Welcome Soldiers!
Earlier this month we finished up the Operation Two release with our first Community Feedback Survey where we asked our players to answer questions to help developers get a decent understanding of the sentiment across the community. The questions revolved mainly around the major changes that happened with Operation Two, with a final section engaging players to write their wishes for the future of the game. With 900 responses, this article will show the full results from the form with no interpretation, so everyone can see how the community feels about various features and mechanics.
Section 1: General
The first question asked players about their general time in Beyond The Wire. After the first 7 months of Early Access release, the majority of our players have played less than 50 hours (65%) with over a third of players having more than 50 hours in-game.
The next question aimed to see how the community perceived Operation Two as a whole. Thankfully over 85% of players said the update was good or better! This is reassuring for the development team to see the changes being made are welcomed.
The third question for this section asked players to state how much time they have played in the update. Over half of the respondents have played below 10 hours (63%), with the rest netting over 10 hours.
Finally, for this section, we wanted to see how the community feel generally about the update. It is reassuring to see over 75% of players felt an improvement in the game with this update, although a smaller percentage (16.6%) said they haven’t noticed a difference.
Section 2: Gameplay
The second section sought to gauge the sentiment on a few of the mechanic changes and new systems introduced. The first question asked if players preferred the new interaction system, changing a few inventory items and player interactions into a single keybind. The large majority of our players (49.2%) feel this change is an improvement, while a number would like to keep the system with some changes (31.8%), with the final 19% preferring the old inventory system.
The next question engaged the players on their opinion of the new hit detection audio feedback system. The overwhelming majority like the system (68.4%) and 21.1% want to keep the system but improve it. The remaining 10.5% of players stated the audio had a negative impact on their experience.
As we continue to tweak gun handling we asked the community their views on the new sway values. While 37.5% liked the new handling, most players didn’t notice the change and the final 7.3% would like to see sway values changed back.
The following question asked if players had noticed their engagements happening at closer distances due to the damage drop off. The majority stated they had indeed been engaging the enemy at shorter distances, with the remainder saying their firefights had been the same as before the update.
The last two questions on this section revolved around the latest revisions of our game modes.
First we asked if the community had found the Frontlines game mode more enjoyable since the overhaul. Again the majority said they have been enjoying the new version (64.6%) and 29.9% saying they hadn’t noticed a difference. The final 5.5% said they haven’t enjoyed the game mode more this update.
A follow up asked if the new Preparation Phase in the Assault game mode was worthwhile. 62.1% said yes, with 23.7% needing more time in the game mode to judge properly. Just 14.2% said the new phase was pointless.
Section 3: Maps
The two questions in this section were written to identify which of the new maps was performing the worst for players, as well as which map from our collection was the favourite.
Out of the 3 new maps that released with Operation Two Poelcappelle has the worst performance (46.1%) followed by Sechault (28.3%) and finally Combles (25.5%) which appears to have the best performance.
For the first time, we have asked players to share their favourite map. Interestingly Zonnebeke is the community’s favourite map (22%) with Chateau-Thierry being the second (19.3%) and Poelcappelle being the third favourite map.
List:
Zonnebeke 22%
Chateau-Thierry 19.3%
Poelcappelle 15.6%
Combles 12.5%
Sechault 12%
Ansoncourt 7.4%
Frise 6.5%
Cantigny 4.8%
Section 4: Performance
This section sought to identify the performance of the game. First, we asked overall how Operation Two performed compared to the earlier build. Most players noticed an improvement with 50.8% saying the game now ran better. 37.6% said the game ran the same as before, with just 11.6% of players noticing the game ran worse.
Secondly, we tried to seek out which issue was giving the players the most frustration. Map optimization was the biggest area of concern (42.6%) along with network issues (40%). Worryingly, 17.5% of our community have had crashes ruin their experience since the update was released.
Section 5: A Look To The Future
The final section was aimed at the future and asked players to write their wishes for the future. A multiple-choice question closed out the form to see which types of content our players would like to see in the future. This list was written to gauge what content the community deemed important and perhaps reflect our development decisions for the immediate future.
More Factions 65.4%
More maps 57.8%
A new theatre 57.2%
Customization and progression 51.7%
New game modes 38.9%
Steam challenges 15.8%
Thanks to all of our players who submitted their feedback, it has given our dev team a great snapshot of the current situation. We will continue to share these surveys when large updates make changes to the game. Stay posted for the next one arriving later in the year. See you in the trenches, Soldier!