The Results of the 1999 Survey

Undercover

Undercover. A place where you have to act differently. Because you can't sneak into this place, you slip into the role of a Novice of the Order of the Hammer. A place that is filled with Hammerites, books, and hammers. You should act as a Novice: Don't enter the forbidden areas, don't steal anything, don't draw a weapon - as long as someone can see what you are doing. A place that has also a really scary area - the torture chamber in the basement. The quests are relatively simple: Figure out how where the Talismans of Earth and Air are. Figure out how you can steal them. Steal additional the First Hammer from the reliquiary. And steal some additional loot. No need to mention that a bad surprise awaits you after you have achieved the talismans...

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

Descriptive Data about this mission

hese scores are indicating that the map is one of the most preferred missions of the game. Both the mean score and the Modalvalue are very good. Nevertheless, the StD is relatively large.

The distribution of the scores

Score	N	%	Y-axis: "N", X-axis: "Score"
1	23	10.2
2	23	10.2
3	38	16.9
4	37	16.4
5	23	10.2
6	24	10.7
7	10	4.4
8	11	4.9
9	14	6.2
10	6	2.7
11	6	2.7
12	5	2.2
13	5	2.2

Note the fact that ... sorry, I can't write this, now. (I am standing infront of the sad fact that my disgust is too large to jump over my shadow. I don't want to describe that positive rating of the mission.) :(

Just watch the graphic, and see that the majority enjoyed the map obviously. Note also that some people again did not like the map. And note that the distribution of the scores is not very extreme.

Okay... correlations. Undercover correlates highly with 'Training' (.14 *), and 'Assassins' (.15 *). With no other mission is the correlation significantly positive. But, it correlates really highly negative with 'Bonehoard' (-.36 **), 'THC' (2.7 **), 'RTC' (-.30 **). Note that the positive correlations are not so highly significant as the negative correlations. It seems that the map was enjoyed by the people who preferred the realistic settings. But it seems also, and on a higher level of significance, that the people who enjoyed the Undead missions disliked 'Undercover'. The negative correlations are, btw., significant on a .00-level. That is really high.

With the other variables, the mission correlates only with the preferred style (.16 *). That correlation is not very significant, and very low. And it tells us not very much, because the styles are not sorted in a meaningful way.

'Undercover' seems to be the antagonistic mission to the Undead missions ('Bonehoard', 'THC', 'RTC.')

Comments

Short Summary

The majority of the comments was positive. They were about the concept to work undercover, about the human opponents, about the fun to pretend to be a Novice.

The negative comments were about the time puzzle, and about the lack of replayability. And about the fact that this mission gets boring after you have knocked everyone out.

Positive Comments

The pretty details. The architecture.
'Going undercover is quite fun.'
The non linearity.
'Very fun to take down guards 1 by 1.'
'Ahhhh.... to be a hammerite...'
The human opponents.
Its easyness.
'Possibly the best! Everything about it was rewarding, and fun... spot on!'
The background informations in the books. The Hammer quotes.
'Awesome, lets you be seen by the enemy, and sneak around after.'
'I want to use the rack!'
The time switches.
'Atmospheric. Scary. High sneak adrenalin factor.'
The sleeping Inquisitor.

Negative Comments

Too easy. Too short.
Too many guards.
It was not possible to sneak.
The lack of replayability.
'As soon as you know where the switches are, it is no challenge anymore.'
Too difficult.
'Didn't like having to be nice.'
'The 'undercover' aspect didn't work so good.' Sometimes they seem to get alerted without any reason. That is inpredictable and quite annoying.
The time-puzzle with the switches.
'Keystone? What keystone?'
'Well so what you almost got the eye... This is the intro to all the mess.'
'Very original. But I had all the guards knocked out too soon. Then it got boring.'

Some personal comments

While I was updating these pages in February, 2000, I still stood infront of the fact that even thinking about this mission and the extremely high score it recieved in the 1999 survey, makes me almost throw up. I am still disliking it, disliking it more than the 'worst' fanmade mission so far.

Nevertheless, rest assured that the analysis was as objective as possible.

So, I cut the long explanation why I hate this mission, and just let the last paragraph as it was:

Because I don't want annoyed emails now of the fans of that mission: I don't want to discuss this fact neither. I am sure that you have enjoyed the map, and that it can be very funny. But, well, not for me.