Seera.5916

> @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said: > > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > > Specifically, when you make a theory based on observed data, that theory applies only to the part you can observe - you can't automatically assume it will hold true when you include the parts you couldn't observe. You'd need to make a reasonable explanation why the unobserved data would not impact you results first - and you didn't do that. You claimed that this unobserved data is irrelevant, _without_ explaining why it is so. That's highly unscientific. > > Ehh...i think you need to go back and understand how scientific method works. Sorry not trying to be rude. Firstly, you never hold ANYTHING in a science to be 100% true ever because there will always be a margin of error in experiments (Experiments are done via orders of accuracy, where the only way of getting 100% accuracy is by doing an experiment an infinite number of times) . > > Secondly, you do not need to explain away things you can not measure. In science you don't explain away the theory of the bearded man in the sky everytime we talk about protons and neutrons. The theories are based on what you can measure...and that's as far as the theory will go to address a phenomenon Things you can not measure in theory or in practicality is what's called unfalsifiable...and can't be USED to prove or disprove a theory...its inconclusive information. This is not my words here...this is something you go on to google and nod your head and accept that this is the reality of scientific approach. > > > > > > No it's not reasonable. Again you can't measure it to within any accuracy. > > Actually, no. Discord does exist, and conversations do happen there. That's a fact, not a belief. Sure, you can't measure them easily (which, by the way, doesn't mean you _can't_ measure them - it just means _you_, personally, don't have easy access to the right tools for that), but they _do_ exist, and you can't simply ignore them. At least not when you're talking about social interactions. > > > > > > We can estimate forum/reddit users to active players because there have been enough companies who have released active player data to base those calculations off of. I've yet to see any official data for number of public vs private chats and they would always be lower on private since they wouldn't be able to account for third party chat systems. > > > > > You can actually figure out the proportionality by averaging out how often you see say chats in proportion to map chats, in proportion to guild chats in proportion to whisper chats etc. > > You could do that, if you had access to that kind of data - but you _don't_ have that for anyone that is not yourself. > > > > Those proportions will be different for each player, though - you can't "average" that data based only on your personal experience. Well, you can, but it will apply only to you, it won't be something you could extrapolate on the entire playerbase. > > > Not exactly true. Because you can go looking at a streamer's chat logs can give you data to reference. But, in general the only person you have to make a reliable measurement is yourself, ...one can think of clever ways to get non-bias data , and or you of course can collaborate with others to get that number, which realistically you can do. (Send picture of your chat box, send over for analysis. Done.) Since you're only finding a universal proportionality, you don't have to interview complete strangers, you can go about and ask your friends for snaps. > > Anyway, the scientific methods on measurement are very precise and clear for a reason. Reliable measurement means you are supposed to do an experiment over and over again, and what this does is confirm accuracy of the measurement. You can take data that is just yourself, but you have to include a margin of error due to the fact that it's just one experiment and not 5 sigma's of experiments. Here in gw2 we don't need 5 sigma's of accuracy to talk about a forum post...you just include margins of error based on how rigorous the experiment was. > > > > There you go again stating that unfalsifiable data can't be used to prove or disprove something, yet you've constantly used it your attempts to prove your theory. You can't determine the ratio of hidden conversations to ones you can see because there are not tools for that and you wouldn't get a large enough sample size from friends where you could be sure you could reliably eliminate duplicate chat snaps. Not to mention friends wouldn't be random enough to make sure enough different play styles were captured in order to get the widest chat types. Therefore any argument that hinges on using the 1:1 ratio you claimed is derived from unfalsifiable data and therefore based on your own words unusable to prove your hypothesis. Especially when there's good reason to suspect that there are more hidden conversations than ones you can see.

