Guild Wars 2

Forum posters are the ones being heard. Whether or not what they say represents the feelings of the community at large is irrelevant to that fact.

If you have CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, then post it on the forums. The feedback will be read. Who gives a kitten if what you say represents the majority or not? If what you say matters to more than one person, your inquiry will naturally garner support.

This thread in particular is a useless argument. It is not constructive and therefore is an inadvertent counterproduct to what the OP is trying to accomplish.

If I worked at Arenanet and saw this thread title, I’d go "oh, it’s one of those. "

Skip it and move on to topics worth my time.

alcopaul.2156:

Aoshi.4785:

mulch.2586:

2 million + accounts.

Fewer than 1 million forums users

Therefore a minority. Cuz that’s what it means.

Pretty simple really. /thread

do you have to eat all the fishes in the sea to know what fish tastes like?

you just need to eat one to 2 fishes.

Because the taste of a fish equates to the disposition of one’s opinion? I just don’t see your logic there.

GregT.4702:

Tolmos.8395:

In the end, the only way that metric could show player dislike over something would be if they stopped playing. And deciding that something is fun and accepted simply because the playerbase didn’t quit overnight hardly seems like an efficient way to do things.

You, my friend, do not understand metrics. :-)

Assuming Anet gathers anywhere near as much information as, say, Valve (and they should) then they gather statistics on things like “last activity before log-off”, “first activity after log-in”, “activities repeated immediately upon completion”, “amount of chat interaction during activity”, “variety of skill use during activity”, “mouse-look variety during activity”.

They can use this, across a vast number of players, to determine which activities are probably triggering people to log-off (or take a break), which activities are prompting people to log in, which activites are producing repetitive (grindy) gameplay and which ones are promoting experimentation and exploration. They can tell which activities you talk about to your friends (although it might be harder to tell whether you’re griping or being enthused). And they can profile you to determine your player type and then see which activities are only being engaged in by high-end players and aren’t attracting casuals, and vice versa.

If you think metrics can’t be used to get a pretty good map of where the “fun” is in the game, you need to do more reading on statistics, analytics, and game design.

Again, that is by far the most inaccurate way to determine enjoyment of content. Pretending to have some nonexistant knowledge of stats and probability beyond that of mortal men won’t change this.

Players in MMOs constantly do things they don’t enjoy in order to achieve a goal that they would want. If the players who hate fractals right now want ascended gear, they are going to run fractals over and over. It might be the first thing they do when they log in, they might not take a break in between, and they might spam chat with “LFG LFG LFG” and “LFM LFM LFM”, while being generally unhappy with the entire situation… but the ends justify the means, so they keep with it.

You can read 100,000 books on statistics and probabilities, take as many game design courses as you want, and at the end of the day that will not make this failed method any less inaccurate than it currently is.

JarekCyphus.7068:

f a fish equates to the disposition of one’s opinion? I just don’t see your logic there.

He was trolling; it was an obtuse kind of humour making use of sarcasm to expose the ridiculousness of the OP’s argument.

Unfortunately all the posts immediately following it that pointed that out were infracted but the original post was left alone.

shrug

GregT.4702:

If you were only sampling one player this might be an issue. But you’re sampling ~1 million players, so it’s not.

That’s just incorrect. Sampling doesn’t work that way, it doesn’t matter if you have 1 or 1 million subjects, as long as you just analyze activities you won’t receive any information about their motivation or what kind of game they actually want to play.

If you find that players stop running a dungeon as soon as they get a 20 slot bag, then it’s a safe assumption they’re running the dungeon to GET the 20 slot bag. If, in addition to that, you find that players who already HAVE 20 slot bags don’t run the dungeon at all, then probably the dungeon is not inherently fun and it’s all about the bag.

And now try this with an unlimited amount of possibilities, cause that’s what you would have to do if you want to know more about your players motivations.

You can also compare it to the play patterns of casuals. Casuals aren’t going to run all the dungeons, and they certainly aren’t going to grind them. Looking at which dungeons casuals DO play, and in particular the ones they repeat, gives you a pretty good idea of which ones are fun, especially if they’re different ones to those being hit by reward-motivated players.

Again, doing the same thing over and over again doesn’t mean that it is fun at all, players could also experience it as an annoying but necessary grind. And even casuals grind, not as excessively as hardcore gamers, but they do it if they have to do it.

Logs of in-game activities are not pointless, they can tell you what players avoid, but never what they like. It’s just like trying to proof that an algorithm works right, you can only do it if the input and output are very limited. But you can always proof that it doesn’t work by finding an example.

GregT.4702:

JarekCyphus.7068:

f a fish equates to the disposition of one’s opinion? I just don’t see your logic there.

He was trolling; it was an obtuse kind of humour making use of sarcasm to expose the ridiculousness of the OP’s argument.

Unfortunately all the posts immediately following it that pointed that out were infracted but the original post was left alone.

shrug

Kinda hard to tell with people, anymore. I was debating with someone in another thread about costing them “personal time” by wearing MF gear in fractals. Yes. Players are seriously butthurt in a non-subscription game over a matter of “minutes.”

I may be in my thirties, but I’m not a parent, yet I still feel there are a large number of players in this game who need to go “play” outside…

GregT.4702:

nachtnebel.9168:

If the market research sector really thinks of that kind of data as a gold mine then I know why games keep getting worse. Log files of what people have done doesn’t tell you anything about what they want to do. Running 20 fractals per day doesn’t necessary mean that that player likes the dungeon, he could just want the 20 slot bags or is maybe hoping for a good ring to drop.

In-game activities don’t tell you anything unless you can link them to a players motivation, which you can’t get from just evaluating log files, you have to actually talk to him.

