Guild Wars 2

I did some maths. Feel free to rip me to shreds if I’m wrong, but here’s my work.

I figured a Skill Rating range of 2108 (the top ranked account) and 600 (conservatively figuring the lowest, though my lowest friend is at 959).

The top 250 players range from 2108 to 1749.

So, I took the difference of the two ranges, 2108 minus 1749 and 2108 minus 600. The range of the top 250 players and the range of all the players.

Dividing the difference in the ranges, 359 over 1508 is 0.238.

If 250 players make up 23.8% of the available range, that means there are only 1050 active players. This doesn’t account for alternate accounts.

Am I missing something?

Except how much more crowded are lower divisions, esp. Bronze and Silver? Wouldn’t be surprised if only a few thousand or so were active in the PvP every season, quite a good deal of that population (myself included) being primarily PvE players.

There are a lot of playing having literary same rating, even in top 250 (e.g. player 1 has 1815 rating and player 2 has 1815 rating). Your mistake is that you assume that each rating is reserved only for one player, which it is not obviously. There could be 100 players sitting at 1500 rating.

Pretty sure silver/gold has A LOT more players than your assumption considering most ppl end there after their placements.

Your assumption is linear, and averages do not work like that. Most averages follow a “bell curve” graph.

Say the Y – axis is the amount of players, and X- Axis is the skill rating on the graph;

-Only a few high end players will be at the far end of the bell curve (Platinum, Legendary)
-a high amount of avg players will be in the middle (Gold, Silver, Bronze)
-few players with abysmal ratting will be at the close end. (Bronze)

With that in mind and referencing the general shape of a bell curve. The population would be much higher than you would speculate.

Have they added any new gamemodes? Do i still need to spam AoE inside too small circle or play that stupid moba clone?

Junkpile.7439:

Have they added any new gamemodes? Do i still need to spam AoE inside too small circle or play that stupid moba clone?

Love your sig btw.

No new game modes.

Yes just spam AoEs that cover the whole point you have to contest and capture.

That depends if you are like me in unhappy with the way GW2’s Ranked have devolved into. Then I suggest Smite for a established Action 3rd person action MOBA. Or Paragon which I’m testing now to see how good it is, since it’s new. I would highly not recommend playing Paragon on a low to mid end machine you will get rekted.

But since you are already asking this question in this way. I’d say you had no intentions on sticking around in GW2 to begin with. So I will not waste my time explaining to you the pros of GW2’s Ranked PvP, and why you might want to causally hang out in it, instead of trying to play it competitively.

That’s not how rating works… At least use a bell curve distribution or something. This is just kittenty math.

You assume a uniform distribution, but its probably more of a Gaussian distribution (bell shaped) with most players in gold/low platinum which don’t appear on the leaderboard.

Divided by zero.9370:

You assume a uniform distribution, but its probably more of a Gaussian distribution (bell shaped) with most players in gold/low platinum which don’t appear on the leaderboard.

I know this is anecdotal, but the curve should probably be slid back to more silver/low gold.

I just clawed my way out of silver and while doing so had near instantaneous queue pops whereas the last few days at gold 2 it’s taking longer on average to get into game.

Again….just stating what I’ve been seeing.

your assumption is a crime against math

as mentioned above. “BELL CURVE” !

and LOL lexander

Starbreaker.6507:

Divided by zero.9370:

You assume a uniform distribution, but its probably more of a Gaussian distribution (bell shaped) with most players in gold/low platinum which don’t appear on the leaderboard.

I know this is anecdotal, but the curve should probably be slid back to more silver/low gold.

I just clawed my way out of silver and while doing so had near instantaneous queue pops whereas the last few days at gold 2 it’s taking longer on average to get into game.

Again….just stating what I’ve been seeing.

While technically it is anecdotal, I think ANet intends for the curve to be centered around high silver, low gold at the highest. They are trying to set up a system where you have to work to get into Platinum and Legendary divisions. If the average level hovered around high gold/low platinum, then a lot more people would be getting into Platinum without needing to be there. Having the center of the curve be shifted downwards makes it easier for the better players to separate themselves with the higher divisions, and lessens the chance that someone places in platinum/legendary if they don’t need to be there

Player population is a lot smaller than it looks. Almost half of the active accounts you see are alt accounts. There are many players who run multiple accounts for reasons of exploiting the algorithm, trolling and direct match manipulation tactics.

It’s disgusting and ArenaNet needs to develop ways to limit this activity.

In old leaderboard it used to be a number of 50k players on each region, that were ranked.

How many play unranked or hotjoin only?

Its been stated by anet that pvp population total doubled since then and has been improving.

Rewards and leagues bring in masses, boring bad balance shawed the high end population tho.

Distribution is probably gaussian.

Divided by zero.9370:

You assume a uniform distribution, but its probably more of a Gaussian distribution (bell shaped) with most players in gold/low platinum which don’t appear on the leaderboard.