> @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said: > > @"Julischka Bean.7491" said: > > One question though. How do you know people are in complete silence at banks and such? They might be engaging in guild chat, or whispering to the person next to them. > > So i wrote this as a response to someone I'm currently messaging whom I'm having a more in depth discussion on the topic, so I'll just paraphrase what i said over there, over here - > > ----Unfortunately, these hidden interactions can't be realistically tested to any reliable accuracy. The assumption is that anything that could be considered outlier behavior (Extremely chatty guilds, to extremely dead guilds.../extremely chatty players in hidden channels, to extremely silent players in hidden channels) are treated as outliers, and thus the frequency of guild chats, whispers or other 3rd party communication services lay somewhere in between, which we would expect to be distributed as a bell curve with some average frequency. > > The reasoning behind just observing interactions we can see, and using that as data we could use, is that it should be representative of interactions as whole by a similar proportionality, which is again based on how we aren't treating interactions we can't measure as outliers, but instead as an average. This is the same tactic that's used in statistics, where for example, [we can measure measuring Gw2's total population by looking at the amount of gw2reddit subscribers]( ), (based on the 80/20 rule). In other words, the people that use reddit or forums will be some proportion of the population. We are using this tactic but in reverse, taking the total population and using measurable interactions to determine proportionality of hidden interactions. > > So in a general sense, the amount of interactions you can measure in chats you can actually observe, is assumed to be some proportion of all chats that you can't observe. So if there are 100 people in Lions Arch, and you have 10 Interactions per hour, than it implies that may also have on average 10 interactions per hour that you can't observe. > > Again, because you can't reliably measure these hidden interactions, you can't make a case for it because it could be anything, ranging from 0 to 100 to a thousand. It's unfalsifiable. > > You can't have it both ways. You can't use unfalsifiable data to prove your hypothesis is correct if you're saying we can't use it to say that it's wrong. Which means your entire hypothesis above is wrong because it uses unfalsifiable data. Or that's the only things you've been able to come up with. You claimed only 2 meaningful conversations happened while you were in Lion's Arch. We refuted that just because you couldn't see them, doesn't mean more didn't happen. None of us claimed that they did happen. Just that the possibility exists that the meaningful conversations were had in places you couldn't see. And gave evidence to support the fact that it was likely. You brushed it off simply because it goes against your theory instead of actually taking a step back and realizing that maybe parts of your hypothesis are wrong. That you've miscalculated what percentage of conversations that you can see are of the total conversations had by players in game. Example: It's reasonable to expect that Discord is where a large number of conversations happen. With Discord I can have a meaningful conversation about Guild Wars 2 with someone while I'm at work on my lunch break. I can chat with a friend I made in Guild Wars 2 without both of us being on at the same time and both wanting to spend game time chatting. I can chat with a group of people who are on different maps without needing to be in a party of squad in game. It's also safer for me to chat in Discord than using in game chat while actually playing the game. Private chats also give players a little more leeway with the rules. Two friends can rag on each other in private chat, but it might get reported by someone who means well if done in public chat. We can estimate forum/reddit users to active players because there have been enough companies who have released active player data to base those calculations off of. I've yet to see any official data for number of public vs private chats and they would always be lower on private since they wouldn't be able to account for third party chat systems.

So you have access to the game's chat logs and can see whispers and guild chats or other chat systems which you may not be able to see?! You can't tell me exactly how many conversations are going on in a single map unless you're a moderator and you'd probably be bound by all kinds of contracts and NDA's to not reveal that information. Really drops your credibility down when you claim stuff like that, especially when you're getting on people for saying most or many. You can state we can't prove something and then use something you can't prove as evidence. Your hypothesis is wrong. As I've seen more people say that without these conveniences in the game, they'd be less social than they are in game already. Meaning the conveniences increase their social interactions in game. I've yet to see a single person in this thread state that they would talk more if the conveniences are removed/reduced. I know I'd be less likely to go help out someone who called out in map chat for help if it was going to take me more than a minute or two to get to them. I don't tend to play for extended periods of time anymore and I want to make progress towards my goals when I play. Without the closeness of waypoints, going to help someone might mean giving up on meaningful progress towards my goal. Which would reduce the chances of me going to help. The willingness of people to go help out would likely go down for similar reasons. That's not to say no one would go help, but maybe instead of 10 people, only 5 show up (numbers chosen at random for illustration purposes and not indicative of the reduction in willingness). In a game with thousands of players, I'm sure there are hundreds who can go a few hours in game without socializing. 200 players out of 200,000 is 0.1%. 200 out of 2000 is 10%. Both 10% and 0.1% are relatively low percentages and therefore in the realm of possible. Accounting for non-public chats or conversations taking place outside of the game (discord, etc), I'd say it's fair to assume that there are likely hundreds of players appearing to be silent in game because we can't see/hear their conversations. Even in places such as Lion's Arch.

