Guild Wars 2

Let’s clear something up about AP.

AP is not about player skill. It is not about experience.

AP in my opinion measures how seriously you take this game – if you took the time to grind out achievement points every day/living story cycle then that means GW2 means a lot to you and that you’re willing to put in time and effort into this game.

What does that mean? Why does it matter?

It means that you’re probably going to have invested enough time to be up to date with the latest builds, have ascended/legendary gear, and generally played through most of the game lots of times.

People that farm AP are generally players who aim for the top of everything in the game. The most expensive/ rare gear, the hardest titles – that sort of thing.

So yes – in a sense AP does matter as an indicator – an indicator for people to find other similar people.
High-AP people want to play with other high-AP people because they’re similar. And similar people have similar goals but also similar solutions to getting those goals.

High-AP players tend to be reward-oriented – and naturally want to group up with other reward-oriented people in order to maximize efficiency.

So if you’re new and feel excluded because of AP – it doesn’t have anything to do with you as a person and has everything to do with the fact that you’re new or not so invested in the game.

It’s been 2 years since the game started and experienced players pretty much want other experienced players to play with.

I’m hoping this clears up a few misconceptions about AP.
I’ve seen a lot of people saying that it doesn’t mean you are experienced or good – and they’re right.
But because of the reasons above any experienced player will tell you that if you have to choose between 2 random players in your party the one with higher AP has a better chance of being experienced than the one with the lower AP ( provided of course the difference is somewhat significant – anything over 2-3k difference).

Edit : A the beginning of my post I accidentally replaced “not” with “now” – I apologize as it seems to have confused a lot of people.

The intent of the line was AP is NOT about player skill.

Harper.4173:

Let’s clear something up about AP.

AP is now about player skill. It is not about experience.

AP in my opinion measures how seriously you take this game – if you took the time to grind out achievement points every day/living story cycle then that means GW2 means a lot to you and that you’re willing to put in time and effort into this game.

What does that mean? Why does it matter?

It means that you’re probably going to have invested enough time to be up to date with the latest builds, have ascended/legendary gear, and generally played through most of the game lots of times.

People that farm AP are generally players who aim for the top of everything in the game. The most expensive/ rare gear, the hardest titles – that sort of thing.

So yes – in a sense AP does matter as an indicator – an indicator for people to find other similar people.
High-AP people want to play with other high-AP people because they’re similar. And similar people have similar goals but also similar solutions to getting those goals.

High-AP players tend to be reward-oriented – and naturally want to group up with other reward-oriented people in order to maximize efficiency.

So if you’re new and feel excluded because of AP – it doesn’t have anything to do with you as a person and has everything to do with the fact that you’re new or not so invested in the game.

It’s been 2 years since the game started and experienced players pretty much want other experienced players to play with.

I’m hoping this clears up a few misconceptions about AP.
I’ve seen a lot of people saying that it doesn’t mean you are experienced or good – and they’re right.
But because of the reasons above any experienced player will tell you that if you have to choose between 2 random players in your party the one with higher AP has a better chance of being experienced than the one with the lower AP ( provided of course the difference is somewhat significant – anything over 2-3k difference).

The 16k-20k AP players still wipe and die in boss encounters, last to survive myself end up rezzing them at the end and solo if needed. I’m sitting at 9k with decked out Legendaries and armors.

What’s the deal here. You’re the one in misconception. Some players don’t farm AP every day. Players have a life and some players are really good at games and technical aspect of theory crafting builds. AND they don’t give a crap about AP.

Back in the day where players had 10k AP just sit all day long buying junks and salvage for AP. You call that serious skilled players at salvaging. Right.

Players took 6-12 months break, missing out all the 10k AP from festival events (like a joke) free AP. Coming back still left off 9K AP like myself, you call these players who took time away in RL and right off saying they are not skilled. I wonder how would you call a friend of yours with who took time off and missing out just the free AP festival events.

Get a life. You are so one-sided.

Yeah… Recycler 1 AP: Accidentally salvage 10 items is serious game business. uh huh… right… get your logic straight.

i have a story from gw1 ring of fire mission early days when just profecies was there.

We had this warrior with us in gear that you could get by trading things with someone. So this was the cheapest gear there was for a lvl 20.
i forgot what it was called lol.

He was very good at what he did, and he fitted the group perfectly.
No leroying, listening to what was said in chat and acting accordingly.
Very smooth rof mission that was 8-)

I have also met leroying wammos in obsi gear who just kittened everything up.

I dare say it doesnt matter what someone has. ap points, titles, armor , weapons, it
doesnt say anything.

Congrats on finding the most long-winded, roundabout excuse for your elitism.

I would still rather take any decent player and get things rolling, than waste time rejecting people for not being “serious” enough to run CoF1.

All AP measures is how much content you’ve completed. It has absolutely nothing to do with your abilities or approach to gaming.

@OP

No. All AP does is give a good basis as to whether a player potentially has a grasp on basic game mechanics. It does not denote skill or a certain mindset.

AP is the best available metric in the game to judge a player’s experience. It’s not ideal, but it’s the best because it’s the only one.

If I had to choose between the player with 8K AP and one with 2K AP, I’d choose the former.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Harper.4173:

AP in my opinion measures how seriously you take this game

No, it measures how seriously you take achievement points.

