Guild Wars 2

Last week, I ran a survey called “What future do you want? Upcoming development of Guild Wars 2.” The survey got a pretty strong response – 3,638 responses total – through its release on Reddit, Guild Wars 2 Guru and the official forums.

Formatting all the data proved to be a huuuuuuge challenge (it took me a couple hours to put it together for Reddit alone). So on that note, instead of reformatting everything to post it here, I’m just going to link the post over there. Feel free to comment here, however. The results are really interesting.

Survey results

Thanks for that. It was very interesting!

Was actually a pretty interesting read, sadly though it will fall on deaf ears, as according to Anet they had over 10,000 testers who said the game was to hard and needed dumbed down to a level never seen before,

Most of the questions asked on the survey are questions that have been asked time and time again on here, Anet knows people want new dungeons/fractals/perm content, we’ve already been told where not getting new dungeons/fractals, the LS2 does give some perm content in dry top but how long ppl will go there is another thing.

Interesting survey, would have given my $0.02 if I’d known about it… although most answers reflect my own feelings and intuition about the state of the game+community anyway.

Worthwile bit of marketing research of a kind I wish ANet would bother to do so that (visible) GW2 development would resemble a headless herd of chickens a little less.

Ok I Did It.2854:

…as according to Anet they had over 10,000 testers …

as according to ANet they never developed a tutorial because it was too time demanding and hard to fit in… but according to another source of ANet they did a tutorial and was proved a bad move.

For this and all other things (manifesto included), I no longer trust ANet in anything they say. Specially in something so ridiculous as having 10K testers when with only 5 players at least half of their mistakes would’ve been avoided.

Fascinating that I didn’t see it anywhere even tho you say you posted it to the official forums because I can tell you that if it were here in general you would have definitely NOT received the 1% demands that you have listed there. Absolutely not.

You see most of the people posting here are casuals in the official forums whereas most of the people on reddit are the 1% who demand raiding, making everything harder, and dungeons constantly. So it’s blatantly obvious that these results are skewed. Not to mention that one of the key reasons why Arenanet is moving away from the 1% is due to their losing vast numbers of casuals. When you lose the majority it’s time to move away from the tiny demographic you’ve been trying to appease for 2 years.

So I simply don’t believe that these are results from this forum because I see the posts in general all the time and most of the people who are left here are tired of the problems that come with dungeons, tired of fractals, want new content but generally want it to be open world in the form of new zones, and want the old stuff to be fixed before moving onto the new content.

Well, as amateur surveys go, this one is probably one of the better-worded ones. That is to say, the questions are less likely to skew results, although some of them would still need work. The other issue is that the sample population is not representative of the game’s population, it’s representative of the population that visits forums. As such, I would expect the survey to reflect the desires of the sample population. Given all that, the number that surprised me most was 42% “satisfied with the present direction of Guild Wars 2’s development and updates.” What this suggests is that in a sample representative of the whole population, the satisfaction rate would likely be much higher.

I had not noticed the original post either but found it from your post history. It is a bit odd.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-future-do-you-want-A-thorough-poll/first#post4375855

“With the release of the feature pack tomorrow, Guild Wars 2 adds a number of features that many in the community are excited about. Meanwhile, several others – maybe more than those excited – are frustrated it has taken two years for some of these changes to become part of the game. All the while, certain sub-communities within the greater GW2 community are frustrated with their part of the game not getting as much attention as other parts, i.e. the Living Story and gem store.”

Odd is that invitation to take the poll is directed to those certain sub-communities and it might show in the results.

Mesket.5728:

Ok I Did It.2854:

…as according to Anet they had over 10,000 testers …

as according to ANet they never developed a tutorial because it was too time demanding and hard to fit in… but according to another source of ANet they did a tutorial and was proved a bad move.

For this and all other things (manifesto included),* I no longer trust ANet in anything they say. * Specially in something so ridiculous as having 10K testers when with only 5 players at least half of their mistakes would’ve been avoided.

I have heard this SO many time over the past few months. At first I thought it was just a few upset people but I think it’s starting to become a sizable number of players and former players.

Anet needs to be very concerned about this trend and try to garner some trust in the community.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Well, as amateur surveys go, this one is probably one of the better-worded ones. That is to say, the questions are less likely to skew results, although some of them would still need work. The other issue is that the sample population is not representative of the game’s population, it’s representative of the population that visits forums. As such, I would expect the survey to reflect the desires of the sample population. Given all that, the number that surprised me most was 42% “satisfied with the present direction of Guild Wars 2’s development and updates.” What this suggests is that in a sample representative of the whole population, the satisfaction rate would likely be much higher.

I’d usually agree, but with the game populace having shrunk so much, I think people in these “sub-communities” represent a much higher percentage of current players than in most games.

