Surveys are always tricky - the way you ask a question can lead people to answer a certain way, the sequence of questions can trigger a bias, how you analyse the results can tell you what you want to hear. Certain people tend to answer questions and others don’t which already introduces a certain bias (so bear that in mind when reading polls :-)
Now over 2500 people took the time to fill out our long survey - thanks to everyone it’s been a real help as we assess where we’ve come from, and where we’re heading! Here's some top line results:
It turned out that 70% of you weren’t on our mailing list already so we managed to reach a lot of new faces with this.
As was to be expected North America ranked first in responses (over 50%), followed by the UK, then Europe, Australasia then Russia, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East & Africa.
Outside English speaking places we know the game needs more translations to help build the community and we’re working on that. There is a German translation in the works and we’ll announce more on that when we can, you may know we’re already working with Legion Distribution in France for the French edition and in Russia Pandora’s Box have been doing amazing work growing the player base with first the English and now Russian edition coming!
We asked people who’d started but then stopped playing about why they stopped. Of course, a lot of you related how Covid had effectively shut down your local clubs, cons and gaming stores let alone your home groups. It was clear that the lack of someone to play with had made a lot of people stop playing and many of these stated they’d return to playing if they could find people to play with.
As one of the solutions we focused on getting Fallout: Wasteland Warfare set up on Tabletop Simulator. You can find the Workshop item here including all the contents of the Two Player Starter Set for free! You do need the Tabletop Simulator Software available on Steam but once you've got that you're good to go! We’re also working on a Tabletopia version as this is free to play and we hope to have it ready for December. We've also added a demo of the Elder Scrolls Call to Arms starter sets too!
It’s one thing to have the tools to play, another to have people to play with. We've found through a similar survey for Star Trek that most people know about the online virtual tabletop's but don't always have friends able to play online. So we’ve partnered with www.tabletopwizard.com and www.startplaying.games
TabletopWizard lets you list all types of games as a host whether it's a war game or RPG or boardgame, or you can search for games that have been listed and request to join. It might be a one-off session or a regular meeting. The host selects where they want to play so it's all in your control.
You will already find Fallout Wasteland Warfare listed there along with all our other games, so why not pop over to look for or post a game and find someone to play against.
StartPlayingGames is our gaming partner for MODCON the online convention that we are hosting in December. You’ll be able to use it to find people to play with as well. Both sites will let you find others to play with - online and offline when things get back to normal in your region of the world but until then we’ve made the whole we’re going to be encouraging as many of the community to sign up to these platforms so it makes it easier to find someone to game with in these times.
Ok back to the survey results, those in Australasia often stopped playing due to availability of the products so we’re talking to our Australian & New Zealand distributors to see how we can improve the flow of new product out to our Commonwealth mates!
Not surprisingly 55% of people are doing a bit of painting and playing, another 21% are playing and 15% painting with the rest not getting around to playing yet
In terms of how you’re playing 873 are playing solo and 616 are playing co-op style games vs 586 who play Battle mode (people could tick several answers so it doesn’t add up to the grand total). There are a few other smaller variations but overall that’s over 1400 people using the AI engine. Good thing we have more coming for that :-)
The numbers for where you want to see more support overwhelmingly emphasised storytelling and AI - 1022 voted for narrative game play, 939 for solo, 514 for co-op vs 135 for battle mode. A lot of you gave us notes on what rules you house rule and change, we’re still going through these to find any common threads.
As far as what you’re most looking forward to 19% should have been pleased to see the In To The Wasteland random wasteland creation option turn up, another 18% are waiting on the Defend the Settlement Mode (which is the forthcoming Homestead expansion), 21% are looking forward to the Random Vault Creation and a massive 32% for an expansion involving character levelling. We have these things on the radar but will be watching how In To The Wasteland goes so if you're looking for more AI support show your support as it really helps us plot development priorities.
Over half of you are using both published scenarios and those of your own making, 37% are using the official ones only and the rest are making it up as you go along. FalloutFridays will see new monthly official scenarios to help support that and we hope the community will be inspired to show off their own too.
The major standouts in what you want to see next were 1398 votes for Campaign Boxes (which is great seeing as that is how the new card expansions will come, in larger boxes with booklets of hobby guides, scenarios, new rules and the cards you need for that whole expansion wave). 1167 would love to see a big deluxe rulebook with lots of beautiful pictures, all the assembled rules and scenarios - we want to get more expansions complete but it’s on our list. 1139 people would like to see more linked campaigns (we’re looking at that), 1074 want more narrative rules and content - as we listed above there’s a lot of new expansions coming that will help expand the storytelling aspect and more to be announced. 787 want to see more hobby guides - we’re working to get more guidance for you and we’re using the FalloutFridays to encourage the community to show off their amazing work to inspire you all.
