Results of the fate-locked stories survey (April 2018 edition) - You won't believe which story is #1 now!
Here are the results for our survey on fate-locked stories for April 2018. Thanks to everyone who participated!
The unthinkable has happened! "Lost in Reflection" is no longer the most popular story!
After the clickbait title I have to concede that the new highest-ranking story isn't actually a surprise, though. :)
As in our previous survey, story quality has been calculated based on the average voted value. Possible values ranged from 1 ("Exceptional") to -1 ("Didn't like it"), so stories with an average above zero were liked by the majority of players, while stories with an average below zero were not.
##Most Popular Stories
- HOJOTOHO! (average vote 0.78)
- Flint (average vote 0.78)
- Lost in Reflection (average vote 0.76)
- The Gift (average vote 0.68)
- The Empress Shadow (average vote 0.63)
While the top 5 stories are no surprise for anyone familiar with the results of our last survey, it's worth noting that "HOHOTOHO!" and "Flint" got exactly the same average vote. Also, there used to be a small gap between the first five or six stories and the rest in previous surveys that is no longer there. Compared to last time, a few stories got a significantly better average vote, namely "The Art of Murder", "Cut with Moonlight", and "A Trade in Faces". The most controversial stories were "Secrets Framed in Gold" (variation=0.37), "The Heart, the Devil and the Zee" (0.36) and "The Clay Man's Arm" (0.34)
##Least Popular Stories
- The Rubbery Murders (average vote -0.52)
- Discernment (average vote -0.31)
- Spinning of the Wheels (average vote -0.26)
- Factory of Favours (average vote -0.25)
- A Court of Cats (average vote -0.24)
There's a bit of gap after these five. I was very surprised to see "Discernment" was so little liked. "Rubbery Murders" aside, it got the worst vote any story has ever gotten since we started doing these surveys. A lot of players also were dissatisfied with "Factory of Favours" when it was released and it shows here. The stories that did significantly worse than last time are "The Frequently Deceased", "Discernment" and "The Pentacost Predicament". Personally, I don't really understand because none of these stories are actually bad in my opinion. Also keep in mind that many of the less liked stories have not that many votes. For instance, if only one person voted "Exceptional" for "Discernment", it's average vote would become better than "Spinning of the Wheels". I'm not saying that the results are "wrong" in any way. It's just that statistics become less meaningful with small sample sizes.
Below you will find the ranking for all stories, a list of stories that voters thought are worth buying based on rewards alone, as well as recommendations for stories (i.e. if you liked story "x", you'll probably also like story "y"). I've also put everything in a Google spreadsheet where you will also find a few more details. (Note that the spreadsheet has four tabs, they are easy to overlook.)
##Ranking of Fate-Locked Stories
I have included the difference in the average vote compared to the last survey. For a detailed breakdown on how exactly players voted for each story, please take a look at the Google Spreadsheet.
| # | Title | Total votes | Avg vote | Diff. to prev. survey |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | HOJOTOHO! | 52 | 0.78 | +0.08 |
| 1 | Flint | 52 | 0.78 | +0.03 |
| 3 | Lost in Reflection | 56 | 0.76 | -0.02 |
| 4 | The Gift | 71 | 0.68 | +/-0 |
| 5 | The Empress' Shadow | 60 | 0.63 | -0.03 |
| 6 | All Things Must End | 53 | 0.62 | +0.11 |
| 7 | The Twelve-Fifteen from Moloch Street | 60 | 0.61 | -0.06 |
| 8 | Where You and I Must Go | 47 | 0.56 | +0.09 |
| 9 | The Calendar Code | 40 | 0.55 | +0.05 |
| 10 | Theological Husbandry | 76 | 0.55 | -0.02 |
| 11 | Cut with Moonlight | 42 | 0.49 | +0.19 |
| 12 | The Waltz That Moved the World | 39 | 0.46 | +0.12 |
| 13 | The Pursuit of Moths | 73 | 0.45 | - |
| 14 | The Persona Engine | 54 | 0.44 | -0.01 |
| 15 | Steeped in Honey | 61 | 0.44 | - |
