Guild Wars 2

Pifil.5193:

Blaeys.3102:

Obviously I don’t have the numbers, but isn’t the raid vendor as big, if not bigger, source of new ascended gear than PvP or fractal vendors?

Makes you wonder why they limit this change to just those vendors.

Good question. Are they going to introduce this kind of change there too?

If they want to be consistent, they should. I doubt however that them not mentioning Raid in the list of the vendors affected by changes was an accidental omission.

Sublimatio.6981:

Topic is self-explanatory. It was previously mentioned each raid would have separate currency.

It was? I’m pretty sure i heard something exactly opposite. Do you remember where you heard that?

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

Sure, but as a way of obtaining exotic class gear, pvp tracks were never a serious option.

The Fractals vendor was a never a serious option either and they simply made the PVP vendor the same.

Agreed. But in this case it was the fractal vendor that was the problem. Balancing doesn’t mean making everything equally useless.

Obtena.7952:

That’s one perspective, here is another.

People from my guild were having a good time teaming with each other and farming leather. They see the game as something else beyond maximizing their gold intake or rushing to get something done. Not necessary? No, but lots of things in this game aren’t necessary … and people still do them and have fun doing it. It’s clear to me who this leather farm benefits.

You could have picked any other spot in the game and you’d likely have the same effect. The fun you had in no way impacts how good (or bad) this area is as a leather farm.

maxwelgm.4315:

Toughness doesn’t help much (they have significantly butchered armor due to no PvP/PvE split), and specially on fractals, you’re better off with the extra HP really, that is what is going to give you an extra second to stop the ticking damage from killing you.

I disagree. Toughness is at least as good, if not better, in fractals. Especially on a character with some aboveaverage healing ability, as it is a de facto multiplier to healing. The real decision comes between power and precision. If there’s a lot of important on-crit effects from traits and sigils, go with Magi. Otherwise, go with Cleric.

Though that is only when making a new set. If you already have one, stick with it. Changing it is not worth the effort, in my opinion.
Not in this case, anyway.

Now, what is interesting is that, by the post, Raids will not be treated the same way as the rest of the content. Unless they simply forgot to mention them, which i doubt, only Fractals and PvP will get the crafting treatment.

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

Nah. dungeon PvP tracks are here for skins, not for exotic class gear. If you want exotics, you can just buy them off tp for small amount of gold.

Last I checked the dungeon gear had exotic stats too and wasn’t just skins.

Sure, but as a way of obtaining exotic class gear, pvp tracks were never a serious option. Don’t use them as a baseline of comparison, because it makes your argument look really weak.

RandomWolf.3986:

A full-DPS set will give you a hard time. If you like being easily crushed, go with it.

On my ele, i found the opposite to be true. Any attempt to increase survivability of my build caused more enemies to be able to get close to me and start pounding. More pounding meant usually increased amount of pain, blood, and deaths.
Going zerker however pushed all of that on the enemies, and further away from me.

(so, to sum it up: if you play a squishy class, don’t bother toughening up, because you will still be squishy. Put all your hopes in ability to kill enemies before they kill you)

maddoctor.2738:

That’s irrelevant. You can get Ascended faster than Exotic from pvp rewards, that doesn’t lead to a healthy reward system at all.

Nah. dungeon PvP tracks are here for skins, not for exotic class gear. If you want exotics, you can just buy them off tp for small amount of gold.

Frost.5017:

Yes, I realize that the wvw doesn’t even hit the balance dev’s radar for consideration

The nerf to boon sharing to mesmers and revenants was due to WvW. Raid meta was just a collateral damage here.
The real problem is not that they don’t balance WvW. It’s that they have a tunnel vision when balancing, concentrating only on impact of the part of the content which caused them to consider the change. This often has undesirable consequences in many other places they haven’t even bothered to consider.

Healix.5819:

Astralporing.1957:

4. To reiterate, HoT won’t be included in f2p with the next expac release. That was just a misunderstanding of the policy mentioned in point 2 that somehow got treated as fact by some.