Ask if they can confirm the person is on your friend list. That at least narrows it down, but doesn't give the exact name of the person. That way you at least won't be cold PM'ing people on your friends list without knowing it's one of them.

> @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said: > > @"Seera.5916" said: > >I've only seen actual proof that it would lessen the social experience if there were fewer waypoints and no mounts. > > And what proof would that be exactly? > > The way i "proved" (it's not actually proof btw, it's a hypothesis) that waypoints mounts, and other features take away social interaction is by explaining how taking away the time it takes from point A to point B eliminates interactions that could have occurred along the way. This is shown in a mockup network map that illustrates that behavior. > > The mockup network map i drew itself is just a terribly drawn approximation. if i had the drawing skills, the regions of interaction would look more like a river that forks out into capillaries, like these population and interaction density map... > > rather than a [contour map](https://support.goldensoftware.com/hc/article_attachments/360034201934/DualColorscale.jpg) where the path most people travel on from Point A to Point B would have the highest interaction density, forking off towards area's of interest like events, hearts etc, which would have less interaction density then the main pathways. > > > This game was designed so you spend more time actually doing the content and not waiting for others > > This has been said multiple times in the thread. I understand that is the point of the waypoints and the mounts etc... Having some waypoints in the game is actually perfectly okay, and i said as much in the OP. My point was that having TOO much convenience starts an amplification process...where the effects of having too much convenience compounds those densities into tighter and tighter regions...and the conclusion of that compounding would be that there would no longer be any reason for people to interact with other people...because why would they when everything can be done right now, by yourself, in an instant. > > I backcheck these hypothesis with in game observations...from what i observe in most cases, is that interaction is incredibly low, where population densities are very high (like Lions Arch) which is not normal...it's not normal for hundreds of people to be standing completly silent and completly still for hours without saying anything to anyone. > > Now, people have proposed many things to explain this, such as that "everyone is in discord" or "everyone is in guild chats" or some other reasoning to dismiss the fact that people aren't interacting in any medium other than those that are impossible to measure with any accuracy. That is not proof...it's unfalsifiable to say that people are using discord more than they are using public chats because one can't actually prove that to be the case. > > Edit: Also as a continuation of the above thought, is that there should be places that you would expect there to be a higher population density than what is actually present in the game. These are places like The Human Starter area for example, which, according to some statistics, is the most commonly picked race among new players. However, this location, although it does have slightly more people than other surrounding areas, is drastically lower than what one would expect it to be. You can actually compare this to other games where it actually matches with the expectation like WoW's Goldshire. The two places don't seem to be any different to each other in design, in fact both seem nearly exactly the same...with a tavern, a few houses, and an outdoor centralized square...except one of them is completely devoid of interaction and people, while the other is so crowded it's hard to understand why there is such a massive difference between these two, seemingly similar starter zones. > You haven't proved that the waypoints are the reason. Yet others have come up with other reasons and given proof. When people have pointed out that removing the waypoints would cause them to be less social. Yet no one's come forth to say the opposite. Or more, you haven't proven that the problem you're presenting is worse than the solution you're suggesting. When there's been multiple people posting that your suggestion would actually make the problem you're presenting worse. No one's claiming more players are in Discord chat than game chat. Just that one reason for people not chatting while going from point a to point b is that many do use voice chat services. Because you can't say that it's not a safer way to communicate while playing with others than using an in game keyboard chat. And since those services are much more stable and easier to set up and many are free, a lot of communities have moved to using Discord. It wouldn't surprise me if this was a majority of players. As for the starter map population, unlike in many games, players are free to go to whatever starter map they want to. They aren't forced to stay in their starter area for several levels. With the only exception being literal new players who haven't unlocked Lion's Arch and would have to traverse more dangerous maps to get there (not that it's not possible to do so). It's totally possible for you to spend hours in a location in an MMO game in this day and age and not see any conversation made. Doesn't mean it isn't happening. Even in Lion's Arch or any other racial city. There are even a few of us who can go several hours without participating in a conversation, I'm one of them. I'm an introvert. Conversations drain me. It has to be a pretty good conversation going on for me to participate. I'll spend time just watching a conversation if it's interesting but not enough for me to join in.