What is the average player?

[Tukaram.8256]

I have no idea what the average player is, but I am super casual. For the most part, these comments describe me pretty well.  

On 4/24/2022 at 4:07 PM, Cuks.8241 said:

I think 6-12 hours is waaaay above average. Thats in my ballpark. 1 hour per day, usually not every work day and a few more for weekend. I think the average play time is more like under 4 hours per week. 

6-12 hours?!  Yeah, that is way above average for me.  I am retired and barely have 6 hours I am willing to invest in a game. I play 3 or 4 hours a week - on the weeks I play. I certainly do not play every week. Certainly no more than 1 hour in a session - except during EoD story - the most fun in game in years. I still have not finished it, and hate the jumping puzzle to enter the story (I will likely never take a 2nd avatar into the story, but will enter the zone).

 

On 4/24/2022 at 11:54 AM, Aridon.8362 said:

To me the average player is someone who is sitting on 500ish gold in their wallet all made from selling stuff on the TP that theyve farmed or acquired in game, and pays for gems to get skins/utilities.

I have 700 gold, 3,000 gems, and there is nothing I feel the need to buy, except maybe some more shared inventory slots. I have no interest in skins. Never pay for gems, they give you too many when you buy an expansion. (people need more?)

 

10 hours ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

This goes both ways then.  Those who are stupid hardcore and can do dhuum CM with only auto attacks (With 4 of their other buddies) and those who can't even figure out how to beat big nose Ted (In their defense, Ted is the hardest boss in the game) or any story boss.

What is CM and who is big nose Ted? 

 

On 4/24/2022 at 5:01 PM, Dante.1508 said:

Casual is the average player. avoids hard core content like HoT and Pof, cannot pass many of the living stories solo, doesn't have many achievements, hangs out in LA or DR and plays in Tyria only..

Does the odd meta event if forced.

I hated all of HoT, and enjoyed the early parts of PoF. I have never finished a story in the franchise (GW or GW2), but have been playing and enjoying the game since 2006. Achievements have no actual use, do they? Other than bragging rights?   Core Tyria is far far my favorite part to play, and replay parts of it numerous times. The more advanced areas of Tyria, I have never been to (Ring of Fire? Dragon...stand/top/desert... something like that).  I generally bank in Divinity Reach, but do not hang out anywhere. I play, or log off.  I love the open world events, wish there were more of them. Lots of monster bashing, and everyone works together. That is why I love GW2.

Best game map ever (in the history of all games): GW pre-searing.

Most fun: Boss Blitz during Four Winds. 

Average? No idea. 😎

[Dante.1508]

I am an average player maybe slightly above average.

• I tend to play 3-5 hours a day for about 3 months then i take 6-12 month breaks.
• I have 28 characters and only use about 6 regularly.
• I never do dungeons, raids/strikes, fractals, pvp or wvw.. I have not even entered pvp in about 8 years.
• I don't really do metas unless one runs right past me and then i get bored very shortly.
• I buy gems for gold.
• I do not do much outside of soloing story and map completions.
• I finally got a skyscale 3-4 days ago and ignored it since release, i still do not like it.
• I tend to chat in Rata Sum or Lions arch more than i play.
• My home instance has maybe 8-10 nodes.
• I have under 100k karma.
• Have a splattering of Ascended and 2 legendaries i bought with gems.
• I have all crafters at max (from 7-8 years ago) but i'm missing a lot of the modern gear set recipes.
• Even with gliders and mounts i tend to have a lot of difficulties in HoT, PoF and living stories, i do attempt them.
• I have only the basic masteries filled as i cannot find more masteries to fill out tyria.
• I never do dailies unless its by fluke
• I never chase achievement points unless its by fluke.

 

 

Edited April 28, 2022 by Dante.1508

[yann.1946]

The "average" player is in general pretty irrelevant concept.

Mostly because at first we probably want to restrict to active players (but do we care about active players who quit for example?)

Do we care zbout average of the whole game, average over specific gamemodes etc.

 

(And then even more, do we care about the average, or do we want to talk about the mode or the mean?)

[Hesione.9412]

I'm not interested in the real average player. I want to know people's perceptions of what the average player is.