Probably because the original plan was to bundle it, but that caused complaints, then the free client was announced shortly after. There’s really no reason to even include HoT, since it’s not actually required.

Nah, people heard “HoT will be included for free with the next expac” and understood “Hot will become free when the next expac appears”. Which wasn’t what was being said, of course, but some people ran with that interpretation anyway.

Anet has allowed them as tools for self-improvement. If too many groups will start to require them, and/or use them as tools to check on others, the toxicity attached to the meters will grow. If the toxicity will grow, the Anet may end up reversing their original decision on allowing their use.
So, people that use them, be careful and use them in moderation.

Motoko.2361:

How many players in gw2 have MAXIMUM skill in all crafting skills?

I did an informal survey and I have found the following.

1 or 2 people say they have max skill.

Everybody else says absolutely NOTHING.

I did a similar experiment, and found out the following:
everyone in my guild has maxed all crafts, except for scribe (which only 2 people had maxed- not surprisingly, as we informed the guild beforehand that they shouldn’t bother with it and our guild has it covered already).

Since the truth always lies in the middle, obviously the real % of people with maxed all crafting (besides scribe) is around 50%[/sarcasm]

(oh, the joys of anecdotal statistics)

maddoctor.2738:

A couple of things:
A: I don’t see anything in the post suggesting that getting ascended gear will be more expensive than it is now (per item).

Um…

Second, purchasing the ascended gear will now rely much more on player crafting. The cost for a piece of gear will now include a crafted token which shows a player’s mastery of the appropriate crafting discipline, the game mode specific currency, and raw gold. Ascended crafting is vital to sustaining a healthy economy and it is important that we keep that in place even when a player acquires ascended items via a vendor. For PvP, this will add a considerable cost to the acquisition of ascended gear.

(highlighted relevant part)

maddoctor.2738:

B: How many players actually used the Ascended gear vendors from Fractals?

I agree that those could cost significantly less. In the end, however, as i understand, it’s not the price changes that are discussed here. Its the requirement to engage in crafting.

maddoctor.2738:

C: Let’s not pretend that the pvp reward system was healthy. It was so cheap/effortless to get Ascended gear from pvp that it made all other acquisition methods seem worthless.

It required interacting with PvP. After the first 4 league seasons i got burned out so much on that content, that i have managed to get only 150 tokens, for example. I know many other people that would rather do fractals for months till the right ascended box drops (and use gold to change stats on it) than play a single pvp match. Besides, there was a hard cap on how many items you could get in one season.

Besides, again, it’s not about the price at all (not that the price doesn’t need discussing).

As far as we know:
1. The f2p content will remain the same as it is now (there were no dev statements that suggested any change in that regard).
2. HoT will be included “for free”, with any new expac. You will still need to pay for that expac to get HoT however. It won’t be really free.
3. Hot and the next expac will be bundled “for free” (the same as above, so at no additional cost, but not really for free) with next expac in line. And so on – every future expac will include all previous expac content (basically, if you’ll pay for the game at any point, you will get every expac content released up until that point).
4. To reiterate, HoT won’t be included in f2p with the next expac release. That was just a misunderstanding of the policy mentioned in point 2 that somehow got treated as fact by some.

Jubilant.7280:

I’m sure the sentiment for majority of experienced raiders is that they themselves know the difficulty of the content and are usually willing to help out. (This is from anecdotal experience)

I’m sure of that too. In fact, almost every experienced raider i know did think like that about themselves.
And while some of them were, in fact, really helpful, others actually were not. Some, while claiming how willing to help they were, tended to be extremely unhelpful.

SkullProX.7083:

Don’t cry, it was way too easy before, and other games have an ENORMOUS gear grind, even 70-80g /asc piece is NOTHING for an end game gear compared to other games…

You might want to try out GW1 sometimes. End game gear there says hello.
How far did we get from those times now…

Ashen.2907:

It seems silly to call for new raiders, who will obviously not be commanding in raids yet, to buy a commander tag as a prerequisite for the content.