If you were only sampling one player this might be an issue. But you’re sampling ~1 million players, so it’s not. If you find that players stop running a dungeon as soon as they get a 20 slot bag, then it’s a safe assumption they’re running the dungeon to GET the 20 slot bag. If, in addition to that, you find that players who already HAVE 20 slot bags don’t run the dungeon at all, then probably the dungeon is not inherently fun and it’s all about the bag.

You can also compare it to the play patterns of casuals. Casuals aren’t going to run all the dungeons, and they certainly aren’t going to grind them. Looking at which dungeons casuals DO play, and in particular the ones they repeat, gives you a pretty good idea of which ones are fun, especially if they’re different ones to those being hit by reward-motivated players.

This is all year 8 statistics stuff, guys. It’s not rocket science. A statistic by itself can be misunderstood; the more intersecting statistics you have, though, the more likely you are to have a true picture of the situation. Anet has a LOT of intersecting statistics.

For someone who supposedly is a master of stats, you sure have some funky notions about how they work…

Just an FYI- the majority of posters here, like myself, are likely software engineers, probably also sitting on masters degrees. We all went through the standard stats and probabilities courses. We all got our minors same as the rest. I’d bet good money that if you polled the audience here, you’d end up with a vastly larger audience of people in mathematics based professions/studies/etc than not.

Just remember that as you post to us

Tolmos.8395:

Again, that is by far the most inaccurate way to determine enjoyment of content. Pretending to have some nonexistant knowledge of stats and probability beyond that of mortal men won’t change this.

The only situation in which I have knowledge beyond that of mortal men is if mortal men have no knowledge of statistics. I’d like to say you’re making a good case for that but I’d just be following the errors throughout this thread about sample sizes and representative samples.

I’ll give you two really good metrics RIGHT NOW to gauge how much of the community is actually enjoying the fractals:

(a) Check the average “fractals completed” numbers across all players who completed the fractals component of their monthly achievement for November. If you get a lot of numbers in the 7 to 10 range it’s likely a lot of players weren’t motivated to come back after completing their monthly. That’s only a one way correlation, obviously – if the numbers ARE higher they obviously may just be hunting the rewards, not having fun.
(b) Check the average hours spent dungeon/fractal instancing across players who did more than 15 dungeon runs over October against the same stat over November. If it’s gone up, they’re either enjoying fractals more or more strongly motivated by them (or some combination of the above). You then check the loot from their last fractal before log-off – if it’s at the top end of the RNG it’s likely they’re loot motivated. On the other hand if they’re coming back for more after high RNGs they’re probably enjoying the experience (whether or not they’re actually griping). Yes, this has a high anomaly rate across individual players but is reasonably reliable over hundreds of thousands of them.

You could do a whole ton more except for the stupid November monthlies being dungeons and fractals, which will distort your stats. As soon as they run a month without fractals in the monthlies we’ll be able to get some much better hypothetical metrics about fractal use.

It’s also likely that there are other kinds of metric that correlate to fun activity. You might find, for example, that players use emotes more on average when they’re having fun, or guild chat more, or mouse-look around the environment more during rest periods or something like that. None of those are immediately intuitively right, though, so you’d need a bit of research to sync them up. It’s research that’s reasonably easily obtainable though and I’d be surprised if Anet doesn’t already have some informing their analysis of the metrics.

More importantly, it’s the BEST way of determining enjoyment of content. What you’re advocating by contrast is taking anecdotal evidence from players. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes it’s not. I’m sure we all have experience with those players who buy the game, play it 10 hours a day for 5 years, spend a fortune at every seasonal event, and gripe and whine about how the game is ruined the whole way through. If that’s a discontented player, I’m sure Anet would like to have more just like him! And likewise the casual player who claims to love everything about the game and then just stops playing it after a month because he’s done.

Anecdotal evidence has its place, but it’s not a very big place.

GregT.4702:

Tolmos.8395:

Again, that is by far the most inaccurate way to determine enjoyment of content. Pretending to have some nonexistant knowledge of stats and probability beyond that of mortal men won’t change this.

The only situation in which I have knowledge beyond that of mortal men is if mortal men have no knowledge of statistics. I’d like to say you’re making a good case for that but I’d just be following the errors throughout this thread about sample sizes and representative samples.

I’ll give you two really good metrics RIGHT NOW to gauge how much of the community is actually enjoying the fractals:

(a) Check the average “fractals completed” numbers across all players who completed the fractals component of their monthly achievement for November. If you get a lot of numbers in the 7 to 10 range it’s likely a lot of players weren’t motivated to come back after completing their monthly. That’s only a one way correlation, obviously – if the numbers ARE higher they obviously may just be hunting the rewards, not having fun.
(b) Check the average hours spent dungeon/fractal instancing across players who did more than 15 dungeon runs over October against the same stat over November. If it’s gone up, they’re either enjoying fractals more or more strongly motivated by them (or some combination of the above). You then check the loot from their last fractal before log-off – if it’s at the top end of the RNG it’s likely they’re loot motivated. On the other hand if they’re coming back for more after high RNGs they’re probably enjoying the experience (whether or not they’re actually griping). Yes, this has a high anomaly rate across individual players but is reasonably reliable over hundreds of thousands of them.

You could do a whole ton more except for the stupid November monthlies being dungeons and fractals, which will distort your stats. As soon as they run a month without fractals in the monthlies we’ll be able to get some much better hypothetical metrics about fractal use.

