If the population isnt low, what is the issue?

[Last Crab.6054]

What is the issue if we have 11 million active players Anet?

[Sahne.6950]

2 hours ago, Last Crab.6054 said:

What is the issue if we have 11 million active players Anet?

You need to be very very very inexperienced with playernumbers to think any game has 11 million active players.

where´d you dig up that information? source pls

Edited November 30, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[ccccc.4963]

3 hours ago, Last Crab.6054 said:

What is the issue

Lazy players

[Sovarica.4368]

I've been noticing this beta weapon event seems to have a lot of empty maps and PvP doesn't seem to be buzzing as well. I think the game is on it's last fumes and it was a nice ride while it lasted. Farewell GW2 lol

Edited December 1, 2023 by Sovarica.4368

[Dadnir.5038]

In a game with both PvE and competitive mode, usually there is a majority of pure PvE player.

The definition of an active account can be very open. Ultimately you can consider that an active account is an account that haven't been terminated.

The game is open over a great number of time zones.

Within these time zones people mostly play when they are free and in the mindset to do so.

Ultimately you'll see more players during the week end and holydays.

[Dawdler.8521]

99.9% of which are PvE players that think invisible shoes is the meaning of life.

[Bunbury.8472]

Josh Davis said the most played mode is open world PvE, and the next biggest mode is WvW.

spvp, raids, strikes, beetle racing etc, these are all basically ants compared to OW PvE and WvW. they are basically not even worth making content for because hardly anyone even plays them.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

13 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

where´d you dig up that information? source pls

I've heard Arenanet makes statements like that quite a few times. I've even heard game coverage streamers quote Arenanet on those statemements.

Clearly what they do is they look at the amount of "accounts created ever" and then use that number when they tell people how big the active player base is.

Realistically this is what I see as a player who plays every day:

1. Maybe 20+ players on in pvp lobby actually moving around pushing buttons and queueing games at any point in the day, and then there are probably 20 more guy standing around in areas that are not the pvp lobby who are also queueing pvp games. Then 40+ random accounts AFK at bank in the pvp lobby that never move or log off.
2. Maybe 10 people on average playing for various sides in wvw servers in various maps at general times. This increases for sure during resets for awhile, but for the most part these numbers will go up a bit when a guild shows up on on reset or go down to nothing to where people are just outnumbered and there is seriously no one playing in a map.
3. Probably about 10 people in every pve map doing stuff, with the exception of newly released content, and in that case the numbers from those maps crowd into the new areas and we get like 5-6 different map instances going of the new content that are all full for awhile until everyone completes what they wanted.
4. Maybe 1 group running each dungeon at any time of day, at least enough people will join LFG fast enough to create 1 group if you list.
5. Probably 4 to 6 LFG listings for fractal groups around reset, but dwindles down to 1 or 2 around during off peak times.
6. Strikes seem to have just enough people rotating in and out to maintain functional group creation.
7. Raids are dead. This content is barely accessible unless you're part of an organized group at this point.
8. I see hundreds and hundreds of players standing around idle in main cities & hubs who never move or log off who seemingly don't actually ever do anything at all. I'll see the same characters going to the same places doing the same dances, for months and months on end. Are they real players? Hard to believe they are. Are they accounts logged in to make things look more active than they actually are? Probably.

If we look at the obvious and do a quick estimate tally, in NA at least, there are probably about 400 to 600 pve players logged in actively playing in various portions of the game at any given point in time. Then there are probably around 100-200 wvw players logged in on average, which I'd say I've seen it go as low as 50 or as high as maybe 300 during reset nights when servers are trying real hard to take every map. In pvp we usually have about 20 players queueing from the lobby and maybe 20 more from pve zones. Sometimes around prime time I'd say that number increases to around 40 & 40 at the highest.

I'd say it is pretty realistic to say that on NA, there is probably about 700-800 players online doing stuff in various places of the game, on your average day, not counting big releases like living world or a new expansion. During big releases, those numbers probably double or triple for a week or so before going back down to normal. These numbers are actual somewhat sizeable for such an old game, but because Tyria is absolutely massive and there are so many different game modes & zones, those numbers distribute and look thinner than they actually are.