Especially when it’s not even needed for commanding in raids.

DeceiverX.8361:

PlatinumMember.5274:

Stand The Wall.6987:

hypehypehypehypehypehypehypehypehypehypehypehype

Why?

It is just a balance patch, it ain’t that big of a deal. Or to be more precise it is better to be cautiously optimistic than overly hype.

Why even go that far?

At this point it’s more worthwhile to just be expecting disappointment and then be excited and happy if nothing bad happens.

FTFY

maddoctor.2738:

Jubilant.7280:

I first invested in a 300 gold Commander’s tag and started hosting VG training sessions.

Last I checked you don’t need a commander tag to enter a Raid why exactly do you need a commander tag to be raiding?

Well, maybe because Jubilant seemed to suggest it should be a requirement for a casual to get into raiding. Which may be because he did buy one.

@OP
Can you please elaborate, how exactly do you want to keep both groups separate that would not create even more toxicity than is already present? Because, personally, the only way I see, would be to make raids be completely unappealing for non-raiders. And this, unfortunately, seem to create …strong dislike on raiders’ side.

Mat.8137:

From what I’m getting out of these replies, to understand the story I would basically have to play through the story of every type of available character, kind of like one of those bad dreamcast era Sonic games.

No. Racial (and order) storylines would fleshen out some side info. For example, each of the racial stories introduces one of the members of the Destiny’s edge (Caithe, Logan, Rytlock, Zojja and Eir), that keep appearing later on. Sylvari story also introduces Trahaerne earlier than others, and gives a little bit more info on him (since he’s a Sylvari) and gives a bit more info on sylvari race, the Dream, Nightmare court and the Soundless, (things that will be referenced later on during LS2 and Heart of Thorns).
Some story about Destiny’s Edge gets introduced through dungeons’ story mode (theoretically you should do them during your personal story, since the final story dungeon – Arah – is also the final element of the personal story). Specifically, Twilight Arbor story introduces Faolain, the leader of sylvari Nightmare Court, someone that will also be relevant for Heart of Thorns story.

GWMO.4785:

So what about gold? …You may ask… Cause not everyone can or wants to grind their stuff, most people will just buy it. Rather that is the equipment itself or mats to craft it.

That’s because, in many cases, buying it directly is cheaper than crafting.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

(And for the record: I voted for the Thaumanova fractal precisely because we knew nothing about it and knew something about Abaddon’s fall. It remains among my favorite fractals in terms of story and setup, even if it’s still longer than I’d like.)

Even though i voted for Abaddon’s Fall, when i heard that Taumanova won i wasn’t really disappointed, because i also was interested in that event. I stopped being interested as soon as i have entered it and saw Scarlet (who i still think of as the greatest narrative fail in the game). I’m now glad that it wasn’t Abbadon’s fractal that won – i don’t think i could have survived seeing this historical event tied to Scarlet somehow.

Jubilant.7280:

The raiding community is more than willing to help Casuals get into raids, but they have to put in the effort and time to learn in order to become a better gamer.

Yes, that’s the core of the problem. You’re willing to help casuals, but only if that means they will stop being casuals.

You ask casuals to stay away from you, but in the end it’s you that should be kept away from them. Which, in the end, is not what this game should be all about. What you’re talking about is creating a split in the community. Any such split can only poison the game.

In the end, what really needs to happen is the exact opposite. We need to seek ways to make raiders and casuals to be able to coexist together without one side trying to force the other one to change.

Amaimon.7823:

yea, it’s supposed to be a big thing, and true, at the time many people voted against abaddon not because they wanted the thaumanova, but because they didn’t have faith in anet making a proper fractal for abaddon.

Well, to be truthful, the vote wasn’t about Thaumanova and Abaddon fractals. It was about Kiel vs Evon. And many people voted Kiel, just because she was a human female, while Evon was male, charr, and a bad, bad capitalist to boot.