It’s also likely that there are other kinds of metric that correlate to fun activity. You might find, for example, that players use emotes more on average when they’re having fun, or guild chat more, or mouse-look around the environment more just rest periods or something like that. None of those are immediately intuitively right, though, so you’d need a bit of research to sync them up. It’s research that’s reasonably easily obtainable though and I’d be surprised if Anet doesn’t already have some informing their analysis of the metrics.

Fine, we’ll play it your way. The ONLY way that method would be even remotely accurate would be to limit the measure to how many times anyone who has finished their monthly AND gotten the ascended gear runs fractals, and that’s it. Because anyone else will continue to run those regardless of whether they enjoy it or not- it is a means to an end, and nothing else.

The moment you include anyone without a full set of ascended gear or their completed monthlies in on that, it becomes the single most inaccurate way to measure player enjoyment of the content.

GregT.4702:

I’ll give you two really good metrics RIGHT NOW to gauge how much of the community is actually enjoying the fractals:

(a) Check the average “fractals completed” numbers across all players who completed the fractals component of their monthly achievement for November. If you get a lot of numbers in the 7 to 10 range it’s likely a lot of players weren’t motivated to come back after completing their monthly. That’s only a one way correlation, obviously – if the numbers ARE higher they obviously may just be hunting the rewards, not having fun.
(b) Check the average hours spent dungeon/fractal instancing across players who did more than 15 dungeon runs over October against the same stat over November. If it’s gone up, they’re either enjoying fractals more or more strongly motivated by them (or some combination of the above). You then check the loot from their last fractal before log-off – if it’s at the top end of the RNG it’s likely they’re loot motivated. On the other hand if they’re coming back for more after high RNGs they’re probably enjoying the experience (whether or not they’re actually griping). Yes, this has a high anomaly rate across individual players but is reasonably reliable over hundreds of thousands of them.

As I mentioned before, unproven or just wrong assumption like those are the reason why games keep getting worse nowadays. Companies think players like neat graphics more than challenging gameplay mechanics or that people actually enjoy grinding.

If you want to use a method like that you would, at the very least, have to change your parameters. Only those people who have everything they can get out of FotM and still continue running it, do it cause they like it. Based on that assumption, the data recorded during the last weeks would be completely pointless since there are not much players that really have anything FotM has to offer yet.

nachtnebel.9168:

As I mentioned before, unproven or just wrong assumption like those are the reason why games keep getting worse nowadays. Companies think players like neat graphics more than challenging gameplay mechanics or that people actually enjoy grinding.

If you want to use a method like that you would, at the very least, have to change your parameters. Only those people who have everything they can get out of FotM and still continue running it, do it cause they like it. Based on that assumption, the data recorded during the last weeks would be completely pointless since there are not much players that really have anything FotM has to offer yet.

No, you’re misunderstanding me. I’m not saying we’re looking for players who get a high RNG and never run FOTM again. I’m saying we’re looking for players who take a high RNG as their trigger to take a break and log off, before coming on and doing more of it the next day. They’re players who are continuing to grind because they want rewards. We already know from other studies (BF Skinner and others) that in activities with mixed fixed/variable reward systems (such as FoTM, where you get a big reward of some kind every fractal, with some bigger than others) people are MOST likely to discontinue the activity when the time until the perceived next reward is longest. In FoTM, that’s going to be at the end of a fractal after a perceived “good” drop. Players who break here are more likely to be motivated by the reward schedule than the process of getting to the reward. It’s basic behavioural psychology.

Likewise I’m not saying that “high mouselook in rest periods” is people liking pretty graphics. (And remember this is a hypothetical anyway.) I was suggesting that it either (a) it may correlate to people being more engaged with their surrounding and companions and therefore having more fun, or that (b) it may be an involuntary reaction correlating to fun, the same way that people enjoying a conversation will semi-involuntarily lean in, make more eye contact, and nod or shake their head in response to the speaker’s attitude.

It may not correlate. But over the vast number of statistics measurable, SOMETHING will correlate to “fun” gameplay, and it’s reasonably trivial for someone in Anet’s position to determine what that is and track it. There is a lot of behavioural psychology out there, much of it specifically aimed at video games and play states in general, and humans are, in the end, predictable creatures with observable tics that betray our emotional states.

If you’re actually interested in this, PM me and I’ll direct you to some of the people doing work on stuff like this.

Speaking of statistics, they’re against you on “games keep getting worse nowadays”. On average, today games have more consumers, who are more satisfied, than at any time in history. Which is just one more reason why you’re not a representative sample. :-)

Forum users are a minority of the whole player base, but they are a good sample of the players in general.

If the majority of people LOVE ascended gear and all it brought to GW2, great, this just means GW2 is not the game for me.

GregT.4702:

nachtnebel.9168:

As I mentioned before, unproven or just wrong assumption like those are the reason why games keep getting worse nowadays. Companies think players like neat graphics more than challenging gameplay mechanics or that people actually enjoy grinding.

If you want to use a method like that you would, at the very least, have to change your parameters. Only those people who have everything they can get out of FotM and still continue running it, do it cause they like it. Based on that assumption, the data recorded during the last weeks would be completely pointless since there are not much players that really have anything FotM has to offer yet.

No, you’re misunderstanding me. I’m not saying we’re looking for players who get a high RNG and never run FOTM again. I’m saying we’re looking for players who take a high RNG as their trigger to take a break and log off, before coming on and doing more of it the next day. They’re players who are continuing to grind because they want rewards. We already know from other studies (BF Skinner and others) that in activities with mixed fixed/variable reward systems (such as FoTM, where you get a big reward of some kind every fractal, with some bigger than others) people are MOST likely to discontinue the activity when the time until the perceived next reward is longest. In FoTM, that’s going to be at the end of a fractal after a perceived “good” drop. Players who break here are more likely to be motivated by the reward schedule than the process of getting to the reward. It’s basical behavioural psychology.