Edited November 30, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Lighter.5631]

well, now is basically lowest active player for all games, it's finals or end of year for business, so people are busy

[Sweetbread.3678]

Well it kind of speaks to how terrible the mode is that of those 11 million active players, about 1000 (and that is being incredibly generous) actually do spvp. The mode is absolute dogkitten, was abandoned years ago, and has gotten worse with every single balance patch to the point that the only people it seriously speaks to are the ones that can only win when carried by a build so busted it no longer has a skill requirement. It had a promising start, but anybody who actually cares about decent pvp (and isn't just farming an armor set) abandoned this mode ages ago and for good reason.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

6 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

I'd say it is pretty realistic to say that on NA, there is probably about 700-800 players online doing stuff in various places of the game, on your average day, not counting big releases like living world or a new expansion

You forgot open world meta events--most players are here.  Just done a whole bunch of HoT metas for Nevermore and can say each one of them 100+ people, especially Dragon's Stand.  Now multiply that by however many metas are in the game---way more than 700-800 people on at a time lol.

Realistically I'd put it more toward probably 8-10k people online at a time across all modes.  If it were only 700-800 NCSoft would have shuttered this game years ago...

This would include WvW as well which is still segregated by server, and it seems most of them still have a queue sometime during the day, especially peak hours.  Did get a lol out of '10 people', you may have never seen VIP blobs but it's a hell of a lot more than 10 people 😂.  They usually k-train for 2-3 hours a night it seems.  

The sPVP population is low though, as it only caters to a very specific population.  Compared with WvW where you have a lot of ways to play it, in sPvP you have only conquest, 2v2, and 3v3--with maybe the LoL light mode if you for some reason want to subject yourself to unranked.  

Regardless, the 11 million is marketing.  

[Yasai.3549]

14 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

99.9% of which are PvE players that think invisible shoes is the meaning of life.

I mean considering how much it sells for, even if I don't care for feet, I think it's well worth my attention. 

[Mazinger.1084]

7 hours ago, Bunbury.8472 said:

Josh Davis said the most played mode is open world PvE, and the next biggest mode is WvW.

spvp, raids, strikes, beetle racing etc, these are all basically ants compared to OW PvE and WvW. they are basically not even worth making content for because hardly anyone even plays them.

So tired of this take... sPvP is an integral part of the game and merits attention from its developer, full stop.  These excuses are why devs feel they can get away with this kind of thing (although anet's handling of spvp is unlike anything I've seen before).  It is such a shame that this mode has barely gotten any actual work done to it as a whole for so long.

[Bunbury.8472]

28 minutes ago, Mazinger.1084 said:

So tired of this take... sPvP is an 🤣 integral part of the game 🤣 and merits attention from its developer, full stop.  These excuses are why devs feel they can get away with this kind of thing (although anet's handling of spvp is unlike anything I've seen before).  It is such a shame that this mode has barely gotten any actual work done to it as a whole for so long.

it's not a take. it's just the facts. it doesn't matter what you think about spvp. no one is playing it, (like seriously NA has less plat players than the average WvW guild has members) so it's not a good use of development time.

it's the same issue the raid community has. most players don't like raids, and don't want to do the content. so anet stopped making raids, because investing their super limited development resources on content the average player won't even touch.

the appeal of GW2 is massive open world events, and massive castle sieges. this is a large scale casual game. that's not a take. that's the truth.

you can pretend it's a competitive esport, or a hardcore raiding game, or even a high octane beetle racing game, but that's just copium and you will always be disappointed by the content that's released.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Bunbury.8472

[Sahne.6950]

 @Trevor Boyer.6524 I think thats way too low. You heavily lowballed the pve and wvw Population. According to steamDB, there are right now 2108 people playing... and thats just the people that launch the game thru steam

 

There are no accurate playernumbers for Gw2. Websites are estimating the playerbase, by the ammount of searches for gw2 over different IP´s, views on youtube and a few more things like Steamcharts.DB.

If you look at diffrent websites they will all give you a diffrent number of players....  so you can only guess....     

 

 

if I had to guess....  using those websites to form an average... it would look something like this:

 

Average players online at the same time, is somewhere around 30k-80k.     <-  Thats actually not too bad for a game thats 10 years old. 

You have a daily login of 200k-300k unique accounts.   (50k of those are estimated to be multiboxers and bots/afkfarms,  and 10k are estimated to be alts)  

There is probably around 200-300 people, per region that participate in PvP battles, throughout the whole day. 

At the end of Each season you have roughly 350-450 people, per region, that actually managed to get enough ranked games to be potentially able to score on the leaderboard.   (30-40 of those are bots and roughly 20-30 of those are alts)

I would estimate that there are 70-90 players per region that are ACTUALLY online simultaneously and are looking to play atleast one pvp game within the next hour or so. 

