Guild Wars 2

Something I’ve seen a lot of controversy about recently is the whole “No one plays only one game mode” idea.

People get outraged by this- say, how can ArenaNet be so out of touch?

But then, where they get this information is clearly from their data. Big D.

Data can be powerful, but also very easily misinterpreted.

Take, for example, a player that spends most of their time in WvW. If they want a shiny new aesthetic, they must look elsewhere. For example, dungeons, or PvP. That doesn’t mean that they enjoy the other game modes, or consider themselves a serious player of them. They’re making an investment into the other game mode to get what they want, and then they return to their preferred game mode.

Data will say that this player clearly is not solely a WvW player. And that would be technically correct. However, I mostly play PvE, but do my dailies in WvW. It seems that the data would consider us to be equal in terms of game modes played. But just as the WvW player couldn’t really tell you the aspects of PvE teamcomp, speedrunning, and strategies, I could never even dream of trying to explain the complexities of WvW.

The person who primarily plays WvW, would naturally identify as someone who solely plays WvW, even if they’ve dabbled here and there in other content, or get pulled into dungeons occasionally by guildies.

I would identify as a PvE-er, despite having Tiger rank in sPvP, and Rank 244 in WvW. I don’t find either of those game modes particularly enjoyable for myself, and I probably couldn’t help you with the finer details of either as well.

So, what does this mean?

When data shows that players are all playing the different game modes, and that people who play sPvP have a higher retention rate, you still have to ask why.

Correlation != Causation.

I “play” pvp. I’ll be honest, I just farm dailies with friends on private rooms. Those friends are players that have played for a very long time as well. This does not mean that we are interested in sPvP. It just means that sPvP is a practical way of getting achievement points and rewards for low effort.

Similarly, just because I got in a golem and took a tower with a friend in WvW yesterday, doesn’t mean that I play WvW, or that I participated in or even enjoyed the golem event. Someone left a couple golems at spawn, tower capture was a daily, and we said why not.

Yet another example- Silverwastes. You could argue that Silverwastes has the highest consistent density of players in open world PvE. Is this because the events in Silverwastes are that much more fun? Is it because players find chest farming to be so enjoyable? No. As has been a consistent issue with GW2, the effort/reward level of Silverwastes is such an oasis, that despite it being mindnumbing, it is still extremely profitable for very little effort. Yet when we saw the beta of Verdant Brink, there was already a similar system to Dry Top and Silverwastes in place (yes it’s a beta, yes things change, and hopefully things will change). .

Priority based on misguided conclusions due to data makes the game stuck. Feel empty. Where despite content updates, everything still feels the same.

There’s a Catch 22 here.
Players will usually play new content en masse, regardless of what it is.
New content also has exciting rewards, and high profitability long after the release. Data says that players are playing this content.
People look at the data, and say, players must be enjoying this content if they’re playing it so much!
More content similar gets developed and prioritized.
Other types of content, i.e. dungeons, gets left behind.
Players get bored of old high effort, low reward content that hasn’t been updated in years.
Data says fewer players are playing such content.
People look at the data, and say, players must not enjoy this content.
And it receives less priority.

And then everything just cycles.

Those that play and enjoy the old content become the “vocal minority” because there are fewer people overall playing the content.
Those that play other types of content become the majority, even if they do not enjoy said content. And when the vocal members of those communities speak out, they are given higher priority since they are members of the majority.

This already was a disturbing trend during the Scarlet clockwork events- when the most profitable thing to do was just run around and farm champions at events. It was absolutely boring as heck after the first few times, yet it seemed as though those at ArenaNet thought people were enjoying it immensely due to data.

So please, please please, ArenaNet. Look not only at the data correlations, but also take the time to look at the causation.

I haven’t found any sources that detail what the metrics tell ArenaNet. It seems an assumption to say that dipping one’s toes in another game mode equals playing all game modes equally. What makes you think that the metrics stop at ‘spent 10 minutes in different game mode’, ergo ‘plays all game modes equally’?

There is a video, somewhere, that shows some of the metric gathering. Something like 500 (5000?) different tables of data per minute…or something equally astounding.

Until ArenaNet releases all their metrics, and what the information and decisions they conclude from said metrics, players can only guess at what takes place behind the scenes, I would say.

