A while ago I asked you to fill in a survey. Nearly 4,500 of you did. Most of the answers came from Steam. That's more than I expected, so it took a while to go through. Thank you.
This post is about who answered and how you play. It isn't a list of what gets worked on next. A survey isn't a vote: how many people mention something isn't what decides what gets done. It helps me understand how you play and where things get hard, and that's how I'm using it. Work on the game continues as usual.
Who answered
More than half of you have played over 100 hours, and 231 of you have played over 500.
Many of you are also fairly new. Of the people who remembered their first version, 40% started on V70 or V71.
How you play
I asked how you usually approach a new game, and there's no single kind of Syx player:
Explore until something breaks, then restart: 717 of you
Play relaxed, no pressure: 710
Roleplay and build a story: 669
Optimise hard: 556
Set my own challenges: 516
Most of you learned the game on your own. 70% said trial and error and 64% said tooltips. About half used the tutorial (53%) or YouTube (47%).
89% of you also play other colony builders, and 69% play both colony builders and management games like Factorio or Anno.
The part most of you like best is the same: building the city.
What you wrote
Most of you also wrote something in the open boxes. You wrote about a lot of different things: battles, diplomacy and the world map, species, research, logistics, the late game, and wanting to understand better what's happening in your city. Sometimes two people asked for opposite things.
Many of you also described where you got stuck in your first game, and how you got out of it, or didn't. That part was the most useful.
What I don't know
A survey only tells me so much. Most of you who answered have played a lot. People who tried the game and stopped early mostly aren't in here, so their side is probably missing.
That's it for now
Many of you also offered to help further. 878 of you said you'd be willing to playtest, and 1,767 said you'd fill in a longer survey. That's more than I could expect. Right now, Aleksei is sending emails with the first detailed survey to all of those people. 394 of you have already filled it in.
Because so many of you want to playtest, the planned size of the playtest group was changed from 100 to 200. People will be invited bit by bit, not all at once, so if you haven't heard anything yet, it doesn't mean you were left out. But you have to join Discord in order to participate in the playtest.
No conclusions yet. This is just what the answers look like.
