Posting it on reddit and other websites would probably generate a more accurate representation I think. Correct my thinking here but, I infer that
1) People who took the survey on this site are more likely to like Sims 4 as simmers who don't like/have no interest in the Sims 4 are less likely to visit thesims4.com than those who are interested.
2) All the surveys will be skewed towards the younger demographic, but especially the social media sites. Those sites are disproportionately biased towards the young when measured against the general population as a whole.
It'll be interesting to see if #1 will hold up, I expect the number of people who say Sims 4 is their favorite to be higher in this survey than in any other survey.
Posting it on reddit and other websites would probably generate a more accurate representation I think. Correct my thinking here but, I infer that
1) People who took the survey on this site are more likely to like Sims 4 as simmers who don't like/have no interest in the Sims 4 are less likely to visit thesims4.com than those who are interested.
2) All the surveys will be skewed towards the younger demographic, but especially the social media sites. Those sites are disproportionately biased towards the young when measured against the general population as a whole.
It'll be interesting to see if #1 will hold up, I expect the number of people who say Sims 4 is their favorite to be higher in this survey than in any other survey.
Any other thoughts or predictions?
Boy are you dead wrong. XD Personally, I am not even surprised people on this forum chose TS3 over TS4. TS3 just seems to be a favorite here on this site. There are more posters who praise TS3 here in TS4 discussions than there are people who like TS4. They should just rename this section "Complaining about how bad TS4 is Discussion".
Which is why I linked this survey to my Tumblr, cuz I need to know what other people who are not in this forum think about the game.
I voted for Sims 2
Awesome! It was a tough call for me between TS2 and TS4.
Posting it on reddit and other websites would probably generate a more accurate representation I think. Correct my thinking here but, I infer that
1) People who took the survey on this site are more likely to like Sims 4 as simmers who don't like/have no interest in the Sims 4 are less likely to visit thesims4.com than those who are interested.
2) All the surveys will be skewed towards the younger demographic, but especially the social media sites. Those sites are disproportionately biased towards the young when measured against the general population as a whole.
It'll be interesting to see if #1 will hold up, I expect the number of people who say Sims 4 is their favorite to be higher in this survey than in any other survey.
Any other thoughts or predictions?
Boy are you dead wrong. XD Personally, I am not even surprised people on this forum chose TS3 over TS4. TS3 just seems to be a favorite here on this site. There are more posters who praise TS3 here in TS4 discussions than there are people who like TS4. They should just rename this section "Complaining about how bad TS4 is Discussion".
Which is why I linked this survey to my Tumblr, cuz I need to know what other people who are not in this forum think about the game.
It has been my experience that some simmers who do not like Sims 3 are those that started with Sims 4 and then started to play Sims 3 and found it too difficult. That's my experience of course and based on what I've observed and not a reflection of which is better. BTW, I voted for Sims 3 because I like it better.
If you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all. Live in your Truth.
It has been my experience that some simmers who do not like Sims 3 are those that started with Sims 4 and then started to play Sims 3 and found it too difficult. That's my experience of course and based on what I've observed and not a reflection of which is better. BTW, I voted for Sims 3 because I like it better.
yep agreee:)) because Sims 3 is more difficult than sims 4 - for example build mode:) btw still sims 3 is the best for me;)) sadly never played sims 2 and 1;(
I've actually come across multiple surveys people have conducted, and everyone get's very similar results. At some point, with such a large sample, over different time periods, and on different online platforms your margin of error is minuscule. It's all very interesting. It proves to me that what ever Maxis used to gather data was wildly inaccurate.
What's the deal with the creepy Sim in the yellow shirt, and glasses? The one right up there! I'm guessing what ever he is it starts with "serial".
Okaaaaaaaaaaay hi folks, guess what, I just experienced my own personal "THINGS CHANGE" moment! Sorry to pull that awful card on you all, but situations have occurred that are beyond my control. I apologize that I am unable to meet my original goal to provide a month of surveys - please know I am just as disappointed as you are, and will be doing everything I can to correct this situation and meet your expectations over the next few weeks. (See how easy that was EA lol...) Let me explain:
Bad news first: So, I misunderstood the fine print on the SurveyMonkey terms and conditions (and by misunderstood I mean I assumed that their business model would be reasonable, and did not scour the darn thing with a fine tooth comb.) Apparently when they say you can have 1000 responses, they mean TOTAL, across ALL surveys, PER MONTH, and if you go over they AUTOMATICALLY CHARGE YOU for those extra responses whether you want them or not. So, the super fun result is I had to shut down all the surveys and have been desperately trying to work something out with SurveyMonkey's customer support. Apparently they wont budge, sooooo yea I just doubled my cost for this silly little project! *kicks self in face* Unfortunately I had to close the surveys rather than bankrupt myself, and the service is totally useless to me now, so I guess all my grand plans for making more of these will have to go on hold until I find a better FREE host.