/wins thread

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Harper.4173:

AP in my opinion measures how seriously you take this game

No, it measures how seriously you take achievement points.

I agree.

AP is nothing more than an indicator of how many things a person has done and how LONG a person has been playing. Someone that does dailies/monthlies every time and did all the LS will have alot of points. Yet someone that just plays the game like a game will likely have far less points. Is there a difference in skill between those players? Who knows, AP most certainly doesn’t show that at all. I think the issue with AP-requirements that people ask in dungeon is that those people are just…. <you fill in the gap>. I have well over the commonly asked 3-5k points but I actively avoid groups asking such things because I just want to have fun. I can often carry people that are not fully geared and I don’t mind at all. The best thing you can do regarding this is to not join them and try to find likeminded people to add to your friendslist.

I think player like @OP wants to avoid teaching. This is not how to be a leader in any aspect of the game. This is just purely selfish and generalization.

Once in a while I have new players in my party, I always ask who is new and willing to teach on the run. Helping players and they might even catch up to you someday and be skilled as you.

Some player level up in PvP only and in fact those players are probably very skilled in PVP and a bit of adjustment in PVE side. They can sit around 2k AP in that case.

Having AP requirements in your LFG is the same as putting “experienced only”, meaning you’ll get the exact opposite of what you’re looking for. I only do dungeons and very regularly see players with 2-3x more AP then me that don’t have a clue, especially in Arah. Saying that having a lot of AP means a person is experienced doesn’t mean they know what they are doing.

The best indicator is what gear they are using and the build they have on.

There’s exceptions to the rule regarding AP. Some players with a large amount of AP are pretty mediocre or just plain bad at the game. Some players with a low amount of AP are quick at mastering the game and may instinctively know what to do in many situations. Some players with a low amount of AP are great at player micro and spend all their time in sPvP, thus earning AP at a low rate.

Much like sPvP rank however, it is still a very good guideline as to whether you can trust a random pug or not in a given situation. Is it a perfect gauge of that player? No, absolutely not, but it’s close enough.

DJRiful.3749:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Harper.4173:

AP in my opinion measures how seriously you take this game

No, it measures how seriously you take achievement points.

I agree.

Also agreeing on this.

I heard that some even might use bots to get some tedious stuff, that can be done with bot program, just for the APs…

Some might use hacks to speed up their process.

It’s not about how much AP a person has, it’s about how much AP a person has taking into account how long they have played the game.

I expect players who are experienced (completed personal story done a couple of dungeons but not all paths and been playing for atleast 6 months) to have a AP of about 2500-4000, but I know players who have been playing since the start 2 years ago but only just have 5000-7000 AP because they are casual about it.
They might look more “hardcore” compared to a new player with under 1000 but they can be just as casual in their approach, and there is nothing wrong with that. Not to mention if you don’t even give low AP players a chance you are cutting yourself off from what I think is the better (social) side of playing an MMO. So I would never use AP as a requirement of any sort.

Give it long enough and I too will have 10,000, but that still won’t make me some sort of elite. I will still play like I do now, just I will have been playing longer.

And no offence but if somebody has AP over 5,000 and has been playing less than 3 months I don’t recon they have much life away from the computer. It’s not a “skill” to have that much free-time on your hands to spend on the sole obsession of collecting AP, it’s a tragedy.
What’s to take seriously? It’s a game, not a job.

DJRiful.3749:

I think player like @OP wants to avoid teaching. This is not how to be a leader in any aspect of the game. This is just purely selfish and generalization.

Once in a while I have new players in my party, I always ask who is new and willing to teach on the run. Helping players and they might even catch up to you someday and be skilled as you.

Some player level up in PvP only and in fact those players are probably very skilled in PVP and a bit of adjustment in PVE side. They can sit around 2k AP in that case.

lol what a load of crock.

Is it so bad that some players want to do speed runs and clear dungeons as quickly as possible? Am I and OP a jerk for only wanting experienced players?

Not everyone wants to be a leader. Heck, not everyone has the capability or patience to be a leader. And that’s not a bad thing. If everyone was a leader, then what separates you from everyone else? Nothing.

But hey, I guess since I don’t want new players in my explicitly named “experienced players only” dungeon group, I’m a bad person.

Ugh. Just ugh. As someone who actually studied metrics and statistics, the “logic” here is simply offensive.

First of all, the OP doesn’t even define what kind of “skill” is being sought. I’m going to assume that the “skill” being talked about here is to justify using it as a criterion for dungeon runs. It’s a horrible attempt at PR and the question is framed poorly to begin with.

AP is a point structure that rewards the completion of tasks. Any tasks: dailies, dungeons, story/festival events, PvP, WvW… The list goes on. A variety of task completion could be considered “experience.” Experience is a correlation of skill. So, even if we declare AP as a direct measure of experience, it is still only a correlation to skill, and we have no measures of what skill means, since it has not been defined. If we do define skill as dungeon/fractal running competence, then the relationship between AP and dungeon speed is spurious. There are too many other point sources as a part of AP, too many factors contributing to variance, that AP cannot be trusted as a measure of “skill” in that case.

From the other direction the null hypothesis states that AP is not a measure of skill. Thus, it would be on the onus of those requesting AP as a measure to prove that it is, in fact, a valid human resources measure, beyond anecdotes subject to an availability heuristic.

