Hi everyone!
First off, just want to thank the several hundred people (most of whom were on the forums) for participating in the survey! I ended up getting 362 observations. Particularly thanks to those (sadly, few) kind Henge of Denravi folks that responded to my “Hi! Would you mind answering a quick survey? I’m collecting data!” requests
Secondly, I do want to apologize for my poor survey design. I know designing this stuff is PhD-level high quality stuff… and in in hindsight I could have improved it and possibly my results would be more conclusive. As it stands… basically none of my data is statistically significant (I know, I was let down too).
But was my survey? Well;
1. What level are you?
2. What class are you?
3. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your happiness right now?
METHOD
I started off running around zones in-game (Henge of Denravi server) and whispering pretty much everyone I saw if they wanted to do a survey. Some said no, some said yes, but most didn’t reply. Also a thanks to Thithiphis, Rizon Reav and Fratlogar for helping me survey people.
But I got tired of that and posted a data call on the General Discussion part of the forums. I was overwhelmed with data there! Although I am aware that the Forum may have given less reliable data (people messing around, not answering the question as intended) I hope that the sheer mass of responses balances this out.
Also, apologies to those forum posters that offered lots and lots of extra data that did not make it into the analysis. I enjoyed reading them though!
Statistics Bit
I have no evidence to doubt the normality and equality of variance assumptions for the tests I carried out. It is reasonable to assume that for asking people surveys in-game, the effect of one person’s response had no effect on another person’s response. However for forums, the effect of one person’s post may influence other people’s posts. Since most of my data came from the forums, the validity of the independence assumption may be in doubt.
STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT RESULTS
The only statistically significant result (and it wasn’t even really statistically significant: a weak p=0.054) was that Necromancers were unhappier than Warriors (if I had more Thief data it probably would show that Necromancers were unhappier than Thieves as well).
I have also attached the Happiness versus Level graph so you can see the relationship (or lack thereof) for yourselves.
INTERESTING RESULTS
The overall average happiness was 7.5/10.
I suppose that gives Guild Wars 2 about a B? Perhaps a B+?
Profession Composition
1. Ranger 19%
2. Warrior 17%
3. Elementalist 13%
4. Guardian 12%
5. Engineer, Mesmer and Thief 10%
6. Necromancer 9%
Interesting that Rangers were the most common profession, but also one of the most unhappy. If you Rangers are so unhappy, why are you playing so many of them? Haha.
44% of the overall responses came from level 80’s.
The average happiness of a level 80 was 7.4/10.
15% of the overall responses rated their happiness at 10.
Of those, the top professions were Warriors (21%) and Rangers (17%).
23% of the overall responses rated their happiness between 9 and 9.9.
Of those, the top professions were Warriors (19%) and Rangers (17%).
2 people (0.6%) rated their happiness at 1: a level 80 Necromancer and a level 80 Mesmer.
3 people (0.8%) rated their happiness at 0: a level 8 Necromancer, a level 75 Necromancer and a level 40 Elementalist.
AESTHETIC RESULTS
Profession Happiness Ranking (Happiest to Unhappiest)
1. Thief
2. Warrior
3. Mesmer
4. Guardian
5. Ranger
6. Elementalist
7. Necromancer
For those who saw my previous study, Thieves are once again on top! This encourages the belief that this class is the happiest.
Common complaints that held back other classes were:
1. The lack of effective ranged weapons/slow scepter attacks on a Guardian.
2. Not sure what the problem with Rangers are. They scored low on my previous study as well (to many people’s displeasure).
3. Elementalists being “under-powered”.
4. The many Necromancer bugs.
Level Bracket Happiness Rating (Happiest to Unhappiest)
1. 61-70
2. 51-60
3. 31-40
4. 21-30
5. 41-50
6. 11-20
7. 71-80
8. 1-10
It’s interesting that the first level bracket 1-10 and the last level bracket 71-80 are the unhappiest. I guess no one likes to start and no one wants to finish?
The most common level-bracket complaints were Orr-related (bugged skill points, Risen everywhere).
Hope you guys found this investigation interesting!