The Results of the 1999 Survey

The Haunted Cathedral

The Haunted Cathedral [THC]. It is a window-shopping mission, so to say: You don't get the Eye, but you will return 3 missions later to get it. Beside this window-shopping element, this mission has the extra-quest to get the serpentyle torc, and the quest with the watchman's grave. The place is creepy, and inhabitated by our best friends, the Zombies. Additional to these friendly chaps we have the huge green Spiders here and there, a cute family of Burricks, two Craymen, some well hidden Haunts, and some Apparitions here and there. The diversity of monsters is very large: This map is probably inhabitated by the highest amount of different species.

And this mission has the possibility to enter almost every house in the streets. A fact that would have improved the gaming experience of Assassins. But, nevertheless, this mission did not get a high score of the majority.

[Descriptive Data], [Scores], [Comments], [Final Comments]

Descriptive Data about this mission

This mean score is indeed depressingly low for a freak like me who loved that mission. The Modalvalue is with 7 relatively high. Again, the range of the scores from 1 - 13 is quite amazing.

The distribution of the scores

Score	N	%	Y-axis: "N", X-axis: "Score"
1	4	1.8
2	5	2.2
3	10	4.4
4	7	3.1
5	16	7.1
6	22	9.8
7	33	14.7
8	23	10.2
9	25	11.1
10	19	8.4
11	18	8.0
12	27	12.0
13	16	7.1

Hm. This mission seems to be somewhere between place 6 - 12 for the majority of the people. It is not clearly one of the least preferred maps, but solidly middle area.

And it correlates significantly high with many other variables of the survey. Relatively high positive with 'Bonehoard' (.19 **) and with 'RTC' (.20 **). Relatively high negative with 'Training' (-.22 **), 'Bafford' (-.29 **), 'Assassins' (-.19 **), 'Undercover' (-.27 **). And also relatively high negative with 'Bedfellows' (-.22 **), 'Maw' (-.24 **). It seems to be a good predictor if someone belongs to the group of RTC-freaks or to the group of realistic Human mission-freaks, I think. And additional to this enjoyable fact, it is also good for the distinction if the people enjoy the Trickster beast missions, more or less.

The fact that THC correlates also highly with some of the other variables, is even more enjoyable. Well... significant correlations make me happy. It correlates relatively high with the rating for the most non enjoyable mission (.17 **). That means: The people who gave the most non enjoyable mission a really bad rating, did not like THC. I have already analysed the group of people who rated the least preferred mission low in Training. No need to do it again (But they were in a short and harsh summary kiddies.) And it correlates high negative with age (-.22 **). The older the people, the more likely they gave THC a better rating. Hey, another hint for the fact that age could be involved in the characterization of that group of people who rated the least preferred mission bad.

So, people who liked this mission were most probably mot very young. And they enjoyed the entire game more (conclusion from the rating for the least preferred mission). And they enjoyed also RTC. Most probably they belonged to the group of gamers that enjoy to be scared, more than to run around in realistic settings.

Comments

Short Summary

Surprisingly, the quantity of the positive comments was greater than of the negative comments. :-)

The positive comments were about the scaryness and creepyness of the place, the hugeness, the monsters. And, most important, about the immense replayability of the mission.

The negative comments were mainly about the too well hidden loot, about the lack of arrows (Huh? Too few arrows? Too few holy water? Hehe... you can see another really wicked grin in my face rightnow. LOL. I am a beast, I know. *g). Others were simple 'Zombies suck!' or 'I hate Spiders!' Well, because I see not much sense in quotes like that, I shortened the lamento a bit. I have my own opinion. No question.

Nevertheless, the positive comments were in the majority.

Positive Comments

'Best level for fear, rewarding, good puzzles.'
The possibility to create monster-gang wars.
'A entire city with many houses to break in.'
'Cuddled a cushion all the way through, oooooer !! '
Challenging.
Architecture. The excellent level design.
Lots of exploration.The serpentyle torc - house.
The Zombies.
The hugeness of the place.
'Everyone who hates this, but wants to be able to wander around a city at will, should pause to think.'
Reachable roofs everywhere.
The objectives per se.
'Zombies, spiders, the dark, oh my! More Indiana style-play!'
Replayability.
'I got very lost in the city part of this mission... and loved it.'
The voice of the Eye.

Negative Comments

Maybe too scary.
The loot was (maybe) too well hidden.
Undead.
It was a simple easter-egg hunt.
Burricks.
Too confusing.
'Aaaaahhh!! I hate the undead!! whimper... scary...'
Spiders.
Too big. Too much time needed to finish the mission.
No interesting story here.
Too much 'supernatural.'
'Boring. Just walked around doing nothing.'
Burricks should have a tiny little change against Zombies.
Too few holy water.
Too easy.

Some personal comments

The Haunted Cathedral. Well... first time I played it, I refused to turn the light on. Because the monsters would have seen me then. And I had the problem of the 'Where's the loot? I need 750, where's it?' But I think that this mission scared me not so much as Bonehoard did.

After that came the phase where I enjoyed playing this mission. I had changed from only keyboard to mouse&keyboard game controls, and it helped me very much to find almost every odd reachable roof. And I enjoyed the gang wars very much. Then came the phase where I decided to let the lights turned off, again. I crouched through the place, had a very close contact with the spider in the basement of Market Street (but she did never see me). And I have the odd idea that it should be possible to enter the Cathedral already in THC (via its backdoor, and with the help of a crate and a piece of rubble).

I love this place. And more important, it is the mission before the most disliked missions (Lost City and Undercover). And it motivates me to hurry through those two least preferred missions, because it gets me already in the right mood for RTC: Being scared, eager to face Undead, and eager for sneaking through the place.Things that I can't do in the other two missions.