Constructs and Mechanics that lead to the Death of the Game.

[Feilou.7395]

> @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

 

> 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.

>

 

This is rather obvious. Other games don't have tomes of knowledge. I would say tomes are a way better example of a mechanism that is "bad for the game" as tomes are one of the reasons that the population in leveling areas is really low. This obviously makes it so that you have less social interaction in Gw2 during the leveling process than in other games (lower density= lower interaction).

It would be possible to argue that less social interactions in these areas results in a lower retention time (of new people) and is one of the reasons the game is "dying". I would still say that tomes are great because the leveling experience is not fun in my eyes.

The question anet has to ask themselves is " Is reworking the leveling experience worth it or is a item that circumvents the problem of a bad leveling experience a better idea so we can focus on other aspects of the game". I think this is true for almost all of the bigger convenience aspects in the game. Waypoints are a shortcut to making a world that is always engaging, rewarding and fun no matter where I am and at what time. The later is incredible hard to do and I think no game has managed to do it.

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"Feilou.7395" said:

> This is rather obvious. Other games don't have tomes of knowledge.

New players don't have access to those yet. It's something veterans use to level up their new characters - but veteran players even without those are going to play more efficiently, and skip a lot of initial content. I could easily get from 1 to 80 in like 2 days of my playing session without using any "shortcuts" like crafting xp, tomes , level-up scrolls etc. And i wouldn't even be trying hard.

 

New players are not capable of doing that - they lack the experience, gear, gold, and access to tomes/birthday leveling scrolls veterans have. They aren't able to make any shortcuts. Well, with the notable exception of level-80 boost item, which is probably not something completely new players should have access to.

 

The main reason why new player areas aren't flooded with players is, in my opinion, much simpler - it's because this game _does not have many new players_. Which, obviously, is a significant problem on its own - just one that has no relation whatsoever to stuff brought up by OP.

 

 

 

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > @"Feilou.7395" said:

> > This is rather obvious. Other games don't have tomes of knowledge.

> New players don't have access to those yet. It's something veterans use to level up their new characters - but veteran players even without those are going to play more efficiently, and skip a lot of initial content.

 

I think you misinterpreted what he said. He said exactly what you just said, that because veteran players have access to those tomes, they will use them on alts to skip straight to the higher level endgame zones. This cuts the densities of possible interactions and the population density just as it does waypoints.

 

Now Tomes of knowledge like he points out takes away social interaction. because again this is another mechanic in the game that amplifies convenience. Now i would have acknowledged this one more, but the phenomena i really was set out to explain was why places like Lion's Arch or other major cities, with high population densities, and mostly max level players have low interaction densities. The problem is universal among nearly every region in the game, so there must be more universal problems that exist here, not just the Tomes of Knowledge.

 

> The main reason why new player areas aren't flooded with players is, in my opinion, much simpler - it's because this game _does not have many new players_.

 

Wow. It's so simple why hasn't anyone thought of this yet?

 

But aside that this is one of the few things i can agree with you on, i would at least appreciate your view on that....why exactly does the game not have new players?

 

[DirtyDan.4759]

> @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

> to the point where interaction is no longer necessary

 

Dude, wake up please. In GW2 social interaction has NEVER been necessary. 99% of open world pve is balanced around single player. **Your character** is balanced around single player with dodges, a dedicated heal skill slot etc. In instanced content you just say "hi, dps" when entering.

 

You start off with a bad example (waypoints in a game that has mounts) but your points about guilds being useless and player interaction 100% optional are valid. GW2 is a game where you play together alone, an online singleplayer game with optional coop features.

 

It doesn't take to be a "complexity theorist" to realize this.

[kharmin.7683]

> @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

 

>why exactly does the game not have new players?

Having posters on the forum preaching the game's demise doesn't help bring in new players.

 

 

[Obtena.7952]

If the whole OP is just a hypothesis ... then who cares? I mean, even if your hypothesis is true and it's why the game is dying .. OK. Not like you can do anything about it. This hypothetical discussion is rather worthless in a practical sense for this game.

 

The premise is a hard sell frankly ... convenience kills games? Right ... try playing Age of Conan without a mount. You quit the first day when you take 20 minutes to run across a map. I don't think the OP has thought very hard about the practical implications of his theories that he keeps trying to push in all his threads.

[TheGrimm.5624]

> @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

> ....why exactly does the game not have new players?