Yes the OP assumption is bad, but have you ever been to the PvP areana? I would say 70% of the badges are bronze. The top 250 is tier 2 plat and up. It is a back end loaded distribution with a long tail. Would be interesting to see what the percentages are for the different tiers.

Make that 1049 active players, I just quit.

Why?

• nooby teammates 75% of the time who ignore team chat, map pings and target calls; also, many don’t know most maps’ directives (they need to raise the level at which you are allowed to play Ranked)

• unbalanced team constellations (two Mesmers, two Elementalists, one Guardian on the opposing team; or three Necs, a Thief and an Ele — wth, you call that balanced??)

• being lied to that the Byzantinum chest reward was “repeatable” (couldn’t finish my armor set nor my ascended backpiece, because I didn’t know this earlier!)

• rude players (frequent flaming, bragging, AFK’ing or disconnecting, and other childish nonsense)

GG, ArenaNet, I’m out (and I only started a few months ago). Waste of time.

even if the OP estimated the active pvp players X3 it is still low. this season is proly the worst but we wont really know that because anet wont release numbers.

Let’s say your math is off. I still don’t believe GW2 has a big PvP population. It’s gotten to the point I recognize people in my matches -__-

Just some numbers for the hobby mathematicians:

I’m in a WvW community guild with ca. 495 members. When I look at “Friends and Guild” I count 154 people.
Maybe 10 of them are from my friend list or another guild.

Make of it what you want .

Kreweless.2196:

Am I missing something?

You are missing that ratings are not uniformly distributed. They are normally distributed. The top 250 are the upper tail of that normal distribution.

Fitting a normal distribution with a mean of 1200 and the rank 1 and rank 250 ratings mentioned estimates a total ranked population of ~32,000.

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

even if the OP estimated the active pvp players X3 it is still low. this season is proly the worst but we wont really know that because anet wont release numbers.

This season is much better than the first 4

Ignoring the questionable math on the OP’s part, we know his conclusion is false because 1k players would not even be enough to support a the queue.

Thanks everyone for replying, even the haters.

You were right, I’m missing the normal distribution instead of uniform distribution.

So, let’s adjust. Still assuming a range of 600 to 2100 and an average of 1200. The top score is view-able on the leaderboards, the low-end is assumed and the average was stated in devnotes during the “soft reset” of the MMR.

In a normal distribution, if the mean is 1200 and the top end is 2100, the standard deviation is 300. Since the top 250 players fall into the range of 1749 to 2108, we can place them a little less than 2 standard deviations away from the mean.

That still means the top 250 players make up around ten percent of the active player base. And since we’ve seen a lot of alt-accounts taking advantage of the MMR-reset…

I’m still right. There are only 1000 PvPers. #AirTightLogic

Ensign.2189:

Kreweless.2196:

Am I missing something?

You are missing that ratings are not uniformly distributed. They are normally distributed. The top 250 are the upper tail of that normal distribution.

Fitting a normal distribution with a mean of 1200 and the rank 1 and rank 250 ratings mentioned estimates a total ranked population of ~32,000.

Can you show the math behind this? I’m curious how it is done.

Ryan.9387:

Ensign.2189:

Kreweless.2196:

Am I missing something?

You are missing that ratings are not uniformly distributed. They are normally distributed. The top 250 are the upper tail of that normal distribution.

Fitting a normal distribution with a mean of 1200 and the rank 1 and rank 250 ratings mentioned estimates a total ranked population of ~32,000.

Can you show the math behind this? I’m curious how it is done.

Step 1: Go to a liberal college and learn about “numbers”
Step 2: Make up some numbers that look kinda plausible.
Step 3: Observe the numbers and gauge how they make you feel.
Step 4: If they make you feel good, call them real, because reality is subjective.

:). All joking aside, I feel 32,000 sounds good. There are many, many PvP players. The top 250 is full of several alt accounts so there is probably only 70 or so breathing people there.

Ryan.9387:

Can you show the math behind this? I’m curious how it is done.

Sure. Back of a napkin, first estimate the standard deviation of player’s ratings.

Crude way of doing it is to find X such that the probability of drawing a random number of 1749 or greater from a normal distribution with mean 1200 and SD X is 250 as likely as drawing a 2108 or greater from that distribution. I got a standard deviation of ~277.

pnorm(1749,1200,277,lower.tail = FALSE)/pnorm(2108,1200,277,lower.tail = FALSE) ~= 250

Then divide 250 by the probability of drawing 1749 or greater from ~N(1200,277).

250 / pnorm(1749,1200,277,lower.tail = FALSE)

If one can own multiple accounts; imagine those their job is solely to multibox. I expect greater numbers.

https://gw2efficiency.com/ Lists a total of 105,082 accounts that have PvPed to a point of being ranked. Subtract the people who PvP for the ascended and get out and you might be just over half that IF WERE GENEROUS.

Dlaxer.1428:

https://gw2efficiency.com/ Lists a total of 105,082 accounts that have PvPed to a point of being ranked. Subtract the people who PvP for the ascended and get out and you might be just over half that IF WERE GENEROUS.

that site only counts players that added their code there, which is extremely minimal actually