Likewise I’m not saying that “high mouselook in rest periods” is people liking pretty graphics. (And remember this is a hypothetical anyway.) I was suggesting that it either (a) it may correlate to people being more engaged with their surrounding and companions and therefore having more fun, or that (b) it may be an involuntary reaction correlating to fun, the same way that people enjoying a conversation will semi-involuntarily lean in, make more eye contact, and nod or shake their head in response to the speaker’s attitude.

It may not correlate. But over the vast number of statistics measurable, SOMETHING will correlate to “fun” gameplay, and it’s reasonably trivial for someone in Anet’s position to determine what that is and track it. There is a lot of behavioural psychology out there, much of it specifically aimed at video games and play states in general, and humans are, in the end, predictable creatures with observable tics that betray our emotional states.

If you’re actually interested in this, PM me and I’ll direct you to some of the people doing work on stuff like this.

What kills me… is that I believe 100% that this is how MMOs these days determine what is “fun” or not, because it explains perfectly why MMOs are becoming such crap. :-\

Step 1) Create a dungeon and put the best rewards in it. Doesn’t matter if the dungeon is fun. Doesn’t matter if the players like it. What does matter is that there are rewards that are unattainable elsewhere within that dungeon, and these rewards affect other portions of gameplay (the ability to see the next content that releases, PvP, open world PvE events, etc)
Step 2) Measure how many people run the dungeon, how often, etc.
Step 3) When you see that the majority of players are running the dungeon, not taking breaks as often and continuing until they receive their rewards, declare that the new content is “fun” and, as Arenanet put it, “wildly successful”.
Step 4) …
Step 5) Profit???

Are you seriously telling me you see NOTHING wrong with this method? Because when I look at it, I can suddenly see the clear answer to every question about why MMOs are heading down a winding road of becoming crappier WoW clones.

People are driven by rewards, but they don’t always enjoy it. Why, then? Because they want to do other content. They want to see the next dungeon when it comes out. They want to PvP on even ground. They want to get rewards for doing events and not have their damage drowned out by higher geared players. So if something completely crappy gets added to game, and its the only way to get rewards, guess what happens? Everyone plays it anyway! They grind and bear it, as best as they can.

And the result? The content is declared “Wildly successful” and more appears. All based on the statistical methods listed above.

Edited by moderator: post edited since the message quoted does not longer exist

Tolmos.8395:

What kills me… is that I believe 100% that this is how MMOs these days determine what is “fun” or not, because it explains perfectly why MMOs are becoming such crap. :-\

You missed or misunderstood a step.

I was proposing a way to determine if a player is motivated to do content by the reward.

You seem to have assumed that if they are, in fact, grinding for the reward, that the developer would think that was good and be satisfied.

I was implying that if they are repeating content for the reward rather than the fun, then the content was insufficiently fun and the design process had gone wrong, and the developer would retune the content to, if nothing else, be more friendly to (non-reward-motivated) casuals.

Sorry for the confusion. The basic point stands, that metrics can tell you more about what your players are doing and why than anecdotal evidence can.

I’m not worried about claims of pseudo-intellectualism. I haven’t studied game design professionally, but I have written about the study of game design professionally, and if what I’m putting forth is psuedo-intellectualism then I would be both entertained and educated by the real thing. :-)

Besides, Carltonbanks, you don’t have to understand it all; that’s why you’re the one playing the game, not the one making it.

GregT.4702:

Tolmos.8395:

What kills me… is that I believe 100% that this is how MMOs these days determine what is “fun” or not, because it explains perfectly why MMOs are becoming such crap. :-\

You missed or misunderstood a step.

I was proposing a way to determine if a player is motivated to do content by the reward.

You seem to have assumed that if they are, in fact, grinding for the reward, that the developer would think that was good and be satisfied.

I was implying that if they are repeating content for the reward rather than the fun, then the content was insufficiently fun and the design process had gone wrong, and the developer would retune the content to, if nothing else, be more friendly to (non-reward-motivated) casuals.

Sorry for the confusion. The basic point stands, that metrics can tell you more about what your players are doing and why than anecdotal evidence can.

Fair enough. That I can see. I still don’t entirely agree with how that information is being derived, but I agree with your point in any case.

Still… I personally think log in polls would be far more accurate. lol. I’m sure a psychologist and mathematician in a room could devise 100+ ways to determine the motivation of a player doing something, but being a lazy programmer I can’t help but just think “Why not just ask them?”

GregT.4702:

Tolmos.8395:

What kills me… is that I believe 100% that this is how MMOs these days determine what is “fun” or not, because it explains perfectly why MMOs are becoming such crap. :-\

You missed or misunderstood a step.

I was proposing a way to determine if a player is motivated to do content by the reward.

You seem to have assumed that if they are, in fact, grinding for the reward, that the developer would think that was good and be satisfied.

I was implying that if they are repeating content for the reward rather than the fun, then the content was insufficiently fun and the design process had gone wrong, and the developer would retune the content to, if nothing else, be more friendly to (non-reward-motivated) casuals.

Sorry for the confusion. The basic point stands, that metrics can tell you more about what your players are doing and why than anecdotal evidence can.

I’m not worried about claims of pseudo-intellectualism. I haven’t studied game design professionally, but I have written about the study of game design professionally, and if what I’m putting forth is psuedo-intellectualism then I would be both entertained and educated by the real thing. :-)

Besides, Carltonbanks, you don’t have to understand it all; that’s why you’re the one playing the game, not the one making it.