Mat.8137:

I notice that people have been mentioning seasons. I have no idea what you’re referring to here. Is it another DLC like the whole Heart of Thorns thing?

Sort of. It’s a “living world” type content – something that originally was to replace the need for expansions.

In short, Anet kept releasing short bits of content over the years, that formed a storyline advancing the events from the point where personal story from core GW2 ends.

First was Season 1, which was deployed in form of one-time events, that were available only for the people that were playing at the time the specific chapter was up (once the events passed, they could not be replayed by anyone anymore). Some of those events made permanent changes to the game world. Kessex Hills lake area got significantly changed, when first a big tower made by Toxic alliance got buit there, and then when it got destroued. The city of Lion’s Arch suffered much bigger changes, as it got completely destroyed, for a time existed in partially damaged form, and then got completely rebuilt – you can see how the old city looked only in personal story elements that took place in there.

As i have already mentioned, it’s impossible to replay this part of the story, but there is a recap ingame movie available to you once you finish personal story, and there are some films on youtube that offer more info.

Then came the Second Season, that continued the same story further. This time, it was made to be repeatable – you can buy chapter unlocks in gemshop now, and everyone that logged in when one of the chapters was up, got this chapter unlocked for free (the same system now is used for season three). The story ended up just before (and lead to) Heart of Thorns expansion.

It is the part you are missing.

In short, to fully understand the story from Heart of Thorns expansion, you need to:
1. Finish the personal story from the core game. Preferably you should do the first, starting chapters from each race. Barring that, i’d advise to pick sylvari storyline, as it’s most relevant to the expansion (which used story that was strongly tied to that race).
2. Watch the Living Story season 1 movie/recap.
3. buy the Living story season 2 unlock, and play through it.

Oooh, i see it now.

One post says “buy ascended gear faster, because we’re going to increase its cost soon”.
And then another tells you “don’t spend anything now, because any build you may make can get invalidated in few days from now”

Then they just sit back and laugh.

That’s going to impact PvE players’ interest in PvP rather severely, i guess.

morrolan.9608:

Grant only mentions currency from PvP and Fractals. What about WvW?

They haven’t mentioned it, so if it’s coming, it won’t be anytime soon. Notice, however, that they haven’t mentioned Raids either.

Anyway, before they implement it, they’d better fix the leather problem first.

Justine.6351:

Ascended gear is becoming too easy to aquire just like exotics were when the game launched.

Well, if Anet’ll want for new people to get into raiding, while at the same time keeping to use sledgehammers as a skill balance tool, that gear should really stay that way.

In short, you missed the whole LS2 story (and the movie describing ls1 story).

I’d actually like to see more of the salvage kits (and less of tomes of knowledge, for example :P)

nottsgman.8206:

I haven’t really played with it, but the lifesteal made me wonder: does the lifesteal from the signet stack with the lifesteal that necros get naturally on their downed 1 skill?

I don’t think so – haven’t seen any difference here. On the other hand, on condi necro skill 5 is almost instant ress if you have the heal on condi trait active.

Just to give you a better idea (and illustrate my earlier point):

Cynz.9437:

rev – just reroll. Nobody wants your, even your own guild :/

Revenant, before the changes that put this class out of meta, was considered to be one of the “guaranteed spots”. And the changes that removed it from this spot were not even aimed at PvE group content – they were caused by some WvW problems.

So, no class is really secure.

Joxer.6024:

Now, before everyone says the obvious “all of them”, I ask in realistic terms, as one who has seen firsthand the raid community demand or ask for only certain classes.
And, will this ever change?

Yes. One patch was enough to shake the meta already. Any future patch can do the same, and may see some classes go back on the list, while making others get removed from it.
Remember, that sometimes it can be a result of a change to single trait or skill.

No, this meta is not set in stone.

And there are no guarantees. I mean, i am reasonably sure, that Eles will remain useful, no matter what, but, knowing Anet, i wouldn’t really bet anything too valuable on it.

maddoctor.2738:

Though too bad about the archival data not being available. I had hoped for more detailed info.

