Guild Wars 2

Hi guys! So I was interested in what people thought about their “Endgame” experience, so I designed my own little survey to find out! Big thank you to all those people who responded to my survey, a not so big thank you to those who responded but purposefully messed with me (you know who you are…), and a small apology to those people I ended up asking more than once!

MY METHOD

I stood on the bridge of Lion’s Arch (the one that goes over to the Asura Gates) and randomly sampled 58 level 80’s over the past month or so. My random sampling method consisted of me asking the first level 80 that walked past me after completing a survey.

This was my course of action:

1. Hi! I’m doing a quick survey about Endgame, do you mind answering some questions? (If asked, I defined “Endgame” as: any activity you’ve done since getting level 80).
2. If they agreed, I would proceed:
3. Great, first up: what have you spent the most time doing since getting level 80?
4. The following questions are on a satisfaction scale of 1-10.
5. What do you rate your Event experience so far?
6. What do you rate your Dungeon experience so far?
7. What do you rate your Exploration experience so far?
8. What would you rate your satisfaction if GW2 had 10-man content? (“You know how dungeons take 5 players? 10-man content is similar but requires up to 10 people instead of 5.”)
9. What would you rate your satisfaction if GW2 had statistical gear progression? (“A system where you play through tiers of harder PvE content to obtain gear with higher stats on it.")
10. What would you rate your overall Endgame experience in GW2 so far?

I had a response rate of about 50%, which isn’t too bad.

Before you say it, I know 58 samples aren’t that much… but seriously, it took ages to do all these surveys. I didn’t trust anyone else to help out, AND by doing it this way, I have random sampling, independent data and no problems with self-selection (all of which would be present if I had done this a faster way, like forums, etc). So I should be able to make reasonable inferences about the sample I have.
Also, I know my results are biased towards those people who are actually playing the game (since I only sampled people who are online).

MY RESULTS

Overall Mean Satisfaction Scores (out of 10):
1. Exploring: 8.5
2. Overall: 7.7
3. Having 10-man Content: 7.4
4. Events: 7.4
5. Dungeons: 6.9
6. Having Gear Progression: 5.4

Every category got at least one 10/10 score.
Only the Gear Progression category scored 0/10, and 19% of people gave this answer (despite me saying that the answers were to be given on a 1-10 scale)!
Having 10-man content got the most 10/10 scores, with 26% of people answering this way.

Exploring definitely shines as offering the most satisfying experience in GW2. People often said that Exploring was the best/their favourite part of the game.

Dungeons are a pretty mixed bag, with large proportions rating it both highly and poorly (reasons such as; bosses having too much health, being too hard, hard to find groups, etc).

Events seem to offer a pretty solid experience, the majority of people score it well, but very few people give it a 10. People did mention the influence of bugs which may be holding back the Event category from achieving 10’s.

(see Scatter Plot)
We have strong evidence that having high satisfaction in Dungeons, Events and Exploring combined (but not separately) leads to a higher overall satisfaction. This suggests that I have correctly identified Dungeons, Events and Exploring as being important components of Endgame in Guild Wars 2.

An interesting outlier: this person rated the combination of events (4/10), dungeons (6/10) and exploring (3/10), but scored his overall Endgame experience at 9/10. And despite rating his exploration experience at 3, they spent most of their time exploring!

The Pie Graph
This is a accumulation of all the things people said they have done most. “Other” included: fire elemental, gathering, gear grinding, non-dungeon looks, novelty items, pvp, shenanigans, and story).

Would the people I sampled be satisfied with 10-man content and/or statistical gear progression?

A rather large 90% of people would get some satisfaction from GW2 having 10-man content (90% of people rated this >5).
64% of people would get some satisfaction from GW2 having gear progression.
Only 8% did not want either of these contents (both rated<5).
About 20% of people did not really care (rating=5).

Having 10-man content actually decreased satisfaction by about 0.3. Which is interesting because this question scored the most 10’s. I suppose the people that award 10’s are happier people overall!

On average, having gear progression decreased satisfaction by a massive 2.3!

Constructive criticism is welcome, but I hope you found this interesting!

You make a good set of point the big thing about what you did is that you could of asked the same person 2 times with out know it if you just randomly sampled, the ppl you asked where not doing events they where in LA doing something (you missed a big active pop unless LA is all of pop) and was this your own world or overflow? if it was just yours your going to think that all world are the same and truly some are not the bit wvw world often have ppl in wvw making it harder to get a full idea what they find fun (i know ppl would love to have 10 man + in wvw making it easier to pick out with targeting).

Other then that great work if you could work out a few bugs i think you can make this into a good sturdy on GW2 pop.

Sorry Jski I have a bit of trouble understanding your sentences but… it’s probably not that good of an idea to sample people twice, is it? Unless you sampled everyone twice and then did a test on the differences I suppose, but that’s pretty hard to orchestrate.

No they were not doing events in LA but the question was about their overall event experience so it shouldn’t matter that they weren’t doing events at the time.

Mostly sampled in my own world (Henge of Denravi) but some in Overflow as well. I picked LA because it’s kind of a big melting pot where everyone goes at some point, so I hoped it would give sample of a wider range of people (rather than sampling people just in WvW or just in certain zones).

Thanks

gear progression is rated lowly not because of the gear treadmill its the lack of cosmetic gear there are in the game.

Medium armour especially.

My sentences must be realty messed up something i cant seem to get over any way i was just pointing out that a person can have 2 or more characters and if you asked them as if they where 2 different people then it would throw off some of your findings.

I was talking about you questing people who turn up in LA at the time your looking there is still a pop that you missed who are spvp wvw and running events that may not go to LA that often. Good point though about not doing it during an event.