So far, I have not seen any statistical data on either side. There have been no experiments done, no reliability measures taken of AP in relation to skill constructs, or any interaction effects between AP, class, and gear loadout. There haven’t been any mentions of practice effect or false positives/negatives, either.

Conclusion, AKA tl;dr, Science or go home.
#srsbznz

Okay, it’s not really serious business, it’s just a game. Just getting a little sick and tired of the well-practiced (I can’t justify using the word “elite”) set using weak logic for exclusionary purposes.

Which is immediately countered by the common sense notion: If you don’t want them and they don’t want you, just leave it be and make your own group. It’s just how people want to play, get loot, and unwind. There’s no need to defend it.

The amount of achievement points you have is inversely proportional to your life outside GW2.

Vol.7601:

lol what a load of crock.

Is it so bad that some players want to do speed runs and clear dungeons as quickly as possible? Am I and OP a jerk for only wanting experienced players?

Not everyone wants to be a leader. Heck, not everyone has the capability or patience to be a leader. And that’s not a bad thing. If everyone was a leader, then what separates you from everyone else? Nothing.

But hey, I guess since I don’t want new players in my explicitly named “experienced players only” dungeon group, I’m a bad person.

Well, Rauderi covered it all.

Not to mention that some use bots and hacks to speed up their point gain, on the stuff they’re less likely to be caught…

Me for example, I’ve got 8k AP:

• I just recently started trying Fractals and dungeons.
• I haven’t done sPvP properly, just once tried it, which was very short.
• I did little WvW. But only when we had a proper Commander and organizing…
• Started doing World bosses after Feature Pack and Megaservers.
• I don’t own Ascended or Legendary gear at all. I keep despising ascended gear, as they weren’t supposed to exist in the first place.
• I got 8 characters, 1 of each profession. Most of the gear on them are still just Rare, few already have full Exotic.
• I haven’t done achievements for the points, I just did the ones that gave me rewards.
• I have crafted a single Ascended weapon for a skin, got a ascended gear box and 2 random trinkets as drop while doing stuff on open-PvE, after Megaservers. I just sold these items to merchant for 1 gold each.
• I’m a quick-learner, so it won’t take long for me to know the methods.

FrostSpectre.4198:

Vol.7601:

lol what a load of crock.

Is it so bad that some players want to do speed runs and clear dungeons as quickly as possible? Am I and OP a jerk for only wanting experienced players?

Not everyone wants to be a leader. Heck, not everyone has the capability or patience to be a leader. And that’s not a bad thing. If everyone was a leader, then what separates you from everyone else? Nothing.

But hey, I guess since I don’t want new players in my explicitly named “experienced players only” dungeon group, I’m a bad person.

Well, Rauderi covered it all.

Not to mention that some use bots and hacks to speed up their point gain, on the stuff they’re less likely to be caught…

Me for example, I’ve got 8k AP:

• I just recently started trying Fractals and dungeons.
• I haven’t done sPvP properly, just once tried it, which was very short.
• I did little WvW. But only when we had a proper Commander and organizing…
• Started doing World bosses after Feature Pack and Megaservers.
• I don’t own Ascended or Legendary gear at all. I keep despising ascended gear, as they weren’t supposed to exist in the first place.
• I got 8 characters, 1 of each profession. Most of the gear on them are still just Rare, few already have full Exotic.
• I haven’t done achievements for the points, I just did the ones that gave me rewards.
• I have crafted a single Ascended weapon for a skin, got a ascended gear box and 2 random trinkets as drop while doing stuff on open-PvE, after Megaservers. I just sold these items to merchant for 1 gold each.
• I’m a quick-learner, so it won’t take long for me to know the methods.

Out of interest how long have you been playing?

Lady Celtaine.3760:

Out of interest how long have you been playing?

695 days…

FrostSpectre.4198:

Lady Celtaine.3760:

Out of interest how long have you been playing?

695 days…

How many hours is that accross all characters over those 695 days when you type /age?

I’m going to guess your AP is pretty reasonable, and towards the high end of what I’d call the average range of time played vs AP accumulated.

I’ve been playing 1696 hours over 502 days and I have nearly 4,500 AP but then I’m not too big on completion either I like the lore and story stuff most and deleted my first level 80 and also had to limit when I can play because of what I do lifestyle wise… holidays and stuff last year so y’know I can’t have it all.

Also it will be interesting to hear from you whether you find the total hours put in are more indicative of experience than the AP. Considering as somebody before mentioned there are other reasons for having a low AP score.
Heck maybe we should start a survey based on that and see what other factors like time and what their main focus is on the game actually affect the AP.

The ONLY reason I take AP in any way serious is when actual REWARDS were introduced with them. Before that, I never even looked at them. Just don’t care about the “number” as it’s only indicative of how much time someone has invested in the game and will tell you nothing about how well they play and certainly not how well they will play in any given activity or mode.

Anyone that thinks the AP number directly relates to skill in-game is simply delusional.

I have 4,497 hours in Game. 6,780 AP. A lot of those hours I was asleep with the dumb game still on, or tabbed out looking at shiny things.