Actually gw2efficiency has a much better statistic, it clearly gathers all the boss kill achievements and you can see in your achievement tab if you’ve killed a boss or not. If they expose that in graph form they could show us how many players actually killed a boss, including challenge mote versions. That would be a really valuable statistic.

Yes, that would be even better. That’s not what i meant however.

The legendary insights page alone is not bad, as it can sort-of track activity. The problem is, we don’t have its history. If we had that page’s snapshot done every week (weekly, because it would negate the fluctuations due to lockout reset times) since the site started tracking this currency, we could have done some really nice things with it.
Unfortunately, without in-site archive, and without anyone that actually thought to archive this info, we’ll be starting fresh (which means a lot of time before any sensible results arrive).
Boss kill achieves on top of that would of course help too – but again, without archive data…
(remember, we can’t really track size of the community through gw2eff. We can only try to track activity trends, and that requires a lot of data points to compare)

maddoctor.2738:

I might have older ones that I didn’t post on the forums. Now I’ll bookmark this and probably do an archive every month to see how it grows.

You might want to keep tracking the total gw2eff account numbers too, it will be relevant.

Though too bad about the archival data not being available. I had hoped for more detailed info.
Guess might start tracking it myself, just need to think a bit about what i’d want tracked.
(probably i’ll just harvest the whole LI statistics page every week, or so, now that i’ve looked closer at it)
Will also need to calculate LI possible totals i guess (or i will just use the 1st spot position for that one)

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

You don’t know if some of those people would not have bought expac if raid accessibility was better.

Because they knew what the Raid accessibility would be like when the expansion was released…

Oh, come on, it has been over a year since HoT now. It’s not like the decision to buy HoT had to be made before launch.

maddoctor.2738:

I specifically mentioned those that stopped playing completely in my post, didn’t you notice?

Did you also count them and removed them from the total?

No, because, as you know well, i don’t have enough data to do that. (i believe i mentioned how gw2eff is not that really helpful for most of statistical questions, didn’t i?)

maddoctor.2738:

The problem wasn’t about not tweaking the total, but more about tweaking the Raiders by choosing a number of LI like 130 while keeping the total the same.

Oh, i agree about that part of your post – the definition of a “raider” is definitely different for everyone here, and without agreeing on it first we can’t really have a meaningful discussion about size of the raider community.

maddoctor.2738:

Why not be fair and use 1 LI with the total, since you don’t know when those players got that 1 LI, what if players started raiding very recently?

See above.

maddoctor.2738:

Though, actually, for that question alone gw2eff might be useful (but only if we could have access to achival data, or if someone kept checking it over time).

Although the site itself doesn’t have archival data, I do. I’ll go find them and post them here

Cool. We might try to make something out of them. There’s a lot of factors included that could possibly impact the results, but at least some trends should be visible.

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

The original question didn’t go into the reasons why someone might not raid, only about the relative size of raiders compared to the whole community.

And that’s a completely useless metric. If the expansion wasn’t good enough to convince players to buy it, it has nothing to do with Raid accessibility.

Maybe. Maybe not. You don’t know if some of those people would not have bought expac if raid accessibility was better. If they cared about raids well enough, they would likely have bought it for that alone. I know some people did just that, even while disliking HoT in general.

Besides, again, that’s not what the question was about. As i read it, OP wanted Anet to release numbers showing that raid community is thriving and is so big that all raid opponents should shut up.

maddoctor.2738:

If the expansion wasn’t good enough to grab the attention of players and they left soon after starting, that also has zero to do with Raid accessibility.

I specifically mentioned those that stopped playing completely in my post, didn’t you notice?

None of those need to be excluded (well, except those that stopped playing, obviously).

And those that merely stopped playing HoT, but continued to play the rest of the game, likely weren’t interested in raids for some reason too. It might have had something about accessibility, or it might not. You don’t really know. And since you don’t know, you can’t just exclude them from the picture.

maddoctor.2738:

The original question asked if the Raid community is growing or not.

