Holy cow, last week's survey resulted in a lot of participation and discussion! The blog now has nearly 100 comments, and the survey is at 888 responses. All of this has been very insightful, so thanks a lot! Like always, we'll share all the results with you. Nearly all questions asked participants to rate something from 1 to 7, with 1 being "awful" and 7 being "great". The first question was:

Imagine the "magical stockpile" gets fully removed. All items need to be physically transported from A to B, with a combination of something like delivery men, conveyor belts and trains. How would you rate this change?

A vast majority of players rates this change positively, and out of this majority, a large share has picked "7", the most positive option available. This is great to hear, and it's making us more confident in implementing this change.

We could leave the early game like it is, and constrain "items that need transportation" to later in the game. This means there are "two systems" in the game. What's your opinion?

To prevent disappointing players who don't like realistic logistics, we've proposed having two different systems in-game. This was rated rather negatively. In the comments, multiple people suggested making logistics a "toggleable" option. This will probably be difficult to develop, but there might be a great alternative. If logistics gets implemented, we need to assign each item a weight or volume. Hopefully, we could relatively easily make an alternate option where all items have significantly less weight, making them a lot easier to transport.

We could focus on other features that have less impact on the core gameplay, and reserve the ideas about logistics for a potential sequel. How do you feel about that?

The alternative, not implementing logistics in Colony Survival (1), is even more impopular. Good news: we're probably not going to do what this question proposes, and we're very strongly considering to start working on realisitc logistics in CS(1) soon!

Logistics "inside" colonies could function like they always did, with the "magical stockpile", while trade between colonies receives an overhaul. Here you'll have to build paths between colonies, with tunnels and bridges, and for long distances, safe sleeping places for the travelling colonists. What's your opinion?

We're back to more popular proposals! This seems to be a very viable option.

The idea above could also be combined with realistic logistics inside of the colony. How do you feel about having both?

Yet implementing realistic logistics everywhere gets an even better response. There's one drawback: it's a bit more polarized, with more very excited voters, and simultaneously more participants who rate this suggestion "awful". The amount of votes for "1" went from 27 to 37.

How do you feel about a feature that allows players to "clear" the world of monsters (but, for example, forcing them to defeat the same amount of monsters at a portal), allowing them to safely expand in a much wider area than just the safe zone?

Monsters portals get a more muted response. It's still generally positive, but significantly less compared to the two previous questions. We get it, it's a bit of a strange workaround. We've got some new ideas, but we're not exactly sure how to implement them. Still, we think it would be great if players could use a lot more area in the world, without having to place guards absolutely everywhere.

What's your opinion about the addition of delivery men as a feature, who bring items from one stack of crates to another?

Delivery men get a "regular positive" response. Not extremely excited, but not seriously conflicted either.

Should these delivery men mainly work automatically (based on the needs of workers), or mainly based on the explicit orders and requests of the player?

This was the one exception in the entire survey. Instead of 1 to 7 being 'awful' to 'great', the options here were 1 to 5, representing "Automatically" to "Player controlled". The most popular response is right in the middle, which makes sense. Many systems in the game currently work relatively autonomously, but with the option for the player to intervene. Outside of the most popular response, most participants favor automation above explicit player control. The last five questions have been combined in one chart. They all ask the same question, about five different subjects.

What's your opinion about the addition of conveyor belts / trains / ships / zeppelins / pipelines?

Up till these questions, no proposal got even close to 400 votes for option 7. But here, both (automated, transport) "trains" and "ships" received 502 votes! It's great to see this amount of enthusiasm :D Conveyor belts and zeppelins received the most "conflicted" response, although it's still largely positive. Ships got the most appreciation. We think this has to do with "timeline issues"; people who feel that more modern tech doesn't fit Colony Survival. A topic for another blog :D Bedankt voor het lezen! Reddit // Twitter // YouTube // Website // Discord

[ 2021-01-15 16:20:06 CET ] [ Original post ]