That leaves the matchmaker with maybe like 30 to 40 people and maybe 50-80 people during weekends, that are queueing at the same time.... and those are split between ranked and unranked and then also separated by the skill margins.  

 

Which leaves the matchmaker with basically nothing to work with....  The first 10 people that are somewhaaat close in ranks will just be thrown into the same match and it starts.

Whenever i play ranked or unranked i am always against  Boyce,wolfspider, Sindrener....    its very rare that i am not matched against or with them... and i am 1550 rating while they are borderline legendary.      But there is simply noone else to fill those games... so you have the very top people in your average unranked game all the time....

Edited December 1, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[Last Crab.6054]

On 11/30/2023 at 1:44 AM, Sahne.6950 said:

You need to be very very very inexperienced with playernumbers to think any game has 11 million active players.

where´d you dig up that information? source pls

https://welcome.guildwars2.com/en/play-guild-wars-2

 

Apparently, it is 16 million

[Sahne.6950]

That number is the total number of accounts ever created over the course of guildwars lifespan.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[Last Crab.6054]

1 minute ago, Sahne.6950 said:

That number is the total number of accounts ever created. 

That's a gain, of 5 million since 2019.

Lol, where or where are those millions at?

I bet the heroic Twitch giveaway probably for bots

[Sahne.6950]

alot of them are f2p accounts created for botting.  exactly.

[Remus Darkblight.1673]

6 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

 @Trevor Boyer.6524 I think thats way too low. You heavily lowballed the pve and wvw Population. According to steamDB, there are right now 2108 people playing... and thats just the people that launch the game thru steam

 

There are no accurate playernumbers for Gw2. Websites are estimating the playerbase, by the ammount of searches for gw2 over different IP´s, views on youtube and a few more things like Steamcharts.DB.

If you look at diffrent websites they will all give you a diffrent number of players....  so you can only guess....     

 

 

if I had to guess....  using those websites to form an average... it would look something like this:

 

Average players online at the same time, is somewhere around 30k-80k.     <-  Thats actually not too bad for a game thats 10 years old. 

You have a daily login of 200k-300k unique accounts.   (50k of those are estimated to be multiboxers and bots/afkfarms,  and 10k are estimated to be alts)  

There is probably around 200-300 people, per region that participate in PvP battles, throughout the whole day. 

At the end of Each season you have roughly 350-450 people, per region, that actually managed to get enough ranked games to be potentially able to score on the leaderboard.   (30-40 of those are bots and roughly 20-30 of those are alts)

I would estimate that there are 70-90 players per region that are ACTUALLY online simultaneously and are looking to play atleast one pvp game within the next hour or so. 

That leaves the matchmaker with maybe like 30 to 40 people and maybe 50-80 people during weekends, that are queueing at the same time.... and those are split between ranked and unranked and then also separated by the skill margins.  

 

Which leaves the matchmaker with basically nothing to work with....  The first 10 people that are somewhaaat close in ranks will just be thrown into the same match and it starts.

Whenever i play ranked or unranked i am always against  Boyce,wolfspider, Sindrener....    its very rare that i am not matched against or with them... and i am 1550 rating while they are borderline legendary.      But there is simply noone else to fill those games... so you have the very top people in your average unranked game all the time....

This actually doesn't sound all that inaccurate. I'm a very casual PvP player, usually end up around 1350 and I am almost in the top 250. Plus my games can swing wildly from cake walk to getting absolutely steamrolled.

[Chase.8415]

31 minutes ago, Remus Darkblight.1673 said:

This actually doesn't sound all that inaccurate. I'm a very casual PvP player, usually end up around 1350 and I am almost in the top 250. Plus my games can swing wildly from cake walk to getting absolutely steamrolled.

That's because once you hit 1350 range you will be facing against platinum players and it is essentially a coin flip if you're going to get a fair match or not. If you're lucky, the matches won't be 100-500 but often you can figure out exactly who is going to win the first 45 seconds of the match because of how ridiculous the matchmaking is above 1350

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

7 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

I think thats way too low. You heavily lowballed the pve and wvw Population. According to steamDB, there are right now 2108 people playing... and thats just the people that launch the game thru steam

Yes but is this system reading all of this including all the multi-windows and bots being ran, as well as all those AFKs logged into Lion's Arch that never move and do the same dances in the same places for the past 5+ years?

