by DaniAngione » Wed May 25, 2016 11:47 pm 
It's finally time to reveal the cool statistics acquired over the course of the last week or so. I intended to write a more in-depth, extensive report... But, alas, can't really play Haven, play other games, have a real life and write full articles on Haven statistics all at once
Oh, and if you have no clue what I'm talking about... Look here!
Anyway... Let's go!
The Haven & Hearth Census Report
The Census Report is based on 156 responses acquired over the period of approximately 10 days (May 13 ~ May 23).
All the responses are completely anonymous although they can be analyzed one by one - and not just the full statistics - which allows me to reach some interesting conclusions. So I’ll try to keep my commentaries limited to whenever I feel these conclusions can be made by making links between the different responses. I take no responsibility over what was answered, however, and everything beyond this point is merely speculative based on this 'fragment' of the community's population that might or might not be representative.
Considering this will be up to each one of us, so... Without further ado, let's start.
Demographics
The first section of the Census was meant to analyze the general demographics of the Haven community.
We can clearly see a vast majority of players from the Americas (mostly North America) and Europe (evenly divided between western and eastern europe) which doesn't perfectly reflect the statistics we see on the server and population meter. That's likely because some communities (like the Russian, Japanese and Korean communities) have their own website and forums where their players have a higher presence. So it's arguable that this Census focused on the more "western" part of the community - but it also tells a lot about forum usage and the people that access it the most. It's also worth mentioning that even though we got 156 responses, the number of total "attempts" (people that started to respond but gave up or closed the page before finishing) was higher than 300. So we have an approximate 50% rate of contribution within the total reach of the census.
Among the 156 responses, 110 people agreed to share their specific country. The list goes as follows:
- 29 from the United States
- 11 from Canada
- 7 from Russia
- 6 from Ukraine
- 5 from Poland, France and Australia
- 4 from Brazil and Sweden
- 3 from Mexico, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom
- 2 from Romania, Turkey, Croatia, Bosnia, Netherlands and Finland
- 1 from Latvia, Estonia, Italy, Hungary, Colombia, Denmark, Philippines, Czech Republic and Argentina
Gender and age also comes with their own conclusions. We see there's a big majority of male players even though the amount of female players is still expressive. It goes against the overall trend around the world, however, as some institutions have already released their own numbers (like this, from 2014 on UK residents) and there's an exponential growth of female gamers. A more precise study into game genres could give a proper answer, but my guess would be in relation to maturity and toxicity - especially against women - within certain communities of games. It's also worth of mention, although not there yet, that the proportion between gender and "How is your playstyle" (from pacifist to aggressive) was almost 80% female and more pacifist against 60% male and more aggressive, which also reflects on a community's mindset...
And age. Female players are, in their vast majority, between 25-more than 40 years, with only 2 exceptions in the 20-24 group.
As a whole, however, we see that Haven's main age group is the 20-24 group, but still with a very expressive 16-19 group and a relatively expressive less than 12-15 group - if you consider the themes in the game and the overall aspects of the community. That's something interesting to ponder about, and might be a reason behind so many "fights over attitude" around these parts...
A big part of the people between less than 12 and 15 years (and almost half of the 16-19 group) are ok with concepts like killing on sight and declare themselves aggressive.Another interesting point is the large portion of players above 40 years. Some of them have stated that Haven is the only game they play, and it's interesting to wonder about how do these people got here, a relatively unknown game with a very niche community, this "far" from the average age of players? These are stories I'd like to hear
Gaming Habits
The idea here was to try and make an association between the different playstyles and the concept of being "hardcore" - as in, how much effort do you put in the game. The results were interesting.
The results on this one might be a bit altered. I've noticed that some people answered it by checking ONLY the first world they played and not all the worlds they played. But I then corrected the question to make this more clear and got more precise answers. (This was around Response 60~). So there might be a larger margin of error on this one.
Regardless of that, it's interesting to notice the different "booms" from each generation of players - and how World 9 is acting as the actual W8 in terms of the natural/exponential growing of the game. That's probably because of the payment model used in W8, which limited it from a big part of the community and acted as a "testing" world of sorts. W9 is the real W8, with far more reach and access than W8 ever had, which is clearly noticeable if you consider that W7 had more players than it over its long life. Still does.
Here is where things get interesting. We see that more than half of the community plays other games all the time - which is expected - but the interesting part is that it was a bit different than what I expected in terms of trying to "draw" the "hardcore" population. Funny enough, the proportion between people that declared themselves villagers, part of "Big factions" and don't have Haven as their main game and play other games is far greater than the proportion between peaceful hermits that only play Haven and treat Haven as their main game.