[disco.9302]

Anyone who believes they are the average player on forums is incorrect.

The "average" player would never visit any external website, reddit, forum etc or even have discord (or TS). Statistically only the top 20% interact with anything GW2 outside of the client and possibly the official page. Time to accept that if you're on this forum, you are a hardcore player XD.

[Gibson.4036]

This thread is an amazing demonstration of cognitive bias.

[sasya neko.1985]

22 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

Why not share your insights? What do you think people are getting wrong, and in what way?

the average is whatever the most players are doing, none of us will ever know unless Anet tells us.

noobs never improve yet annoy other players, casuals just play whatever they like but stay away from problematic stuff like grinding, farming and legendary stuff.

[Fuchslein.8639]

For me personally, no one in this Forum is a "Average" Player. Because Average means most People, not Casual, not a bad player, just the platant Average which are most people are, whether they want it or not. And most People in Gw2 don't step out of their way to participate in Forum-talk. If this was the case, the Forum would be much mor active.

And i think the Average Player is someone who

- Plays mostly OW
- Has not much Gold, because he uses it or just don't have it
- buys Gems with IRL-Money
- is someone who plays a bit, goes away for weeks or month, and than plays again for a bit

Yeah, that's all I can think of. I find it pretty hard to make any predictions about the Average Player.

I know some casuals, I know some hardcore players. I myself am a thing between casual and hardcore.
But Average? I couldn't tell if this person or this person is Average. In the past, I would have considered my best friend to be Average, but she now has a Legendary and is working on her second, and has been in raids and fractals because of me, which probably excludes her by now from this term.

[Hesione.9412]

5 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

This thread is an amazing demonstration of cognitive bias.

Isn't it just. 😉

[Voltage.8027]

On 4/24/2022 at 12:26 AM, Vayne.8563 said:

I know a bunch of players who never had more than 50 gold in their wallet ever and don't know how to get more. They just hang out in the open world repeating world complete on alts.

Are you sure they "don't know how to get more"? Since they already did world completion before, at the very least they must know about dailies before, and know they can get 2 gold a day from that. It seems more likely to me that they just aren't interested in getting more and just enjoy playing on alts.

[Labjax.2465]

25 minutes ago, Voltage.8027 said:

Are you sure they "don't know how to get more"? Since they already did world completion before, at the very least they must know about dailies before, and know they can get 2 gold a day from that. It seems more likely to me that they just aren't interested in getting more and just enjoy playing on alts.

I don't see how doing world completion implies they must know about 2 daily gold. You can log in and do map completion without ever opening the character panel.

[Vayne.8563]

49 minutes ago, Voltage.8027 said:

Are you sure they "don't know how to get more"? Since they already did world completion before, at the very least they must know about dailies before, and know they can get 2 gold a day from that. It seems more likely to me that they just aren't interested in getting more and just enjoy playing on alts.

Actually you can do world complete without ever getting dailies, or not getting them incidentally. They really have nothing to do with each other.

If you don't look at your achievement panel, you simply wouldn't know how dailies happen. Maybe you get an occassionally rewardf or getting a vista.  Maybe you occassionally get 4 events in a specific zone. But that doesn't mean you go to your achievement panel and figure out what happened.

 

The odds of getting a full daily just doing world complete would mean you'd have to be in the right areas for gatherer, vista and the right zone for events, and I'd wager that doesn't happen very often. 

I should point out, I help a lot of new and returning players and there are plenty I've talked to that had no idea how to get their daily. Even people who see stuff like krytan forager don't necessarily put together where kryta is on the map.  Getting world complete is in fact, completely the opposite of it, particularly since the content guide came out. They just follow the arrow which points them to the closest thing they don't have. Doesn't mean they know how to get a daily. I know it sounds crazy, but people don't know all sorts of stuff.

An extreme example is that two different guys didn't buy a copper fed salvomatic because they didn't feel it was worth mining copper ore in order to salvage stuff.  And example is a guy that had no idea there was a daily panel at all, they only saw the ones on the top of their screen.  And years ago one of the devs said a fairly high percentage of the playerbase (I don't remember the number but it was ridiculous) had never been to the trait screen. 