That was part of the question – and, incidentally, excluding some groups of players from the equation doesn’t change the answer for this one in the slightest, so not sure why would you want to do that if that was really all it was all about.

Though, actually, for that question alone gw2eff might be useful (but only if we could have access to achival data, or if someone kept checking it over time).

With that, you could create growth curves for different LI thresholds, which might tell us something. Or it might not, but at least it would be better than trying to estimate raiding community size compared to whole.

Azoqu.8917:

Coffietire.2783:

It’s only vulnerable to spirit weapons, lava axe, and earth shield

Hey, hey, hey! Letting earth shield damage it would be too OP because that thing already has a use in Deimos.

Earth shield is useful for something? Nerf it immediately!

BlaqueFyre.5678:

The only thing we know is that Raids have exceeded the Targe Audience population size expectations of Anet

Which also tells us nothing, really, since we don’t really know what these expectations were. For all we know they might have had a really low one.

If you don’t remember, they almost always say that they are excited about player response. Even when, as we learn later, that response wasn’t all that good.

Obtena.7952:

Astralporing.1957:

ich.7086:

Anet doesn’t consider price as a problem. The inhability to farm it was the problem for Anet.

Which hasn’t been solved. You can farm only t5 from this area, and t5 was the only tier that always was okay.

You know … it’s pretty important to be accurate in these discussions.

OriOri.8724:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5t7d1u/possible_spoilers_salvage_rate_research_for/?utm_content=title&utm_medium=hot&utm_source=reddit&utm_name=Guildwars2

This might be of some interest to people in this thread. Salvage rates from 4,000 drops from the new map. 1,000 each of Bloodstone-Warped Hides (the drops from the centaurs) and Unstable Hides (which drop from the random white mantle mobs in the map) with both the copper fed and silver fed salvage o matic.

TL;DR – The unstable hides give significantly more T2, 3, 4, 6 leather than the Bloodstone Warped Hides does. I don’t know if this is intentional or not, but if you want leather in other tiers than T5, then the centaur camp is not your friend. Instead just randomly killing white mantle mobs on the map is good-ish at that instead.

T5 is NOT the only tier that drops in that farming area.

Highlighted the relevant part.

ButterPeanut.9746:

If they had 9 or 6 more “clueless players” would that not count as a “clueless party” that could beat the encounter?

Well, on Cairn, 9 clueless players could have gotten the last one killed pretty fast.

maddoctor.2738:

worminator.5174:

error in measurement

You forgot to exclude those who didn’t buy Heart of Thorns from the total.
You forgot to exclude those who stopped playing Heart of Thorns before the release of Raids.
You forgot to exclude those who do not have an elite spec unlocked yet.
You forgot to exclude new players with little play time that do not even have Exotic gear.

There are more but I’ll stop here.

None of those need to be excluded (well, except those that stopped playing, obviously). As long as they are active, they remain part of the community, and should be counted.

The original question didn’t go into the reasons why someone might not raid, only about the relative size of raiders compared to the whole community.

ich.7086:

Anet doesn’t consider price as a problem. The inhability to farm it was the problem for Anet.

Which hasn’t been solved. You can farm only t5 from this area, and t5 was the only tier that always was okay.

For the first character? Yes. For alts, you can use the first character to buy the portal scroll and get them in that way.
Edit: oh, didn’t know you can just walk in to Bitterfrost with other chars. In this case, this one area is unique (you can’t do that for Bloodstone Fen, Ember Bay nor Lake Doric).

Rednik.3809:

Vinceman.4572:

That’s completely bs and you know it.

50 is never ever the average minimal number of LI for pugs.

Go back to facts instead of throwing in fake news to underline your personal feeling.

I took minimal requirement for VG and Escort, but if you want to move the plank up to 100+ then go ahead.
So, instead of 8.5% we have 5.5% raiders.

That raises another question. Should people that are doing escort on regular basis, but haven’t managed to kill VG, be considered to be raiders?