As far as sample bias, clearly these sub communities contain a very high percentage of current players and a small fraction of former players. Since retention of a dwindling player pool and even recapturing a large portion of players who own the game, but no longer play, has to be a massive priority if the game is going to have any chance at reversing current trends, the sub-community polled should be considered as overly representative of the target audience most happy with the current game, rather than the opposite.

Only ANet or NCSoft could broadcast a poll to the audience that most needs to be reached, which is all GW2 owners, but I think they are too afraid of the potential results and what it might say of their post launch efforts to ever do so.

Ok I Did It.2854:

Anet they had over 10,000 testers who said the game was to hard and needed dumbed down to a level never seen before,

Apparently those 10,000 testers are players that do not exist in the game, and never will. A good portion are probably mobile games. Instead of catering to the players that are and have always been loyal, the ones that advertise the game to others and expand their experiences to everyone they come in contact with, they have instead chose to turn a blind eye to us. This makes it really hard for me to recommend the game to anyone in its current state as they clearly don’t care about players the actually care about the game, but to players that could care less about the game.

Its a really poor way of choosing the direction of the game based on that statistic… Just look at the results it yielded…

tigirius.9014:

Fascinating that I didn’t see it anywhere even tho you say you posted it to the official forums

He posted it here. I remember participating in the survey.

IndigoSundown.5419:

The other issue is that the sample population is not representative of the game’s population

No sample is a true representation, social statistics are flawed like that. 3,638 respondants out of the hundreds of thousands that likely still play this game? Reaching out to such a small population, never mind an excluding demographic, warrants dismissal of the results.

However the responses do indicate, at least to me, that ANet has some loyal fans that they shouldn’t turn their back on for metrics.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Well, as amateur surveys go, this one is probably one of the better-worded ones. That is to say, the questions are less likely to skew results, although some of them would still need work. The other issue is that the sample population is not representative of the game’s population, it’s representative of the population that visits forums. As such, I would expect the survey to reflect the desires of the sample population. Given all that, the number that surprised me most was 42% “satisfied with the present direction of Guild Wars 2’s development and updates.” What this suggests is that in a sample representative of the whole population, the satisfaction rate would likely be much higher.

this is a kittenumption, you assume that the people we really have no numbers to reflect what people in game think. Many people assume people ingame love it, but almost all such evidence is anecdotal at best.

It is true however that the survey has selection bias, the key is we dont know in what direction or how a different sampling of information would change it, or even whether it would change it much.

What anet should really do is have a survey they link ingame that gives a pretty good reward (worth doing). Most people will do the survey if it has a good reward, and can help direct the games future, if they have any interest in the game at all.

Then they can get a lot of information.

ahhh but i just realized the flaw of ingame survey, with ingame results.
They have lot of people who bought the game who dont actively play it. Ingame is also a biased population, in comparison to the amount of people who bought the game.
if they could get back even 1rd of the inactive people, they would have a substantially larger playerbase than they have now.

As someone said in a different post above, these “niche” audiences may actually be an extremely sizable portion of the people who bought the game and left, and catering to them should not be ignored.

:O I’m surprised Dervish is more popular than Ritualist.

HAPPYcat.6479:

Last week, I ran a survey called “What future do you want? Upcoming development of Guild Wars 2.” The survey got a pretty strong response – 3,638 responses total – through its release on Reddit, Guild Wars 2 Guru and the official forums.

Formatting all the data proved to be a huuuuuuge challenge (it took me a couple hours to put it together for Reddit alone). So on that note, instead of reformatting everything to post it here, I’m just going to link the post over there. Feel free to comment here, however. The results are really interesting.

Survey results

Thank you very much!. Its prettty good to see so much suport for dungeons.

I participated in this survey and seeing those results simply confirms my initial impression which was that the outcome was too predictable. This type of survey suffers heavily of selection bias (look at Q1), and a lot of the questions are directed (for example, Q14 and Q15 force you to want new races and professions, but it may not be the case for every player) in such a way that the end result is simply “we want more of everything” (except of course Living Story because of the belief that “everything else” and Living Story are mutually exclusive). Not really of any use to the developers.

Lucius.2140:

HAPPYcat.6479:

Last week, I ran a survey called “What future do you want? Upcoming development of Guild Wars 2.” The survey got a pretty strong response – 3,638 responses total – through its release on Reddit, Guild Wars 2 Guru and the official forums.

Formatting all the data proved to be a huuuuuuge challenge (it took me a couple hours to put it together for Reddit alone). So on that note, instead of reformatting everything to post it here, I’m just going to link the post over there. Feel free to comment here, however. The results are really interesting.

Survey results

Thank you very much!. Its prettty good to see so much suport for dungeons.

To my mind, the survey was looking backwards at the old style of MMOs. Perhaps your respondents were thinking that way too. For example, your survey didn’t ask if people wanted casual two person content. There are a lot of couples and families who play GW2 who don’t want champion trains, zerg events, pick up groups, speed runs, meta builds, PvP, or anything else like that.