Arguably village life has fewer chores per person - if you consider hermits that want to do everything - but still, it's interesting to point out that the most active/hardcore part of the community - the big factions - are not really the people most attached to Haven as their only game but to a more standard, common "Gamer" profile. Also, 90% of the people that use and agree with bots are also related to big factions, which makes it clear where the time they play is focused in. And the people that are more attached to Haven are so in a more casual, not so hardcore manner (in terms of PVP/End-game). That's not what I expected to find out but it was interesting to do so. Also, the HUGE amount of people that says "Haven is sometimes my main game but not always" are not only a reflect of this idea/concept of Haven being a "generation" game but also an evidence to the problems with the end-game grinding... Which we will see soon.
The fact that people play Haven intensely to then stop playing for some time... And keep this as a cycle... Is more than enough to point out that the game worlds "age" and once they reach a certain stability/grinding level, the end-game becomes completely uninteresting. This has been the concern for a major part of the community for quite some time, and observing these gaming habits we can clearly reach this conclusion.
Development
An in-depth look about the direction the game is going and how the community feels about it. The most obvious, natural thing to be asked first was - in comparison to what we had - how the person feels about the new "Haven".
There's a mistake - from my part - in that one. I should've added options for "Legacy, but never played Hafen" and "Hafen, but never played Legacy". This would give a more accurate insight. The results, however, are interesting enough. Even though Hafen is being actively developed, it seems that the years of ironing the balance and the more stable, functional combat mechanics of Legacy still keep some people truly faithful to it. I must say I did not expect so much people to still prefer Legacy - but I do agree they have more than honest reasons.
I guess that from now on, most of them speak for themselves and there's not much I can add. So I'll keep the commentaries to a minimum - whenever I can make some interesting links that can only be made by analyzing the responses individually and not the general graphs. So it won't be much more extensive.
The last 3 colors that can’t be seen are:
Dark red: Performance and Stability (11.5%)
Deep blue: Sound Design and Music (0.6%)
Purple: Social Interactions and Mechanics (6.4%)
Another relatively obvious result but that tells a lot more than it looks. This is the most “scientifically accurate” proof we now have for what has been the greatest community complaints so far. Although they’re all relatively spread among several options, it’s clear that the End-Game Grinding is the greatest concern and, right next to it, the combat system. The fact that the Combat Mechanics got so much support as a “secondary” option rather than the most important thing to improve shows that the majority of the community - even people that don’t usually fight - recognize the importance of that being fixed and reviewed. Some other areas that got a lot of support, like politics, empires/kingdoms, social interaction, character customization… Although not directly related to quality grinding, are certainly related to the lack of activities and things to keep the game world alive after a certain point. These results clearly express what most people seem to feel about Haven, whether just peaceful hermits or big faction villagers (and even more truthful if you consider the question about Haven having “phases” of being the main game): the game needs continuity, purpose and a new layer of activities and experiences to keep people playing once they have all they need.
Quite clear answers here. Worth to point out that it’s relatively worrying that in a small, tight community with just two devs that directly interact with it, almost half of the community feel their opinions are mostly disregarded or - worse than it - just a certain part of the community is heard.
The fact that people would appreciate more means of input is clear, too.
Your Profile
The idea here was exactly to do what I’ve been doing with the analysis: getting individual answers about how do people play to compare with demographics and their opinions - something the graphs alone can’t tell. These links are the most important conclusions we can get from the Census.
Haven = Merry-Hippies-living-in-a-dangerous-world Simulator : CONFIRMED
Just kidding - or not. Nonetheless, interesting results. The world feels a little safer, somehow.
I just love how these two graphs can almost perfectly be placed atop each other.
And yes, looking at individual responses, it is pretty much a perfect fit - it doesn’t just look like it.
Among the “Other” (5) responses I got about playstyle, there are some really cool stories about playing a “nomad” like life. I might try that sometime
Interesting enough, most people that wanted more social interactions and mechanics are people already participating in social activities. I suppose this means that the community does figure out ways to do it when they want to, but more means of doing it are always welcome - and the people not doing it probably don’t mind anyway - except, perhaps, the large “Rarely” group which would likely do, given the mechanics and improvements.
Opinions
Other than pointing out some interesting links seen in individual responses, I’ll refrain from any personal comments here
As expected, most people in favor of/using bots are related to big factions and/or village life.
Also, the existence of bots is a direct and clear reference to the end-game grinding issues so many people also complained about.