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

16 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Actually you can do world complete without ever getting dailies, or not getting them incidentally. They really have nothing to do with each other.

If you don't look at your achievement panel, you simply wouldn't know how dailies happen. Maybe you get an occassionally rewardf or getting a vista.  Maybe you occassionally get 4 events in a specific zone. But that doesn't mean you go to your achievement panel and figure out what happened.

 

The odds of getting a full daily just doing world complete would mean you'd have to be in the right areas for gatherer, vista and the right zone for events, and I'd wager that doesn't happen very often. 

I should point out, I help a lot of new and returning players and there are plenty I've talked to that had no idea how to get their daily. Even people who see stuff like krytan forager don't necessarily put together where kryta is on the map.  Getting world complete is in fact, completely the opposite of it, particularly since the content guide came out. They just follow the arrow which points them to the closest thing they don't have. Doesn't mean they know how to get a daily. I know it sounds crazy, but people don't know all sorts of stuff.

An extreme example is that two different guys didn't buy a copper fed salvomatic because they didn't feel it was worth mining copper ore in order to salvage stuff.  And example is a guy that had no idea there was a daily panel at all, they only saw the ones on the top of their screen.  And years ago one of the devs said a fairly high percentage of the playerbase (I don't remember the number but it was ridiculous) had never been to the trait screen. 

Dailies always appear in the top right corner of the screen, refreshed every day at midnight UTC-0.  Unless they've got an achievement tracked (Which would mean they've already been in the menu) or an ArcDPS addon enabled to disable those, the daily achievements always there, nagging you on what to do.

Also, it's quite improbable that they've never, ever, had a single soul in this game tell them how things worked with acquiring easy money, ever, especially if they're vocal about their monetary woes.

[Vayne.8563]

6 hours ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

Dailies always appear in the top right corner of the screen, refreshed every day at midnight UTC-0.  Unless they've got an achievement tracked (Which would mean they've already been in the menu) or an ArcDPS addon enabled to disable those, the daily achievements always there, nagging you on what to do.

Also, it's quite improbable that they've never, ever, had a single soul in this game tell them how things worked with acquiring easy money, ever, especially if they're vocal about their monetary woes.

Yep, it gives you five random dailies. Some of which you can or know how to do and some of which you might not know how to do. Not knowing where or what kryta is means you can safely ignore them.  I know this because I know people who have played the game for five years who have no idea how to do a daily.

 

Keep in mind, I've helped hundreds of people learn this game. New players, returning players, even people who play daily who've never learned anything. I'm running a prelaunch guild with hundreds of people. I've interacted, directly, over the years with thousands of people. Not hundreds, thousands.  And I talk to them. I even have a character named New Player Helper.

 

I have people in my guild right now that before they came to my guild, never did a daily even though they were playing for years. Just because something is on the side of your screen doesn't mean you care about it. They're simply following the arrow to the next objective. That's what they do.  If something is outside that, it's ignored. You don't have to believe me, it's a fact.  Whatever dailies some people have or might have done was completely incidental. It's nice to them that they get a chest.  That's it though.

[Cuks.8241]

I think its really hard to make statements about average anything. I mean sure Anet has the numbers but these are just numbers. Some boundaries should be set to actually get anything useful out of this. I'm sure if you average all the players that ever logged into the game the numbers get very skewed. Now going for all that actually bought the game might be a bit better but still. To get anything meaningful you at least need population that is somewhat invested in the game.

In addition I think people too often connect different parameters which I don't think are really related. For example the perception that someone that doesn't play a lot plays easier content. That someone that is older and has family plays certain types of content.

For example I am a member of 7 discord channels related to gw2 (some pve and some wvw related, not active in all of them at current time). Now the interesting part is that many of the people that are active and vocal on the channels are not young and dont put many hours in the game. Now this is completely from the top of my heart but I would say the average age is around 35-40. At least half have families. About 20% are female, maybe even more. 

[Sobx.1758]

On 4/27/2022 at 10:13 AM, Hesione.9412 said:

I'm not interested in the real average player. I want to know people's perceptions of what the average player is.