Ok now good news: We have received a total of 1761 responses! (I am both rejoicing in the number of participants and crying from the overage charges they caused.) Since I paid for the plumming things, I went ahead and put the total responses together for our final results. I've kept the responses separated in the breakdown below the graphs so it is clear where these votes are coming from. I know the margin of error is way higher than I wanted because I wasn't able to collect the number of responses I wanted from each platform, so I had to just throw them in with the much larger forum results. Sorry about that. I still think the results help to give a general idea of how the forum/community feels, and at least we have a couple of hundred from outside the forum as well to help round things out.
Sorry this didn't work out the way I planned - I will try my best to rally, find a better host - and recover from my annoyance at being charged extra. When I build up the patience to try again you guys will 'be the first to know' (AAaaah what have I becoooome *morphs into Rachel*)
Aww what a shame @esharpmajor and I'm sorry you got burnt for more money. For what it's worth I think you were awesome for trying and the results that you got were very illuminating anyway
So you have a simmer who is grateful for your efforts here!
Thanks Sparky, I feel pretty silly for not looking closer at the payment scheme. You know what they say about what happens when you assume, it makes an ___ out of u + me. Lol! Oh well, my simming fund is depleted, but it was likely going to remain unused considering no EP announcement yet this year anyway. Not the end of the world. Live and learn!
@luthienrising - I agree. I was referring to how SimGuruDrake exposed the flaw in her own method by a) dismissing players' feelings about the game by providing Facebook and Twitter data to counter their arguments but then b) discussing the pitfalls of using social media to gauge an accurate idea of customers' opinions about the game.
Just popping in here as I see this thread is still active.
I used that method to prove a point that trying to use things that cross all channels would be inaccurate. Not everyone is on every platform, not everyone who likes something will actually state what they liked (which is why I gave the examples with the reaction button numbers compared to comments), people who ARE on every platform will attempt to take something multiple times which can skew the results. Even the poll I did here had a good percentage of people who had just created new accounts that day which could either belong to actual new users OR to members creating a new account to skew results (I compare that with the actual number of active users on these forums during that time compared to a normal weekend).
That, again, was not to dismiss any one person's feelings it was to prove a point that there are variables that can cause some inaccuracies in stuff like this (including the human element which is what I used as a basis for my example of a method.)
Regardless I do think data is very interesting (despite really disliking math >.<).
Thanks Sparky, I feel pretty silly for not looking closer at the payment scheme. You know what they say about what happens when you assume, it makes an ___ out of u + me. Lol! Oh well, my simming fund is depleted, but it was likely going to remain unused considering no EP announcement yet this year anyway. Not the end of the world. Live and learn!
lol Do a gofundme account and I will donate to the survey XD. Honestly thank you for this survey it was very informative and did help to explain what a sample of the community is feeling. I'm so sorry to hear that they charged you for anything over 1000. Its funny how companies will do that to people without warning all because they want to use very small print to inform us. Great job and it was very much appreciated!!!
Hi @simgurudrake thanks for stopping by! I know - now from experience - how tricky it is to get an accurate read by using online surveys, but I think it's also a bit defeatist to just say because the margin of error is over x amount that there is no point in trying. Just wondering how does the team approach this issue?
I know there are the satisfaction surveys via origin, but then those only go out to people who are playing the game, making it a biased system as well! It seems like a really tough challenge!
I see over and over this idea that 'everyone has to be included' in order to get accurate results, but that is a fairly odd approach to statistics, isn't it? It's my understanding that the whole point is to find a small group to poll and then use that to gauge the entire population.
Care to shed any light on how you guys go about data collection/how you feel about taking samples of the community?
@kphillips2977 that is so sweet of you, but I couldn't possibly accept. It's my own silly fault, and I fully accept the consequences of my oversight. It was only $33 bucks extra anyway - while it never feels good to throw money away, that's less than a dinner out here in Vancouver, haha! I really appreciate your offer though, you're too kind.
@luthienrising - I agree. I was referring to how SimGuruDrake exposed the flaw in her own method by a) dismissing players' feelings about the game by providing Facebook and Twitter data to counter their arguments but then b) discussing the pitfalls of using social media to gauge an accurate idea of customers' opinions about the game.
