Hi All,
Thank you to everyone who helped me out by completing the crusade survey. We got over 170 responses from every army and all types of players. This is a dip from last year but still represents a great quantity of data. I plan to distribute the results in a few articles. Today’s article will cover some aggregated results as well as include the gaming demographics of the respondents. Over the coming days we will look at the results for the Imperium, Chaos and Xenos factions. Without further ado, let’s dive into the results!
One of the more interesting aspects of this survey is its comparison to last year. For example, despite a lot more armies having crusade rules, we had a smaller percentage of respondents report they had actually played in a crusade campaign. The previous year’s results indicated 84% had played in a crusade campaign.
A new question this year focused on whether players still wanted to use these Crusade rules in events. I asked participants if using these rules made them more or less likely to go to an event
It would appear that, for most players, using these rules in some fashion is still a good choice.
Continuing on, we can see that global satisfaction with army-specific crusade rules. On the whole the numbers are pretty similar to each other and to last year. What is interesting is that satisfaction in almost all categories save one (Chaos forces) have declined year over year. It is important to note that there is no statistically significant difference in the faction ratings for 2023.
We have also seen some shifts in the perceived power of army abilities and how easy it is to understand an army’s special rules.
Now it’s important to note that I haven’t run significance tests on most of these charts so interpret accordingly. We also haven’t seen too much of a shift in the perceived complexity of the crusade rule set with the majority of players indicated they are satisfied.
Thoughts:
I think many of these changes are due to updates in the crusade rules for individual factions and fatigue with 9th edition. I think players are feeling a bit burnt out with the edition, and that is causing the drop in players participating in crusade vents. Another option might be that when this survey was delivered in 2022 it hit a time when many people were getting back into the habit of playing after the COVID-19 hiatus. Thus, these numbers may be more representative of a typical population than the 2022 survey.
In favor of the burnout theory, is the fact that army satisfaction has dipped almost across the board. While I have yet to test the statistical significance of these changes (it could be chance), it is a little striking. An explanation for the differences in the Chaos satisfaction is that, at this point in 2022, we only had the Death Guard with custom crusade rules. I think the increase in codex crusade rules is also why we are seeing a change in perceived codex power levels. As more armies get their rules, it is easier to see who are the winners and losers.
Anyway, this is just a taster of things to come. I hope to do some more analytics as I break down the faction results in future articles. I hope you enjoy them, and let me know if you have any thoughts!
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