Highlights from a Rogue Trader's journey through the Koronus Expanse

Lord Captain!

It's been over eight months since the game released. During this time, we've turned to you more than once for advice on how to make your journey more comfortable. The post-release survey was one such occasion. An astounding 15241 people took part in it, which, according to our esteemed Lexmechanics' calculations, took them a collective total of 335302 minutes to complete. 

We immensely appreciate the effort you're putting into further improving the game. Based on the survey results, we've already fixed numerous “sore spots” such as the behaviour of the cargo interface in the game's third act, or the miscalculated difficulty levels in skill checks. As a thank you for the work you've done, we're going to share the most interesting community perspectives that were reflected in the survey results. 

With a passion for all things precise, as is typical of any servant of the Omnissiah, our Lexmechanics have drawn up a report for you that is rich in intriguing correlations and captivating data tables:

Introductory Notes

Worth mentioning first is the fact that by four months after release, more than half of all survey participants had clocked over a hundred hours in the game. That might’ve been surprising if the player base didn't consist overwhelmingly of CRPG fans. 

We knew that releasing a game in the Warhammer 40,000 universe meant submitting it to the scrutiny of demanding critics. A mere 7% had no or only cursory experience with the setting. We enjoy assuming the role of guides on the journey to the dark future, and we are proud to say that players trust us with the job: a whopping 96% of captains had their expectations of the setting's atmosphere met, to the incredible delight of the Warhammer fans among the game's creators. But enough bragging! On to the more fascinating facts, as well as some disconcerting ones.

Interface

Regardless of whether a Rogue Trader was a Dogmatic or followed one of the Radical paths, all of them equally disliked loot-related hassles, be it their ship's cargo management or their party's inventory. The organising, the sorting, the tedium of managing a huge number of items, and especially the situations where stolen loot would, upon recovery, return to a bag instead of where it had previously belonged, were things that frustrated our players a great deal. We've fixed some of those problems and are still working on others. 

It's worth noting that while most Rogue Traders were torn between Puritanism and Radicalism, 89 among them preferred to altogether skip delving into the value system.

Ground Combat

While picking through loot was a mostly unrewarding experience, obtaining it was quite another matter. On average, players gave the ground-combat system 4.3 points out of five, which surpassed the Beta rating for this metric. 

57% of participants thought the Lord Captain had been through just the right number of ordeals. Among the rest, opinions were split between those who'd prefer more ordeals and those who envisioned a more peaceful life for the protagonist. Luckily for the Rogue Trader, the well-wishers outnumbered the daredevils nearly two-to-one.

We'd always known that Warrants of Trade were granted only to Humanity's bravest. But this time, they showed themselves to be quite deft as well. Players who opted to skip the character-build part and go straight for the Story mode were satisfied with the challenges they faced. For their part, those who started the game on a higher difficulty level would’ve preferred to challenge yet fiercer foes than the ones they actually encountered. Indeed, the higher the difficulty a player selected, the likelier they were to report a dearth of worthy opponents. Worry not! Our latest major update has made significant changes to the balance of archetypes. Perhaps now the Imperium's enemies will present a serious hurdle in your path.

Speaking of archetypes, in the survey, we asked you lots of questions about your characters' combat abilities. These were the results: over 60% of survey participants got a taste of Exemplar, the third tier in a character's career. Other archetypes available earlier in the game saw yet greater use, with the top spots going to Soldier and Officer, which had some form of involvement in the Lord Captain's adventures in over 90% of cases.
Soldier and Officer also topped the list of audience-favourite archetypes. Great Strategist came bottom of that list, their difficult-to-execute stratagems earning many an indignant comment.

Notably, the special abilities players deemed to be the most powerful (and perhaps overpowered) were Arch-Militant's Wildfire, Soldier's Rapid Fire, and Assassin's Death Whisper. Operative's Intimidation was deemed the weakest.

When it came to key mechanics, Officer shone once again with their ability to grant an extra turn to an ally. You liked both the mechanics and the spirit of this archetype's abilities.

However, there'd be no point in any of those skills without someone to use them on, now would there? Who among the Rogue Trader and their retinue's opponents emerged as the most popular one, and who as the most detested? Alas, these questions cannot be answered without spoilers. But if you've conquered the Koronus Expanse before, you could probably make a guess, and it would probably be correct.

SPOILER: We don't know what the exact reason was, between the earliness of the encounter, the pesky sniper on the roof, the untiring parries, and the endless attempts to preserve each of the three shuttles, but there's no doubt that Aurora, also known as the Chaos Space Marine, won the hearts of the largest number of Rogue Traders.

SPOILER: Edge of Daybreak and his gang were the next biggest favourite. Forgefiend closes the top three.

Interestingly, most of the negative combat experiences were caused by encounters that involved no bosses or named characters. Case in point, mid-flight battles.

Character Creation

Creating and customising a character is a key aspect of any role-playing game. To make sure no Rogue Trader lacked in individually tailored options, we added over 500 talents to the game! Many players hinted that we might have tried too hard there... Thus 37% of participants would have liked the options to be fewer. The same percentage said the number of options matched their expectations. There were also those who didn't find enough variety, but the former two outnumbered these four to one.

As for the Rogue Trader's Origin, the majority's preference leaned firmly toward Sanctioned Psyker. Voidborn Psyker was therefore the most popular combination, ahead by almost a third of the runner-up, Imperial World Noble.

Companions and NPCs

We've asked you before to share your first impressions of the companions, and the poll results were quite unambiguous: Argenta led in every category! Although she's still a favourite, the Lord Captain has by now had the opportunity to form a more comprehensive picture of their retinue's other members.

This time around, we looked at the following criteria in our companions: interesting story, dialogue, and interactions; mechanical efficiency; best romance; and most attractive. Let's go through these in order.

The Rogue Trader's loyal Seneschal emerged as their most interesting companion. This choice surprised us and would probably surprise Abelard himself! He'd most likely be flattered too. 
Pasqal's multifaceted personality also got its fair share of attention.

Owing to her unique origin, Cassia came first in combat efficiency.

Her heart-stealing efficiency put her in the lead as well. And keep this document far from the Inquisition's eyes, for Yrliet and Marazhai were a very close second and third. 

Naturally, these statistics would've been incomplete without Argenta taking at least one of the top spots. Her fervour in combat and her zealous smile won over many.

Now what about those who can only be observed from the sidelines? We left this as a free-form question so that participants could name whatever non-player character they wanted as their favourite. After meticulously sifting through over 5,000 comments, we had the following top ten: a Koronus Expanse All Stars according to the heir of House von Valancius.

There's a high likelihood that the vote results might have been altered by an organisation we've been unable to trace. 

Conclusion

As the cogitators hum and the Lexmechanics rhythmically count off the figures, the time to part has crept unnoticed upon us. We truly hope you've found it interesting to see these survey results and to learn more about the way you play. We certainly have. Collecting and reading your responses for this article felt like discussing our favourite game with friends! We found it incredibly interesting to hear what aspects of the game you liked the most, where you spent the most time, and which moments delighted you the most. It was an interesting conversation with a lot of takeaways for us regarding the gameplay, your personal preferences, and ways we might improve the game.

As the Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader team, we'd like to say a big thank you to each and every one of you. Your responses, opinions, and ideas are genuinely important to us as we, too, are passionate fans. Seeing your engagement and enthusiasm is what inspires us day to day as we work to bring this universe to life. 

That's all for now, but more is on the way: we're already preparing new updates and content which we're sure you're going to like. Follow the news and brace yourselves for more thrilling adventures in the Koronus Expanse. Thanks for being with us, and see you soon, friends!