Just popping in here as I see this thread is still active.
I used that method to prove a point that trying to use things that cross all channels would be inaccurate. Not everyone is on every platform, not everyone who likes something will actually state what they liked (which is why I gave the examples with the reaction button numbers compared to comments), people who ARE on every platform will attempt to take something multiple times which can skew the results. Even the poll I did here had a good percentage of people who had just created new accounts that day which could either belong to actual new users OR to members creating a new account to skew results (I compare that with the actual number of active users on these forums during that time compared to a normal weekend).
That, again, was not to dismiss any one person's feelings it was to prove a point that there are variables that can cause some inaccuracies in stuff like this (including the human element which is what I used as a basis for my example of a method.)
Regardless I do think data is very interesting (despite really disliking math >.<).
With so many participants though, I'd say the result will be pretty accurate. Especially since participants who'll cause some 'noise' will be representing all opinions.
Oh no @esharpmajor . Hope you didn't get into too much trouble hun. I don't really have a clue on the cost of these sites but the end result sounded painful from your post
Thanks for showing the results. Some of them were rather unexpected, especially the missing content result.
Edit OK just read the other posts. Though $33 (if I read that right) on top
@luthienrising - I agree. I was referring to how SimGuruDrake exposed the flaw in her own method by a) dismissing players' feelings about the game by providing Facebook and Twitter data to counter their arguments but then b) discussing the pitfalls of using social media to gauge an accurate idea of customers' opinions about the game.
Just popping in here as I see this thread is still active.
I used that method to prove a point that trying to use things that cross all channels would be inaccurate. Not everyone is on every platform, not everyone who likes something will actually state what they liked (which is why I gave the examples with the reaction button numbers compared to comments), people who ARE on every platform will attempt to take something multiple times which can skew the results. Even the poll I did here had a good percentage of people who had just created new accounts that day which could either belong to actual new users OR to members creating a new account to skew results (I compare that with the actual number of active users on these forums during that time compared to a normal weekend).
That, again, was not to dismiss any one person's feelings it was to prove a point that there are variables that can cause some inaccuracies in stuff like this (including the human element which is what I used as a basis for my example of a method.)
Regardless I do think data is very interesting (despite really disliking math >.<).
Then again raw data is notoriously inaccurate too. Telemetry doesn't tell you the full story at all and it's something the community has been concerned about after seeing it heavily mentioned when discussing cut content.
It's all a big picture thing. Nothing will be entirely accurate but taking a good approach across all of the possible avenues will give a better picture than just raw data from any avenue.
Now take this survey for example-it tells you some trends but doesn't tell you *why* people are not happy or confused about the often quoted 'vision'. For your company to understand that it would require some background investigation. Same goes across the whole of the survey and any other that you do.
Another thing often mentioned is so quickly the quota for the 'older' age group seems to get filled in your sims related surveys. A lot of people seem to be disappointed by that. Maybe it's a missed opportunity for Maxis? That generation generally have a lot of money and spare time to offer. But of course you guys know what you are looking for and we can't tell what that is.
@esharpmajor we all make mistakes, sadly easily done too!
Just putting my two cents in since it appears that surveys are considered so inaccurate. When doing a survey, all you are doing is taking a small sample of the community and measuring those results to represent a population. For instance, when they test a new drug they do not go out of their way to hunt down everybody who has diabetes for instance. Instead they take a small sample and test the drug on the small sample and thus represents the whole population of people with diabetes. So to say surveys are inaccurate, you are correct but thus you are admitting that the companies use to measure the community is inaccurate as well. I think taking a sample to gauge the customers is a great way to show you care and are interested to hear what they have to say. When taking statistics class (boy did I hate that class) I learned so much in regards to how the data is collected and how useful the information is and why even taking samples of the community to represent the whole population can give you a bigger picture. I'm curious as well to what the company uses to gauge the communities feelings if they are so hypocritical of sampling surveys? I would be curious so that I can run it past my next statics class instructor to gauge the full accuracy of that information as well.
Well said guys, I agree. No poll is going to explain the nuance of 'why' people feel the way they do - that requires a much closer and open ended discussion with the community. It requires trust, patience and empathy from both sides, not some simple one sentence questions with multiple choice answers.
While not perfect, surveys given to a sampling of players imo do provide the general sense of the community, and may be helpful in showing the company where there is call for a more in depth conversation. I think through data like this, a company can focus on creating targeted talking points that may garner them some more holistic info on the major topics effecting customer satisfaction.
eta I also found the results of the 'how do you feel about the vision' question very interesting. You can see that even many of the players who selected 'Great' for their experience with the game, must be unclear or undecided on the overall vision of the franchise. So it is not a simple case of 'people who don't like the game just don't 'get' the vision', clearly even players who LOVE the game don't get the vision, and it's not a matter of playstyle or player stubbornness, but rather a lack of clarity on the part of the team.
