able to dedicate all of our time to this because at the end of the day, its just a hobby. Its a hobby were taking extreme precautions with to ensure we dont break the game, but it is still a hobby. Regardless, were working to get W9 out as soon as possible, and we hope to have more information to share soon.
• Community Leadership
There were a few responses that implied that people aren't aware of the community leadership changeover and consolidation that happened at the beginning of the year, which is fair considering we never really announced it. For those not in the know, the head of the community is now Zero, who you may know as the guy responsible for this very site, and he's been hard at work to combine the efforts of several development groups under one banner. So if you were concerned about there being several different sources for cards, that's no longer an issue.
• Moar Casual Stuffz
Remember when I randomly said Foreshadowing earlier when talking about analysis videos? This is what I was alluding to. The encounter series has been doing well in maintaining a competitive circuit for the game, but many players have been asking for more casual events so they can participate in events without having to dive into the meta. And we've been actively working on that. Every Saturday at 7:00pm Eastern, we host our Open Play Nights on discord, which often have a theme attached to them to encourage all sorts of crazy builds. Additionally, KingNaga, one of the more prominent members of the community, is currently running a sealed league on the discord server that's proving to be a success. Should this trend hold, I'm sure more sealed events will happen in the future, and we're continuing to look for new casual avenues of play. As an example, I've been working on a king of the hill event for a bit now, and I'm hoping to roll that out sometime this summer. TL;DR: We hear you on more casual events being needed, and we are working to fulfill that in as many ways as possible.
If there's one takeaway from all of this data, it's that our hunches about what we need to do were correct. There were some additional things we needed to touch on (Mainly the leadership thing), but for the most part, all of our hypotheses regarding where things are at in the community and what we needed to do were correct. And now you know that we know that. Hopefully all of our actions on this won't take too long to roll out, but you should start to see things within the next month or so.