Alts are also evidence to a game problem, however far more used than bots. That’s not only because the access to bots is relatively “restricted” but especially because the alts are related to balance issues and concept issues regarding the value of character life and feasibility of certain mechanics when alone, etc… This is something that affects far more players - if not all - unlike end-game quality grinding, which is more reserved to big villages and factions. So, yes, alts are also evidence of an issue that is arguably more damaging to the game - IF not directly related with all the end-game grinding anyway.
Hidden results:
Yes, all of them: 3.8%
Except noobs: 6.4%
Only noobs: 1.9%
Obviously this relates directly to the profile question about being aggressive and the proportions are quite clear.
This one is quite funny since some people that think it’s wrong still admitted they’d do it if it happened to them. This is the kind of honesty I hoped to get with the answers so it was very nice to see the results
Although less than half of the people completely agree with justice without pre-estabilished rules, only a small portion of the community disagrees with it. If we consider all the options that mention that having rules would be better, though, we can see that having punishments based on precedence and clearer rules would be interesting for most parts.
Curious fact: The closer to “aggressive” people declared themselves, the unhappier with the caps they are.
Not a 100% match, though - of course.Economics
Finally, the idea was to see how well H&H as a business could be faring and what could make it better for both the players and Jorb & Loftar’s table.
I’m sure this graph would be completely different if I made the Census during W8… All things considered, though, I suppose we can say they got it far better this time.
I love how these two graphs also seem to almost compliment each other but it’s a bit trickier than that. Most people, when looking individually, that went for blue (yes) in the first one also picked blue (yes) in the second one. So the approximate amount of people that thinks the benefits could be better are actually people that already consider them to no be pay-to-win, obviously.
Left: Very fair/cheap
Right: Very unfair/expensive
Most people opted to say the prices are ‘so so’.
I suppose that, in terms of marketing, that means they’re on the hot spot. Expensive enough to give a better return but cheap enough to not be unfair.
We can, however, take a closer look to the smaller bars and try to figure out a tendency. By doing that we see that there are more people considering cosmetics unfair or expensive than subscriptions. And even more when it comes to verifying the account. Which means that subscriptions are probably the best priced item in the store but cosmetics and other products are a bit overpriced.
That will be more evident when we look at the sales.
Just look at those big blue bars. These big blue bars represents potential costumers that are not giving them money. And yes, that’s a lot. And yeah, they’re obviously aware of that - they run the shop, after all. But I guess it’s important for both sides - the community and them - to be aware of that. We all play the game for a reason - and paying for stuff obviously keeps it active and not abandoned on some corner. But what are our motivations? What do we really want or not?
I guess that finding the balance between these two things is very important because, right now, what it looks like is that the whole development/community is actually being held and paid by a small part of the population. Looking at individual responses, they were evenly divided among big factions/villages and hermits/loners - so there’s really no pattern. Is about people that want to invest time (and money) in the game.
So, these huge blue bars represent how much money Haven is NOT making, and the last two questions can give us some answers about that. Are the things not what people expect when they buy?
Edit: As asked by boreial, some of the numbers:
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Never bought one: 47.5%
One time: 7.2%
A Few times: 28.2%
Many times: 17.1%
SUB TOKENS
Never bought one: 92%
One time: 5%
A Few times: 1.8%
Many times: 1.2%
No, that’s not it, apparently. Although I’d say this is below the usual customer satisfaction standards (lol) it is understandable. There are a couple of answers to this question (mostly negative) that were funny since the person also said they never spent anything in Haven. So the results are slightly offset.
Here’s where the problem shows, I would say. The store isn’t offering all it could offer. The more content the store had, the less it could charge for it - making stuff more affordable and cheaper and also more varied.
There’s an evident outcry for Character Customization - exemplified by skins, different hairstyles and things like that. And also for cosmetic furniture.
I suppose that these stats are interesting if they ever plan to not lose so many potential customers as evidenced above.
Summary
Overall, I think that the Census was a successful experience and brought some interesting information to light.
I would’t say that it brought surprising or incredibly unexpected results for most of the community - it did not - but it gives statistical basis to a lot of the knowledge that so far has been guessed and claimed based on our own personal experiences with the community.
It’s important to read and crunch these numbers and take the most of them because they clearly “end” a lot of discussions and I’m sure that many people have wondered about actual numbers and statistics on these subjects, like bots, alts, caps, etc...
Hopefully this will be helpful and enlightening to someone and perhaps useful for Jorb & Loftar. Nonetheless it was really fun to do so and I really appreciate all the help and support.
A big thank you to everyone that participated, shared, etc… And I hope you all enjoy these results!
Feel free to request anything else or suggest corrections/etc… I’ve been writing this in Google Drive and I’m sure there are typos, things overlooked, etc…
And, of course, feel free to discuss now!