Your survey supports what a lot of players on this forum have been trying to tell Anet for ages, but they constantly ignore us.

1. Majority of players want a proper expansion. Really GW2 has been screaming out for a proper expansion for 6-12 months now. AFAIK Anet have no plans for one!

2. Majority of players want more endgame content to do at 80th lvl, like open world or instanced bosses, dungeons, WvW improvements etc… What do Anet do, scrap the dungeon team and concentrate development on low level play….

Anet are just not listening and have not been for a while now….

Also, 3,000+ in a survey is usually statistically accurate to +/-5%. Election polls usually only target 1,000 to 2,000 people and they are usually correct. The only thing that may be biased, is that its more likely, hardcore/veteran players frequent the official forum, reddit and other forums etc… So it could be biased because of that.

Not surprising at all, people need/want a real expansion. This living story isn’t cutting it in terms of what we would see in an expansion, even though Colin thinks an expansions worth of content was released the first year.
release an expansion with half a dozen dungeons, new race and profession and a dozen or so new zones.
It just feels like we’re playing the same game that was released over 2 years ago. This living story is only a couple hours a month of new content.
But as many others(like Vayne) believe, they already have an expansion in the works and have been for quite awhile now.

I get that you want to be “hip” and not have an endgame, but it truly is needed. Player retention is obviously something you want to work on. How about instead of trying to reel in new players you try to get back some of the 3 million that originally purchased this game.

Fernling.1729:

Not surprising at all, people need/want a real expansion. This living story isn’t cutting it in terms of what we would see in an expansion, even though Colin thinks an expansions worth of content was released the first year.
release an expansion with half a dozen dungeons, new race and profession and a dozen or so new zones.
It just feels like we’re playing the same game that was released over 2 years ago. This living story is only a couple hours a month of new content.
But as many others(like Vayne) believe, they already have an expansion in the works and have been for quite awhile now.

I get that you want to be “hip” and not have an endgame, but it truly is needed. Player retention is obviously something you want to work on. How about instead of trying to reel in new players you try to get back some of the 3 million that originally purchased this game.

Actually quite a common question in new players, that comes from other MMOs, is: Whats the end game?. After a sucefull answer explaining the LS, they stop connecting after a few days…

tigirius.9014:

Fascinating that I didn’t see it anywhere even tho you say you posted it to the official forums because I can tell you that if it were here in general you would have definitely NOT received the 1% demands that you have listed there. Absolutely not.

You see most of the people posting here are casuals in the official forums whereas most of the people on reddit are the 1% who demand raiding, making everything harder, and dungeons constantly. So it’s blatantly obvious that these results are skewed. Not to mention that one of the key reasons why Arenanet is moving away from the 1% is due to their losing vast numbers of casuals. When you lose the majority it’s time to move away from the tiny demographic you’ve been trying to appease for 2 years.

So I simply don’t believe that these are results from this forum because I see the posts in general all the time and most of the people who are left here are tired of the problems that come with dungeons, tired of fractals, want new content but generally want it to be open world in the form of new zones, and want the old stuff to be fixed before moving onto the new content.

Im sorry .. what? Where do you get these numbers that reddit is all for hardcore people and casuals hang out on the forums? I check both and am very casual and happen to prefer reddit because GOOD threads and valuble info is much more visible on a day to day basis as well as positive things the community are doing like videos about the game. Many of which are very positive. Reddit is not some elitist forum.. it’s pretty casual in itself if you spent time there you would realize it’s not that different from the forums except that you wouldn’t see as many of the name-calling cry baby posts on there because those ones get downvoted pretty quick

An interesting survey. Too bad anet do not listen to their players and just go ahead and change what they think is good and do not care if it will benefit the players or not.

Interesting that 29% of respondents purchased gems to convert to gold. That’s a number I’ve wondered about for quite a while!

Sarrs.4831:

Interesting that 29% of respondents purchased gems to convert to gold. That’s a number I’ve wondered about for quite a while!

I’m not seeing that. I’m seeing 2%.

Fernling.1729:

Sarrs.4831:

Interesting that 29% of respondents purchased gems to convert to gold. That’s a number I’ve wondered about for quite a while!

I’m not seeing that. I’m seeing 2%.

YES: For gem store items 47%
YES: For both gem store items and to convert to gold 27%
NO 24%
YES: To convert to gold 2%

IndigoSundown.5419:

Fernling.1729:

Sarrs.4831:

Interesting that 29% of respondents purchased gems to convert to gold. That’s a number I’ve wondered about for quite a while!

I’m not seeing that. I’m seeing 2%.

YES: For gem store items 47%
YES: For both gem store items and to convert to gold 27%
NO 24%
YES: To convert to gold 2%

ah, yeah. I don’t know how I missed that.

All I really want anymore is more map to explore. I’m a cartographer at heart.

Ah the feeling of discovery.