How many of those tables could conceivably judge “player enjoyment”?

Outside of time, participant #, and repetition data, there’s very little that would even likely correlate with such a subjective concept as enjoyment.

How would one judge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LhvuomaJaY

There’s no surveys going around asking how “into” certain game modes you are.
And if ArenaNet has developed psychic data, then we have a whole ’nother problem on our hands.

I think this explains very well why many of us are serious disappointed with Mike O’Brian’s off the cuff comments and who poorly thought-out the Golem Rush was… When the CEO doen’t even remotely understand the different core players in his game… wow, just wow.

Most serious marketing companies make a cross between their hard numbers and their “soft” polls (or focus groups, or any of theose things to measure perceived quality) before making strategies.

Most serious financial companies know the soft data isn’t important in the end: the money will be were the numbers are anyway. In the eventuality the angry public opinion collapses the bussiness, you just change your name and begin anew.

+1, OP.

I’m disgusted by ANet’s leads’ responses. At this point I’m genuinely just considering dropping the game altogether since I see the reason why I play having no future. Gimmicky new maps do nothing when the core systems – and server resources (they used WvW resources/reduced the player cap in WvW for all servers/matchups recently to make sPvP less laggy) – are at fault, and with such remarks insulting the seriousness of players focused heavily on one game mode, I see no reason to have faith in GW2 as a game or ANet as a company. The incredible passion for their games and the notion to make all game modes a way of playing – without needing to touch other game modes – and the overall promotion of huge-scale battles with siege, etc. is why I signed up for GW2 to begin with. If I wanted e-sports, I’d play LoL. If I wanted a PvE grind-fest, I’d play a wide variety of highly-refined Asian RPG’s.

They’re completely off their rockers.

First, it’s pretty clear that everyone is using the same words to mean different things. Second, it’s also clear that ANet often has no idea how to be explain their data to be people (such as ourselves) who won’t be allowed to see it. (Colin is better at it; Mike is terrible at it.)

My understanding of what they said is:

• Those of us who stick to a single game mode mostly hang out with others who stick to that same mode (for reasons I hope are obvious). That means our impressions are skewed about how many people are exclusive to a single game mode.
• They have a specific definition of how much time is spent to count someone as exclusive. It’s unclear if they make allowances for people who switch modes because something they want is hard-to-obtain in their preferred mode. If someone plays PvP to get Glorious armor and never goes back, should they be considered mixed for that month? Or still as a PvE-exclusive player?
• The phrase, “you’re the exception” used in the video was, at best, undiplomatic. As a bit of PR, it was completely foolish. What I suspect they meant was that the number of people who play WvW 90% of the time (or more) might be in the 1,000s, while those who play WvW 70% and something else the rest of the time is in the 10s or 100s of 1,000s. In other words (according to ANet), she wasn’t “unique”, just part of a small albeit dedicated subset.
• Finally, regardless of the truth of the statement, it was useless as a way to communicate ideas. The question has become “is ANet out of touch” instead of “what does the data tell us about how people play.” I can’t imagine that was Colin’s or Mike’s intent.

tl;dr ANet really should find people other than Colin and especially Mike for unscripted interviews. They are good at hyping certain kinds of things, but terrible at addressing spontaneous questions in a way that shows ANet’s and GW2’s best side.

In particular, I think their remarks were understandably misunderstood. We are less informed about what they meant than before they gave the interview.

I am not really a PvP player but I went out and got my deer rank 2 days ago, I actrtually joined PvP 5 days in these 3 years,

Data will say I play PvP but I honestly play PvE most and WvW second,
my focus changed from PvE to WvW in the last 16 months due to the general lack of content in PvE.
To pay for WvW I need to run dungeons (PvE-Dungeons) and fractals (PvE-Fractals).
To make my alts (I’ve got 17 lvl 80’s) future proof I need the hero points, so I’m heropoint farming atm (WP’s in PvE and heropoints in PvE, I have 9* map completion so I do not care for hearts anymore)

Food siege and upgrades have cost me a LOT of money

SO What kind of player am I?

I am PVE only. but I do enter WvW and PvP on occasions. But if the data interpret that I am not a PVE only player, then something must be wrong with the data gathering or the analysis is somehow wrong somewhere.