I have never done a fractal. Never completed a JP. Never completed world exploration.. see JP. Ignored most of the PS after one run through, and ignored most of the LS.. and all of it now. I don’t zerg, not in the world, not in WvW. Don’t do minigames. I haven’t bothered to do any crafting to 500. I have 12 level 80s. I don’t sPvP and don’t go out of my way for a daily. I dislike charr, a lot. I’ve mapped charr occupied maps on only one char, been to Citadel maybe 3 times.

My AP alone is no indication of anything. I am a Legendary Slacker.

FrostSpectre.4198:

Vol.7601:

lol what a load of crock.

Is it so bad that some players want to do speed runs and clear dungeons as quickly as possible? Am I and OP a jerk for only wanting experienced players?

Not everyone wants to be a leader. Heck, not everyone has the capability or patience to be a leader. And that’s not a bad thing. If everyone was a leader, then what separates you from everyone else? Nothing.

But hey, I guess since I don’t want new players in my explicitly named “experienced players only” dungeon group, I’m a bad person.

Well, Rauderi covered it all.

Not to mention that some use bots and hacks to speed up their point gain, on the stuff they’re less likely to be caught…

Bots? Hacks? What kind of stuff would you do to increase your AP? Use bots to farm monsters for their kills? Farm weapon kills?

The only way your AP grows is by completing your daily and by participating in LS. Most of the achievements listed on the achievement tab is fixed and acquirable at any time. I don’t see how any sort of hacker/botter interested in acquiring AP will do so at an increasingly higher rate.

DJRiful.3749:

The 16k-20k AP players still wipe and die in boss encounters, last to survive myself end up rezzing them at the end and solo if needed. I’m sitting at 9k with decked out Legendaries and armors.

What’s the deal here. You’re the one in misconception. Some players don’t farm AP every day. Players have a life and some players are really good at games and technical aspect of theory crafting builds. AND they don’t give a crap about AP.

Back in the day where players had 10k AP just sit all day long buying junks and salvage for AP. You call that serious skilled players at salvaging. Right.

Players took 6-12 months break, missing out all the 10k AP from festival events (like a joke) free AP. Coming back still left off 9K AP like myself, you call these players who took time away in RL and right off saying they are not skilled. I wonder how would you call a friend of yours with who took time off and missing out just the free AP festival events.

Get a life. You are so one-sided.

Yeah… Recycler 1 AP: Accidentally salvage 10 items is serious game business. uh huh… right… get your logic straight.

I’m sad to see you chose to go for such an aggressive tone against my post – but I’ll respond.

I’m sure there have been plenty of cases where 16-20k AP players have failed but this doesn’t mean the general trend isn’t that higher AP players usually perform better than lower AP players.

If you’re going to do an run of Arah P1 or 4 – who do you want with you – a guy who’s got 15k AP or a guy who has 5-6k?
Provided you know nothing about them a higher AP rating means there’s a chance the player is better/ more experienced/ more invested in the game.

It’s not a certainty but it never was about certainty. It’s all about probability.

I didn’t say that players that took time off the game or who focus on RL are “unskilled”.

I just said they’re less invested in the game ( which is true) and personally I prefer to play with people who are highly invested in the game because there’s a bigger chance they’ll be skilled/experienced/take it seriously.

And no – recycling items isn’t a measure of skill but it is a measure of how much you care about the game and your AP – if you took all that time to grind all those recycle items and get the AP it means the game is very important to you.
If the game is very important to you chances are you’re also better geared, playing a proper build and more experienced.

At the very least it shows you care enough about dungeons and the meta to farm the AP that people seem to ask for on LFG today. You can thus deduce that these players care about farming dungeons and have a bigger chance of being a reward-oriented player.

To put it in your terms : Players who “don’t have a life” and “farm AP” are going to want to play with similar players because RL-oriented players or players who take breaks aren’t taking the game seriously enough.

I hope that explains things.

Fyrebrand.4859:

Congrats on finding the most long-winded, roundabout excuse for your elitism.

I would still rather take any decent player and get things rolling, than waste time rejecting people for not being “serious” enough to run CoF1.

And how do you determine if the player is “decent” or not?

That’s the real issue.

I’m not elitist – I don’t think I’m better than people.
I do things faster and more efficiently because I’ve put in a lot of time to perfect myself – but ultimately anyone can do that.

It’s just that I want to play with people who are like myself.

DJRiful.3749:

I think player like @OP wants to avoid teaching. This is not how to be a leader in any aspect of the game. This is just purely selfish and generalization.

Once in a while I have new players in my party, I always ask who is new and willing to teach on the run. Helping players and they might even catch up to you someday and be skilled as you.

Some player level up in PvP only and in fact those players are probably very skilled in PVP and a bit of adjustment in PVE side. They can sit around 2k AP in that case.

Perhaps you and others have the time and patience required for teaching.
Not all people are the same – each of us has a unique inclination. While you might take joy and pride in teaching someone I simply find it to be boring at the best and frustrating at the worst.
So – considering I play this game to have fun and relax I tend to stay away from experiences that take that fun away.

Hooking onto a point here. If 5k is better than 1k, and 15k is better than 5k, what’s the relationship? Linear? Curvolinear? Inversely logarithmic?

Assuming AP can accurately be used as a measure of anticipated dungeon speed, what is the cut-off? 2000? 5000? 10,000?