Thanks for doing this, I been took the survey but I dont think I post a comment. Im glad to see the out come of the results and I like the way you did it. And Im glad to have been apart of the opportunity.
Oh no @esharpmajor . Hope you didn't get into too much trouble hun. I don't really have a clue on the cost of these sites but the end result sounded painful from your post
Thanks for showing the results. Some of them were rather unexpected, especially the missing content result.
Edit OK just read the other posts. Though $33 (if I read that right) on top
Thanks for your concern, yea the whole thing ended up costing me around $65 bucks, lol, so I'm very happy that people are finding it interesting - that makes it worth it.
I really was very unimpressed with SurveyMonkey, and was even more disappointed in their unwillingness to work with me. They basically just said I'd agreed to the terms, and that was that. I felt very misled and annoyed with them tbh.
In the end, it's their loss since now their sneakiness has been revealed to hundreds of simmers, AND my company will most certainly not be using them in future. (Part of the reason I did this was to test out their service because we were thinking of starting a customer satisfaction follow up email thing at work, and I wanted to be really confident of the service before suggesting it to my boss. Well. That AIN'T happening, lol.)
So basically, for my $30 bucks they lost $350/year and potentially way more from word of mouth. I've already explained what happened to another friend of mine who is also in marketing and was looking for a survey service - and he handles 8 different company accounts so that could have been a lot of money, long term. Goes to show how poor customer service, and product clarity can cost a company a lot of sales - all to try to get my quick buck. If they'd waved the overage fee I would have immediately forgiven them, switched to the 'gold' account which removes those restrictions, and happily given my recommendations, because the site is actually really well designed and easy to use. Now, it could be the best survey site in the world, but I will never recommend it to anyone, rather I will warn people away whenever it comes up.
Anyways, if anyone knows of a good free service - or reasonable paid service that doesn't charge by the response - please let me know.
Comments
Proof please?
Awesome! It was a tough call for me between TS2 and TS4.
As did I.
AHQ Champion
yep agreee:)) because Sims 3 is more difficult than sims 4 - for example build mode:) btw still sims 3 is the best for me;)) sadly never played sims 2 and 1;(
Origin ID : kateteaa Twitter: MunchPumpkins
Sims 3 wishlist: http://store.thesims3.com/myWishlist.html?persona=teaa5
Sims 4 origin wishlist: https://www.origin.com/gbr/en-us/view-wishlist/7a1SQrtJtdHoNce4KS_ZTg--
Sims 3 is awesome too, in freedom, content, and others.
Origin ID: Hyeion
Bad news first: So, I misunderstood the fine print on the SurveyMonkey terms and conditions (and by misunderstood I mean I assumed that their business model would be reasonable, and did not scour the darn thing with a fine tooth comb.) Apparently when they say you can have 1000 responses, they mean TOTAL, across ALL surveys, PER MONTH, and if you go over they AUTOMATICALLY CHARGE YOU for those extra responses whether you want them or not. So, the super fun result is I had to shut down all the surveys and have been desperately trying to work something out with SurveyMonkey's customer support. Apparently they wont budge, sooooo yea I just doubled my cost for this silly little project! *kicks self in face* Unfortunately I had to close the surveys rather than bankrupt myself, and the service is totally useless to me now, so I guess all my grand plans for making more of these will have to go on hold until I find a better FREE host.
Ok now good news: We have received a total of 1761 responses! (I am both rejoicing in the number of participants and crying from the overage charges they caused.) Since I paid for the plumming things, I went ahead and put the total responses together for our final results. I've kept the responses separated in the breakdown below the graphs so it is clear where these votes are coming from. I know the margin of error is way higher than I wanted because I wasn't able to collect the number of responses I wanted from each platform, so I had to just throw them in with the much larger forum results. Sorry about that. I still think the results help to give a general idea of how the forum/community feels, and at least we have a couple of hundred from outside the forum as well to help round things out.
Sorry this didn't work out the way I planned - I will try my best to rally, find a better host - and recover from my annoyance at being charged extra. When I build up the patience to try again you guys will 'be the first to know' (AAaaah what have I becoooome *morphs into Rachel*)
So you have a simmer who is grateful for your efforts here!
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
Just popping in here as I see this thread is still active.
