ANet numbers regarding GW2. Discussion.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

How did they count "active" accounts? Got a link for that article?

Can't provide the link, but I am sure they answered this question that active account = login once per month.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:And yet, there was a Fortune article about GW2 ESports a couple of months before HoT dropped citing 1.5 million monthly active (paid) accounts, which roughly doubled to 3 million once Play for Free hit. HoT sales were at best (at that time) a third of those paid accounts.

How did they count "active" accounts? Got a link for that article?

http://fortune.com/2015/11/24/areanet-investing-in-esports/

“Guild Wars 2 has proven pretty resilient historically, with about 1.5 million monthly actives,” SuperData Research CEO Joost van Dreunen says. “Since it switched to free-to-play in late August, Guild Wars 2’s monthly active user base has doubled to 3.1 million (October 2015)."

[maddoctor.2738]

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:And yet, there was a Fortune article about GW2 ESports a couple of months before HoT dropped citing 1.5 million monthly active (paid) accounts, which roughly doubled to 3 million once Play for Free hit. HoT sales were at best (at that time) a third of those paid accounts.

How did they count "active" accounts? Got a link for that article?

http://fortune.com/2015/11/24/areanet-investing-in-esports/

The article is from November 2015 so after Heart of Thorns launched. And in just one month after going free to play the game got 2 million new free players.Why do you blame Heart of Thorns for the lack of the conversion? Isn't the core game responsible for converting players? Plus 1 month of playing Guild Wars 2 is a very short length of time for anyone to convert anyway, they would be far from finished with the Core game at that point.

[Torolan.5816]

And we all know that GW2 shoved Lol and Starcraft from the throne of Esports...oh wait...

I have to admit that i am not sure if a F2Player is any kind of measurable success for Anet. I do not see how this could pay off beside being a very, very extended demo, but the model of F2P is so popular that there has to be something I am missing.

My personal! explanation is that the casual players liked the core game, at least that much that they logged in once a month or so. Most probably informed themselves about HoT and found it lacking or simply not something they wanted to take part in. Evidence for this idea would be that PoF sells better than HoT because it is much closer to the core game than HoT. The only other guy I personally know who still plays Gw2 is a now casual(married^^), full time job having but seasoned veteran of other MMOs and only recently bought HoT for a very small price because he could not spare the time for it when it was in full swing.

[Michael.9403]

I believe PoF should do okay with sales, and it's fun to play, but it will not hold people.

I look back after 3 weeks and a griffon owner, and PoF is done. Maps complete, masteries lack 1 of 19, and it isn't essential, story done (required for griffon). What is there to do? Run another character thru for elite? But that just needs HP runs, which might take an evening once the account has full use of all mounts. While others have done it faster, and others will do it slower, PoF gets done and there's no draw to keep one coming back. That leaves Tyria and HoT, and we have seen the history of that.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:And yet, there was a Fortune article about GW2 ESports a couple of months before HoT dropped citing 1.5 million monthly active (paid) accounts, which roughly doubled to 3 million once Play for Free hit. HoT sales were at best (at that time) a third of those paid accounts.

How did they count "active" accounts? Got a link for that article?

http://fortune.com/2015/11/24/areanet-investing-in-esports/

The article is from November 2015 so after Heart of Thorns launched. And in just one month after going free to play the game got 2 million new free players.Why do you blame Heart of Thorns for the lack of the conversion? Isn't the core game responsible for converting players? Plus 1 month of playing Guild Wars 2 is a very short length of time for anyone to convert anyway, they would be far from finished with the Core game at that point.

If you read the article, the 1.5M number is referred to as "historical," i.e. prior to PFF launch in August 2015.

I don't blame HOT for free player conversion, I do suggest several issues with HoT (game and business related) kept paid player adoption lower than it might have been.

[STIHL.2489]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

If someone loves a game they will buy the expansion for it, if they do not like a game, they won't buy it. So it's simple, the problem is in the Core game, not HoT

You would have a point.. IF.. and only IF HoT was like Core, but HoT was not, HoT was an expansion for people who wanted to play something other then Core, and this was made very vocally clear by the player base, so, a F2P player comes an asks about HoT, gets told it's a steaming pile of shit, well you can guess what happened to those sales.. buys it anyway (Notice the 30 score in the following quarter) realizes HoT is a steaming pile of shit.. quits game.. notice the 15.. in the next quarter... it's pretty easy to see that HoT was the problem here.

