[2022] My reaction to Devblog 377

This is not correct. The segments are split amongst survey respondents.

Among players with 0 battles played, there was 43% opinion against adding Submarines to our game. The negative opinion dropped sharply with as little as 1-5 battles played as those players had a 23% opinion against adding Submarines. It dropped even lower amongst those who'd played 6-25 battles with only 11%.

Familiarity with the class through direct play experience had a powerful interaction with player perception.

No, 100% of the people in the "0 Battles" category didn't actively play a Submarine in Update 0.11.8. Of that population, only 43% were against adding them to the game.

Players can still interact with subs and form opinions without playing a Submarine.

It's from Survey data, yes. The sample size is enough to be considered a representative sample, so it can be extrapolated to the playerbase.

I don't have that number offhand, but even if much of the playerbase fell into the 0 Battles section, that section still has only 43% resistance to the addition of Subs. Our data does not see the majority as being against Subs.

Change in any form will always meet resistance. This is a known in an industry that requires change to stay alive.

Some will look at the above and see the 43% opposed as being ignored or unvalued, but that isn't the case. The product has to maintain viability and the majority are not opposed to the addition of the new ship type.

In terms of "What does 43% of the playerbase mean?" or in terms of the size of the survey? Surveys rarely are able to connect with every individual, so there are methods in how to get a representative sample which aims to reflect the whole. Polling/Survey work is a specific field so I have to differ to those with the ability to do that work.

No, a Neutral/Indifferent response would be recorded as a neither for or against. That being said, having no particular opinion would mean seeing Content as Content and not being overly concerned as to what package it came in.

Addition of Subs would still perform their function of adding gameplay variance/diversity as Content.

I don't believe we release internal statistics on user-data like that. There are server tools that people use which track Concurrent Player Population (# of players simultaneously on a sever) across our servers, but we do not release active player numbers (to my knowledge).

Use of the percentage is the easiest way to understand the data. If the category had 100,000 people in it, 43% of that would be 43,000 people. If the category had 500,000 people in it, 43% of that would be 215,000 people. Etc...

I can ask about that. I have a vague memory of what the dispersion was, but that was from maybe 5-6 months ago and I don't want to give an incorrect impression of this 0.11.8 survey data. If the concern is that 43% were anti-sub and 57% were neutral, that was not the case. There were For, Against, and Neutral in all cases.

The core intent of the graph is to answer the concern about the "Most players do not want subs" narrative which is often repeated. I suppose there will be some that will try to redefine that narrative as "Few players do want subs", but that's ultimately a different line of logic.

The largest showing of anti-sub sentiment is not over 50%. It has not been over 50% for months, which should answer some questions as to why we have continued forward with Submarines. Simply put, the majority of players are not against Submarines being in the game. Further, players that do interact with Subs on even a basic level show as much more ok with them being added as they understand the class better.

Arlskandir's addition method was wrong. If doing that, you would have to look at it as 77 out of 300, but that would only work if all three groups were even in size (which is not shown in the graph and players have requested in this thread).

Each sections is its own section. No section has higher than a 43% resistance to adding Submarines to the game.

There are various end-of-update reports on user experience and such, but things mostly related to event data and how people responded to new ship lines or battle modes. The first time I saw the tracking data being shown here was several months ago in a Submarine meeting I attended, so that's the beginning of my knowledge on this specific topic.

The information showing that people really do feel more comfortable with the class after they engage with it on even a small level is an important thing to understand. I've been aware that CVs hold a similar barrier-for-entry as some people will never play them, which causes issues when attempting to deal with a ship type you don't have direct knowledge of.

We are a data driven company. If the information showed the detriment to be something insurmountable, then you are correct that the idea would need to be shelved. The current iteration of Submarines does not show that, which is why development continued and they have been released officially in 0.11.9.

This argument doesn't make sense. If you want to assume there are three sections of players, we can do some assumption for visual representation:

0 Battles in Subs (We can assume a large number, so perhaps 75%?)


1-5 Battles in Subs (remainder between the two is ~15%)


6+ Battles in Subs (you suggested <10%)

The above example can be mathematically represented with the following formula:

([0 Battle Size] x [0B No %]) + ([1-5 Battle Size] x [1-5B No %]) + ([6+ Battle Size] x [6+B No %])
which reads as...


(.75 x .43) + (.15 x .23) + (.1 x .11) =

.3225 + .0345 + .011 =

36.8% "Against Adding Subs"

This uses the size sampling estimations listed above. The worst possible option would be if the 0 Battle Category represented 99.999% of players... which would mean ~43% "Against Adding Subs".

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The above example can be looked at as "Around 1/3 of players dislike Subs", but it also indicates that "Around 2/3 of players are ok with Subs being in the game". In terms of game content reach, the majority are not against the addition of subs as content in our game.

The information provided is literally addressing the concern you have. The concern is that Subs were overwhelmingly not wanted, but the reality was not that. The information provided is broken down in terms of player interaction with the class and shows how even small amounts of interaction shows a dramatic reduction in concerns about subs being added to the game.