Lionhead survey seeks feedback on Fable franchise

by James Ransom-Wiley on Feb 10th 2011 4:35PM

What's your favorite Fable game? Lionhead is seeking the (obvious) answer in a community survey that's also intended to rank the franchise's thirteen core features, as listed by the developer, in order of importance. Fable players are asked to evaluate design elements like accessibility, British humour, co-op and the Dog, assigning each its rightful, subjective rank. (And what about the bugs, you're wondering? Those are actually dealt with in a separate survey.)

"Sure we could try and digest 1,000,000 forum posts and come up with the data that way," Lionhead community manager Sam Van Tilburgh wrote in a community call to take the survey, "but it would take way too long and so it isn't very efficient."

"Lionhead has a long relationship with a large and passionate community," Van Tilburgh added in a comment on the post, "so it's just a continuation of what we've been doing for many years now" -- and, presumably, for many years to come. Head of the pride Peter Molyneux has previously said his studio has plans for at least a Fable 4 and 5, which could include Kinect integration (not mentioned in the survey).

Fable 3 debuted last October and went on to become the #7 bestselling release of 2010 on Xbox 360, according to NPD data published by Gamasutra. The PC version is still unreleased.

Via: Lionhead
Source: Fable Survey

Tags: fable, fable-2, fable-3, lionhead, microsoft, pc, survey, xbox

Reader Comments (71)

Where's the box to check "Manage Expectations Properly"?

@Truant

And they didn't ask about Kinect! I would've given that the lowest rating. Lol.

@Truant This should've been done before they took all the good stuff out..

Where is *any* box regarding things that aren't in the game already? Seems like they're completely unwilling to remove themselves from the tunnel of thought that is destroying the franchise. They even restrict your input in the survey.

I don't want to play Fable at all any more, it's the same game over and over again with the same cheap gimmicks like getting fat and skipping years of your character's life with no real substance or sense of control. I doubt these guys will ever stop resting on their laurels and actually finish the game they claimed they were making almost a decade ago.

@Truant

They also forgot the "how important are the RPG elements such as collecting gear, improving your characters statistics and/or gaining skills and abilities?" Fable II's lack of custom-ability in armor and weapons was bad enough, they absolutely destroyed it in III.

@jsx92

Yeah, I tried to do that survey, but after the first question, about accessibility, which I labeled a max because the games are a joke of a button-masher that requires nothing more than tapping one button over and over.

The rest though? They wouldn't let me give more than one One! The hell is that? I had no interest in the so-called Character Morphing they use, no interest in the Dog, and my god... no connection with anything and no interest to marry, but noooo... I would of had to label one of those things as "decent" and I just can't lie like that.

Its no survey, its a joke.

@DevilSei

Of course you can only put one 1, you're suppose to rank them in order of importance. Did you read the instructions?

@Chyld989
Hence why I said its a joke, not a survey.

@Chyld989

Please rank these in order of preference:

-Getting punched in each testicle

-Being sprayed in the face by a skunk

-Automated electrocution each time you think about pizza

Hoorah! Game developing!

@Truant

I just hope that lionhead keeps being the revolutionary company that it once was ( and even more in it´s bullfrog days) because I´m starting to have the sad feeling that they are getting the "woms" syndrome of team 17, and it looks like they don´t want to develop anything but fable...... a real shame, specially from a guy who was a huge visionary as molyneaux....

@Chareth Cutestory

you nailed it on the head.

They arent asking for your input, they are deciding what they consider IMPORTANT to the fable franchise (like dogs, apparently...TOTALLY WORTH SURVERY ABOUT!) and then you get to tell them, of the things they consider priorities, what you consider most important.
Sadly it seems like half the stuff they have on the list seem completely irrelevant its truly a good game or not.

Put fable on PS3. Its the best franchise xbox has IMO.

note: I took Halo off because after halo 3 they all sucked.

@jph89

The best 360 franchise is a series in which only one of the two games for the 360 are stellar?