How much better is 5k over 10k? Is the expected gain of 5k over 2k 40%? 10%?
Is getting a 15k member like adding on an Ascended helm? Minimal gain over the more common 5k and just as good, barring a negligible 3-5% increase in efficiency that could be wasted by waiting for “better” people to come along?

Should all AP-groups actually be looking for “Dungeon Master” titles be shown instead, for relevance?

As it is, I’m just not seeing any real thought put into this, solely on the basis of “it’s the best we have.” The best we had was also a flat earth, which worked until we stopped living our lives in 8 square miles of our birth homes.

Rauderi.8706:

Ugh. Just ugh. As someone who actually studied metrics and statistics, the “logic” here is simply offensive.

First of all, the OP doesn’t even define what kind of “skill” is being sought. I’m going to assume that the “skill” being talked about here is to justify using it as a criterion for dungeon runs. It’s a horrible attempt at PR and the question is framed poorly to begin with.

AP is a point structure that rewards the completion of tasks. Any tasks: dailies, dungeons, story/festival events, PvP, WvW… The list goes on. A variety of task completion could be considered “experience.” Experience is a correlation of skill. So, even if we declare AP as a direct measure of experience, it is still only a correlation to skill, and we have no measures of what skill means, since it has not been defined. If we do define skill as dungeon/fractal running competence, then the relationship between AP and dungeon speed is spurious. There are too many other point sources as a part of AP, too many factors contributing to variance, that AP cannot be trusted as a measure of “skill” in that case.

From the other direction the null hypothesis states that AP is not a measure of skill. Thus, it would be on the onus of those requesting AP as a measure to prove that it is, in fact, a valid human resources measure, beyond anecdotes subject to an availability heuristic.

So far, I have not seen any statistical data on either side. There have been no experiments done, no reliability measures taken of AP in relation to skill constructs, or any interaction effects between AP, class, and gear loadout. There haven’t been any mentions of practice effect or false positives/negatives, either.

Conclusion, AKA tl;dr, Science or go home.
#srsbznz

Okay, it’s not really serious business, it’s just a game. Just getting a little sick and tired of the well-practiced (I can’t justify using the word “elite”) set using weak logic for exclusionary purposes.

Which is immediately countered by the common sense notion: If you don’t want them and they don’t want you, just leave it be and make your own group. It’s just how people want to play, get loot, and unwind. There’s no need to defend it.

A terrible thing occurred to me.
I wanted to write “AP is not about player skill” and accidentally wrote now.

The point of the rest of my post still stands.
I don’t think you need statistics or studies to deduce that the more AP you have the more time you’ve invested in the game.

And the more time you’ve invested means you care about it.
The more you care about it the higher the chances of you being good at it are. There’s no guarantee – but the chances are higher.

So yes – it’s logical to want someone who has invested a lot of time in the game over someone who might or might have done so – but you just don’t know and can’t know.

AP is an indicator of how long and how much somebody has played this game. I know people who specifically grind out AP and they aren’t even good players.

The only way to measure someones skill is to duel with them, sorry. Everything PvE in this game is just a case of doing something over and over til you know the patterns and can play blindfolded.

TrOtskY.5927:

Everything PvE in this game is just a case of doing something over and over til you know the patterns and can play blindfolded.

That’s exactly the kind of player I want in my dungeon run, someone who can do the run blindfolded.

I’ve gotten numerous achievement points from slaying ambients, visiting the laurel vendor, harvesting, and daily 50 kills (autoattack says Hi!). I’m pretty sure none of these have increased my skill level or show mastery of the game.

Harper.4173:

AP is not about player skill.

Astral Projections.7320:

I’ve gotten numerous achievement points from slaying ambients, visiting the laurel vendor, harvesting, and daily 50 kills (autoattack says Hi!). I’m pretty sure none of these have increased my skill level or show mastery of the game.

Astral Projections.7320:

I’ve gotten numerous achievement points from slaying ambients, visiting the laurel vendor, harvesting, and daily 50 kills (autoattack says Hi!). I’m pretty sure none of these have increased my skill level or show mastery of the game.

Well, to be fair, the dailies have led to a number of folks achieving mastery at dodging wurm spit. Ya know.. in case there is some endgame thing involving that.

Not me. I cheese it with an underwater thief. If I bother.

Btw, this theory only works in PVE though.
It’s quite accurate for most part, but there’s two exceptions:

1.AP has almost 0 relationship with WvW experience because WvW offers very minimal AP for players. Meaning a low AP commander can be the best one out there too.

2. PVP skills generally has nothing to do with AP, with the exception of people on the top 50 AP leader-board. Those people have already max out everything in PVE and has no more AP to add from PVE, so the only way for them to reach to top 50 is go all out for high-end PVP. Those people at the top 50 AP leaderboard must be rank 80 and having most classes champion titles (150 wins in Solo/ Team Q) because they basically has nothing else to add to their mark.

To (quasi-)mathematically reiterate the point:

Say, for example, Achievement Points and “investment or care in-game” are highly correlated, 80%. (That’s really dang good in metrics.)
80%, Awesome.

Now, that same construct “investment” relates to “skill”. Again, assuming great correlation, 80%

That leaves, at best, a 64% correlation between AP and “skill”.

But we’re not interested in “skill.” We want fast dungeon runs. So, assuming yet another awesomely fantastic 80% correlation, we’re down to 51% chance of assuming AP yields a positive speedrun result. At best. 51%.

