What is the average player?

[Cuks.8241]

4 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

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

  Hide contents

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.

I think its more likely the average player doesnt care about wealth. Especially because you dont really need gold in this game to play any content. At least doesnt need to go out of his way to earn it. And there is always the credit card path.

[StrangerDanger.3496]

Instead of trying to define what an average player is, why not just list common complaints people have with remedies so maybe these average joe's can read about it while at work ect?

WvW needs a huge, sticky, etiquette and map guide post.  Not just little stuff like resource awareness and "why are you repairing these walls to 100%?" and "how to call out important stuff you see" so someone doesnt drop EWP for two guys and a catapult.

Speaking of EWP, a guide to common abbreviations will help massively. 

There also should be some info on each map, why you join, what happens there, and why its important.  

This way you can just mail someone a link to the forum post when you see "average players" doing things wrong that you feel should be obvious.

Edited April 29, 2022 by StrangerDanger.3496
8==D

[ArchonWing.9480]

On 4/28/2022 at 8:20 AM, 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.

I mean sure, but perhaps they just don't care or don't know it gives 2 gold? It didn't always give 2 gold. Like I'm pretty used to ignoring most of the text in games.

And most dailies do require a deliberate attempt unless you are lucky. They are pretty specific and require you to be in a specific region. I would say most of them are pretty out of the way, especially the zone completer ones often feature zones that I haven't been to in years-- in fact I can't even remember the last time I did a zone event completer daily and I have rarely missed finishing 3 dailies for the last 6 years or whenever since they started paying 2g. Add a JP I am unfamiliar with and it's off to WvW. Many players won't do that.

Even on this forum, there are many people complaining about various prices, so these ways of getting easy gold are not always that commonly known.

It really isn't impossible at all; not everyone plays the game consistently every day or every month. And this is not the only game people will play either, so it is trivially easy to forget, especially since the game itself has changed much.

Edited April 29, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

2 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

I mean sure, but perhaps they just don't care or don't know it gives 2 gold? It didn't always give 2 gold. Like I'm pretty used to ignoring most of the text in games.

And most dailies do require a deliberate attempt unless you are lucky. They are pretty specific and require you to be in a specific region. I would say most of them are pretty out of the way, especially the zone completer ones often feature zones that I haven't been to in years-- in fact I can't even remember the last time I did a zone event completer daily and I have rarely missed finishing 3 dailies for the last 6 years or whenever since they started paying 2g. Add a JP I am unfamiliar with and it's off to WvW. Many players won't do that.

Even on this forum, there are many people complaining about various prices, so these ways of getting easy gold are not always that commonly known.

It really isn't impossible at all; not everyone plays the game consistently every day or every month. And this is not the only game people will play either, so it is trivially easy to forget, especially since the game itself has changed much.

Yeah, but then you have daily login rewards that trump the whole "Never knew how to make money".  Unless they're vendoring everything, I'm pretty certain they know certain materials have value, they know what their bank is, they know what their material storage is, etc.  Even doing map completion nets you materials that can be sold.  I just can't buy this line of thought when one of my friends I introduced to this game a couple years ago now was able to figure out how to make money and what materials to s ell basically three weeks in and this was basically her first MMO that she got into.

A more believable argument would be "They only did city map comp, roleplay, and nothing else. Never even asked for help on making money." But stating they did multiple world map completions over a few years without once figuring out basic systems and money making methods is very, very implausible.

[Vayne.8563]

7 hours 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."

My annecdotes aren't hard data, but that also doesn't mean they're meaningless.   If you don't think there are clueless people, completely clueless people, playing this game, you simply haven't interacted with enough people. There are plenty of them.

It was a dev who said years ago, and I can't find the quote now, that some ridiculously high percentage of the playerbase had never been to the trait screen. He was talking something like over 30%.  That's not a me quote, that's a dev quote. I sure wish I remembered who said it or what the number was, but it was in fact said.

 

You can also get arc DPS and look at the numbers people do for DPS.  There are people who have absolutely no idea how to play this game, running around, in some cases for years. You don't have to believe it. It doesn't make my annecdotes meaningless.

 

That said it's obviously not hard data, because how the hell could I access that. I have nothing to go on but annecdotes for most things and neither do you. But having more data, that is having helped a TON of new and returning players and some long term ones as well. I don't think my annecdotes or worthless.