 

Many reasons:

* It doesn't market, outside of Google ads which show you GW2 ads if you have ever hit the site, but if you haven't it doesn't bring it up

* Its 8 years old, many people find it daunting to start an older MMO because they are years behind other players let alone friends

* Existing players will try and rush their friends thru new MMOs which causes even more friction and there is a lot to take in here

* Its slow to market on expansions, between GW2 and HoT was too long and now between PoF and EoD was too long, living world is a tie in for existing players but not a draw for new players. People who don't play GW2 don't know what living world means

* It hasn't hit aspects (untouched game modes, abandoned game modes) that would draw prior GW2 people back who then might bring new players in

* Lack of new and original events to draw players in and to focus activities, world boss events were a good addition but they are lag fests and offer no challenge, just flashes

 

Now not adding champ trains here because they were toxic, but they were also a selling point. Had done beta but didn't come over at release because was still in my prior MMO and was concerned if starting two years after launch was going to be too much and playerbase would have been thin. While scouting the game for others crossed the Queensland champ train and the flood of people running the train and that there told me game was healthy and looking good since there was that many people in starting zone. Removing them was still probably a good thing but it was a big group activity that was eliminated and at least for me it showed me pop was in a good state.

 

Would I still recommend to a player not in game, yes. Is the game dying, no more than normal player retention items. Does the core mechanic bleed players, no outside of lack of attention. But I get why someone out of blue may not see it or try it.

[Wintrez.7435]

No waypoints - you cannot meet up with the friends fast which is disastrous to your socializing if you cannot spend much time in game, instead making you rely on one-time talks. You skip half of the events if you do not wait for them specifically, as most of them can be done in a minute by duo of somewhat skilled players in core world.

No conversation - this is action-based game, you do not write in chat in the middle of counter strike shootout, because you are dead and do not helping other that way. Also multiple alternatives to map chat and /say (heck I even used in game mail to strike up conversations)

No people in Shaemoor as opposed to Goldshire - in Goldshire there are vendors, class and profession trainers, innkeeper, quest givers located in there.You are forced to spend time there. In Shaemoor there are a couple of guys selling you useless 4slot bags and all quests(hearts) are located away from it.

Ignoring arguments which do burst their little pretty bubble - priceless.

OP is clearly bored and trolling.

 

P.S. Instead of ranting about your smartpants theories at forum, log in and strike a conversation. I had an RP session a couple of days ago and in 30 minutes that me and my friends spent in Shaemoor we saw several people talking and interacting and even had one person joining us despite us being in group chat, so only /me emotes were visible.

[Mortifera.6138]

Lol OP has a relatively abstract academic theory which is met with laymen’s rebuttals. This thread isn’t going anywhere

[TheGrimm.5624]

> @"Mortifera.6138" said:

> Lol OP has a relatively abstract academic theory which is met with laymen’s rebuttals. This thread isn’t going anywhere

 

I think part of that is because their targeted examples of mechanics are what encourage people to actually play versus stand and AFK in text. The underlying premise is people don't interact as much as the OP thinks is healthy. But there were better items to target if that is the case. Better examples might have been a decline in dungeon content, lack of trade channel outside of the TP, too many maps, not enough support in some game modes, lack of guild content. We also don't have anyway to understand the amount of people that are already in a voice chat and don't read/use map chat because they are already engaging with others outside of the internal game mechanic. So another might have been an argument for a push for ANet map based Discords even if they didn't add in their own embedded voice. In Queensland, join the Queensland Discord channel at ...... and such.

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

> I think you misinterpreted what he said. He said exactly what you just said, that because veteran players have access to those tomes, they will use them on alts to skip straight to the higher level endgame zones. This cuts the densities of possible interactions and the population density just as it does waypoints.

Like i said, veterans aren't usually interested in low-level interaction anyway. They will be skipping that content regardless, tomes or no tomes. Even without tomes, they would likely be out of starting areas in 15 mins to half an hour tops anyway, and would not bother interacting with anyone while there.

 

> Now Tomes of knowledge like he points out takes away social interaction.

They don't. Someone keen on powerleveling fast to 80 would not be interested in those interactions anyway. They would just slow the leveling process down.

 

>The problem is universal among nearly every region in the game, so there must be more universal problems that exist here, not just the Tomes of Knowledge.

And now you start to think. Yes, there's a ton of reasons behind why the game is as it is. You can't pin all of this to only a few singular things.

 

>

> > The main reason why new player areas aren't flooded with players is, in my opinion, much simpler - it's because this game _does not have many new players_.

>

> Wow. It's so simple why hasn't anyone thought of this yet?

Oh, i'm quite sure a lot of players are completely aware of this. They are not the ones trying to find convoluted explanations for this though.

 

>

> But aside that this is one of the few things i can agree with you on, i would at least appreciate your view on that....why exactly does the game not have new players?

I doubt there's any real consensus on that - ask anyone, and you will get a different answer each time.

 

If I were to point the reasons i think might be responsible, i'd mention

 

- a severe lack of communication between devs and community

- Anet being very, very bad at advertising (to the point where some of their ad campaings are memes now).

- lack of a developer vision for the game (there seems to be no longterm, coherent plan about the direction for the game, and no set target group. Instead the whole planning seems to be made of a lot of short-term plans for individual parts of the game, that do not work well together, and are subject to frequent changes)

- (partially tied to the above) tendency to start new projects, only to abandon them after a while

- systemic inability to admit to mistakes, which (coupled with the previous point) doesn't help with fixing old problems.

