[Idea] Annual survey

A lot of arguing among players have it source in lack of knowledge.People claim that raids/fractals are accessible only for small group of players but we do not know how many players are actually doing these.People claim that thay know how playerbase is feeling about certain things, when they actually do not know.Et cetera, et cetera

I know we got a lot of data from sites like efficiency, from reddit, pools on forum and so on and so on. But not everyone is using these.

My idea is to do annual in-game survey, maybe with some small reward for completing it to encourage people to do so, and anoymously ask people about these things and then publish it.Then we will know, for example, if it is 2, 5 or 10% players who do raids.

I think we could help to create lists of questions here, on forum.And whats most important i think such survey can deliver a lot of interesting info about our community, both to players and devs.

What do you think?

ANet already has metrics on how many do what. At the first anniversary they published a bunch of statistics, including that Risen Thrall's had accounted for the most player defeats. That they have not chosen to publish those numbers since is perhaps due to the game's population declining. One whiff of actual numbers and we'd see a frenzy of doom and gloom posts.

This don't need to be actual numbers but percentages. And number-based data isn't the only data that we can get from such survey.

ANet isn't going to release that data. Probably not ever. Without understanding the context of the data, it's often hard to say what it tells us (or doesn't tell us). Gaming companies tend to believe (with cause) that publishing stats just creates more uninformed suggestions/conversations, but not using numbers they provided. (Plus, it takes some time to massage the data into a form suitable for the masses.)

I might personally prefer that ANet show us the numbers; I just can't imagine they will consider it in their best interest to do so, just because a few people are likely to want it for argument's sake.

With the way ArenaNet has GW2 set up, this would not work. It would be awesome, but won't work.

Sega does an annual survey for PSO2 on their site.Would ask things like what systems you play the game on, about how much time you play?Do you spend money? Are you planning on spending any more money soon? Are you planning on spending money in the distant future?What are your thoughts on the content? What're your thoughts on the story? What're your thoughts on the items?What are your thoughts on the store? What would you like to see come up on the store?What are some of your ideas for the future of the game and if you can, leave details below.Would you like a form of a collaboration? What kind of collaboration would you be interested in?

etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

The thing though is that almost all information for the game is usually posted on the site itself and they do deal information on stuff like certain streaming sites and live meetings within Japan and such.

ArenaNet usually releases information through the forum mainly and also Reddit.The site itself isn't really too interacting with most "normal" or "casual" folks to visit either.

If the set up was more open for everyone (yes, even freemiums), this would've worked really well.

There's a (very clueless) interview at Forbes, from a bit before the release of Path of Fire. The reporter apparently didn't realize that GW2 is not the same game as the original Guild Wars, but, during that interview, Mike O'Brien said (source):

Mike O'BrienAmong our core active players, about 90% play a lot of PvE content, about 40 percent play a lot of World vs. World or PvP content, and about 30 percent play a lot of both.

Now, what do you take from that comment?

That PvE in GW2 is great, and that's why so many players of the game play a lot of it?

Or that PvP is so, so bad, that Mike O'Brien didn't even say how many players actually bother with PvP, and instead grouped the PvP players with the WvW players?

It's all a matter of perspective, of how you want to perceive what you're told.

Frankly, I wouldn't trust any MMORPG community to receive data about a game and be able to analyse it whtout any kind of bias.

@Erasculio.2914 said:There's a (very clueless) interview at Forbes, from a bit before the release of Path of Fire. The reporter apparently didn't realize that GW2 is not the same game as the original Guild Wars, but, during that interview, Mike O'Brien said (source):

Mike O'BrienAmong our core active players, about 90% play a lot of PvE content, about 40 percent play a lot of World vs. World or PvP content, and about 30 percent play a lot of both.

I think he groups them as they're both PvP with just different scaling.

PvP is what... 5 vs 5 I think?WvW is.... I have no clue... XX vs XX.

Still pretty much competitive gameplay while the other is computer.