The Results of the 1999 Survey

The Results

Well... I think I should come now to the really interesting stuff. To the results of the survey. Maybe it took me so long to come to this page, because I did not like the results. Yes, I didn't. That's why I will spend even more time with the stuff in 'Some further data analyses', I think.

Nevertheless, I will publish the unmanipulated results here, too. That was my intention, even before some friends gave me the nervously hint that the normal results are of high interest, too. I may be nuts and freaky, and I may have a really different opinion than the majority of my subjects of the survey, but I know also what to do with the results of surveys. :-)

[summary], [some remarks]

A short abstract:

Yes, we have an absolutly obvious winner. And the winner is... 'Assassins'. Congratulations, dear mission.

The Human missions scored all in all much higher than the Monster or Undead missions. The 'normality' of the missions increased their odds to get a high score. So, of the Human missions scored i.e. 'Sword' much lower than the really and completly 'normal' mission 'Assassin'.

The missions can also be sorted in the order of their mean scores:

Mission	Mean	StD	Click here to have a look at the image in a better quality.
Assassins	2.91	2.24
Bafford	4.17	2.79
Undercover	5.00	3.50
Cragscleft	5.07	2.78
Sword	5.27	3.09
RTC	7.25	3.79
Lost City	8.07	3.25
THC	8.19	3.05
Bedfellows	8.21	2.85
Bonehoard	8.43	3.46
Escape	9.10	2.75
Maw of Chaos	9.12	3.26
Training	10.19	2.99

Note the fact that every map ranged from place 1 - 13. Only 'Bafford' ranged only from place 1 - 12 (that means that this map was no one's least prefered mission).

The most preferred mission got a excellent rating of almost everyone (221 gave the most prefered mission the A, 3 gave an B, and 1 managed it somehow to give no rating).

The least preferred mission got not so enjoyable scores: The mean of the ratings is 3.21 ( ~ C ¼ ;-) ). The majority of the people (85, 37.5 %) gave here the rating C for the least preferred mission, and sadly called 36 (16 %) of the people the least preferred mission 'very not-enjoyable'. (Guess what I will check out about those people in the further data analyses... I wrote that point on my note papers right now.) Happily, 2 (0.9 %) gave a A here, and 59 (26.2 %) a B.

Seems that most of the people enjoyed the entire game.

Some remarks:

The results are based on the ratings of a group of people who finished the game mostly only one time. It is really hard for me to write the next points, but I ... I understand these ratings. If you have finished the game only once, and if you have not figured out yet how easily the Undead can be eliminated or avoided, then you are really annoyed by them. Annoyed by the fact that they appear in approximately every third mission: In Cragscleft, Bonehoard, Haunted Cathedral, Return to the Cathedral. Hell, I was annoyed myself, when they stumbled in my way everytime.

The problem is, that obviously people who play the game more often than one single time develop slowly firstly a sort of acceptance, and finally a sort of enjoyment regarding the Undead. They add more replayability to the game, IMHO.

Same thing with Monsters: Burricks are annoying and scary in the first time you meet them. Then you develop the instinct that they are like dogs, and like or dislike them - that depends of your emotions agains dogs, if you are a dog or cat person.

Before I do another playdoyer for Undead and Monsters now (that belongs into the part comments, not here), a final point: As I reviewed the comments, I learned that some people had not even finished the game one time. And that those people had decided that this was the most appropriate way to ask a highly experienced 'Thief'-gamer - me (I am really not very modest, huh?) - for help, i.e. about the entrance to Lost City. Because their ratings had looked very correctly for the first few missions, I had left them in the data pool. I think they will have given the missions that they had not finished simply the not yet given values (most probably the 9-13 values). To eliminate those people is not very easily done now, though. So, I will leave those people in the data file.

A short explanation how I had tried to clean the data of some odd subjects: Firstly, I had eliminated the double-posters. Secondly, I had eliminated the people who had done odd ratings (the really odd ratings: Training = 1, Bafford = 2, ... Maw = 13). Thirdly, I had a look at the comments and the feedback to find some really odd comments (I did not want any perverts in the data pool. My own decision for my own survey. But I did not find any. Only odd mass-murderers... :-) ). And finally, I decided that it was highly unprobably that someone had played the game more than 10 times. The two people who claimed to have it finished more often were very closely inspected; and so the person with the claim to have finished it 243 times was eliminated because of additional odd ratings, and the person with the 16 times got a missing value in that field. No personal offence meant, you two guys.