If this forum taught me anything, it's that "the average player" is whatever someone needs it to be in order to achieve their own goals 😄 

Even in this thread, we apparently need to pretend that poor "average player" doesn't understand how numbers (and accumulating wealth) work. "The player doesn't know how to get more than 50 gold" is a pretty bizarre thing to say -and no, I'm not saying here that it's somehow "fast and easy" for everyone, I'm talking specifically about the claim that was made there. Pretending that "average players" spamming world completion on alts don't know about daily achievements also seems like an attempt at normalizing extremes, based on someone who refuses to read anything that's on their screen -because that's probably the only way you can keep missing dailies while repeatedly 100%ing the maps.

Edited April 29, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

On 4/27/2022 at 6:00 PM, Vayne.8563 said:

Actually you can do world complete without ever getting dailies, or not getting them incidentally. They really have nothing to do with each other.

If you don't look at your achievement panel, you simply wouldn't know how dailies happen. Maybe you get an occassionally rewardf or getting a vista.  Maybe you occassionally get 4 events in a specific zone. But that doesn't mean you go to your achievement panel and figure out what happened.

So you're sitting here admitting that someone you know has played for such a long time and you didn't even bother giving them any sort of assistance in learning the game?

I'm also not entirely convinced your anecdotes are anywhere near the average player.  Gonna have to start seeing some sources or your anecdotes are as good as my own.

 

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

So you're sitting here admitting that someone you know has played for such a long time and you didn't even bother giving them any sort of assistance in learning the game?

I'm also not entirely convinced your anecdotes are anywhere near the average player.  Gonna have to start seeing some sources or your anecdotes are as good as my own.

 

Yep, someone I know how, played the game for years before they met me. More than one person. It's hard to understand how you could think that I know people for years and they don't know anything about the game.

See, I said I help new and returning players, and some people come back to the game repeatedly  because they never get it in the first place. One guy in my guild has been here all along, and he did nothing but world completes over and over again on alts. He didn't know anything else. But all that was before he was in my guild.

 

As for sources, you can accuse me of lying or not, I don't really care. But if you think I'm going to start going up to guildies and outing them personally just so you can trust me, or for that matter that every person I've helped I've recorded their name is just silly.  If you don't believe me, you don't believe me. I'm okay with that.

 

It doesn't make anything I've said untrue.

[Luthan.5236]

I think about 1-3 hours per day during weekday seems right. Maybe a bit more at weekends.  Let's say 10-15  hours per week. (I play a lot more ... so I am above average there lol.)

Might be trying to play easier instanced group content as well (fractals, dungeons, easier striks). (I tried the easy IBS strikes and the fractals up to T2. Usually avoiding such group content. While in other games with more focus on this there might be a lot of even older players with a job and stuff ... that play raids. Cause they know the game from growing up when they are at school. WoW - that game has such a playerbase maybe ... I guess. For GW2 it might be different ... more that actually are 100 percent casual ... avoiding instanced group content at all since you can make progress without being forced to raid for gear. Other games basically have only raiding as endgame.)

For money/farming: Leisurely and only as needed (for Skyscale just starting when they start the collection). (Personally I save stuff slowly every day and barely grind at all. Gathers up by just playing a lot.)

Achievementing and story: Focus on story and 1 main char - doing achievements as needed (or in the mood) - to complete meta and map comletion (only once for the main). (Here I am achieving map completion for at least 1 char of each profession - 9 chars. 2 finished so far.)

Yeah ... the casual average player will be in the "end game" once they have played their main through the full story -gotten the important mounts (Skyscale) - and having unlocked all elite specs for their main + map completion on the major expansion and living world stuff.

Then "endgaming": Completing world completion on old core maps and achievements and maybe later a legendary slowly.

Most stuff so far fits pretty well with the core philosophy - and what those types of players like. Only exception I can see (might get changed sooner or later): Strike required for the turtle unlock.

Edit: Also the average (while I try to farm for myself - since playing a lot) might get the 2g daily and selling mats from home instance. (I get the 2g daily and put the mats in storage that I bought expanders for.) And now with EoD selling the weekly stones for about 8 gold. (4, not 5 since avoiding strike. if we talk about "average" player.) Big increase in easy income for those players that play not a lot - with EoD. At least as long as the price stays stable.