It’s not what you’re putting forth, it’s how you’re going about it.

You’re not a genius. Settle down.

Lordrosicky.5813:

I hate it when people say forum users are the minority of the community.

We aren’t. Anyone who knows about maths and sampling knows that forum goers provide a snapshot of the community and what we say reflects generally the feelings of the whole player base.

I know forum users = self selected sample so we arent totally reliable for feedback but that doesnt mean the people here and on other forums culminate to be a minority. It doesnt.

Do you know about sample size?

alcopaul.2156:

ever heard of sampling? or electoral college?

(this is in support of the OP)

Scientific samples are chosen randomly to represent the entire test group. Forum posting is not. Forum posters only represent forum posters. Any corelation to the total population is merely coincidental.

DarcShriek.5829:

Any corelation to the total population is merely coincidental.

Aka… random? >_>

Um, im a frequent user of forums and know many MANY others who also visit the forums. But OP you must be completely delusional if you think we aren’t the minority.

There are literally over 2.5 million users player guild wars 2, and if you count up every forum thread POST you only hit about 530,000… Don’t believe? Count it yourself, takes about an hour and a simple calculator.

Do you know what that even means? That means the extremely LARGE majority of GW2 players do not come onto the forums and give us their 2 cents. Only the angry, unsatisfied, suggestion giving, compliment giving, lore exploring, bug reporting user visits here.

WE are the very small minority on the forums. Please don’t try to categorize the opinions shared on the forums as being an elite force, It’s not, and most of the time it is just babies crying about one thing or another.. And the forums being a minority is by no means an insult. It is something every game needs.

I dont think forum users are a good sample personally! the majority of players are casual they play the game for fun and dont interract witht he community on forums. Its a sample alright but its a low quality sample. When sampling for research one of the important things to do is to ensure you sample enough diverse people to eliminate bias forum users are really bad for that!

Its like trying to determine the quality of your product by seeing what people calling support think! 99.9% of those people will call because they have an issue. If you ask them they’re going to tell you that your product has issues and if you just look at them you’re going to get the impression nearly everyone using your product has issues! but when looking at the bigger picture it might turn out people calling in are just 1% of your users base which in turn means it almost certainly isnt nearlly everyone who has issues! the real number lies somewhere between 1% – 99% and most closer to 1% then 99% at that!

That being said forums are a bit more diverse then call centers, people do post to praise the game but that number is still an unknown and I do believe it is biased towards negativity! If you’re somewhat neurtal play the game and find issues its likely if it bothers you enough that you’re going to join the forum and talk about it! if you’re happy with the game you’ll likely keep playing and thats it!

In my opinion forums are a great way to see what issues people who are having issues and are unhappy face but not such a good source to see how the majoirty of the players feel!

nachtnebel.9168:

Sender.7958:

Its pretty obvious you’ve never done market research or conducted a psychographic / behavioral study of consumers. That kind of information, actual in-game behavior, is a gold mine, not ‘useless.’

If the market research sector really thinks of that kind of data as a gold mine then I know why games keep getting worse. Log files of what people have done doesn’t tell you anything about what they want to do. Running 20 fractals per day doesn’t necessary mean that that player likes the dungeon, he could just want the 20 slot bags or is maybe hoping for a good ring to drop.

In-game activities don’t tell you anything unless you can link them to a players motivation, which you can’t get from just evaluating log files, you have to actually talk to him.

Ummm, which is why I said quantitative statistics should always be paired with qualitative feedback, so you have the whole picture . . . the two go hand in hand you don’t drop one for the other and saying its ’better ’

I think the OP is trying to say that those of us pointing out the glaring difficulties brought on by the sudden 180 that this game took from the manifesto and all of the problems that follows a vertical treadmill (including but not limited to the horrible members of the gaming community vertical treadmills ultimately attract) are not the minority.

They would not have had a demographic of casuals for the launch of this game were that the case. All demographics including WoW’s shows that casual players burst onto the mmo scene on 2005 and virtually took over the American market overnight. Because of this games have had to adapt to keep up or suffer huge losses. Basically leading to gaming companies putting on hold projects they had because their entire billing system needed to be re-evaluated. (too many to list)

So, dungeoneers can pretend that we’re some five people in a crowd of 1 million but in the end we’re really the million coming to these forums to help communicate to the devs how wrong of a direction this is. We’re also the ones that stick with games for years as opposed to the typical dungeon/raider that bounces from one game to the next to try to get his personal ego’s quota for the month.

Casual players include (open world pve’ers, dungeon runners who only run for fun -never speed or to try to outdo their party members in dps-, those who enjoy the storyline, gathcraftsplorers like me, people who like to play the market, RPers)

Dungeoneers are the rest of the PVEers that tend to only worry about spreadsheets of data, cookie cutter builds, hoards of youtube videos on strategies, diagrams of where to stand when, boss fights that involve dancing, and gearscore/dps meters.

Like it or not hardcore players if it wasn’t for us casuals you wouldn’t have a game. Niche games were able to be funded by very few at the dawn of mmo’s but not today, certainly not in this market.

You are an unhappy forum user, I am a happy forum user. How exactly are you figuring out which one of us is the minority? The fact of the matter is way more people play the game than post on the forums. I know you want your voice heard but you don’t need to be on a pedestal to do it.

tigirius.9014:

I think the OP is trying to say that those of us pointing out the glaring difficulties brought on by the sudden 180 that this game took from the manifesto and all of the problems that follows a vertical treadmill (including but not limited to the horrible members of the gaming community vertical treadmills ultimately attract) are not the minority.

There is no vertical treadmill. Ascended is the top, was always intended as the top. The verticalness ends at Ascended.