They're at very least better than someone saying that's not how it is.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

1 hour ago, Vayne.8563 said:

It was a dev who said years ago, and I can't find the quote now, that some ridiculously high percentage of the playerbase had never been to the trait screen. He was talking something like over 30%.  That's not a me quote, that's a dev quote. I sure wish I remembered who said it or what the number was, but it was in fact said.

Oh hey look, actual data.  ... 30% is still a minority, though, and "over 30%" isn't exactly a great number  either.  But hey, it means at least 30% of people at that time didn't even care about their traits, I guess. 

Quote

You can also get arc DPS and look at the numbers people do for DPS.  There are people who have absolutely no idea how to play this game, running around, in some cases for years. You don't have to believe it. It doesn't make my annecdotes meaningless.

 

That said it's obviously not hard data, because how the hell could I access that. I have nothing to go on but annecdotes for most things and neither do you. But having more data, that is having helped a TON of new and returning players and some long term ones as well. I don't think my annecdotes or worthless.

They're at very least better than someone saying that's not how it is.

I do have ArcDPS, and I'll  let you into a little secret.  The people pulling less than 10k DPs isn't actually all that many and it's been getting fewer and fewer as time goes on especially around primetime.  Exceptions occur when the content is 1) Not in any current rotation be it for achievements, skins, etc 2) brand spankin  new to the game like how Dragon's End is or  HoT was ages ago. or 3) You're there on off hours.

I'd also argue that ArcDPS is hard data.  It shows how good players are doing by a metric (DPS, boons, even healing) in the logs that it can collect.  It just doesn't automatically collect logs of open world meta events because logs are heavy as is.  I'm also not entirely certain on the legality of collecting such logs anyways.

But anyways, you also don't seem to understand how implausible your anecdotes actually are.













 

[Vayne.8563]

8 minutes ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

Oh hey look, actual data.  ... 30% is still a minority, though, and "over 30%" isn't exactly a great number  either.  But hey, it means at least 30% of people at that time didn't even care about their traits, I guess. 

I do have ArcDPS, and I'll  let you into a little secret.  The people pulling less than 10k DPs isn't actually all that many and it's been getting fewer and fewer as time goes on especially around primetime.  Exceptions occur when the content is 1) Not in any current rotation be it for achievements, skins, etc 2) brand spankin  new to the game like how Dragon's End is or  HoT was ages ago. or 3) You're there on off hours.

I'd also argue that ArcDPS is hard data.  It shows how good players are doing by a metric (DPS, boons, even healing) in the logs that it can collect.  It just doesn't automatically collect logs of open world meta events because logs are heavy as is.  I'm also not entirely certain on the legality of collecting such logs anyways.

But anyways, you also don't seem to understand how implausible your anecdotes actually are.













 

Reality doesn't have to be plausible because it's not fiction. Fiction should be plausible because people need to buy into it. I'm actually recounting stuff that happened to me.  You don't have to believe it, but implausible things happen every day all over the world. 

Nor am I saying everyone I dealt with was clueless but there were certainly enough of them. I never said it was a majority.

But not going to the trait screen? Over 30%?  It's where you make your build mate.  That's astounding. If you haven't gone to the trait screen at any point in your GW 2 journey unless you're just a low level character, you really don't have much of a clue about the game. I think most people would agree with that and you're just dismissing it.

If 1/3rd of the players of this game have never been to the trait screen, that's a huge percentage. It means 1/3rd of the people playing probably don't have builds.  This quote was before you could just copy and paste builds in too, btw.

[Bladestrom.6425]

'You can also get arc DPS and look at the numbers people do for DPS.  There are people who have absolutely no idea how to play this game, running around, in some cases for years. You don't have to believe it. It doesn't make my annecdotes meaningless.'

 

^^ This is the misconception often promoted by 'LFM must by XYZ' groups or meter users, just because you don't run perfected rotations you are not useless.  For example i've spent thousands of hours in this game, thousands in eso and 10k in WOW as a pure raider,  If i chose to learn the perfect rotation like i have done in other games i would, but I don't, because i don't enjoy the spammy gameplay anymore. I would expect the average player doesn't care or want to spam their buttons in seek of a  perfected rote pattern for long periods of time either.