(Seems to go low to 8.1 or so at the start of the week.  Higher up to 9 towards the end of the week. For this week. Might start with a lower value next week and go even lower in the long-term.)

Edited April 29, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[Cynder.2509]

Well, then I'm not average and in a category completely above average. Good to know ^^

[voltaicbore.8012]

On 4/25/2022 at 6:31 PM, FirebrandFrog.7603 said:

but games like GW2 hit them with paralysis of choice like a bat to a man's face.

This is the best possible statement of the "average" GW2 player in my mind. The average MMO player in general, really. Players really seem to like being told exactly what to do, and exactly how to play their class.

But yeah, I think the hallmark of the average player is the inability (or unwillingness) to handle the gear/trait/playstyle variety this game offers. Their response to that inability can differ - some just copy a meta build, others try to make their own, and still others simply don't care and wear/equip a hodgepodge of whatever. But in the end all those "average" choices are centered on simply not wanting or not being able to understand the build variety available.

[Astralporing.1957]

11 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Even in this thread, we apparently need to pretend that poor "average player" doesn't understand how numbers (and accumulating wealth) work. "The player doesn't know how to get more than 50 gold" is a pretty bizarre thing to say -and no, I'm not saying here that it's somehow "fast and easy" for everyone

There was, long time ago, a first moment when the game introduced a new and very lucrative way to earn gold (at least compared to how it was before). That event was the first Queen's Pavillon, and the LS1 Scarlet Invasion events that wen alongside it.

The whole thing took about 2 weeks, and consisted of 3 activities that could bring different levels of income: Queen's Gauntlet (with at that time extremely lucrative way of earning gold through Deadeye farming - you got gold for killing Gauntlet enemies, and additional gold rewards for each gambit selected, and deadeye was the opponent that could be killed the fastest with all gambits on), the Pavillon bosses below (which worked a bit differently than today, you basically had zones filled with bosses, with normal scaling up giving veterans and champs, with appropriate reward drops - and quite high rate of lodestone drops on top of it), and the Scalet invasion events, which also showered you with normal drops and champion bags.

There were people that could earn hundreds of gold daily with this, but even more casual approach could easily earn you several gold per day (and a ton of valueble drops on top of it).

And then, after the event ended, we've got told what was the earning for the median player in that two weeks total - out of all players that did participate. Can you guess how much it was?

Answer: it was

Spoiler

2 gold

Yes. that's how much  a median active player earned total in two weeks.

So, yeah, the average player apparently really does not understand how wealth (and wealth acquisition) works in this game.Or at least did not understand it then, and i haven't seen yet anything that would make me think the situation has changed since then.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

4 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Yep, someone I know how, played the game for years before they met me. More than one person. It's hard to understand how you could think that I know people for years and they don't know anything about the game.

See, I said I help new and returning players, and some people come back to the game repeatedly  because they never get it in the first place. One guy in my guild has been here all along, and he did nothing but world completes over and over again on alts. He didn't know anything else. But all that was before he was in my guild.

 

As for sources, you can accuse me of lying or not, I don't really care. But if you think I'm going to start going up to guildies and outing them personally just so you can trust me, or for that matter that every person I've helped I've recorded their name is just silly.  If you don't believe me, you don't believe me. I'm okay with that.

 

It doesn't make anything I've said untrue.

I'm saying your anecdotes are meaningless, Vayne.  They hold no water, weight, or even real relevance here as they don't actually connect to anything plausible outside of "You gotta believe me, I've seen people who are completely clueless while also having played the game for hundreds of hours doing big content."

[Astralporing.1957]

44 minutes ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

I'm saying your anecdotes are meaningless, Vayne.  They hold no water, weight, or even real relevance here as they don't actually connect to anything plausible outside of "You gotta believe me, I've seen people who are completely clueless while also having played the game for hundreds of hours doing big content."

Anecdotal evidence is indeed not worth much. Claims that someone flat out lies when presenting such anecdotal evidence just because it clashes with your beliefs of how reality should work is worth even less however.

[Average.7901]

Um, excuse me.... You rang???