The thing about different worlds SF is where i run most of the time some what of a low end WvW its mostly a pve or spvp but say YB from what i understand they are a high community world in that there was a web pages for YB before GW2 came out.

These are just small points and only means you may need to get more data to come up with a good idea of what going on.

1. Exploring: 8.5
2. Overall: 6.5
3. Having 10-man Content: 10
4. Events: 7
5. Dungeons: 5
6. Having Gear Progression: 10

lets add some more:

7. 25 man raids: 10
8. Rep to grind: 10
9. More primary skills available :10
10. WoW
11. LOL

Thank you for spending so much time getting all of this data. The game definitely needs some work endgame, and it shows people want to do dungeons but aren’t getting much out of it

Thanks for putting this together – it was very interesting. I imagine getting rid of the self selection issue was a LOT of work.

The only thing I really noticed missing from the survey was WvW and PvP. The folks that are doing that for end game might be a more difficult population to sample because they tend to get cranky if you hang out in the PvP areas and don’t help out with the war effort

Yay for nonrepresentational testing samples.
No raids. No further gear progression. No dueling(open world kind, not an instanced seperated one). Because those things aren’t in the game I enjoy GW2 more than any other RPG or multiplayer game. Using terms like “a lot of people”, when the sample size is tiny just to make the statement sound more important than it actually is, lacks objectivity.
GW2 is designed with different kind of goals in mind, and actively discourages and/or disallows certain kind of player behaviour to shape the community and not let it devolve into what you see in other MMOs or large online communities. How do you know your sample of people wasn’t just saturated with whiners and complainers, which are by default many times as vocal about what they personally don’t like than rest?
I think this whole thread is just another excuse for people to moan about things they want to have in the game and hate about the game, regardless of what the developer actually has in mind for its future. GW2 doesn’t need to please a certain demographic that has become used to things like raiding, open world pvp or officially segregating their population by declaring RP, PvP, Raid, and what not servers.

That’s some nice work.

I think Jski was just saying that part of the first question, or a second question, might have been to ask if they have taken the survey before. Or otherwise have made an effort to make sure you weren’t asking two toons that belonged to the same account the same survey.

Edit: Actually he/she said some other things too which I didn’t comment on, but that was the first part. Other reasonable concerns about the sampling possibly not getting good WvW or PvP coverage.

marcel.5938:

1. Exploring: 8.5
2. Overall: 6.5
3. Having 10-man Content: 10
4. Events: 7
5. Dungeons: 5
6. Having Gear Progression: 10

lets add some more:

7. 25 man raids: 10
8. Rep to grind: 10
9. More primary skills available :10
10. WoW
11. LOL

Well, I don’t think that is what the survey was asking.

It would be like asking a survey about, ok Football (it’s Sunday here). Asking random people questions at a football game (I’m presuming they are there because they enjoy watching football) what they think of some of the rules or whatever you would ask someone about football and what might improve the game, and they ask you, and you say…

NASCAR 10!
WWE 10!

:|

ASB.4295:

I think this whole thread is just another excuse for people to moan about things they want to have in the game and hate about the game, regardless of what the developer actually has in mind for its future.

It’s just data, with a pretty good explanation of how it was acquired and analyzed and no particular agenda or spin put on it. The survey was of folks’ opinions, not a scientific analysis of how the game should be designed.

If folks stick to discussing the data instead of dragging all their baggage in from other threads, it could be an interesting discussion. Unfortunately, your post has probably just precipitated the type of discussion you’re complaining about. Disparaging other folks’ opinions is a sure fire way to get them to defend their opinion and criticize yours.

This game has no end game, and that’s what makes the game brilliant. Instead of an “end game”, this game just has a “game”.

End game, in most other MMOs, is defined by the carrot dangling in front of your face, that’s supposed to keep you hooked with long, tedious tasks that give great rewards once you are level 80. In Guild Wars 2, you can do everything whenever you want; dungeons simply require you to be a certain level (which is not always 80), and PvP has absolutely no level requirement. Achievements, similarly, are based on many things that don’t require character level, and all of this simply contributes to the fact that level doesn’t matter in this game, and that this game has no need for something called “end game”.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Thanks for putting this together – it was very interesting. I imagine getting rid of the self selection issue was a LOT of work.

The only thing I really noticed missing from the survey was WvW and PvP. The folks that are doing that for end game might be a more difficult population to sample because they tend to get cranky if you hang out in the PvP areas and don’t help out with the war effort

Yah, actually my first plan WAS to survey people from Heart of the Mists and in WvW. But then when I thought about it, I thought that I didn’t want to be singly going to those places and specifically asking those people… for the same reason I didn’t want to go to different zones and specifically ask people either! (And it would be very hard to get data, as everyone in HoTM looks level 80 and it would require self selection on their part to do the survey, and in WvW HoD is getting thrashed so no one is there)

Pandemoniac.4739:

ASB.4295:

I think this whole thread is just another excuse for people to moan about things they want to have in the game and hate about the game, regardless of what the developer actually has in mind for its future.

It’s just data, with a pretty good explanation of how it was acquired and analyzed and no particular agenda or spin put on it. The survey was of folks’ opinions, not a scientific analysis of how the game should be designed.

If folks stick to discussing the data instead of dragging all their baggage in from other threads, it could be an interesting discussion. Unfortunately, your post has probably just precipitated the type of discussion you’re complaining about. Disparaging other folks’ opinions is a sure fire way to get them to defend their opinion and criticize yours.

Thanks Pandemoniac, I definitely don’t want to start ANOTHER one of those conversations.. I’ve seen it a million times on the forums. It’s just an interesting survey and I’d prefer just talking about anything interesting people found out (or didn’t find out) from it!