Now, factor out that AP also includes PvP and WvW, we’ll assume 1/3 with some overlap for “skill”, since it’s still time in game. Waffle it at a generous .75 instead of .66. Then factor out holiday achievements and caps for daily, monthly, holiday, or LS1 achievements, because those are either pointless grinds are lolzergfests. Well, that’s about half the game so… table that at .60.

So, before we even reassert the calculation, AP is more realistically (by pure fluff estimation) a 45% indicator “dungeon investment”. Apply two layers of separation at high correlation coefficients, and 45% becomes 28.8%.

That. Is. Terrible. for using as a measure of success.

It’s better to stick with “Lv80 full zerk experienced only please” and leave it at that.

[quote=4225255;Teofa Tsavo.9863Well, to be fair, the dailies have led to a number of folks achieving mastery at dodging wurm spit. Ya know.. in case there is some endgame thing involving that.

Not me. I cheese it with an underwater thief. If I bother.
[/quote]

I tend to use blowdart hyleks. One roll, 5 dodges.
Or a Mesmer sword. Effortless dodging.

Rauderi.8706:

I tend to use blowdart hyleks. One roll, 5 dodges.
Or a Mesmer sword. Effortless dodging. [/quote] Personally I prefer young karkas… first attack they do on agro is a ranged attack, dodge twice forward and kill it, repeat 2 or 3 more times and daily is done..

Ruahahaha!

AP as a measure of anything? Except maybe how obsessed you can be with a number? Yeah, good joke.

There is nothing “reward-oriented” about kittening on the forums to change the daily so that they don’t have to do all of them to keep their spot on the AP ranking. There is nothing “reward-oriented” about doing personal story on all the races. There is nothing “reward-oriented” about getting all sets of cultural armor and then complaining that they’re not Exotic or Ascended quality. There is nothing “reward-oriented” about complaining that the Living Story gives out too much AP.

How the kitten are you supposed to tell, from AP alone, whether I have played the game for almost 2 year? How are you supposed to tell that I have over 1,000 hours played on my main character? How are you going to tell that I have done my research and know my profession?

Aomine.5012:

Btw, this theory only works in PVE though.
It’s quite accurate for most part, but there’s two exceptions:

1.AP has almost 0 relationship with WvW experience because WvW offers very minimal AP for players. Meaning a low AP commander can be the best one out there too.

2. PVP skills generally has nothing to do with AP, with the exception of people on the top 50 AP leader-board. Those people have already max out everything in PVE and has no more AP to add from PVE, so the only way for them to reach to top 50 is go all out for high-end PVP. Those people at the top 50 AP leaderboard must be rank 80 and having most classes champion titles (150 wins in Solo/ Team Q) because they basically has nothing else to add to their mark.

When I made the original post WvW and sPVP were not taken into account since I’ve rarely seen any in-game correlation between AP and these two game types.

Simply put – AP doesn’t influence and I haven’t seen people exclude or include other people based on AP in those game types.
Especially since they have their own separate ranks that you ckittene to differentiate between players.

The topic was aimed at PVE – where certain players feel they are being unjustly excluded from the game.

Rauderi.8706:

To (quasi-)mathematically reiterate the point:

Say, for example, Achievement Points and “investment or care in-game” are highly correlated, 80%. (That’s really dang good in metrics.)
80%, Awesome.

Now, that same construct “investment” relates to “skill”. Again, assuming great correlation, 80%

That leaves, at best, a 64% correlation between AP and “skill”.

But we’re not interested in “skill.” We want fast dungeon runs. So, assuming yet another awesomely fantastic 80% correlation, we’re down to 51% chance of assuming AP yields a positive speedrun result. At best. 51%.

Now, factor out that AP also includes PvP and WvW, we’ll assume 1/3 with some overlap for “skill”, since it’s still time in game. Waffle it at a generous .75 instead of .66. Then factor out holiday achievements and caps for daily, monthly, holiday, or LS1 achievements, because those are either pointless grinds are lolzergfests. Well, that’s about half the game so… table that at .60.

So, before we even reassert the calculation, AP is more realistically (by pure fluff estimation) a 45% indicator “dungeon investment”. Apply two layers of separation at high correlation coefficients, and 45% becomes 28.8%.

That. Is. Terrible. for using as a measure of success.

It’s better to stick with “Lv80 full zerk experienced only please” and leave it at that.

I don’t really accept your suppositions.
Skill should not be correlated with the “fast dungeon runs” since fast dungeon runs don’t only take skill.
In all honesty fast dungeon runs require both skill but mostly repetition. Which in this case should correlate with investment in the game.
If a player cares about the game and invests time in it he should know the content by heart or at least very well.

I also feel you’re trying to skew the numbers by factoring in WvW and sPVP – the majority of all player’s AP don’t derive from those.

You can get a maximum of about 2600 AP from WvW and sPVP – that’s it.
You can’t call it 1/3 out of all people’s AP because it doesn’t scale like that. Plus you have to do a lot of sPVP and WvW – more than your average player does – to even get close to getting those 2600 points.

And since the value is capped – unlike PVE AP – it becomes less relevant the more AP you have.
I don’t think we should factor this in with such a high coefficient.

But even if your numbers are let’s say correct – even if the chance is 28% – even if it’s lower.