In that case, i’d say that not having immediate interrupt for engi would be the problem. Other classes had ability to avoid getting stomped already, so skill 5 is not a big improvement in that regard.

Rising Dusk.2408:

All I’ll say is that once again, it is a DPS increase for a Necromancer to enter down state.

Ouch, that was harsh (even if not entirely unwarranted).

Ayrilana.1396:

Exactly what subgroup is being specifically picked? You only have access to the data in aggregate form so it’s not like you can pick and choose.

The subgroup dedicated enough to the game they would want to use such a site. Seriously, that alone is going to impact player behaviour.

The fact that this site has something to offer for all kinds of players does not mean that all kinds of players will be interested. Or, to be more precise, that all kinds of players will be interested equally.

Generally, there are two relevant survey biases, that often mess up survey results if they aren’t accounted for:
1. you make a survey, and analyze the results, but only from those that answered, without considering if the fact that someone didn’t answer might not be relevant to the survey
or (very similar one)
you make a survey at a specific location, not considering whether someone being/not being present in this location could be relevant to the survey in question.

You seem to simply assume that the fact someone registered on and is using gw2efficiency is completely not related to their playstyle. That assumption is completely arbitrary – you don’t have any proof that it is true, beyond your belief, and there are some strong indications that it may not be true.
That alone completely invalidates any statistical results about the whole gw2 community you might get out of that site.

Ayrilana.1396:

IThere’s nothing to suggest that website would appeal to raiders more than TP flippers which would appeal more to hoarders.

True. There’s a lot to suggest however that it appeals less to people that are so casual they don’t really care about their account stats. Do you really think this won’t impact the results?

Ayrilana.1396:

That website works for both NA and EU players so I have no idea at what you’re trying to get at.

That you pick a specific subgroup of players, that is not really taken randomly. That in itself creates a bias. And you have no info about the nature of that bias, so you can’t even try to correct for it in any way.

But if you want a nongeographical example, let’s try this one: you are attempting to estimate spending habits worldwide. Basing it only on statistical data from people that have bank accounts. It just can’t end well.

Seriously, that’s the very basis of statistics. One of the most common and basic errors, that often can have a massive impact on the results. It’s one of the first things you’re being taught to be wary of…

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

The act of using a site like this for daily activities already sets them above the average crowd. Most players do not even care enough to use forums, much less more advanced sites. Quite often, because they don’t even know such sites exist.

First, the forums have much less activity than GW2efficiency.
Second, if they are in a guild they should know such a site exist. If they’ve been to many meta events chances are they’ve heard about it too

Being in a big guild creates a bias in itself.

Valik Shin.9027:

The raid community is bigger than the pvp community

Possibly, but remember that pvp community is pretty much dying nowadays.

Ayrilana.1396:

So you’re telling me that the player population on that website isn’t a large enough sample size?

Yes. The size is not everything. 100 million would usually be enough sample size for statistics about world population, but if you were to prefilter those, by, say, picking only a population of a single country (US, for example), you might arrive at some hilariously wrong results.
That’s what happening here. You are picking a population of a single country, and treating it as a representative of a whole world.

Ayrilana.1396:

You’re telling me that only a very specific segment of the population is attracted to that website?

Yes. People that use gaming websites, for one. We already know that such bias can be really heavy (remember that one LOtRO thread?).

maddoctor.2738:

IndigoSundown.5419:

And having an understanding of statistics tells us that Vinceman is correct. A biased sample is unlikely to be representative of the entire population. All GW2E can tell us is what percentage of people who signed up for GW2E have LI’s or MS’s.

And those who joined GW2E aren’t “random” enough?
I think people are underestimating how many are using GW2E for their daily activities, inventory management, crafting guides and not for hardcore play like Raids. There is zero evidence that the GW2E population is mostly a group of hardcore players

The act of using a site like this for daily activities already sets them above the average crowd. Most players do not even care enough to use forums, much less more advanced sites. Quite often, because they don’t even know such sites exist.