 

This game is designed for casual gameplay that the average player will enjoy, and average means it targets the median, someone who dabbles across many types of GW2 content.  

Edited April 30, 2022 by vesica tempestas.1563

[yoni.7015]

11 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

If 1/3rd of the players of this game have never been to the trait screen, that's a huge percentage. It means 1/3rd of the people playing probably don't have builds.  This quote was before you could just copy and paste builds in too, btw.

From when is this information? I find it hard to believe. You have a source for that? 

Edited April 30, 2022 by yoni.7015

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, yoni.7015 said:

From when is this information? I find it hard to believe. You have a source for that? 

I don't have a source, I and a whole bunch of other people on here read it at some point. Maybe someone can back it up. It was a long time ago, and I don't save every post I think might come in useful a few years down the road.  That said, enough people saw it where I think I can probably get someone to support it.

[yoni.7015]

2 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I don't have a source

Of course not, how convenient.

It might have been true, but is it still true today? What was said exactly and in what context? 
 

[Vayne.8563]

Just now, yoni.7015 said:

Of course not, how convenient.

It might have been true, but is it still true today? What was said exactly and in what context? 
 

Like I said, it was said, years after the game was out, so years into the game a percentage of people hadn't been to the trait screen. And of course, my own annedotal experience also informs me. A lot of people really don't know the game, whether you believe it or not. Whether you put a little confused icon down under this post or not.

It's not convenient. Having that data handy would be convenient. A lot of people know me on these forums for a very long time. I'm occasionally mistaken, but I never lie, because I have no reason to.  If I were going to make something up, it wouldn't be something like that.

It might have actually been when people were asking for the return of the Marionette or something like that and a dev explaining why adding harder content into the game was difficult.  I'm just guessing though, since it was a long time ago. And you're right, it might not be true now, but remember, not every person in this game is here for 10 years and even people who were here at the beginning might only have a year playing, before returning.  People don't learn or know the game, particularly people who stick to open world content, which I believe is most of them.

At any rate, not having a source of a few year old quote should hardly surprise anyone. You don't have to believe me. It was said though.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

12 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Reality doesn't have to be plausible because it's not fiction. Fiction should be plausible because people need to buy into it. I'm actually recounting stuff that happened to me.  You don't have to believe it, but implausible things happen every day all over the world. 

Nor am I saying everyone I dealt with was clueless but there were certainly enough of them. I never said it was a majority.
 

No, but the average tends to be what's generally common and you've posted something that was pretty outlandish and tried to pass it off as thoug hit were the average.  Also, my friend, averages tend towards the majority.  Are you familiar with bell curves?  Most, if not all averages fall on said curve where a majority of things happen between two thresholds and dictate an average.  Basically, what I'm saying is that someone who's spent hundreds of hours doing map completion and never once even tried to do dailies or sell off their stockpiles of materials that they would have if they actually did that, isn't someone who'd be on the big hump of the average bell curve.  It's as absurd as stating that people who only play raids once a week and nothing else are somehow the average.

Quote

But not going to the trait screen? Over 30%?  It's where you make your build mate.  That's astounding. If you haven't gone to the trait screen at any point in your GW 2 journey unless you're just a low level character, you really don't have much of a clue about the game. I think most people would agree with that and you're just dismissing it.

If 1/3rd of the players of this game have never been to the trait screen, that's a huge percentage. It means 1/3rd of the people playing probably don't have builds.  This quote was before you could just copy and paste builds in too, btw.

Gear, sigils, runes all play a big part, too.  Open world is pretty forgiving that one could forgo traits with the right set up. But also a third is still less than a majority and without the context of your claim or the source, it's not really anything to go off of or parrot a gain and again.  Also it's completely possible to miss UI elements that aren't advertised.  It's not like the game dumps the fact that a player doesn't have traits assigned into their face every second back then.  It does now though, (If you don't trust me, try walking around on one of your level 80 characters when you don't have assigned traits.  The game literally tells you now that you have things to assign.) which is why I don't believe that value is accurate anymore.