[katz.8376]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

If someone loves a game they will buy the expansion for it, if they do not like a game, they won't buy it. So it's simple, the problem is in the Core game, not HoT

i loved core GW2. i preordered HoT without hesitation. the $100 flavor. it (in my opinion) sucked so bad i quit within a month or two, and upon my return a month ago i was very reluctant to purchase PoF blind. i did eventually make that purchase, but the cheapest flavor available, and only after reading many reviews and inquiring with friends what they thought of it.

so i'm sorry, but i disagree with your statement.

ever hear the expression "once burned, twice shy"?

[Chickenooble.5014]

Dear OP,

That was awful analysis. If this were a class and that were your analysis, you would get negative marks.

Regards,

Mr. Pres.

[Cristalyan.5728]

@Chickenooble.5014 said:Dear OP,That was awful analysis. If this were a class and that were your analysis, you would get negative marks.Regards,Mr. Pres.

Dear Mr. Teacher,I already admitted in my post that may "analysis" may be inaccurate or entirely wrong. I know where I can go wrong and I know why. On the other hand, in that points where an error may occur, I had no proofs that the result is categorically wrong.It seems you have that proofs. Can you enlighten us and show us where the mistake lies? Using a logical flow of arguments?

I wish you luck in this attempt, Mr. Teacher, because it seems that at least the attention is not your strong point (I don't dare to say the lack of understanding power), because, by reading the post you can easily see that this is a DISCUSSION and not an ANALYSIS. Furthermore, my opinions were not intended to be an "analysis" but an invitation for the others to bring other numbers and known/proven facts in order to have a clearer image of what GW2 is now.

@Cristalyan.5728 said:

Please add other numbers if you find. Please correct me if you consider I'm wrong. And please post your own feelings about the numbers ANet listed on the site and based on this, about the future of the game.

Thanks for the patience to read all of this.

[Chickenooble.5014]

@Cristalyan.5728 said:Dear Mr. Teacher,I already admitted in my post that may "analysis" may be inaccurate or entirely wrong. I know where I can go wrong and I know why. On the other hand, in that points where an error may occur, I had no proofs that the result is categorically wrong.It seems you have that proofs. Can you enlighten us and show us where the mistake lies? Using a logical flow of arguments?The problem with your post is that you used a few numbers from ArenaNet, filled in the rest with your own numbers and assumptions, and drew conclusions from that. Also, you didn't cite where you got your numbers from so any resulting discussion was mired in confusion since people wanting to participate in your discussion had no idea what numbers were released by ArenaNet and which were not.

I wish you luck in this attempt, Mr. Teacher, because it seems that at least the attention is not your strong point (I don't dare to say the lack of understanding power), because, by reading the post you can easily see that this is a DISCUSSION and not an ANALYSIS. Furthermore, my opinions were not intended to be an "analysis" but an invitation for the others to bring other numbers and known/proven facts in order to have a clearer image of what GW2 is now.It appears that you analyzed the available information, filled in the unknowns, made some assumptions, and created your post. In fact, you repeatedly said, "My conclusion," after performing some analysis on the numbers. While the point of the thread was to have a discussion (perhaps) it's undeniable that you attempted to analyze the information to reach your conclusions. Whether you want to call it "analysis" or not doesn't matter.

Just because you are presenting your "opinions" and say, "I may have been wrong" somewhere in your post doesn't mean you can't be criticized.

[STIHL.2489]

@Cristalyan.5728 said:

@Chickenooble.5014 said:Dear OP,That was awful analysis. If this were a class and that were your analysis, you would get negative marks.Regards,Mr. Pres.

Dear Mr. Teacher,I already admitted in my post that may "analysis" may be inaccurate or entirely wrong. I know where I can go wrong and I know why. On the other hand, in that points where an error may occur, I had no proofs that the result is categorically wrong.It seems you have that proofs. Can you enlighten us and show us where the mistake lies? Using a logical flow of arguments?

sure, your entire analogy rests upon a formal logical fallacy , called a Conjunction Fallacy.