If you had been keeping up to date with the Developers comments on Ascended gear (which you should do if you are going to comment on them) then you would know that Ascended gear was planned for launch but they content that required the infusion gear was not read yet (the first of these is the fractals dungeon) so they chose to hold off from releasing Ascended gear until they released the fractals. It was a stupid thing to hide ascended gear from the community because now there are a bunch of silly people complaining about an imaginary vertical treadmill.
New content will not introduced tiers above Ascended. Ascended is the top.

Bluestone.7106:

tigirius.9014:

I think the OP is trying to say that those of us pointing out the glaring difficulties brought on by the sudden 180 that this game took from the manifesto and all of the problems that follows a vertical treadmill (including but not limited to the horrible members of the gaming community vertical treadmills ultimately attract) are not the minority.

There is no vertical treadmill. Ascended is the top, was always intended as the top. The verticalness ends at Ascended.

If you had been keeping up to date with the Developers comments on Ascended gear (which you should do if you are going to comment on them) then you would know that Ascended gear was planned for launch but they content that required the infusion gear was not read yet (the first of these is the fractals dungeon) so they chose to hold off from releasing Ascended gear until they released the fractals. It was a stupid thing to hide ascended gear from the community because now there are a bunch of silly people complaining about an imaginary vertical treadmill.
New content will not introduced tiers above Ascended. Ascended is the top.

There is a vertical treadmill NOW because they created one. There was no gap between exotic and legendary until they CREATED it with ascended gear. Then they made it a LA lobby game.

Those are all vertical treadmill traits. (Complete I might add with requests soon after for other community breaking addons such as gearscore, cross server LFG, and dps meters.)

But that’s beside the point. The point is of this thread, that the people complaining are not the minority or they would have made this a WoW clone instead of starting it off in the vision they produced. See our point?

tigirius.9014:

There is a vertical treadmill NOW because they created one. There was no gap between exotic and legendary until they CREATED it with ascended gear. Then they made it a LA lobby game.

Um… there is a gap between Masterwork and Rare, and again between Rare and Exotic but I would hardly call that progression a treadmill. A treadmill never ends it goes around and around. GW2 gear progression ends in Ascended. That is the top. It ends. There is no treadmill…

Bluestone.7106:

tigirius.9014:

There is a vertical treadmill NOW because they created one. There was no gap between exotic and legendary until they CREATED it with ascended gear. Then they made it a LA lobby game.

Um… there is a gap between Masterwork and Rare, and again between Rare and Exotic but I would hardly call that progression a treadmill. A treadmill never ends it goes around and around. GW2 gear progression ends in Ascended. That is the top. It ends. There is no treadmill…

i’ll make it easier for you:
they introduced exotics
But we just have FINE infusions.

They WILL (already confirmed) upgrade infusions to ascended (look at requirements for infusions lol)….

Done?

Well now they already said they will upgrade level cap along with equipment making all your equipment just worthless

This can be done indefinitely

Enjoy the trendmill….

Also saying forum is not representative of the community without a single proof is the most antidemocratic thing i read since history of WW2…..

Bluestone.7106:

tigirius.9014:

There is a vertical treadmill NOW because they created one. There was no gap between exotic and legendary until they CREATED it with ascended gear. Then they made it a LA lobby game.

Um… there is a gap between Masterwork and Rare, and again between Rare and Exotic but I would hardly call that progression a treadmill. A treadmill never ends it goes around and around. GW2 gear progression ends in Ascended. That is the top. It ends. There is no treadmill…

Uhm masterwork and rare both were in the game from the beginning. And you didn’t have to spend three years gathering mats for rares.

If we are to use that analogy then masterworks and rares would have the same stats, before they introduced Exotics (which for the purpose of this example so you understand how this is wrong) will still have higher stats. So you got your level to max, you get your mats together for your masterwork set and all is well until BAM they add Exotics….and Exotics will have the same stats as rares. See what they did there? yeah.

Suddenly there’s an invented gap where there wasn’t one and yes they can do that again. They said there wouldn’t be a higher tier, BAM there is one, they said this wouldn’t focus on dungeons but open world, BAM suddenly the only place you can get drops is in Fotm, they said it would be a game where gear wasn’t the focus and that you could do everything equally across all tiers of gear, BAM they created a whole new tier just after most people finished getting their exotic sets together.

do you REALLY think that sometime down the road they wouldn’t change their mind with this track record barely 3 months after launch?

The only people who don’t at least read the forums, are casual players, and people who generally don’t care enough about the game to be bothered. People who say we are the “vocal minority” are only trying to convince you that all the complaints here are from “the minority,” and that things are nowhere near as bad as they are reflected here. Wrong.

There are a ton of mmo game forums to express your concerns on that wont close or over moderate your concerns/opinions..

Since the devs at anet actually read and even respond to player concerns we need to keep this in mind and try to be diligent in the way we word things..
The devs have feelings to..

OP is wrong, for one reason. Someone may not play the game anymore, but has lifelong forum access. I’ve noticed that most disgruntled doomyellers do not play the game anymore. On a forum of a sub based game, these players wouldnt have a forum account anymore, and thus unable to reply. Here, quite a few of them keep spamming doom and gloom, even though they’ve stopped playing.

So imo you can’t really count them in the player group.

So, if the forum posters don’t represent the minority, which part represents the majority? The hordes of folks who, during the first two months, complained loudly about how the game needed progression and endgame, or the hordes of folks who have come out in the last month against such things?