 

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

No, but the average tends to be what's generally common and you've posted something that was pretty outlandish and tried to pass it off as thoug hit were the average.  Also, my friend, averages tend towards the majority.  Are you familiar with bell curves?  Most, if not all averages fall on said curve where a majority of things happen between two thresholds and dictate an average.  Basically, what I'm saying is that someone who's spent hundreds of hours doing map completion and never once even tried to do dailies or sell off their stockpiles of materials that they would have if they actually did that, isn't someone who'd be on the big hump of the average bell curve.  It's as absurd as stating that people who only play raids once a week and nothing else are somehow the average.

Gear, sigils, runes all play a big part, too.  Open world is pretty forgiving that one could forgo traits with the right set up. But also a third is still less than a majority and without the context of your claim or the source, it's not really anything to go off of or parrot a gain and again.  Also it's completely possible to miss UI elements that aren't advertised.  It's not like the game dumps the fact that a player doesn't have traits assigned into their face every second back then.  It does now though, (If you don't trust me, try walking around on one of your level 80 characters when you don't have assigned traits.  The game literally tells you now that you have things to assign.) which is why I don't believe that value is accurate anymore.

 

Anyone who forgoes traits, which are free to use, doesn't know enough about the game to make a statement. Yes, they can get through the very very easy open world content in the core game. But those people are going to have problems in anything harder.  It's those people I'm talking about. You seem to be saying that well they can know the game even if they don't have traits. I don't agree.

 

And I didn't say those people were average anyway. If that's what you think I've said, you should go back and read it all again. I just said there are more than a few of them. They can't be average if they're at one end of the spectrum. That's literally the opposite of average.

 

Edited April 30, 2022 by Vayne.8563

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

2 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

And I didn't say those people were average anyway. If that's what you think I've said, you should go back and read it all again. I just said there are more than a few of them. They can't be average if they're at one end of the spectrum. That's literally the opposite of average.

Yep, sure.  I've reread what you've wrote.  This thread is about the average player and the perception people have therein. You posted some outlandish examples and are now trying to backpedal.  I'm done here.  There's no good faith being put forwards when your argument is about as consistent as ANet's stated release cycle for new fractals.

[Vayne.8563]

43 minutes ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

Yep, sure.  I've reread what you've wrote.  This thread is about the average player and the perception people have therein. You posted some outlandish examples and are now trying to backpedal.  I'm done here.  There's no good faith being put forwards when your argument is about as consistent as ANet's stated release cycle for new fractals.

I made a comment, you assumed it was about something else. I never said it was the average player only that there were many players like that.  All I've ever said.  Plenty of times in conversations like this the topic deviates during the course of the conversation. It's almost what conversation is about.

If you want to have a mathematical conversation about the average you would take the 5% raiders and the 5% or whatever of the players I'm talking about and the average would be somewhere in the middle. I'm sorry you made that assumption. It's never something I said, because I know math. The entire thread is basically pointless because there is no average player.

But the players I'm talking about pull the average down significantly. I'm pretty sure there are more of them than there are raiders in this game.

Edit: Actually I can see why you would assume what you assumed, but it's still a terrible assumption.  I'm reacting to specific posts and my post will generally be about the post I'm reacting to, not the title of the thread.  That said, I feel you've been pretty dismissive in general of pretty much everything I've said, and now I can at least understand why.

Edited April 30, 2022 by Vayne.8563

[Astralporing.1957]

12 hours ago, yoni.7015 said:

From when is this information? I find it hard to believe. You have a source for that? 

From what i remember, it was mentioned somewhere around the first Marionette, back during LS1.

[Sarm.5923]

I can only speak for myself but this was basically my GW2 experience. Kinda rambly, maybe good for a laugh, and also a look into how a self-professed megacasual saw the game for the first time. In spoilers so people can scroll past my post easily if they want to skip.

 

Spoiler

 

-Blood Legion Charr Elementalist with the sorcerous shaman background. The game said Eles preferred ranged combat, and I like wizards, so it was a natural pick to me. Was a Charr because I had read about an Olmec werejaguar shaman myth and thought it sounded cool as a meta-theme.

-Grabbed whatever gear I got. It didn't really matter what the stats were, as long as they looked vaguely relevant and had a higher level than what I had before.

-Spared father, let him move in.