[Cristalyan.5728]

@STIHL.2489 said:

sure, your entire analogy rests upon a formal logical fallacy , called a Conjunction Fallacy.@STIHL.2489 said:

sure, your entire analogy rests upon a formal logical fallacy , called a Conjunction Fallacy.

This is the definition of the Conjunction Fallacy (or conjunction effect)."The conjunction fallacy (also known as the Linda problem) is a formal fallacy that occurs when it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one"With other words - the probability of two events occurring together (in conjunction) is always less than or equal to the probability of either one occurring alone.

Let's see what I said in my post:

@Cristalyan.5728 said:From the official ANet site I have the following numbers:

1. GW2 (as a whole game) has 11 000 000 (11 millions) players.
2. During the life of GW2 the players created over 53 056 000 (53,05 millions) characters.
3. The 11 millions characters formed 952 000 guilds (almost 1 million).
4. The +53 millions characters completed 430 773 344 hearts (430,77 milions)
5. This is not from ANet site - a friend saw this: The griffon number in game is now over 50 000.

These are not probabilities - these are numbers released by ANet on the official site (I can say these are certain evidences).Now, let's apply the Conjunction fallacy to the first point: GW2 (as a whole game) has 11 000 000 (11 millions) players.According to this theory (the Conjunction Fallacy) we should consider the 11 millions players (I still consider it "accounts") not as something real, but something possible to happen. Well, in this case, the possibility that the first player to make an account and the second player do make an account and ....... and the 11 mill-nth player to make an account is indeed very low. So low, that GW2 cannot even exist in this conjuncture. But, you see, the 11 millions are not probabilities, are real facts.

Now, for example - I said that 430 773 344 hearts means at most 1,3 millions Tyria completions. That means around 9% players completed Tyria. It sounds as a conjunction of probabilities for you?

The only point where the Conjunction effect (or the Conjunction Fallacy) can appear is at the point 5 when I guessed/ speculated based on the number of griffons. The two variables here were "the number of veteran players having PoF" and "the number of new players having PoF". And for this i posted a Disclaimer, admitting that my opinion can be entirely wrong.

BUT, if you are such a master of logic and probabilistic calculation, please do the calculation again. Correctly this time. You will have the gratitude not only from me, but from all the readers who are now not decided if the post was correct or not.

This is exactly what I asked - "please correct me if I'm wrong".

[Chickenooble.5014]

@Cristalyan.5728 said:This is exactly what I asked - "please correct me if I'm wrong".The numbers are accurate but your conclusions and analysis are based on several assumptions you're making. That's the correction and that's why you're wrong. Three pages in with dozens of people giving the same criticism and you're still not giving it?

Let's look at your analysis of "average guild size." First, the only information you have is the number of accounts in the game and the approximate number of guilds created. To get your average you're simply dividing the number of guilds by the number of players. You're not considering the fact that some players aren't in any guilds, that some are in multiple guilds, and so on. To do the average you would need to know the number of players in each guild -- which you don't know. That's how averages work. If there were 2,000 people in the game and only three guilds in game and they had memberships of 200, 300 and 400, you wouldn't say the average guild size was over 600. The average guild size would be 300.

Another example is your analysis on the number of hearts completed in the game (and I hate to revisit this because the mental gymnastics needed to square your circle are seriously mind-numbing). You note that 330 hearts are in core Tyria (not considering the repeatable hearts in LS3 maps which may be included in that total number). Then you state that the total number of hearts is approximately equal to 1,300,000 characters doing full map completion. Then you estimate that 2.5% of all characters completed map completion because your estimate of how many characters that completed map completion divided by the number of players created. Then you make a bunch of points about how some accounts did full map completion several times and so on. All in all you're making the assumption about the percentage of players that did map completion because you don't have enough information to go on. I can look at the 53,000,000 characters created, see that 430,000,000 hearts were completed, and make an equally flawed statement like, "100% of all characters completed 8 hearts." You and I both know that's wrong but it's using the limited numbers we have to make an assumption that all characters are completing hearts.