It’s still better than nothing.

And AP doesn’t only interest you because of “skill” or “dungeon capacity” – the type of player mentality also matters.

Like I stated above – the average high-AP player is usually reward-oriented. Anyone who’s played the game will know this is true.
Psychologically it can be easily explained up since people who care about “achievement points” also care about other rewards since for them the experience is more about the ‘reward’ (AP, gold, skins) than the actual game play.

So when you’re in a dungeon or doing content having people who are similar to you and have the same goals is relevant since they’ll probably choose the same way to achieve them as you will.
In this case getting the loot in the fastest possible way.
This might mean knowing the dungeon well but it also might mean not aggroing unnecessarily or accepting skipping and stacking in said dungeon.

High achievement points also mean shared experiences since you go through the same areas of content to get the points.

Ultimately though – high AP are a way for people to differentiate and group up if they desire to have a higher chance of grouping up with similar players.

Yes – I’m well aware that people who don’t care about AP can be very good, but in a game where time is gold I’ll take whatever gives me the best chances.

Experience in game has proven that creating your LFG with a set-AP value requirement gives you the best chances – otherwise people would have abandoned the practice.

You can’t really calculate exactly how well AP will correlate with your intended goals but some things are certain :

I’ve had more fail runs with people with low AP than with people with high AP.

My runs – fractals / dungeons are faster when playing with people with high AP.

I’ve had more differences and arguments on how we should do the content in runs where people had lower AP.

Ultimately my game experience has been overall better when running with people who have a high number of AP.

This might be skewed, subjective, but that’s how things have been for me and I believe things are similar for other players with higher AP values – so that’s why this phenomenon is created.

Olba.5376:

Ruahahaha!

AP as a measure of anything? Except maybe how obsessed you can be with a number? Yeah, good joke.

There is nothing “reward-oriented” about kittening on the forums to change the daily so that they don’t have to do all of them to keep their spot on the AP ranking. There is nothing “reward-oriented” about doing personal story on all the races. There is nothing “reward-oriented” about getting all sets of cultural armor and then complaining that they’re not Exotic or Ascended quality. There is nothing “reward-oriented” about complaining that the Living Story gives out too much AP.

How the kitten are you supposed to tell, from AP alone, whether I have played the game for almost 2 year? How are you supposed to tell that I have over 1,000 hours played on my main character? How are you going to tell that I have done my research and know my profession?

Actually there is something reward-oriented about what you mention.

The players realize that AP is becoming a requirement for runs/dungeons/prestiege and are trying to maintain their top-ranking status.
In a sense they realize there’s something to gain by having more AP than others – so they’re thinking about personal gain. That’s reward-oriented thinking.
They’re thinking about themselves and their well-being. They realize that their high AP means nothing if everyone has it and are trying to keep their status and the benefits it brings about. that’s reward oriented thinking.

The reward in this case might not be gold – it might be something purely psychological but it’s there.

From your AP ? I can’t tell how well you play your class, how much you’ve played or all that other stuff.

But if you’re AP is over 10.000 I can get a rough estimate of how much you’ve played by comparing with my own AP level.

If you’re under 5000 for example the chances of you playing a lot are lower than if you were let’s say 15.000.
There’s no certainty – but again – if I had to choose between 2 completely random players that I know nothing about I’ll choose the one with 10.000 AP over the one with 5.000.

It means that you’re probably going to have invested enough time to be up to date with the latest builds, have ascended/legendary gear, and generally played through most of the game lots of times.

I have over 7,500 AP. I don’t know a thing about builds. I picked traits that I understood what they did, not how well they may interact with each other or other character builds. I have three trait lines at Tier 2 and one at Tier 1. That means I don’t have 2 at Tier 3 thus my build is “broken” by current standards.

I don’t care. It works well enough for me soloing PvE.

And I don’t have any ascended gear. Again, Exotic is good enough for soloing PvE. I don’t do fractals (at all), don’t do dungeons (often), don’t do PvP (at all) and only occasionally, when working toward map complete, do WvW.

So your “assumption” of what a high AP means simply doesn’t apply to me and I don’t think I’m unique or rare in this regard. Fear us you hard core fanatics. The dedicated “casual” player.

Behellagh.1468:

It means that you’re probably going to have invested enough time to be up to date with the latest builds, have ascended/legendary gear, and generally played through most of the game lots of times.

I have over 7,500 AP. I don’t know a thing about builds. I picked traits that I understood what they did, not how well they may interact with each other or other character builds. I have three trait lines at Tier 2 and one at Tier 1. That means I don’t have 2 at Tier 3 thus my build is “broken” by current standards.

I don’t care. It works well enough for me soloing PvE.

And I don’t have any ascended gear. Again, Exotic is good enough for soloing PvE. I don’t do fractals (at all), don’t do dungeons (often), don’t do PvP (at all) and only occasionally, when working toward map complete, do WvW.

So your “assumption” of what a high AP means simply doesn’t apply to me and I don’t think I’m unique or rare in this regard. Fear us you hard core fanatics. The dedicated “casual” player.

Unfortunately, OP isn’t interested in actually providing numbers, just anecdotes. Anyone out there doing double-blind studies on whether AP is a valid measure of this, hitherto undefined, “skill” which isn’t about speed runs, yet totally is?