-Rotated through weapons as I got them but stuck with staff whenever possible. Tried to play it like an AoE kiting mage from WoW; pull up to 5 mobs at once and play keep-away by running around and trying to minimize the time I spent in melee.

-Tried to keep up with professions but I was leveling faster than I was getting compatible ingredients, so I left them behind until I capped.

-Wasn't really liking the plot past level 30. Gave a dungeon a try, but it was all go-go-go. Heard the system was abandoned and gave up.

-Zhaitan was frustrating because the NPCs didn't help at the end. Kinda killed my enjoyment of the ending.

-Picked up the HoT/PoF combo from the $15 special. Immediately found out afterward what Living World was and how it didn't unlock it, saw the exchange rate of gold to gems, got pissed and decided to skip LW2 altogether.

-Decided to try Weaver and my new sword since I could finally try elites now. Was a bit awkward; preferred core Ele with a staff, but I forced myself to stick with it.

-Felt like I had a house dropped on me like the Wicked Witch of the East when I walked into HoT content for the first time. Finally had to learn to start dodging (as well as keybind it away from doubletapping a direction) because between my character's bulk, spell effects, and the idea that I had to watch attack animations for enemies almost always smaller than me, the lesson I had learned was "don't bother trying to dodge, you're just going to get hit anyway."

-Finally had to petition a friend for advice, was shown a fire/earth condi build as a training wheels option until I got more comfortable. Very slowly started to transition my gear out of greens and blues into Celestial yellows. Only now did I find out there's no such thing as "prefers range".

-Was constantly stonewalling myself on story progression because I spent so long being used to not having a leveling bar anymore that I kept forgetting to spend my mastery points, resulting in tons of lost EXP.

-Pocket Raptors.

-Raged hard on the Mordremoth questline because my DPS sucked and I was awful with break bars due to needing an additional 4 seconds to attune to the right spells. Then I somehow managed to not notice there was an invincibility shield I was meant to stand in during the flight phases, so I was trying to avoid boulders without having the gliding talent that lets you dodge in mid-air. I'd die on the second flight phase and the boss would reset; I spent over 40 minutes before I finally got it.

-Began PoF. "Who the hell is Balthazar?" Had to be talked into buying Living World Season 3, was promised it was actually good. Blessedly, I had just unlocked the raptor. Had to wait for the gem conversion to dip to a low point before midnight before I blew just about all of my gold to buy it. Had nothing left for the gaudy dragon wings I wanted to buy, and it cycled out the day before I'd get the gold back for them.

-LW3 was mostly okay. Was enjoying the story. Caudecus tore me a new one. Then apparently my Charr sold his soul to humans to learn someone's master plan was "I want to revive a guy you've never heard of so I can kill him again." What.

-Decided to change things up before starting PoF proper by finally trying out Tempest. Only found out then that Tempest was the HoF elite spec and I could have been picking up ingredients for the ascended warhorn achievement all along, but I was ineligible because I had never officially unlocked the spec until now. Grumbled, but went back and grinded it out.

-Okay now I know why I hate Balthazar so much. Rytlock's fun; he's my bro. Liked him and Canach's back and forth moments.

-Feeling grateful that danger zones seem to be becoming standardized and clearer to see.

-Experimented my way into something I affectionately nicknamed my "Stormsage" build, not knowing it's just called Fresh Air Tempest. Finally get to be the Olmec werejaguar-inspired shaman I imagined my character to be. Gave myself a cheap sleeveless tribal look for the aesthetic match.

-Got hit on a lot by other Charr players. Had no idea why until someone explained to me that I dressed like a "bara himbo daddy".

-Story was feeling a lot better, Tempest was being fun in a "I feel like I shouldn't be allowed to do this" way. Vibing.

-Felt exhausted by the Balthazar fight at the end, though. DPS probably still sucking hard, because my brain was going numb repeating the same stuff for so long. Accidentally skipped the ending cutscene, had to watch it on Youtube.

-Actually enthusiastic for LW4, in part because I got the free unlocks for everything but the first chapter so I didn't blow all my gold this time.

-I love Joko.

-My Olmec werejaguar shaman Charr meets the Olmakhan. Did not see this coming. Had an elemental-summoning playfight with cubs. Was on cloud nine because I didn't expect my race/class combo to ever be relevant in this way.