Last example: You estimate that between 100,000-120,000 have PoF based on some old data that says 50,000 people had Griffons soon after PoF launch. The problem with this reasoning is you create a random percentage of people you consider "veterans" who earned mounts. Yes, a lot of people had the money and skills to get the mounts early... many of us don't. Some others, like myself, are hesitant to get the flying mount because I feel like it might ruin my experience and I don't want to pay for something I don't think I'll enjoy. Your entire analysis is based on the assumptions of: 1) More veteran players purchased PoF than new players, 2) That a majority of PoF owners have the money to get the griffon, 3) That the veteran players actually want the griffon, and 4) The number of people who purchased PoF. You're making a ton of guesses.

Then, at the end, you pat yourself on the back and tell ArenaNet they're doing a bad job keeping the Veterans playing while you came to that conclusion with numbers that, in some cases, you completely made up.

Look, I'm not going to go through and rip apart each of your "conclusions" but hopefully these few examples illustrate the flaws in your entire post.

[The Revenant.4970]

This porridge is too damn cold!

[Aeolus.3615]

Anet forgot how to impress, by telling how much skill 1 has been pressed...

[Cristalyan.5728]

@Chickenooble.5014 said:

@Cristalyan.5728 said:This is exactly what I asked - "please correct me if I'm wrong".The numbers are accurate but your conclusions and analysis are based on several assumptions you're making. That's the correction and that's why you're wrong. Three pages in with dozens of people giving the same criticism and you're still not giving it?

Let's look at your analysis of "average guild size." First, the only information you have is the number of accounts in the game and the approximate number of guilds created. To get your average you're simply dividing the number of guilds by the number of players. You're not considering the fact that some players aren't in any guilds, that some are in multiple guilds, and so on. To do the average you would need to know the number of players in each guild -- which you don't know. That's how averages work. If there were 2,000 people in the game and only three guilds in game and they had memberships of 200, 300 and 400, you wouldn't say the average guild size was over 600. The average guild size would be 300.

Another example is your analysis on the number of hearts completed in the game (and I hate to revisit this because the mental gymnastics needed to square your circle are seriously mind-numbing). You note that 330 hearts are in core Tyria (not considering the repeatable hearts in LS3 maps which may be included in that total number). Then you state that the total number of hearts is approximately equal to 1,300,000 characters doing full map completion. Then you estimate that 2.5% of all characters completed map completion because your estimate of how many characters that completed map completion divided by the number of players created. Then you make a bunch of points about how some accounts did full map completion several times and so on. All in all you're making the assumption about the percentage of players that did map completion because you don't have enough information to go on. I can look at the 53,000,000 characters created, see that 430,000,000 hearts were completed, and make an equally flawed statement like, "100% of all characters completed 8 hearts." You and I both know that's wrong but it's using the limited numbers we have to make an assumption that all characters are completing hearts.

Thanks =)You are the first not just saying that I'm wrong, but actually trying to show me what is wrong.

Why I used the "average guild size"? Because I did not want to be too pessimistic. ANet said 952 000 guilds.With an average of 10 players per guild, all the guilds are covered equally. It's evident that this cannot be true. We have guilds of 500 members. And lots of +100 members guilds. BUT for every "meta" guild, the number of members left for the other small guilds is even smaller. Look on the old forum at the complains about ANet slaughtering the small guilds. One answer you can find repeated very often was: " A 5-6 man group is not a guild. A real guild is a numerous one". ANet developers even approved this.You know what this means? In my opinion, this translates by: " Even if the community likes small guilds, ANet, with intention, made the life of the small guilds impossible, forcing the players to group in larger guilds. This may be a factor of dissatisfaction for some veterans.This is why I said in may post that we need an ANet number with the guilds formed after HoT.Repeat, I agree with what you said. But in this way you state that a lot of guilds from the total of 952 000 are dead guilds, "phantom guilds", the members being absorbed in larger guilds. And the number posted by Anet on their official site is irrelevant.

Let's take the example with the hearts: We have the following problem: "430 million hearts were completed by 53 millions characters. How many characters completed all the hearts (over 330)?The answer at this problem can be found in the interval 0 - 1,3 millions. Why 0? We can have the possibility that all 53 millions characters completed 8 hearts. So none completed all the Tyria. The other extreme is ~1,3 millions characters - all completing +330 hearts.It is obvious that a correct answer cannot be found without supplemental data from ANet. But, I choose the best variant for ANet. Think about a reality like this: 731 characters, all belonging to 151 players, completed the entire Tyria. The rest of the (11 millions) players never took the interest to explore the vanilla. This may be a very dark reality signaling a not very bright future.