In terms of how you see yourselves playing over the next 6-12 months, it was interesting to see that over 55% planned to be using the RPG expansion (with the Unexpected Shepherd solo missions coming out I suspect that's why), over 60% on Settlement mode campaigns, over 50% on escalation campaigns following a group with levelling and injuries, and a massive 70% are diving into narrative encounter sessions whilst nearly 65% are planning dungeon crawl like Vault games.
On to force size, 41% of you are playing with 1-5 models per side, 47% with 6-10, 9% with 11-15 and the rest 16 or more. Looks like 501-750 caps is the sweet spot for 45% of you, 38% playing with 500 caps or under for a quick game. Meanwhile, 14% are rolling out 750-1000 cap forces and 3% 1000 caps or more.
Amazingly 46% of you didn’t know about Jamie Morris’s official FWW app - so I hope you’ve managed to try it. You can find it in the Apple and Google App stores. I know Jamie’s been working hard to improve the features and has just introduced a bunch of new content. It's free to try out so go check it out!
In terms of what you're playing with, 41% are playing with a faction and 50% with a mixture of characters and units with the rest choosing a lot of different answers. We’re going to have some updates on factions next summer and other plans a foot should support those of you with narrative groups of survivors brought together by circumstance just trying to get through another day...
Those playing factions are running with the Survivors 57% of the time, 45% joined the Brotherhood, 33% the Super Mutants, 24% the Raiders, 8% the Institute, 10% Creatures and 14% Robots (remember you could vote for several). Watch out for some introductory offers in our Black Friday sale to tempt you to try out another faction!
There’s a clear demand for more Survivors, Robots, Creatures, and Scenic sets - which the Enclave and Mojave expansions should help but we'll be looking at addressing some of the holes in the robots and creatures ranges in particular through next year.
In terms of what’s to come a massive 1500 people are counting on the NCR vs 1000 for Caesar’s Legions (seems like they need to do some recruiting!), whilst 870 are hankering after those tasty Raiders factions from Nuka Cola World, 835 for the Gunners and 790 for the Railroad, with a massive spread across all the other options. Good thing Mojave is coming next - will give us time to think about the rest ;-)
Interestingly 34% of you like converting your minis to be armed with the weapon you like them using in-game - we’re considering more weapon sprues to help with those of you who like modding your minis as 87% of you said you are interested in just that!
50% of you own the RPG expansion in print or PDF - though 71% haven’t been able to play it yet - we hope the new solo campaign The Unexpected Shepherd will help you give it a try - we’ve got two more episodes in layout and approvals to keep you going. It seems 30% of you are planning to get the forthcoming Fallout 2d20 Roleplaying game, 20% didn’t know about it, and 35% are thinking about it - you’ll get the chance to try it out when we release the free Quickstart next year and there will be lots more news on that in due course. Watch out for the streamed game of Fallout 2d20 at MODCon!
3D Printing is going to transform the miniatures gaming world and with Bethesda's blessing we’ve embraced it by supporting a broad range of scenic sets as print-at-home files. 36% of you are thinking of getting a 3D printer, with 30% owning a Resin or FDM printer. Not everyone wants the work of 3D printing so not surprisingly 74% of you said if we had a service to print files for you, you’d be interested. We are investigating this - it’s a trade-off between price and quality so getting the right mix is important.
Interestingly 63% of you said you would want to purchase 3D print files of the miniatures themselves (so not just the scenery) and another 21% weren’t sure so it shows where things are heading. We offering the first 3d print miniature Vault Tec Girl as part of the recent roll out on MyMiniFactory. We’re considering some miniatures that might not work so well in production for 3D print alongside scenics that would be crazy expensive in resin. Watch this space. Well… not this exact space but you know what I mean!
We’re still digging deeper into the individual answers - thanks so much to everyone who took the time to write out their thoughts and ideas. We really appreciate your time.
We learnt a heck of a lot through the survey, but also it reassured us that we’re on the right track with a lot of things, however, we’re taking a lot of things to heart, feedback on rules, content, pricing, community support and a lot more to steer a path to support you better over the coming releases and the rolling lockdowns we're all going through.
We’ve got some really exciting content and expansions ahead and we’ll be running some open play tests of new material in the new year but until then keep the amazing creativity the Fallout Wasteland Warfare community is known for coming, and try out Tabletopwizard.com and StartPlayingGames.com to find some new friends to play with, otherwise see you in the wasteland!
Lastly, remember we had 5 winners of the survey drawn at random from all those who entered by the cut off. They are as follows (showing the first 4 characters) and we’ve emailed these people to send them their $100 voucher - happy shopping!
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susansXXXXX@XXXXXXXX
mnemonXXXX@XXXXXXXX
arhenrXXXX@XXXXXXXX
bmd.chXXX@XXXXXXXX