-Saw the price tag on a griffin and went hell no, raised a dragon instead.

-Started IBS. Meatoberfest + heavy metal rock concert + Burning Man. Somehow this doesn't feel out of place. Swapped back to Weaver, faceplanting all over again.

-Noticing weird parallels between the old Flame Legion's demon summoning and the Blood Legion's "let's get our own dragon". As a Blood Legion pretend-shaman, some really bizarre irony going on right now.

-What the hell happened to Smodur's personality? Plot feels like it's going off the rails, Norn looking sidelined in their own content.

-Get to the end, feel sad. Think back to my character's father, even though I know he's irrelevant.

-Tried a fractal, didn't enjoy it, didn't go back. Not interested in WVW or PVP so I never even bothered. Thought about making a legendary, but saw it'd require some WVW, so I didn't bother with that either.

-Story done, nothing else I wanted to do. Spend about a month just logging on to do the daily meta for 2g and some profession stuff, burn out.

-Figure I'm done until whenever EoD's Living World content is all out so I can go through it all sequentially later.

 

 

[Luthan.5236]

On 4/29/2022 at 2:22 PM, Astralporing.1957 said:

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

  Reveal hidden contents

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.

Might be true - that they earned not much compared to the to players that maxmized their profits. But you also have to take into account (at least if talking about the "average player") that for a lot of players not only maximizing profit was NOT the goal. They might not even have cared about farming at all at that moment. When season 1 happened back then ... I played as well. (Played from release until end of 2013, came back in June 2019.)

I cared about doing achievements of the seasonal events. Then going back to doing other permanent achievements of the core game and/or leveling other chars. Someone that "farms" has either already completed all of that (I wanted chars of each profession leveled to 80 and through the core personal story with map completion everywhere) or cared to play only a main. (And with 1 main ... a lot were finished with the major core story stuff I guess.) - then focusing on the farming.

If you do not focus/try to farm at all - it will lower that amount of gold of the "median active player" ... (if others that are active ... still play - but do something else).

I would more focus on those that need money. Let's say some new player wants to get the griffon. Then talk about those players. Will they use a website to get some optimized "farming runs"? Will they just do daily 2 gold + anomaly (for selling the mystic coin) - and stuff like that? (I guess that is easy for a lot of players - and won't make them tooo bored. Hardcore farming can make people bored. Especially the "average" ones that do not like to do repetitive farming for hours.) Or will they not do anything like that at all ... just randomly trying to sell materials they get from killing mobs?

I guess you can expect some (not all) of them to ask ingame - and they will get recommendations then. Easier stuff that can be done daily and does not take too much time (farming home instances, getting 2g daily, etc.) - should be possible for everyone.

Farming ... well ... personally I know such stuff exists. But I greatly dislike it. At the moment I am busy with my solo guild guild hall. (Managed to solo capture it.) Doing silverwastes for 2-3 shovels a day (then leaving) - for the mine. (Yes I know we can "buy" them from other players. But I want to farm myself.) Slow but steady progress. I do not really need it faster. I know I can farm a lot more and silverwastes  used to be a popular way to farm in general (also for gold) - and probably still is for players without expansions. But just not my thing to spend hours in the same map when I have other chars and other content to play.

Edited May 1, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[ArchonWing.9480]

On 4/29/2022 at 1:59 PM, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

Yeah, but then you have daily login rewards that trump the whole "Never knew how to make money".  Unless they're vendoring everything, I'm pretty certain they know certain materials have value, they know what their bank is, they know what their material storage is, etc.  Even doing map completion nets you materials that can be sold.  I just can't buy this line of thought when one of my friends I introduced to this game a couple years ago now was able to figure out how to make money and what materials to s ell basically three weeks in and this was basically her first MMO that she got into.

A more believable argument would be "They only did city map comp, roleplay, and nothing else. Never even asked for help on making money." But stating they did multiple world map completions over a few years without once figuring out basic systems and money making methods is very, very implausible.

Some people just have better sense than others in this, it would seem.

A lot of my friends and guildies say they have no gold but then they hoard like thousands of materials that they're not using because "it could come in handy", and "I can get these materials for free". When I see a screenshot, I also usually see bank tabs filled with bags that they couldn't be bothered to open.