This was the reason I choose 1,3. I did not want to be too pessimistic. Because a lower number of Tyria completions means a lower interest for the base game. I tried to keep the best conclusions for ANet.This makes me a white knight? I don't know.

@Chickenooble.5014 - Thanks again for your time and for trying to show us your point of view.

[Halandir.3609]

@maddoctor.2738 said:If someone loves a game they will buy the expansion for it, if they do not like a game, they won't buy it. So it's simple, the problem is in the Core game, not HoT

Sure - I liked GW2 and preordered HoT. I did not like/enjoy HoT and 4-5 weeks in I simply stopped playing. I did not, nor do I intend to, buy PoF. This has EVERYTHING to do with HoT, raid-focus etc. and NOTHING to do with the game (vanilla GW2) I originally liked. Your conclusion is flawed, therefore worthless!

[Chickenooble.5014]

@Cristalyan.5728 said:This makes me a white knight? I don't know.

@Chickenooble.5014 - Thanks again for your time and for trying to show us your point of view.Sure thing. I think the best thing for everyone is to look at the infographic and think, "Wow, that's a lot of numbers" and not try to draw conclusions from it about ANet's intentions, the health of the player base, how many sales of an expansion there are, and so on. We don't have enough information to make those conclusions and doing so with the few data points we have require way too many assumptions.

[STIHL.2489]

@Cristalyan.5728 said:

@STIHL.2489 said:

sure, your entire analogy rests upon a formal logical fallacy , called a

Conjunction Fallacy

.@STIHL.2489 said:

sure, your entire analogy rests upon a formal logical fallacy , called a

Conjunction Fallacy

.

This is the definition of the Conjunction Fallacy (or conjunction effect)."The conjunction fallacy (also known as the Linda problem) is a formal fallacy that occurs when it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one"With other words - the probability of two events occurring together (in conjunction) is always less than or equal to the probability of either one occurring alone.

Let's see what I said in my post:

@Cristalyan.5728 said:From the official ANet site I have the following numbers:

1. GW2 (as a whole game) has 11 000 000 (11 millions) players.
2. During the life of GW2 the players created over 53 056 000 (53,05 millions) characters.
3. The 11 millions characters formed 952 000 guilds (almost 1 million).
4. The +53 millions characters completed 430 773 344 hearts (430,77 milions)
5. This is not from ANet site - a friend saw this: The griffon number in game is now over 50 000.

These are not probabilities - these are numbers released by ANet on the official site (I can say these are certain evidences).Now, let's apply the Conjunction fallacy to the first point: GW2 (as a whole game) has 11 000 000 (11 millions) players.According to this theory (the Conjunction Fallacy) we should consider the 11 millions players (I still consider it "accounts") not as something real, but something possible to happen. Well, in this case, the possibility that the first player to make an account

and the second player do make an account and ....... and the 11 mill-nth player to make an account

is indeed very low. So low, that GW2 cannot even exist in this conjuncture. But, you see, the 11 millions are not probabilities, are real facts.

Now, for example - I said that 430 773 344 hearts means at most 1,3 millions Tyria completions. That means around 9% players completed Tyria. It sounds as a

conjunction

of

probabilities

for you?

The only point where the Conjunction effect (or the Conjunction Fallacy) can appear is at the point 5 when I guessed/ speculated based on the number of griffons. The two variables here were "the number of veteran players having PoF" and "the number of new players having PoF". And for this i posted a

Disclaimer

, admitting that my opinion can be entirely wrong.

BUT, if you are such a master of logic and probabilistic calculation, please do the calculation again. Correctly this time. You will have the gratitude not only from me, but from all the readers who are now not decided if the post was correct or not.

This is exactly what I asked - "please correct me if I'm wrong".

The conclusion fallacy, as the name itself clearly states rests on what conclusions you draw from the data, it does not question the data itself. What you just did was called a Category Mistake, which is where you try to put something in the wrong category to support your point, in this case, Trying to put data into the conclusion category.