Should GW2 efficiency should be used as an inticator for the status of the ingame population ?

[Woof.8246]

I seldomly see threads to pop up and  are used as indicator if living stories are good investment or not .But there are some some inconsistencies ,  about that.

For example , based on the site , if you search for "Fractal Rush Participant" (old community event , for doing  fractals) , it has 76 participant  that have done the achievement ,out of the 440.000 accounts listed there , but in the meanwhile if we check the wiki , we can see it  reached the "maxed Tier" of participation .

Maybe who ever is manually listed there , their interest doesn't align with the interest of the rest  ? What are your thoughts ?

 

 

Edited July 30, 2023 by Woof.8246

[Anvar.5673]

Since the devs don't share some statistics with the community, GW2 Efficiency indeed remains the only one source of official statistics as they come from the official API.

There will always be some people who will say things like "But not everyone is registered on Efficiency." or "There is not only the most invested players on Efficiency, look at my personal case !".

However, there is a whole journey to do (create an Efficiency account, generate an API key from ArenaNet account, enter the API key on Efficiency) and the most invested players are more inclined to do it.

When I speak about "invested players", I speak about people who play daily, manage their storage, look at their achievements completions and use the crafting calculator for legendaries for example. They don't necessarily do CM fractals and strikes missions everyday.

The only truth here is that Efficiency is the only official source we have today, certainly not the most accurate but it exist anyway, and no one can deny that.

For the story, in general the most invested players always buy all expansions and do of all the content, story included. Doing the story is the most basic thing to do. That's statistics just show that many players registered on Efficiency left the game and never come back.

[Knighthonor.4061]

oh lorts,,,, really OP.... I mean come on, you reaching, to try to justify low quality content that EoD was and became.

[Raknar.4735]

It's not official, so no.

[Parasite.5389]

a third party Opt-in website is not an indicator of playerbase

[Anvar.5673]

33 minutes ago, Raknar.4735 said:

It's not official, so no.

Yeah, sure:

Quote

The Guild Wars 2 API (application programming interface) is an interface that enables third-party applications to access data directly from the Guild Wars 2 servers.

 

Edited July 30, 2023 by Anvar.5673

[Vilin.8056]

One main usage of that site is to track account value growth per run cycle, especially to check efficiency of bots during multibox farming. Hence the site name.

Don't take it as an index for players who play normally on a single account.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Vilin.8056

[Danikat.8537]

@Anvar.5673 - The fact that the API GW2 Efficiency uses takes data directly from the game means the information on each individual account is official and accurate (at least up to the time it was last updated).

But the limitation is it can only get information on accounts whose owners have chosen to share their API keys, so it's not showing comprehensive totals across all players and can't be used to get accurate statistics for things like the popularity of different areas of the game. If GW2 Efficiency says 42.3% of players have completed an achievement that doesn't necessarily mean exactly 42.3% of all GW2 players have done it - because there are millions of accounts which aren't being included because their owners have never provided GW2 Efficiency with the API key.

We might be able to guess whether the actual total is higher, lower or about the same, but we can't know what it is. Especially since it's not likely to be a representative sample, I suspect the majority of GW2 players don't even know it exists and wouldn't bother signing up if they did because they're not focused enough on farming and other activities which benefit from it's features to bother using it.

[Anvar.5673]

39 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

But the limitation is it can only get information on accounts whose owners have chosen to share their API keys, so it's not showing comprehensive totals across all players and can't be used to get accurate statistics for things like the popularity of different areas of the game. If GW2 Efficiency says 42.3% of players have completed an achievement that doesn't necessarily mean exactly 42.3% of all GW2 players have done it - because there are millions of accounts which aren't being included because their owners have never provided GW2 Efficiency with the API key.

You're right too. I never said the opposite at all.

Basically I would like the devs to be more honest with the community, to speak with their players about their choices, their priorities (hello PvP again).

Obviously they have no interest in doing so as it could highlight some bad truths. That's why they do more politics than community management.

The most recent data we have is that "Soo-Won has met her final end over 182 000 times" at the date of february 28, 2022.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Anvar.5673

[Cyninja.2954]

The reality here is:

Anything official the developers state can and will be used against them by parts of the community now or in the future.

There is a reason why even the largest players in this space have stopped sharing live numbers. The hype and doom cycles are to unpredictable and counter productive.

[Danikat.8537]

2 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

The reality here is:

Anything official the developers state can and will be used against them by parts of the community now or in the future.

There is a reason why even the largest players in this space have stopped sharing live numbers. The hype and doom cycles are to unpredictable and counter productive.