Because, it sounds to me like the game population is split 50/50 if your argument is true.

jwburks.9735:

The only people who don’t at least read the forums, are casual players, and people who generally don’t care enough about the game to be bothered. People who say we are the “vocal minority” are only trying to convince you that all the complaints here are from “the minority,” and that things are nowhere near as bad as they are reflected here. Wrong.

Not true at all. I have lots of friends who play gw2 and have hundreds of hours logged who don’t bother with the forums.

It’s great that you managed to ask every single person who plays the game if they post on the forum or not and then came to the conclusion after compiling all the data you got from that consensus though. I applaud your hard work.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

OP is wrong, for one reason. Someone may not play the game anymore, but has lifelong forum access. I’ve noticed that most disgruntled doomyellers do not play the game anymore. On a forum of a sub based game, these players wouldnt have a forum account anymore, and thus unable to reply. Here, quite a few of them keep spamming doom and gloom, even though they’ve stopped playing.

So imo you can’t really count them in the player group.

cool…

Now you will for sure show us a statistical evidence more significant of the situation you are trying to disprove right?

LordByron.8369:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

OP is wrong, for one reason. Someone may not play the game anymore, but has lifelong forum access. I’ve noticed that most disgruntled doomyellers do not play the game anymore. On a forum of a sub based game, these players wouldnt have a forum account anymore, and thus unable to reply. Here, quite a few of them keep spamming doom and gloom, even though they’ve stopped playing.

So imo you can’t really count them in the player group.

cool…

Now you will for sure show us a statistical evidence more significant of the situation you are trying to disprove right?

Sure. I’ll show you the same amount of statistical data the rest of the replyers and the OP did in this very constructive discussion.

I hate when people claim the official forums don’t matter and reddit is way more important just because /r/Guildwars2 has 80000 subscribers. Something like the AMA wouldn’t have worked out here due to the flat structure and limited options of a simple forum, that doesn’t mean the forums are useless just because the event didn’t take place here. And if so, they were mainly useless because ANet scatters information throughout all social media channels too. E.g. there has been no information on where exactly the Karka event starts, just a twitter reply short before.

/e: ANet could just tell us how many different players (accounts) have been actively participating or at least logged into these forums last month.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

LordByron.8369:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

OP is wrong, for one reason. Someone may not play the game anymore, but has lifelong forum access. I’ve noticed that most disgruntled doomyellers do not play the game anymore. On a forum of a sub based game, these players wouldnt have a forum account anymore, and thus unable to reply. Here, quite a few of them keep spamming doom and gloom, even though they’ve stopped playing.

So imo you can’t really count them in the player group.

cool…

Now you will for sure show us a statistical evidence more significant of the situation you are trying to disprove right?

Sure. I’ll show you the same amount of statistical data the rest of the replyers and the OP did in this very constructive discussion.

start with a 10.000 posts thread of complaints with 100.000+ visits…with more pages than whole general section pages.

Just to put some numbers

Add polls on forum

Your move now…..show me something similar.

While it’s fun to claim majority, doesn’t make it more right or wrong.
I think it is good that ArenaNet doesn’t show us those numbers and keep those for themselves.

We need structural arguments anyhow. All i ever hear is PR spin, arenanet nexon conspiracy and all that nonsense which doesn’t take a second look at the reality.

I mean sure, things aren’t perfect, but some of the arguments saying “x posts, y views majority this majority that.” I really dunno how such claims make your argument any stronger. It’s like saying, “I think this content is stupid because those other people over there say so too.” Instead of actually giving constructive arguments.

LordByron.8369:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

LordByron.8369:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

OP is wrong, for one reason. Someone may not play the game anymore, but has lifelong forum access. I’ve noticed that most disgruntled doomyellers do not play the game anymore. On a forum of a sub based game, these players wouldnt have a forum account anymore, and thus unable to reply. Here, quite a few of them keep spamming doom and gloom, even though they’ve stopped playing.

So imo you can’t really count them in the player group.

cool…

Now you will for sure show us a statistical evidence more significant of the situation you are trying to disprove right?

Sure. I’ll show you the same amount of statistical data the rest of the replyers and the OP did in this very constructive discussion.

start with a 10.000 posts thread of complaints with 100.000+ visits…with more pages than whole general section pages.

Just to put some numbers

Add polls on forum

Your move now…..show me something similar.

Have you corrected for the positive posts in that thread and the number of “give us vertical progression” topics before the LS update? And do you know how many players that originally quit the game, came back after said expansion?

Point is: this thread is only speculation. you cannot know if the forum users are the majority or the minority. My point was not if it’s a majority or minority, but that it is not an accurate (random) population.

DarcShriek.5829:

alcopaul.2156:

ever heard of sampling? or electoral college?

(this is in support of the OP)

Scientific samples are chosen randomly to represent the entire test group. Forum posting is not. Forum posters only represent forum posters. Any corelation to the total population is merely coincidental.

forum posters also come from the entire test group aka the player base. lol.

LordByron.8369:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

LordByron.8369:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

OP is wrong, for one reason. Someone may not play the game anymore, but has lifelong forum access. I’ve noticed that most disgruntled doomyellers do not play the game anymore. On a forum of a sub based game, these players wouldnt have a forum account anymore, and thus unable to reply. Here, quite a few of them keep spamming doom and gloom, even though they’ve stopped playing.

So imo you can’t really count them in the player group.

cool…

Now you will for sure show us a statistical evidence more significant of the situation you are trying to disprove right?

Sure. I’ll show you the same amount of statistical data the rest of the replyers and the OP did in this very constructive discussion.

start with a 10.000 posts thread of complaints with 100.000+ visits…with more pages than whole general section pages.

Just to put some numbers

Add polls on forum

Your move now…..show me something similar.

