Community Survey Results

First, I want to say thanks to this awesome community. In just two days, 181 Rivals players responded to my survey. Of them, ...

• 9% have more fun than ever with Rivals
• 45% have just as much fun with Rivals as ever
• 41% still play, but have a bit less fun than before
• 5% stopped playing

Who participated in the survey?

Unsurprisingly, this survey reached the active parts of the community that frequent our Rirevals subreddit and/or popular Rivals discords. That's why it's not surprising that 94% of the respondents are Masters / Tiberium league players. 15% of the respondents come from the Terminus Shores alliance group, 5% each from Ascendance and French-speaking Baguette.

As you can see in the bar chart above, most respondents are in full and active alliances. Notably, it seems that a lot of the Top 100 alliances don't play customs or play in / organize tournaments. If you're in such an alliance, please encourage your team mates to play custom games. This is a big part of what makes the game competitive, as custom games can be played at equal level.

Community tools that the respondents use are:

• 71% use their own alliance discord
• 64% frequent the Rivals subreddit
• 54% use the official Rivals discord
• 38% read this blog
• 35% use another larger English-speaking Rivals discord
• 17% use another "local" discord such as the Spanish-speaking community discord, Czech/Slovak community discord etc. (I listed some of them at the bottom of this post. Let me know on Reddit or on Discord (user name "shuukit") if I missed some.)

Community View of Balance

We just had a big balance patch. Nearly all respondents commented on the before-the-patch state of the game. Here's the verdict of the people:

Beyond looking at what the community thinks, it's interesting to compare this with the actual patch:

• Commanders: Here, devs and players are aligned. Nice!
• Units: A mixed bag, with players agreeing to the Fanatics nerf, but not agreeing to the Bike nerf. Actually, Bikes got the highest share of respondents that voted "Balanced" with 71%
• Tech: The Elephant in the room. Mammoth and Tech in general are seen as nearly as imbalanced as Jade & Liang pre-patch. Yet, the devs didn't do anything about this. Instead, they even nerfed a key aggro unit that helps prevent Tech deck air delay the game: Bikes.

I also had a look at what the Terminus Shores crowd specifically thought about Bikes: 52% of Terminus Shores players said that Bikes are too strong / a bit too strong -- versus just 22% of the other respondents. In my view, we can learn two things from that:

1. Influencers are powerful. Because my interpretation is that 13lade often bringing up how powerful Bikes were (on his stream) influenced his viewers, and in his viewers, his alliance Terminus Shores is over-represented.
2. Bike nerf is 13lade's fault, confirmed! :) Of course, you can also turn it around and say that I'm wrong and Terminus Shores are just better players and that at their level, Bikes were actually too strong.

Speaking about 13lade and Terminus Shores ...

A majority of respondents expects Terminus Shores to win the December season unchallenged, just like in November.  A quarter expects Ascendance to mount a challenge, but fail. And a whopping 7 respondents expect Ascendance to win. Hopefully, this is motivating for the Ascendance leadership!

37 respondents agree that Praetor Pyro / CrazyPsychopath should apologize to 13lade for being rude repeatedly. Only 17 voted against this. 70% of the community didn't know about it, which tells us they watch both their streams too rarely! Here's a collection of the key Rivals Twitch & YT channels I recommend you to follow.

YouTube & Twitch Channel Popularity

The by far most beloved channels are 13lade's YouTube and Twitch channel. The distance to the runners up is large enough that I feel obliged to link a great recent video from 13lade, where he plays only Lasers and Wheels.

Twitch popularity ranking:

1. 13lade
2. Bikerush
3. Nukin
4. AliciaDestiny
5. Victor Bansemer
6. Crazy Psychopath / Praetor Pyro
7. Lord Buzz Killington

My recommendation would be that you follow all the Rivals streams (there's some that I didn't include in the survey for brevity). Because only rarely are there two or more, and by following all of them, you ensure that you see which Rivals stream is online when you visit Twitch.

YouTube popularity ranking:

Here, we have two "secret tipps" that most respondents didn't know, but where those who know it give good ratings: AwDaSea who uploads commneted videos from the Rivals Team League, and Omeboi / Omeleet, who uploads thoughtful commentary on units and balance. Here's the overall ranking:

1. 13lade
2. Captain Benzie
3. Bikerush
4. Omeleet / Omeboi
5. AliciaDestiny
6. AwDaSea

What can other streamers / YouTubers learn from 13lade?

• Interact with the community. Most streamers do that, but 13lade goes the extra mile to do that, answering all questions and having betting events that are interactive for the audience.
• Mix it up. 13lade often does special things, such as running his own tournaments, or playing a wide range of different decks.
• Talk. There's some active streamers and YouTubers who don't talk much. They might still have cool gameplay, but it's so much better to also hear thoughtful and/or emotional commentary.
• Be a Regular. 13lade very reliably streams 5-6 days a week, mostly at the same time for 3-5 hours. This helps him connect to his audience, but also makes it worthwhile to check if he's online just right now. 
• Upload good content to YouTube. A 3h stream recording isn't the best for YouTube. A 20 minute tournament final, or a 30-60 minute "special event or deck" video is great YouTube content. Especially with good commentary.

On Rivals Tournaments

• 24% watch every tournament stream they can
• 56% watch occasionally
• 20% don't watch Rivals tournaments. If you belong to this group, please tell us why on Reddit!

And:

• 38% usually know about the big tournaments in advance
• 25% sometimes know in advance, but then get wind of it as soon as the stream starts. 
• 17% sometimes know in advance, and then usually also miss the tournament stream
• 6% don't know about them in advance, but often manage to catch the stream, still
• 14% miss the tournaments completely!

This shows how important it is to (a) follow the big Twitch channels that run tournaments and (b) spread the word to your alliance/discord once a tournament stream started. 

And for tournament organizers, it shows how important it is to get the word out, ideally on Reddit in advance and on Reddit and in key discords when the stream starts. You can also contact the discord admin Bryan on the offcial discord in advance, he might be able to help with a well-timed announcement of your tournament stream going live!

On priorities for the Developers

The community sees priorities for the developers in the following order:

1. Balance patches. 
2. Bug fixes.
   Improvements for new players, including but not limited to changing challenge matches and win streaks in a way that new players don't climb as fast. About two thirds see this as important or very important.
3. Advertising tournament streams through in-app messages and on Twitter. 41 respondents think this is very important, another 57 think it's important. And it should be easy for EA to execute. Of course, it also needs the tournament organizers supplying the information about the tournament and when the stream starts in advance.
4. New units. 

You can find all the data here if you responded, with some charts for all the answers.

And please share your thoughts on Reddit!