I used that method to prove a point that trying to use things that cross all channels would be inaccurate. Not everyone is on every platform, not everyone who likes something will actually state what they liked (which is why I gave the examples with the reaction button numbers compared to comments), people who ARE on every platform will attempt to take something multiple times which can skew the results. Even the poll I did here had a good percentage of people who had just created new accounts that day which could either belong to actual new users OR to members creating a new account to skew results (I compare that with the actual number of active users on these forums during that time compared to a normal weekend).
That, again, was not to dismiss any one person's feelings it was to prove a point that there are variables that can cause some inaccuracies in stuff like this (including the human element which is what I used as a basis for my example of a method.)
Regardless I do think data is very interesting (despite really disliking math >.<).
lol Do a gofundme account and I will donate to the survey XD. Honestly thank you for this survey it was very informative and did help to explain what a sample of the community is feeling. I'm so sorry to hear that they charged you for anything over 1000. Its funny how companies will do that to people without warning all because they want to use very small print to inform us. Great job and it was very much appreciated!!!
I know there are the satisfaction surveys via origin, but then those only go out to people who are playing the game, making it a biased system as well! It seems like a really tough challenge!
I see over and over this idea that 'everyone has to be included' in order to get accurate results, but that is a fairly odd approach to statistics, isn't it? It's my understanding that the whole point is to find a small group to poll and then use that to gauge the entire population.
Care to shed any light on how you guys go about data collection/how you feel about taking samples of the community?
Thanks for showing the results. Some of them were rather unexpected, especially the missing content result.
Edit OK just read the other posts. Though $33 (if I read that right) on top
Then again raw data is notoriously inaccurate too. Telemetry doesn't tell you the full story at all and it's something the community has been concerned about after seeing it heavily mentioned when discussing cut content.
It's all a big picture thing. Nothing will be entirely accurate but taking a good approach across all of the possible avenues will give a better picture than just raw data from any avenue.
Now take this survey for example-it tells you some trends but doesn't tell you *why* people are not happy or confused about the often quoted 'vision'. For your company to understand that it would require some background investigation. Same goes across the whole of the survey and any other that you do.
Another thing often mentioned is so quickly the quota for the 'older' age group seems to get filled in your sims related surveys. A lot of people seem to be disappointed by that. Maybe it's a missed opportunity for Maxis? That generation generally have a lot of money and spare time to offer. But of course you guys know what you are looking for and we can't tell what that is.
@esharpmajor
https://twitter.com/sparkfairy1
While not perfect, surveys given to a sampling of players imo do provide the general sense of the community, and may be helpful in showing the company where there is call for a more in depth conversation. I think through data like this, a company can focus on creating targeted talking points that may garner them some more holistic info on the major topics effecting customer satisfaction.
eta I also found the results of the 'how do you feel about the vision' question very interesting. You can see that even many of the players who selected 'Great' for their experience with the game, must be unclear or undecided on the overall vision of the franchise. So it is not a simple case of 'people who don't like the game just don't 'get' the vision', clearly even players who LOVE the game don't get the vision, and it's not a matter of playstyle or player stubbornness, but rather a lack of clarity on the part of the team.
Poor Vision.
Thanks for your concern, yea the whole thing ended up costing me around $65 bucks, lol, so I'm very happy that people are finding it interesting - that makes it worth it.
I really was very unimpressed with SurveyMonkey, and was even more disappointed in their unwillingness to work with me. They basically just said I'd agreed to the terms, and that was that. I felt very misled and annoyed with them tbh.
In the end, it's their loss since now their sneakiness has been revealed to hundreds of simmers, AND my company will most certainly not be using them in future. (Part of the reason I did this was to test out their service because we were thinking of starting a customer satisfaction follow up email thing at work, and I wanted to be really confident of the service before suggesting it to my boss. Well. That AIN'T happening, lol.)
So basically, for my $30 bucks they lost $350/year and potentially way more from word of mouth. I've already explained what happened to another friend of mine who is also in marketing and was looking for a survey service - and he handles 8 different company accounts so that could have been a lot of money, long term. Goes to show how poor customer service, and product clarity can cost a company a lot of sales - all to try to get my quick buck. If they'd waved the overage fee I would have immediately forgiven them, switched to the 'gold' account which removes those restrictions, and happily given my recommendations, because the site is actually really well designed and easy to use. Now, it could be the best survey site in the world, but I will never recommend it to anyone, rather I will warn people away whenever it comes up.
Anyways, if anyone knows of a good free service - or reasonable paid service that doesn't charge by the response - please let me know.