Also, I wish there were more exclusives, not more multiplatform titles. I miss the days of N64 vs Saturn vs Playstation, or NES and SMS, or really any pairing, where most of the games in the libraries were different and gave you good reason to buy each system. I hate how you have a "multiplatform" machine and another for a handful of exclusives. It's a pain.

@Shockwave Indeed, more of a reason to turn the other console on

@jph89

Did I get downvoted cause I said I like Fable? I've only played them on my friends 360 and love them. I think

Or is it cause I think Halo Wars and Halo Reach stunk?

http://twitter.com/#!/petermolyneux2/status/35734401111293952

@chuckharms
Confirmed:

'Fable 4: Top Men.... Top... Men...'

@chuckharms

"New kinect idea for underwater sections, you have to make one single sound with mouth. Oxygen is based on duration of unbroken sound tone."

You know, for a joke account, this guy actually has some good game ideas...

Where is the checkbox for Populous?

Instead of Democratic or Republican, the karma system should be between Good or Evil.

The survey doesn't give me any kind of scrollbar to go to the bottom and finish it in Firefox. I can only select up to the point it asks which Fable game was my favorite. :|

Cool, I love Fable.

Most Important for me - Freedom, Hero Customization, and Choices that Affect the Game World.

Least Important for me - Lore, Drama, and the Dog.

@Epoque
Yeah, I felt a certain joy in putting the "Dog" at 1... just wish I could've had a "HUD" option to rank up.

Fable TLC for PC without a doubt. Too bad they've attempted to remake the same game 3 times and fallen short in the same aspects every single time :|

@Marshillboy

Yeah, they got it right the first time, and then fumbled the second and third attempts pretty badly. Just do a Fable 1 HD remake and call it good.

@ Ezio While the original is still my favourite, they got a lot wrong that has been addressed in Fable II (and to a lesser extent, III). For a game about carving your own path with an avatar, not having a female option was pretty weak; there was nothing worth playing after the endgame, it just ended and left you to get bored and start hacking up civilians; and most importantly for me, you had no real connection to the world, no reason to get married, no reason to buy property, and your morality (as cool as the system was) was mostly cosmetic and only affected mission choice and the *lackluster either way* ending.

I'd rather them try again than remake a game and cut out all of the progress they've made. A fourth game could give us a best of all games feature-set, that's something I hope for. Like Fable II / III or not, you'll not deny they brought some cool things to the table, no?

@Epoque

Your experience with the Fables seems quite different from mine.

Even in Fable 2 and 3, I had no fondness for anyone: story characters, random NPCs, "family" members. They were all generic fodder spouting the same three crap lines of dialog and constantly wanting me to buy them things or take them places.

While that might be a biting British satire of family life, its not a compelling video game. Marriage, child rearing and property management have always felt like a shallow and tedious means to an end: money. That is, until you reach the point in every Fable game where you're insanely rich and the story is coming to a close, so your wealth doesn't mean anything, anyway (even in Fable 3).

I wish your optimism for them honing in on the great parts of Fable for the next game was founded, but I don't see any evidence to support it. If Lionhead thinks 2 "surveys" that don't ask any of the hard questions are a preferable method of getting community feedback to visiting their own forums, that should give a bit of a hint as to how much they really care what others think.

Humor has to be the most important. There are games with stronger RPG elements, games with better combat, games with better customization or more freedom.

But Fable is fun and always makes me laugh.

@katssun
I'd have to say there are games with better humor, too, though... but this game's humor definitely feels "signature" to it.

Fable TLC on the Xbox was my favorite. It felt the best. Too bad they removed classic RPG elements such as armor. Also the spell system in Fable 2 and 3 was stupid. I still enjoyed Fable 2 alot though while Fable 3 annoyed the heck out of me. The inventory was so... how would anyone think this is intuitive? Also: Stop packaging very basic things as DLC!

@sparkster the armour was too limeted to how much protected it granted, but there was no benefitto wearing a lesser armour.. I always stuck to the leather armour

@sparkster

I tried to find the black dye throughout my entire playthrough. Then I come back a month later and find it in the DLC shop. New missions as DLC, I get that. How is the color black DLC?

