First I’d like to thank everyone who participated in this survey. It would be rather pointless without your efforts. We had a jaw-dropping 501 participants! I nod my scaly snout to you, good sirs and madams. Honestly, my highest hopes were for 50 hits and some amuzing flames on the forum.

Here I will present the findings, and give a small bit of commentary on each. I’ll try to avoid making grand conclusions, as they will likely be wrong and will just serve as forum flame fodder. For those looking to do some heavier statistical analysis on the raw data, I’ve made it available here. There may be some interesting correlations lurking within.

Also of note, the raw data contains participant country and sometimes subzone (such as state or province). At a glance we had

56% United States

8% Canada

4.5% United Kingdom

4.5% Germany

4.5% Australia

2.5% Netherlands

19.5% Many other glorious countries

1. What is your gender?

Not shocked that it’s a sausage fest at the forge, but still good to see all gender types being represented. Lucky that it only matters what’s in your deck, not what’s in your pants.

2. What is your age?

Again, a question of pure curiosity. Roughly half of the participants are in their 20s, and very few older than 50

3. How long have you been playing Solforge?

I would have preferred a numerical entry on this one but that’s not available in the freemuim survey package. We can see a bit of a pattern here, though the categories are not entirely equal (e.g. 1-5 months has a sample population 5x larger than less than a month). Regardless, it’s not surprising the old school participation is high, as they have invested the most into the game. This also shows SBE’s wisdom in focusing on the retention of new players. Will try to brew up a better way to ask this next time.

4. Did you Kickstart Solforge?

Another question mainly done out of curiosity. If anything, it shows that the user-base is growing beyond the kickstarter, which is obviously a good thing.

5. Have you visited any of these sites?

This was a sneaky question I put in, the main purpose being to promote some of the great sites out there to those who may not be aware. So I hope some of you found some new sites through this. I was also curious how many were aware of the Snouthide Stegadon, as I don’t promote it at all. Since the survey launched, two new sites have spawned, so great to see the online community presense growing.

6. Do you watch streamers of Solforge (e.g. twitch streams)

Here we see a healthy amount of stream watchers in the community. The complex nature of the game makes it fun to watch the pros pull off those fancy moves and late-game knockouts. Giveaways don’t hurt either. And of course, a thank you to all those who do the streaming.

7. Describe your playing style in Solforge

A good mix here, nice to see that the game can be enjoyed on both competative and casual levels, and that casual players are involved enough in the community to notice the survey.

8. What platforms do you play Solforge on?

Not a suprising result but still interesting to see the split in the numbers. The PC is a favorite of gamers, and the Android release is still fairly new so a low number was expected. I’m keen to see how the numbers change in the Set 3 survey.

9. If Solforge was offered on any of these platforms, would you play on them?

Interesting how uniform the response was on the non-Mac options (poor poor Windows phone). Next time I may do a ranked response to see how that changes the lay of the land.

10. Choose which best describes your playing habits

This question was terribly done. There simply wasn’t enough options for users, and a thank you to everyone who voiced their concern. So make of it what you will, and I’ll strive to have a better mechanism of providing meaningful input next time.

11. Types of games I play

Not suprised that draft is in the lead, as it’s not only great for building collections but puts players on fairly even footing and makes for some unique and oddball decks. Random timed seeing love for that daily win and funsies / test decks, I would assume.

12. Tournaments I’ve played in

Really pleased to see the ladder getting a lot of love here. A nod of thanks to all those in the community who do the hefty chore of running tournaments for us.

13. What weekend warrior events have you participated in?

Not surprised that Faction Draft is the most popular. By not changing the cost or the payout, and adding a new element of strategy plus increasing your chances of sniping faction-specific heroics, Faction Draft is a winner. I know some also relished the ability to have 5 drafts active at once. As well, a fairly good showing on the drafts where newly released cards could be acquired, as new cards are always in demand.

14. How would you describe your main account?

This result makes me happy. The fact that people can play F2P, but enough are motivated to pay can only mean good things for the future of the game.

15. What have you spent gold on?

Conclusion: players like their events, and they like their one-time-glorious-discount-chests. A bit surprised at how low the deck slot is; a most practical purchase and the gold cost is much better than the silver. I guess those who want lots of decks already have piles of cards and thus silver to burn.

16. How I spend my silver

Wow, forging is popular. After Eyks’ great math article I would have expected boosters to be reigning champ. Clearly a significant number of participants prefer to snipe those specific individual cards.

17. What I do with my excess Legendaries

A balanced response here. I’m looking forward to the market chaos in those first days when trading goes live. One thing I didn’t consider was differentiating between account bound and gold legendaries.

18. When new cards are released, I get them by…

Can we get a round of applause for being patient? It’s good to see that the game offers quite a few options for getting new material and that all are being utilized.

19. What changes would make you spend more real money in the game?

I was expecting the Lower Price Point option to have an 80-90% result; I guess the sentiment of “it’s what I’m buying, not what I’m saving” is alive and well in the participant base. Comparing with question 14, we can also see that approximately ¼ of F2P players could be persuaded to crack open their wallets given the right motivation

20. How often does an opponent run the clock on you when they are losing in a queue game?

Now into the fiery topics! Here we have a hot issue that is always active in the various communities; it even has a Facebook page dedicated to it. So clearly clock-running plagues most players from time to time, some more often than others. This response may yeild some interesting correlations when compared against player type and activity.

21. How do you feel the gameplay / variance is in Solforge?

Another never-ending debate! The survey result shows opinion is spread fairly evenly on this. After the survey was launched, we had some exciting updates on this front: Justin Gary revealed the Consistent mechanic on TinyGrimes’ stream, and we also have a full article on variance from Justin to look forward too.

22. What new feature do you want the most?

A number of participants pointed out that this should have been a ranked answer, and they are absolutely correct. This will be done in the next survey. Not a big shock that Trading is in the lead here, given the constituents of the survey. Campaign is something I’m personally looking forward to, and it seems a number of others are as well. This also helps re-inforce SBE’s decision to focus on the new player experience in the short-term.

23. How do you feel about card nerfing?

This is good to see. The majority of the masses are pleased, and detractors are on both sides of the issue. And a few comedians.

24. What are your feelings on a turn timer for draft / constructed games?

Interesting result here, though I have no grand interpretations. This issue is deeply tied to both the playing style and out-of-game commitments of players, so indiviual needs can vary widely with no “wrong answer.” I’m a tad surprised there wasn’t more love for the multiple queue option. I play a stinkload of Ascension, and find the approach works marvellously on that platform. That said, multiple queues are not without their own drawbacks.

25. Set 3 Bees?

The community has spoken. The sentiment is unanimous. Set 3 Bees!

So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed the picture painted by the results as much as I did. And a big thank you to SBE for making and continuing to support a product we all enjoy so much.

And now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for….PRIZE TIME! The following lucky participants have won themselves a free draft: CodeWithChris, Catalyst, Dragomir.

Thanks for playing, and hope to see you all again a few months into Set 3!