It's anecdotal of course, but I felt like I had this conversation too much, lol.

And on the flip side, I know someone that destroys champ bags because they are too lazy to open them. They have like 10k+ gold, trade on the  tp,  and mostly just ecto gamble, so I suppose gold's not a problem there either.

 

Edited May 1, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Dante.1508]

On 4/30/2022 at 2:36 AM, Cuks.8241 said:

I think its more likely the average player doesnt care about wealth. Especially because you dont really need gold in this game to play any content. At least doesnt need to go out of his way to earn it. And there is always the credit card path.

Everyone cares about gold for fashion wars which is the true GW2 end game.

[Night Wolf.7016]

On 4/27/2022 at 9:41 PM, Fuchslein.8639 said:

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.

The fact that you state no one on the forums is an average player but then proceeds to explain everything that I do/have.

First point-ok I will give you this I play a mixture of OW and sPVP with some WvW mixed in

Second point-Yes I don't have a lot of gold because unlocking mounts like the griffon and skyscale asks for a fair bit as well as trying to get everything for legendary gear.Oh and the odd weapon or armor skin here and there lol

Third point -I don't have the gold to grab the mount skins and stuff I really want so yes I buy gems with IRL money from time to time

Fourth point-Some weeks I play up to between 20 to 30ish hours others I just log on for login rewards and home instance nodes.

So where do I fall am I average or not....I have not been playing that long tbh I kinda really only started this year.I got 7 chars with 5 of them being max and I mostly only play on my necro.My main (aka the necro) has a mixture of ascended and exotic gear(they all have the same stats and runes wich I chose after taking inspiration from online guides).As stated I am working on legendary weapons and armor but not really close to getting it yet.I do not touch raids at all but have reached plat in sPvP.....I did decay hard after that because I did not compete enough after hitting plat lol.I could go on but my point being there is a lot of stuff in what I do and how I play that point to being average but at the same time there is stuff that is not average.....might be because I am new or just how wide the different views are on the subject.

 

[ProtoGunner.4953]

On 4/24/2022 at 6:10 AM, Dawdler.8521 said:

I think I had 470g last I checked and I bought that green pistol on the gemstore recently because its good to see stacking swap. I'm the perfect average with my 9k hours doing mostly WvW roaming on a core engineer!

Average at 2.5h of AVERAGE play for one game. Sorry, this is way above average. I'd say average is maybe 1k hours. Holy kitten this is my 'main' game and I play a lot and i have like 5700h. I never played a game more than this. But I have my breaks of a few months or even a year now and then.

[ASP.8093]

There's a big difference between the "average" player in the sense of:

1. People who've ever played the game

2. People who are current active players

3. People you'll meet in game

That last one depends on your own activities; and also people with, say, 20+ hours play time per week make more of an "impact" on other players' experiences than someone who's only logging on for 2 hours on Saturdays.

 

One thing I've noticed is that the AP threshold for getting into Fractals and Strikes is quite low. Almost every day, I see a account with <5k AP, sometimes even as low as 2k, among the groups where most people are at 10k-25k AP. (Which is good for the game, imo.)

But, on the flip side, a lot of players who've got a lot of game time under their belts, with legendary gear and everything, still haven't maxed out their masteries.

[ArchonWing.9480]

4 hours ago, ASP.8093 said:

But, on the flip side, a lot of players who've got a lot of game time under their belts, with legendary gear and everything, still haven't maxed out their masteries.

Yea. I actually appreciate the game for making most masteries optional. Though fortunately so are legendaries; played the game for about 7 years as they didn't exist, and still do after getting some.

So any of the stuff involving that is very low priority unless it gets in the way.

https://i.imgur.com/LK4YCfd.png

https://i.imgur.com/0ZtBghm.png

https://i.imgur.com/MdiUwD4.png

(I'm mostly missing IBS points, mostly because I don't care. )

Regardless, there's a lot of ways to progress in this game because of the lack of vertical progression, so it's rather hard to say in terms of generalizations since you don't really need to do a lot of stuff. So I would say a lot of people do not seem to grasp this and thinks people play like them.

The other thing to note is that people play other games too, so even if they have free time for games, does not mean they're playing this one.

Edited May 2, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480