Hatchling Cockatrice Mea Tulpa Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 The Grand Spiderweb Poll Results PART TWO: GAME RATINGS RESULTS Please see all the info and disclaimers in the first results post. This thread presents only the base results, with correlations made only to closely related questions, and only for the game ratings half of the poll. Further correlations will take place in upcoming results threads. If the graphs are too small, right-click and open the image in its own tab. It should be larger and easier to read there. Here we go! Here are the results of the "battle to the death" question. I was not surprised to see Redbeard get a bunch of votes. I was not surprised to see Erika get a bunch of votes. I was surprised to see Erika win by such a landslide. I guess the original is still the best. It seems Blades of Avernum has pretty high community penetration when it comes to playing custom scenarios. When I took the survey myself, I realized this was a very difficult question. To me, at least, the central story of all four series are very compelling. I may take exception to the direction it goes or its presentation, at certain points, but the huge underground prison colony, the situation of the village of Nethergate, the bell-ringing of the Geneforge, and the repressive fairy-tale castle all make for great stories. For many of these questions, I'm color-coding the series. Yellow for the sun symbol of Exile/Avernum, blue for the woad of the Celts, red for Redbeard, and green for the major accent color of Geneforge 1. Another landslide -- both in terms of the preference for Crystal Souls, and the preference for the First Trilogy. And another landslide. How many respondents own how many games. As you can see, the population is haphazardly but evenly distributed from one, to all of them. The dotted line shows the average number of members we would expect with a totally even distribution. The average member owns 10 Spiderweb games. Not surprisingly, people were far more likely to own the more recent series. My suspicion is that the recent appearance of the Geneforge Saga on GOG and other platforms is responsible for their consistent high scores. Finally, the moment you've been waiting for: here are the votes for favourite game! As in the previous poll, Geneforge 1 came out on top -- and by a susbstantial margin over most other games. However, in a surprising upset, Exile 2 had nearly as many votes and likewise has a substantial margin over the other games. This is especially surprising since Exile 2 had some of the lowest numbers for how many members own it, and were willing to rate it. These numbers overlay the voting results in the form of the dotted lines. Be careful not to misinterpret those -- they use the scale shown on the right. They are just here to give some perspective. Another version of the same chart, with games grouped by series for easy comparison. Here are the average scores each game received in the rating portion of the survey. I converted the five answers to whole numbers between 1 and 5 just to do math. The dotted lines show the areas corresponding each rating: 3.5 to 4.5 is "Excellent", 2.5 to 3.5 is "Good", and so on. As you can see, most games had an average rating of "Excellent", a number had an average rating of "Good", and only one was low enough to reach "Fair". These ratings are fairly similar to the votes for favourite game -- the main difference being that, since it is only an average of the people who chose to rate the game, games with larger player bases lost that advantage. This gives Exile 2 the highest average rating, and it pushes older favourites like Blades of Exile and Nethergate ahead of more popular, newer games. Another version of the same chart, with games grouped by series for easy comparison. This chart shows the distribution of scores among those who rated each game. It seems every game is a masterpiece for at least one player -- huzzah! This chart shows the average rating across all games, for each individual respondent. The circle size and x-axis both show how many games they rated. Once again, 3.5 to 4.5 is closest to "Excellent", 2.5 to 3.5 for "Good", etc. I also looked to see if there were notable differences depending on the answer given for the best story question. There weren't -- except the very predictable one, that people who liked older games are likely to rate more games. Here is the most interesting chart, and certainly the one that took the longest to make. I compared the ratings given by all 60 respondents for all 20 games to see which games tended to be rated in similar ways, or different ways. A lot of the resulting data was not interesting, but a number of game pairs had strong correlations (meaning that members were very likely to give them similar ratings), and a few had strong negative correlations (members were very likely to give them very different ratings). The blue lines indicate strong correlations: the thicker the line, the stronger the correlation. The sharp, red lines indicate strong negative correlations. I've color-coded the games according to the groups that emerged very quickly when looking at the strongest positive and negative correlations. These are the groups of games that people tend to feel similarly about. They are: 1) ALL incarnations of the First Trilogy of Exile/Avernum, plus all incarnations of Nethergate, plus Blades of Avernum. 2) Geneforge 3-5 and Avernum 4-6, which had positive correlations among themselves plus a large number of negative correlations even with other games in the same series! 3) Avadon. Avadon was not closely tied to any other game, but correlated with a few older games. 4) Geneforge 1-2. Distinct from the Avernum pack, but also looking quite different from the later Geneforge games. 5) Blades of Exile. People who rated BoE, tended to rate it very differently from how they rated other games! There are a few other interesting patterns. For example, notice the correlation among G2, G5, E3 and A3 -- the most rollicky games of their respective series. I plan to check these groups in particular as I look for correlations among other questions, and with the demographic data. Stay tuned! Ircher 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Here are the results of the "battle to the death" question. I was not surprised to see Redbeard get a bunch of votes. I was not surprised to see Erika get a bunch of votes. I was surprised to see Erika win by such a landslide. I guess the original is still the best. Erika is the only one of those characters that the party isn't really supposed to be able to defeat in combat, so... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Understated Ur-Drakon Sudanna Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Her and Rentar-Ihrno. And technically, Rentar-Ihrno did beat Erika in a battle to the death. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Originally Posted By: City Her and Rentar-Ihrno. Avernum 4. And Erika was winning before Rentar did that thing she did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Understated Ur-Drakon Tyranicus Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Originally Posted By: Lilith And Erika was winning before Rentar did that thing she did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Andraste Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Redbeard would bore the other contestants into submission. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 i'm surprised that people who liked BoE tended to dislike Exile 2 and vice versa. like that is probably the #1 most surprising result from all of that data Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unflappable Drayk Death Knight Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Very informative chart slarty! I was surprised by the deathmatch results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Originally Posted By: Death Knight I was surprised by the deathmatch results. SPEAKING OF WHICH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Cairo Jim Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 That charts were cool to start off with, until they started giving me a wee headache. All those coloured dots and stuff all of the place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Originally Posted By: Cairo Jim That charts were cool to start off with, until they started giving me a wee headache. All those coloured dots and stuff all of the place. is that like an ice cream headache except much less tasty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ineffable Wingbolt BMA Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 So the Geneforge's are really very popular; I'd thought that the boards were filled with die-hard Exile/Avernum fans. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Cairo Jim Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Originally Posted By: Lilith Originally Posted By: Cairo Jim That charts were cool to start off with, until they started giving me a wee headache. All those coloured dots and stuff all of the place. is that like an ice cream headache except much less tasty You could say that. I probably shouldn't try and come up with a spam joke about that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Dintiradan Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Originally Posted By: Lilith i'm surprised that people who liked BoE tended to dislike Exile 2 and vice versa. like that is probably the #1 most surprising result from all of that data This might be a lot more work, Slarty, but I'm wondering if you could put in directed edges for the last graph. At the very least, I'm looking at the case of BoE and BoA and wondering if it's a mutual dislike, or if one side is dominating in the 'hatred'. (And my apologies if this was answered elsewhere.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Mea Tulpa Posted July 12, 2012 Author Share Posted July 12, 2012 Erika was theoretically undefeatable in 2 out of 3 games; Rentar-Ihrno in only 1 out of 3 games. Lilith rightly points out that Erika was winning before the spoiler alert, too. I don't think the others were ever undefeatable, although I'm not sure about Ghaldring on that one. Dinti: That's more complicated than it sounds mainly because the disjunction isn't between the games themselves, but the ratings of the games. I do plan to look at various groups of people, including people who liked/didn't like certain games, and see what characterizes those groups. For now, though, I'll just eyeball the data for you: Interestingly, for people who loved BoA, there is not a big discrepancy. The discrepancy in scores comes in among people who did not love BoA as much, but did love BoE. Among people who rated BoA "Excellent" or "MASTERPIECE", the average rating for BoE was 4.33, a very high "Excellent" rating, and an average difference of 0.22 ratings points, not much. Among people who rated BoA "Good" or "Fair", however, almost all of them rated BoE higher: BoE still gets an average of "Excellent" in that group, with an average difference of 1.25 ratings points, which is quite high when you consider that two-thirds of ALL survey ratings were "Good" or "Excellent". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Dintiradan Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Sorry, I really should have been more clear. I'm wondering more about the relationship between BoA and Avernum 4/5/6, and between BoE and Exile/Geneforge 2. Anecdotally, I already knew that BoEers didn't like BoA much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Mea Tulpa Posted July 12, 2012 Author Share Posted July 12, 2012 The differences for BoA and the Second Trilogy are the most striking of all: People who rated BoA "MASTERPIECE" mostly rated A4-A6, "Fair" and "Bad". People who rated BoA "Excellent" rated A4-A6, on average, between "Fair" and "Good". People who rated BoA "Good" rated A4-A6, on average, "Good". People who rated BoA "Fair" mostly rated A4-A6 "Good" and "Excellent". For E2 and BoE, both games had very high ratings overall. However, the lower ratings that were handed out, were handed out to one or the other and not to both at once: People who rated E2 "Good" or "Fair" all rated BoE "Excellent" or "MASTERPIECE". People who rated BoE "Good" or "Fair" all rated E2 "Excellent" or "MASTERPIECE". For G2 and BoE, it is more one-sided: among players who rated both, the lower ratings on G2 ("Good" and "Fair") all came from players who rated BoE "Excellent" or "MASTERPIECE". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garrulous Glaahk JamesMighty Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Wow, that is quite confusing. Why would BoAers not like the Second Avernum Trilogy? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rotghroth Rhapsody Locmaar Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Perhaps because after spending time and effort to produce innovative stories they didn't like Jeff's more guided approach to story-telling too much. This and some flaws in A4's originality. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Alorael at Large Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Possibly, but my first leap is to engine preferences. If you like the way the original engine works, it's easy to loathe Averforge, especially for the brief disappearance of terrain height and the permanent disappearance of the outdoors. —Alorael, who likes the games and acknowledges the benefits of the newer engine but still thinks the loss of an outdoors scale hurts the sense of size of the games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Micawber Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Crikey, that's an impressive set of charts. On the 'Ratings by Player' chart can you explain the coloring of the blobs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Mea Tulpa Posted July 12, 2012 Author Share Posted July 12, 2012 Yeah, I think engine preference is the biggest thing. Actually, if you look at the groups, you'll notice they all have engine elements in common. The large group consists of all the games with a traditional overworld walkabout mode, except for BoE. G1 and G2 are split off from the other Geneforge and Second Trilogy games, and they also had the most visibly different engine of the Geneforge games, with the paper doll always on screen, etc. And then Avadon, with its limited number of zones and constant revisiting of old zones, is in its own group as well. EDIT: Micawber: I already did. Read the explanation of the chart and the chart legend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Micawber Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Edit: I am interpreting this as a scatterplot of respondents scores against number of games they have rated. So you can visualize correlation between those two. But I think I am missing something in the construction here because that doesn't account for the colors? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Mea Tulpa Posted July 12, 2012 Author Share Posted July 12, 2012 Correct. As for what you are missing: Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Read the explanation of the chart and the chart legend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ineffable Wingbolt Necris Omega Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Originally Posted By: Anonymous Reposter —Alorael, who likes the games and acknowledges the benefits of the newer engine but still thinks the loss of an outdoors scale hurts the sense of size of the games. I couldn't agree more without hurting myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Micawber Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 I don't know why you keep repeating that, when I've obviously read your explanation but don't it explanatory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Dintiradan Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Quote: For many of these questions, I'm color-coding the series. Yellow for the sun symbol of Exile/Avernum, blue for the woad of the Celts, red for Redbeard, and green for the major accent color of Geneforge 1. Easy to miss, as it's early on in the post, but the chart legend/key also has the colour labels. (For those of you having trouble reading the small images: instead of right-click-viewing each one, just visit this page. Having an add-on that lets you open all links in selected text at once is an added bonus.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Mea Tulpa Posted July 12, 2012 Author Share Posted July 12, 2012 "I also looked to see if there were notable differences depending on the answer given for the best story question." The chart itself gives a legend for the colors, that includes 4 options: Exile/Avernum, Nethergate, Geneforge, and Avadon. Which were the 4 possible answers for the best story question. I'm not sure how to make it any clearer, really. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Articulate Vlish Tridon Posted July 14, 2012 Share Posted July 14, 2012 Seeing the great scores of Exile/Avernum 2 and how the rating for Avernum: Escape From the Pit rewrite increased from the earlier Exile/Avernum games, I'm really looking forward to start playing that series. If one just follows the numbers blindly, it may look like the rewrite of Avernum 2 can turn into a superb game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Mea Tulpa Posted July 14, 2012 Author Share Posted July 14, 2012 While Avernum 2 was in development, Spiderweb had a statement on their website that read: "We are really looking forward to releasing this rewritten Exile 2. Exile 2 was, for many people, the high point of all of the Exile games, and we really want this game to shine. Hope you like it!" I don't know if there's still room for such a sentiment at SW, but I hope so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rotghroth Rhapsody Locmaar Posted July 14, 2012 Share Posted July 14, 2012 I've never cared too much about Avernum I and II in particular and I can't really explain why. It was probably a wild mixture of enigine, esthetics and Exile being still fesh in my memory. What I do recall though is that when playing A:EFTP, from the first night I thought: this is great, I'm really excited about the very thought of playing A:CS with this rendering. This time round I'm hoping for said sentiments and I have an inkling it's gonna happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyshakk Koan Valdain the King Posted July 18, 2012 Share Posted July 18, 2012 My favorite game and series is avadon. Its casual and the only game series of jeff's I can play, enjoy and make it to the end. Ive played numerous other games of jeff's and what happens is I usually reach a dead end with all of jeff's other games. I like avadon because its simplistic, has a great story, and reminds me of d and d. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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