Please Lionhead!!! Work on something new other than Fable.

Next time don't release with major bugs, and then ask your user base to beta test for you.

I like that your armor doesn't effect the damage you take so you feel you can customize your character, but I loves me some cool looking armor and they need much more of it in that game. The game with the best armor in it for me was Too Human.

@Dirty Shhhh.. it never happenend.. never, got it

Too Human did have some cool armor, but didn't it wear out unnaturally fast? Or maybe that was just the weapons. Either way, I would love that level of customization in Fable.

IMO, the armor in the original Fable was pretty cool looking too, just lacking in variety.

I did the survey. All Fable fans should so this.

The biggest problem with Fable 3 is its almost as if the entire team had amnesia and thought the last game they worked on was the first game. Almost every aspect is either two or three steps back or a new idea thats poorly executed.

Where is my fear of dieing? Just that being absent from Fable games now is just ruining the game experience. Only reason why I keep playing Fable 1 over and over again because well...you can actually die. (As well being more difficult than 2 & 3)

@imDraxx

agreed, take the survey and put 'Accessibility' at 1.

They cranked this survey up to "13".

This is a stupid survey, you basically rate the order of importance rather than HOW important each is overall. Its an asinine way to do a survey lionhead....

Just like the games you produce all this does is give you the illusion of choice

(I happen to like fable dont get me wrong)

Worst implementation of a survery ever.

Way to make sure you discuss all the unimportant stuff like "how important is a dog to you?"

@Draugdraugr

That's in the survey though...if it's unimportant to you, rate that a 13. How are people not understanding this survey?

@Chyld989
Wait, what? I thought the survey said 13 was MOST important... geez, I really hope I didn't rank the freakin' dog as most important!!

@Chyld989 You rank the choices from 1-13, ergo if you wanted to rank two things as terrible, you can't.

@Draugdraugr

Oh I understand it, My complaint was that I need to PRIORITIZE these in terms of importance, as opposed to truly rating them, as there were certain thing that were both worth 1, or 13 for example.

This also gives the illusion that I might care more about something moreso than i actually do, as I am forced to fit it in a hierarchy of importance.

@Xoonaka

13 was MOST important, so you're alright, you've not ruined your survey with inverted results ;)

Outside of this survey bull which game is better I or II? 9.99 or less. It's worth a play through now.

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Fable 3

Lionhead survey seeks feedback on Fable franchise

Reader Comments (71)

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:38PM Truant said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:42PM FlashJS said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:42PM Evin said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:54PM jsx92 said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:16PM CaptainFaith said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:27PM DevilSei said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 6:06PM Chyld989 said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 6:18PM DevilSei said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 7:25PM Chareth Cutestory said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 9:06PM Hunter141072 said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 9:21PM Draugdraugr said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:41PM jph89 said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:50PM Shockwave said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:00PM Mazrael said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 10:51PM jph89 said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:44PM chuckharms said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:52PM SolidRevolver said

Posted: Feb 11th 2011 12:39AM Excessive said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:44PM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:47PM My Prerogative said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:47PM Faceless Troll said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:50PM Epoque said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 6:12PM Xoonaka said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:52PM Marshillboy said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:58PM Ezio Auditore da Firenze said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:07PM Epoque said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 7:38PM Chareth Cutestory said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:58PM katssun said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 6:16PM Xoonaka said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 4:58PM sparkster said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:05PM Mazrael said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 8:24PM Broken Eagle X said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:01PM mjboldy said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:03PM Pugnaciousturtle said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:03PM Dirty said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:06PM Mazrael said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:11PM Epoque said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:11PM iceveiled said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:30PM sammo21 said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:33PM imDraxx said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 7:46PM LENSconcept said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:39PM Bubbameister33 said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:45PM MonKENy said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 5:48PM Draugdraugr said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 6:10PM Chyld989 said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 6:13PM Xoonaka said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 6:34PM Vandell said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 9:15PM Draugdraugr said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 9:17PM Draugdraugr said

Posted: Feb 10th 2011 6:06PM Robotgator said

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