I think for some people it's a kind of 'defense' mechanism; if they're convinced at all times that the game is in trouble and anything that happens is a sign it might shut down soon they won't be as disappointed if it actually happens because they can tell themselves they saw it coming. So any news, even something that should be good news like a new expansion being announced, has to somehow actually be a bad sign.

It's not even just MMOs, although with other games it's DLCs/sequels rather than expansions. I know someone who insisted Tears of the Kingdom was never going to come out, apparently on the basis that Nintendo knew they couldn't beat Breath of the Wild so they were just going to end of their longest running and most popular franchises. He's now saying ok TotK came out but that will be it, no more Zelda games after that, for exactly the same reason.

[Dante.1508]

I don't even know what that is.

[wolfof.1842]

45 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

So any news, even something that should be good news like a new expansion being announced, has to somehow actually be a bad sign.

well is it actually expansion or living world rebrand?

• New "expansion": 3 maps, story, strikes/fractal, no guild hall, no big new feature,..
• LW S4 (one year): 4 maps, story, raids/fractals, no guild hall, no big new feature,..

So how they compare, is good news? look very same to me, they just call living world "expansion" now and sell for $25 

[Khisanth.2948]

Something seems a bit off. I did participate in Fractal Rush events but GW2E says I did not. Even stranger is the Global Ranks one because I still have some of the rewards from that sitting in my inventory.

[Danikat.8537]

32 minutes ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

Something seems a bit off. I did participate in Fractal Rush events but GW2E says I did not. Even stranger is the Global Ranks one because I still have some of the rewards from that sitting in my inventory.

Same for me. I remember doing it (for me it actually was a rush, I missed the first few days then did enough Fractals to get all the rewards I wanted in a day or two) and I've got the rewards but GW2 Efficiency says I haven't done it.

[Pifil.5193]

1 hour ago, Dante.1508 said:

I don't even know what that is.

I think it was a repeatable achievement, spend 5 tokens get a box of crafting mats

[Alsandar.7420]

Let’s say 1 out 3 players uses efficiency. That would mean 1.2 million players? That’s pretty healthy right? WoW dropped below 500k during in 9.1

[Gop.8713]

As others have said, while there are a huge number of accounts on efficiency, they're not randomly selected so they cannot be used to say anything at all about the game as a whole. What you can do is compare efficiency numbers against themselves, to judge things like how popular different expacs, game modes, achievement categories, w/e were among efficiency accounts. Still not super helpful if you're trying to make statements about the game as a whole, but not nothing either . . .

[kharmin.7683]

31 minutes ago, Alsandar.7420 said:

Let’s say 1 out 3 players uses efficiency. That would mean 1.2 million players? That’s pretty healthy right? WoW dropped below 500k during in 9.1

Some players might have multiple accounts and are using GW2E for inventory management among other things.

[wolfof.1842]

1 hour ago, Alsandar.7420 said:

Let’s say 1 out 3 players uses efficiency. That would mean 1.2 million players? That’s pretty healthy right? WoW dropped below 500k during in 9.1

no, we don't know how many active players

GW2 only say "16 million strong" but counts every account 2012 - 2023

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

GW2efficiency will not count any of my characters completing Dailies.  Just will not.  I've no idea what else it does not do.  🤷‍♀️  I've spoken to the creator, and he just shrugs, as well. 

[Solvar.7953]

Note that any metrics have to be taken with what they are measured against.

Of all those accounts on GW2efficiency, how many are still active, or how many were created 5 years ago and haven't been played at all for 4 years?

Even if Anet provided official stats, it depends on how they choose them.  All accounts, even those that haven't logged in for 5 years?  Accounts that only login in once a month?  Active accounts - and how do you define active (5 times/week?  x hours/week?)  So I can see why Anet would not want to provide anything, because people would pick it apart with these details (either for being too generous or not generous enough)

 

[DanAlcedo.3281]

No

[Astralporing.1957]

12 hours ago, Alsandar.7420 said:

Let’s say 1 out 3 players uses efficiency. That would mean 1.2 million players? That’s pretty healthy right? WoW dropped below 500k during in 9.1

Reminder: A lot of players registered on efficiency are no longer active.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

Gw2efficiency.com should be a single data point. You can cross check it with steam numbers. 

You have to remember people who use efficiency are more active and motivated those the normies you will run across in game. 

Now what it actually shows is the decline of highly motivated players. For example, efficacy says only 5.5k people have completed t4 silent surf, I would say that might be close to real number because the % of people doing t4s and uses efficacy is probably very high. 

Compare that to the forward story instance, only 30k account have done that, which is majorly under counting, because every did that instance, not just the top.