And every single one of those posts were from a unique poster? As with the views? And was each post in that thread a complaint instead of praise?

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

LordByron.8369:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

LordByron.8369:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

OP is wrong, for one reason. Someone may not play the game anymore, but has lifelong forum access. I’ve noticed that most disgruntled doomyellers do not play the game anymore. On a forum of a sub based game, these players wouldnt have a forum account anymore, and thus unable to reply. Here, quite a few of them keep spamming doom and gloom, even though they’ve stopped playing.

So imo you can’t really count them in the player group.

cool…

Now you will for sure show us a statistical evidence more significant of the situation you are trying to disprove right?

Sure. I’ll show you the same amount of statistical data the rest of the replyers and the OP did in this very constructive discussion.

start with a 10.000 posts thread of complaints with 100.000+ visits…with more pages than whole general section pages.

Just to put some numbers

Add polls on forum

Your move now…..show me something similar.

Have you corrected for the positive posts in that thread and the number of “give us vertical progression” topics before the LS update? And do you know how many players that originally quit the game, came back after said expansion?

Point is: this thread is only speculation. you cannot know if the forum users are the majority or the minority. My point was not if it’s a majority or minority, but that it is not an accurate (random) population.

False …actually the post was a mergibg of over 13.000 post possibly, ending with 10.500+ i rounded down epecting that answoers that btw doesn t prove the opposite…

Its not accurate for sure, but there is a limit where somethibg is significant, and that limit have been quite obviously surpassed.

Also forum is about discussion and feedback and AS SUCH is the representative of the game.

If a player has something to say he goes to the forum……

You are discussing the very essence of a forum just to prove a thread by an actual minority (those saying things are good as they are) is more important than a huge load of feedback……

This is selfcentered and egohistic, whereas a forum is meant to be vox populi….

Yes, they are the minority. /endthread

They are a minority. Not only are they a minority of the player base as a whole, but they also only represent a small demographic of players. So even going as far as implying that the general tone of the forums speaks for the player’s attitudes as a whole would be a poor assumption.

The fan page on facebook would actually be a better place to gauge the general feelings of players, since it’s more likely to include the opinions of people spanning across multiple demographics. People that wouldn’t touch this or any other game forum with a 10ft pole will still voice their opinion on facebook and not think twice about it.

But even that’s a slippery slope to start going down.

I’m sure the team gets a good bit of feedback from us, but the forums really aren’t even second fiddle. More like third or fourth: Facebook > Twitter > Reddit >= Forums.

Just look at the ways that news and information is distributed and how the company communicates to its customers. We are a small subset of a subset of players. Our opinions and input are valuable for specific reasons, but its a mistake to think that they reflect a majority of the player base.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

LordByron.8369:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

LordByron.8369:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

OP is wrong, for one reason. Someone may not play the game anymore, but has lifelong forum access. I’ve noticed that most disgruntled doomyellers do not play the game anymore. On a forum of a sub based game, these players wouldnt have a forum account anymore, and thus unable to reply. Here, quite a few of them keep spamming doom and gloom, even though they’ve stopped playing.

So imo you can’t really count them in the player group.

The one that asked for “vertical progression” were the minority too amirite?

what you should do is to compare the number of those who asked for vertical progression and the one who complained afterwards.

im a frequent forum visitor since the beta and i can tell you that i never seen many threads asking for vertical progression.

cool…

Now you will for sure show us a statistical evidence more significant of the situation you are trying to disprove right?

Sure. I’ll show you the same amount of statistical data the rest of the replyers and the OP did in this very constructive discussion.

start with a 10.000 posts thread of complaints with 100.000+ visits…with more pages than whole general section pages.

Just to put some numbers

Add polls on forum

Your move now…..show me something similar.

Have you corrected for the positive posts in that thread and the number of “give us vertical progression” topics before the LS update? And do you know how many players that originally quit the game, came back after said expansion?

Point is: this thread is only speculation. you cannot know if the forum users are the majority or the minority. My point was not if it’s a majority or minority, but that it is not an accurate (random) population.

The one that asked for “vertical progression” were the minority too amirite?

what you should do is to compare the number of those who asked for vertical progression and the one who complained afterwards.

im a frequent forum visitor since the beta and i can tell you that i never seen many threads asking for vertical progression.

There is no reason to believe that the official GW2 forums are any different from any other game’s forums. Which means that not only are you a minority, but in fact live in a parallel universe in which your only goal is to scream to favor the things you like doing.

JarekCyphus.7068:

alcopaul.2156:

Aoshi.4785:

mulch.2586:

2 million + accounts.

Fewer than 1 million forums users

Therefore a minority. Cuz that’s what it means.

Pretty simple really. /thread

do you have to eat all the fishes in the sea to know what fish tastes like?

you just need to eat one to 2 fishes.

Because the taste of a fish equates to the disposition of one’s opinion? I just don’t see your logic there.

the logic is that if all of the population is enjoying and not sharing opinions, then i could just get a tiny sample from them and get the representative opinion. their opinion would be generally the same anyway. they will just say “i enjoy the game”.

to ask a population that 100% voting for obama individually is impractical. just get 1 or 2 since the total population is 100% voting for obama anyway.

Lordrosicky.5813:

I hate it when people say forum users are the minority of the community.

We aren’t. Anyone who knows about maths and sampling knows that forum goers provide a snapshot of the community and what we say reflects generally the feelings of the whole player base.

I know forum users = self selected sample so we arent totally reliable for feedback but that doesnt mean the people here and on other forums culminate to be a minority. It doesnt.

The plural of “math” is “math.” “Maths” is not a word. Just thought you should know

Not sure, I think people come to forums only to whine