During my estimation given, I had incorporated this perspective vs. what the "how many are logged in right now" polls. This is why I said realistically probably about 600-800 actual human players playing, regardless of multi-windows being ran. Yes it is a thing. In just pvp even, NA has had the multi-boxing come back into ATs lately. There is again 1-2 teams of full multi-windows in ATs lately. I also see people pveing where clearly 1 person is the actual human player and there are bots that follow them around who stick waaaay to tight on the player to be human players. They follow the 1 human player very tightly and fling autos at targets and do the same exact F interactions ect ect. Clearly these are people who run follow bots in multi-windows to do map completes/XP/ect ect much faster than normal with several accounts. I've also had wvw players admit to me that their "wvw guild core" is pretty much 1 human commander who has several multi-window bots following him that stick very tight and start spamming all the support & aoe when & however the human player has it designed to trigger. Very easy way to make things happen in wvw. All you need is 1 human with 3 or 4 bots following it who all wear the same guild tag and people will follow you. Those bot programs are actually efficient in wvw zerg play from what I hear, due to the nature of needing to stick tight and move like a school of fish = winning.

But yeah, "number of accounts logged-in playing" is not the same as "number of human players playing".

7 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

Average players online at the same time, is somewhere around 30k-80k

Aint no way. I mean I have no idea how active EU & China are, but even if you incorporated NA, EU, and China, there is no way there are between 30k and 80k actual humans playing at a given time. If that were true, there would be 30 people in the FFA pit in every instance, 40 people standing around watching, 60+ people running around in weird places doing random **** and probably 80-100 queueing games at any point in time. Every AT would have at least as many entrys as an MAT, and maps like Queensdale would be reaching maximum limits from players running new characters. You'd open LFG in fractals and see 20+ groups and wvw would have queue waits all day long every day at any time.

Maybe between NA, EU and China combined, it may possible to see 10k-20k during peak releases, but 30k-80k aint no way unless the game is insanely more popular in China than it is in other places. I don't care what those websites say about "people logged in right now", sometimes you have to use your own eyes, common sense, and general math capabilities, to get a realistic gauge on these kinds of things. Companies/Corporations often gives misleading numbers on things. For example, the common dating website. You log in and it says it'll say some bull**** like "there are 5600 members near your local town" but that inflated number is simply counting every falsely created account it can search that has your hometown listed as where it lives. And anyone who has spent any time on those sites knows, 90% of the accounts you search are absolute fabricated bull**** to make paying customers believe the site is a lot more active than it actually is.

 

 

[Marxx.5021]

On 11/30/2023 at 7:57 AM, Last Crab.6054 said:

What is the issue if we have 11 million active players Anet?

Anet does not care about competitive game modes any longer.

[Mazinger.1084]

11 hours ago, Bunbury.8472 said:

it's not a take. it's just the facts. it doesn't matter what you think about spvp. no one is playing it, (like seriously NA has less plat players than the average WvW guild has members) so it's not a good use of development time.

it's the same issue the raid community has. most players don't like raids, and don't want to do the content. so anet stopped making raids, because investing their super limited development resources on content the average player won't even touch.

the appeal of GW2 is massive open world events, and massive castle sieges. this is a large scale casual game. that's not a take. that's the truth.

you can pretend it's a competitive esport, or a hardcore raiding game, or even a high octane beetle racing game, but that's just copium and you will always be disappointed by the content that's released.

Nah, I'll pass on your take (because that's what it is).  Let anet make a new map or two, adjust matchmaking, remove duo queue and add some new exclusive rewards to sPvP and we'll see how low the population would be.  Players left the mode because it's stagnant, not because "GW2 is massive open world events, and massive castle sieges".  Open world has always been there and no one begrudges the work they've done for that style of play.  The people that still play PvP do so because they know there is nothing else like it in the market, and you're lying to yourself if you think otherwise.  I couldn't care less about what PvE content is in the game or what the majority likes... that's never been an excuse.  Stop shifting the blame over to irrelevant things... this lies squarely on anet's poor decision-making.

[Sahne.6950]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Aint no way. I mean I have no idea how active EU & China are, but even if you incorporated NA, EU, and China, there is no way there are between 30k and 80k actual humans playing at a given time. If that were true, there would be 30 people in the FFA pit in every instance, 40 people standing around watching, 60+ people running around in weird places doing random **** and probably 80-100 queueing games at any point in time.

And there you see just how dramatically low the interest in pvp is, inside of the gw2 community.

 Id say its roughly 1% of the playerbase .

Edited December 1, 2023 by Sahne.6950