| 16 | The Jack-of-Smiles Case | 56 | 0.41 | +0.04 |
| 17 | Flute Street | 78 | 0.39 | +0.06 |
| 18 | Secrets Framed in Gold | 62 | 0.38 | +0.11 |
| 19 | The Chimney Pot Wars | 35 | 0.37 | +0.11 |
| 20 | The Final Curtain | 42 | 0.33 | -0.09 |
| 21 | The Blemmigan Affair | 42 | 0.33 | +0.09 |
| 22 | Mysteries of the Foreign Office | 38 | 0.26 | +0.02 |
| 23 | The Sinking Synod | 61 | 0.25 | - |
| 24 | Lamentation Lock | 64 | 0.23 | - |
| 25 | A Functionary's Confidant | 37 | 0.23 | -0.03 |
| 26 | A Trade in Faces | 45 | 0.2 | +0.18 |
| 27 | The Century Exhibition | 51 | 0.19 | +0.02 |
| 28 | The Frequently Deceased | 37 | 0.16 | -0.17 |
| 29 | The Attendants | 54 | 0.16 | -0.09 |
| 30 | The Marriage of Feducci | 44 | 0.13 | - |
| 31 | Five Minutes to Midday | 38 | 0.12 | +0.09 |
| 32 | The Art of Murder | 37 | 0.11 | +0.21 |
| 33 | The Stone Guest | 56 | 0.11 | - |
| 34 | The Murgatroyd Formula | 74 | 0.11 | - |
| 35 | A Trade in Souls | 82 | 0.11 | -0.06 |
| 36 | The Web of the Motherlings | 53 | 0.08 | -0.07 |
| 37 | The Heart, the Devil and the Zee | 46 | 0.05 | +/-0 |
| 38 | Our Lady of Pyres | 44 | 0.03 | +0.07 |
| 39 | Inconvenienced by Your Aunt | 74 | 0.03 | +0.08 |
| 40 | A Long Lost Daughter | 35 | -0.03 | +0.15 |
| 41 | The Pentecost Predicament | 35 | -0.04 | -0.13 |
| 42 | The Haunting of the Marsh House | 29 | -0.05 | -0.01 |
| 43 | Trial and Error | 60 | -0.05 | -0.06 |
| 44 | The Seven-Day Reign | 35 | -0.07 | -0.1 |
| 45 | The Clay Man's Arm | 53 | -0.08 | +/-0 |
| 46 | The Last Dog Society | 26 | -0.15 | +0.02 |
| 47 | A Court of Cats | 25 | -0.24 | -0.1 |
| 48 | Factory of Favours | 67 | -0.25 | - |
| 49 | The Spinning of the Wheels | 44 | -0.26 | +0.01 |
| 50 | Discernment | 29 | -0.31 | -0.15 |
| 51 | The Rubbery Murders | 21 | -0.52 | +0.02 |
##Fate-locked Christmas Stories
All of these stories got pretty high rankings. Don't pay too much attention to the actual numbers, because only very few players voted for most of stories. For stories with less than 20 total votes, one additional vote would be enough to change the position in this list. The lesson here is probably that you cannot really go wrong with any of the Christmas stories, although the first three are abviously more liked than the rest. I will most likely not include these stories in the next survey again because the sample size (i.e. the number of voters) is just too small and we knew before than these stories are almost generally well-liked.
| # | Story name | Total votes | Average vote |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A foolish Rubbery Man | 26 | 0.77 |
| 2 | February of the Calendar Council | 8 | 0.69 |
| 3 | Urchins of the Knotted Sock | 15 | 0.57 |
| 4 | The Duchess | 29 | 0.36 |
| 5 | Some inebriated Zailors | 16 | 0.31 |
| 6 | The scholars at Benthic | 8 | 0.19 |
| 7 | The Gracious Widow | 13 | 0.15 |
##Buying stories based on rewards
You could also vote if it was worth buying certain stories just for the rewards. This is especially interesting for stories that are not all that popular, namely "The Spinning of the Wheels" or "Inconvenienced by your Aunt".
| Story | Worth buying | Not worth it |
|---|---|---|
| Theological Husbandry | 94% | 6% |
| The Empress' Shadow | 90.00% | 10.00% |
| Flute Street | 85.40% | 14.60% |
| A Trade in Souls | 80.20% | 19.80% |
| Spinning of the Wheels | 63.60% | 36.40% |
| Inconvenienced by Your Aunt | 61.30% | 38.70% |
| Flint | 61% | 39% |
| HOJOTOHO! | 60.00% | 40.00% |
| The Blemmigan Affair | 51.70% | 48.30% |
| All Things Must End | 49.20% | 50.80% |
| The Gift | 39% | 61% |
| Mysteries of the Foreign Office | 38.30% | 61.70% |
| Cut with Moonlight | 37.30% | 62.70% |
| A Long-Lost Daughter | 28% | 72% |
| Haunting of the Marsh-House | 27.50% | 72.50% |
| The Frequently Deceased | 27.10% | 72.90% |
| The Marriage of Feducci | 25.00% | 75.00% |
| A Trade in Faces | 19% | 81% |
For reference, here are the links to our previous surveys in September 2017 and February 2017 as well as phryne's original poll in September 2016.
Posted May 15, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC · edited