Travian Survey Analysis

Hey Guys,

The results of the survey are now in, although we only just reached 200 respondents I am very happy we did and the answers to this poll have come from 201 results including one completely blank entry. Due to some problems google has generating the results, some percentages may add up to more or less than 100%, don't worry as the proportion shown is correct and so are the number of answers. This post is extremely long and has been split into three sections to make it easier to read. 

Section 1: Travian Game Questions:

The first question asked which domains most players had come from, because of the sheer number of domains I won't be posting a screenshot up but the domains where the most answerers came from was the .com & .co.uk domains.

The second question in the survey was a simple question, which versions of Travian had the respondent played. The answers showed that the majority of respondents had played both Travian 3.6 and Travian 4. A result I found quite surprising was the fact that 24% of respondents have been playing since Version 2 or earlier which would mean years of experience. 

The next two questions were made to show what kind of players were most common out of the respondents, from the results we can see that they typical player is someone who spends 200 - 600 Gold per month and is online at least 6 hours but under 12. Only 18% of people used absolutely no gold at all and a similar 17% uses more than 1500 Gold Per Month. Only 4% of people played the game for less than 1 hour per day while more than 4 times that number played for more than 12 hours in a single day, and 64% spent between 3 and 12 hours online. 

Out of all the people who responded over 69% believed that they spent too much time time playing Travian and 9% believed they hadn't spent enough.

Next was a question where respondents had to rate how much they enjoyed playing the game, only one person said they did not like playing at all, which begs the question why they would play if they didn't enjoy it. 30% said it was their favourite thing in the world, which I think is quite an impressive number for an online game but it does kind of creep me out. 

The questions from this section, I believe, have shown that the vast majority of players spend a large amount of their time on Travian because they find it highly enjoyable, for the most part they are willing to spend reasonable amount of their own money on the game but they accept that they do devote too much time on the game. Most respondents have tried the newest versions of the game and are relatively new players however a decent number are experienced veterans who have played for many years, which shows the great retention Travian has in keeping it's players and continually drilling money out of them. 

Section 2: Community & Customer Service Questions:

The first question in this section asked respondents to rate the customer service they received from multihunters, moderators, supporters and even admins. These results gave a fairly even mix of results with the highest number of respondents giving Travian CS a 3 which is about average. 30% gave customer service a rating of 2 or 1 while another 30% gave Travian a rating of 4 or 5. This wide range of results shows that Travian needs to step up it's game and standardize the quality of staff over all domains, the fact that it can range so widely shows that the negative experiences are not anomalies and are regular occurances. Domains which are showing large number of negative reports really need to be actively investigated by Travian and, if necessary, changes need to be made. Being average is also not good at a time where hundreds of new games are available online and the competition is really stepping up. Travian should aim to have 90% of respondents giving them a 4 or a 5. 

Next I asked what has been considered Taboo by Travian HQ for a while, which is whether if Travian staff were paid would the service improved. In this questions only 14% believed that there was no chance of improvement if Travian crew were paid. This shows that the vast majority of players believe that if Travian staff were paid service could improve. 

A very simple question followed, asking people which of Travian's community features the respondents used, clearly the most popular was the forum with over 89% saying that they used the forum. To be fair it that could be, in part, because of the fact that this survey was advertised on Travian forums. However the question showed without doubt that the IRC rooms are underused and a bit disappointing. If Travian wish to continue to over the best community features they should really find interesting new ways of interacting with their community.

A quick question on whether forum users enjoyed custom holiday skins, like for Christmas or Halloween, showed that while most people enjoyed them, a significant number thought they should be made only for very special occasions and over 12% believed that they were annoying and made things harder to use. 

This question looked at what people actually used the forum for, with informational purposes about the game, coming out clearly on top. Most people came for the guides, questions, server discussion and news. Socialization was important but the majority of the respondents did not use the forums for this and stuck to just finding out information. Just under 30% of people got involved with either talking about ideas for the game or actually suggesting new ideas which I think is a good number but it'd be better if a lot more people could suggest ideas and made their views on the game known more often.

Following on from that I asked which new ideas players would most like to see implemented into the forums to made them more useful, of course there are more ideas that could make it onto the list but those were the main ones I had recently heard discussed and know are possible.The majority of respondents simple wanted more guides and game information to make playing an easier experience. The next most popular idea was the idea that all Travian forums could have one, single login for all Travian's forums which would mean you would only have to remember one username and password and could login to any of Travian's forums. This would encourage people to share their views and post up guides and other information on many more forums. Although coming in last place over 12% of respondents would have wanted and used the ability to login using facebook connect, which is a popular feature on many of the large, non-travian forums at them moment.

Section 3: Travian & Social Media Questions:

The first question in this section asked respondents which social network they used regularly, by far the most used was Facebook with over 98% of people who answered the questions saying they used the social network. Surprisingly some people still used Myspace with 13% of respondents saying they had accounts. 

On the same line of questioning the next question asked whether players would want to be able to register and login using facebook or twitter connect services. A large majority said they would never used the services but still a reasonable amount said they would be willing to use it at least some of the time. 

Following on from this, I asked, which of any, of the following options people would be willing to post to their facebook streams. Clearly the most popular was winning the World Wonder race which is quite unique followed closely by Getting a Medal which is easily attainable but still quite difficult for most players. This question tended to show that the harder the task the more people believed they would post it to their facebook wall if available.

Again on the same kind of steam I asked whether people would be willing to play Travian actually on facebook rather than on their browser. 48% believed that they would probably at least try it while some of those believed they'd use their broswer as well as playing it through facebook. 95 people said they would certainly not play Travian on Facebook. 

A lot of people have been asking about Travian apps for phones and mobile devices so I decided to add in, as the last question, a question about which device would be the most popular for an app. There was a large split in this question with Android and iOS (Apple Devices) being only 10 votes apart. The largest number of people voted for 'Other' which includes thinks like Symbian, Bada and other operating systems I don't know, however this choice is very fragmented. 

Thank you all for reading, and voting in the survey, if you didn't vote then I hope at least that you enjoyed looking at the results. If you'd like to keep up to date with new posts on the blog please follow us on our Twitter feed which can be found here. 

Steve