Skill should not be correlated with the “fast dungeon runs” since fast dungeon runs don’t only take skill.
-
In this case getting the loot in the fastest possible way.

I would (unsarcastically) actually be interested to see methodology and metrics.
A group of 4 can steadily run dungeons, taking any person that comes along. One measures AP, another takes note of gear. Particular dungeon and path familiarity is asked. Poll about build and meta-adherence. Mark uncooperative responses as such, and note any ragequits. Take count of dungeon clear times.

As much as I loathe this kind of backhanded elitism, if AP is actually a metric, instead of wishful thinking and rosy nostalgia of good runs, I am curious how the evidence would actually stack up.
And then we can have that as reference, instead of seeing the same unsupported arguments over and over again, once every other week or so, about whether AP is or is not fair.

And again, common sense, time:
If someone’s using AP as a limiter, you probably don’t want their group anyway.
If you want a group that isn’t listed in LFG, make one.
To all: Be clear about your requirements when making a group.

That’s it. Seriously. AP, yea or nay, doesn’t need defending.

Harper.4173:

And how do you determine if the player is “decent” or not?

The more important question isn’t how, but when. Do you determine if they are a good player before playing with them, or after?

If you are that serious about keeping a certain degree of efficiency in your dungeon runs, and you’re not even willing to risk playing with someone who may not be up to your standard, then you should make an effort to explore long-term solutions. Join an organized guild, or take a few chances on random folks and add the good ones to your Friends list to reference later. This is how people do it.

You know the phrase “beggars can’t be choosers”? This is the attitude you should have in PUGs. Let’s be honest, you are using LFG because you’re unable to scrape together a group manually. You are asking others to reach out to you, then shooing them away without knowing anything about them, on the assumption that they don’t take the game “seriously enough” for you.

AP requirements in dungeons is not elitism, it’s gold farming using mathematics.

Yes AP is an inaccurate measure of skill. Is it so inaccurate that it is unhelpful? No. Anyone who runs a full speed ac cof coe clear every day for gold knows how it works.

95% of sub 1k AP players are very inexperienced and slow the whole group.
1k-3k AP players are an unreliable mixed bag
70% of 3k-5k AP players can hold their own
70% of 5k+ players perform excellently

I’ve seen excellent players at 768 AP and I’ve seen bearbows who downed every 5 seconds at 18k AP. But if you follow the formula and watch group statistics over time, you’ll see the absolute best chance of actually getting your gold out of a dungeon you’ve done 300 times without having to waste your whole night, list 5K+ AP ZERKS (no rangers) and kick people who can’t read. Elitism is a myth, it’s just a sad fact of Anet’s economy design. 90% of gold comes from dungeons, 90% of gold farmers are very tired of the old dungeons. Listing an “elitist group” pretty much works out to a 90% success rate, success being a fast run that doesn’t involve explaining the dungeon for the 600th time.

This is all rough numbers but it’s closer to the truth than fiction. I can see the frustration of people who want to farm dungeons with speed groups but get kicked for this reason or that. But you should also try to see from the other side of the fence. If you want change stop complaining about people who look at APs and start demanding better and more varied gold farms. The only option besides explorables is flipping, which is even more boring than 2 year old explorables.

Harper.4173:

Let’s clear something up about AP.

AP is not about player skill. It is not about experience.

AP in my opinion measures how seriously you take this game – if you took the time to grind out achievement points every day/living story cycle then that means GW2 means a lot to you and that you’re willing to put in time and effort into this game.

What does that mean? Why does it matter?

It means that you’re probably going to have invested enough time to be up to date with the latest builds, have ascended/legendary gear, and generally played through most of the game lots of times.

People that farm AP are generally players who aim for the top of everything in the game. The most expensive/ rare gear, the hardest titles – that sort of thing.

So yes – in a sense AP does matter as an indicator – an indicator for people to find other similar people.
High-AP people want to play with other high-AP people because they’re similar. And similar people have similar goals but also similar solutions to getting those goals.

High-AP players tend to be reward-oriented – and naturally want to group up with other reward-oriented people in order to maximize efficiency.

So if you’re new and feel excluded because of AP – it doesn’t have anything to do with you as a person and has everything to do with the fact that you’re new or not so invested in the game.

It’s been 2 years since the game started and experienced players pretty much want other experienced players to play with.

I’m hoping this clears up a few misconceptions about AP.
I’ve seen a lot of people saying that it doesn’t mean you are experienced or good – and they’re right.
But because of the reasons above any experienced player will tell you that if you have to choose between 2 random players in your party the one with higher AP has a better chance of being experienced than the one with the lower AP ( provided of course the difference is somewhat significant – anything over 2-3k difference).

---

Edit : A the beginning of my post I accidentally replaced “not” with “now” – I apologize as it seems to have confused a lot of people.

The intent of the line was AP is NOT about player skill.

Uhh, not necessarily. I have over 5k and have never stepped foot inside an explorable dungeon. I don’t have full exotics, crafting professions maxed, low WvW ranks and abilities, low-ranked SPvP, etc. Achievement points are easy to get without even trying.

Let’s clear something up about OP.

Everything stated was self serf-serving, inaccurate, and mostly the opposite of reality.

Gratz to you leaderboard grinders though.

See! I didn’t even need a wall.