- game apparently not being all that good content for streaming

- game lacking any seriousl long-term engagement content for the midtier players (or at least one that isn;t already abandoned - dungeons were pretty much ok for this, fractals were partially good as well before they were shifted more towards the hardcore players)

- the combat/build/gear system that turns even small skill differences between players into massive gaps in effectiveness, which results in a balance mess, and causes massive rifts in the game community

 

ah yes, also:

- some problems in resource management, that resulted several times in game's history in many months of content droughts, one expansion abandonment, and a small case of massive layoffs.

- I also tend to have a lot of problems with gemshop and how it is managed (and how its existence negatively impacts the game), but these may be just my personal issues.

 

i would also say, that those are definitely not all, including some that are probably totally invisible to me, but important to some other players.

 

Compared to those, things like waypoints and tomes of knowledge are pretty much insignificant.

 

 

[DeanBB.4268]

How do we know how many new players join the game? If they are trying out the game as free-to-play, they can't communicate in map chat, and chat is quite limited overall. You'd have to see their toons in the starter zones. And I do see some, but have no way to quantify them.

 

The forums certainly don't represent the game population. I'm the only one in my family (5 people playing) that frequents the forums. That's just anecdotal, but I think a good representation of forum users. How many just lurk and never post?

 

Not that the game is without issues. @"Astralporing.1957" did a good job laying out some problems. But you know what? My brother and daughter are the most recent in my family to join, and they are blissfully unaware of any of those points. I told my daughter a new living world chapter is coming out next week, and she said, "A what?" All the stuff discussed here has zero affect on new players, unless they are perhaps MMO-jumpers and spend a ton of time reading up before jumping into a game. My family will be playing a long time before any of those "issues" come to light, thus making them non-issues to them.

[Kichwas.7152]

> @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

>

> In a game in which way points did not exist, the density map would look something like this.

 

You've never played WoW have you?

 

Over there - your Density map... would look like a map of the world with a single dot on it in one tiny spot.

 

No Waypoints - but people still go nowhere.

- that's actually the fate of a LOT of older MMOs.

 

In fact the two MMOs that seem to have player populations that spread around the game the most are, from what I have seen, Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online. Both of these have waypoint concepts - yet players are also everywhere. Almost evenly spread around both old and new content.

 

It's not the 'travel method' that impacts this... it's the 'gear treadmill design'. In GW2 and ESO old content is never fully obsolete. Moreso in ESO than here though.

I would argue that if you think GW2 has too much 'density' and not enough spread - they should switch to ESO's scaling system (everything outside of raids and elite dungeons there is scaled to the same point - basically the moment you make a new character you run out into the world in gear and stats that are what I think we get here in PvP - scaled to 80-exotic, and every enemy in the game outside of raids / elite dungeons is basically scaled to 'Orr' challenge level - result is all content is always equally relevant... but also... always equally a little too easy as the game ages and player skill has gone way past the challenge of 'Orr').

 

This game has some of the best use of it's maps of any MMO I've seen. Rivaled only by ESO to a point where I'm not sure which of them is in a better state on this point - they seem neck-in-neck in a race both are winning when compared to any other competitors.

 

[ArchonWing.9480]

Umm, they did try maps with limited waypoint access (eg. Silverwastes, Southsun, Dry Top). And they're pretty awful and I never visit them. Well SW is popular, but that's just for the rewards. Also, I wonder how many people enjoy interacting in Tangled Depths.

 

And interaction is generally concentrated at event centers anyways by design. With map chat people are able to centralize interaction.

 

This is also why IMO HOT maps are superior to PoF ones. HoT maps encourage people to group up in certain areas and interact because some stuff isn't able to be solo'd easily.

 

You make people interact with content, and here the meta is rushing to the shiny. Shiny rules everything, after all. If you ask me, the problem with this game's social functions is that guild activities such as missions, halls, and other features have been severely neglected.

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"DeanBB.4268" said:

> All the stuff discussed here has zero affect on new players

Most of the issues i brought up indeed have no _direct_ impact on the new players (some, like bad advertising, and the game not being popular among the streamers _do_, because they severely reduce the reach of the game. The same with the resource management problems - while a well-marketed expansion is often a good oportunity to reach to new players, a badly marketed, or _cancelled_ one is not). The remaining ones however still have some _indirect_ impact. Specifically, the word of mouth kind of impact. The less current players are content and happy, and the more likely they are to speak badly of the game (even if they still keep playing it), the more likely it is they'll discourage any potential new comers. And some of the issues i brought up may not directly prevent players from joining, but still result in them _leaving_ very fast.

 

 

[Pockethole.5031]

Why are you keen on manipulating everyone into interacting with each other? There are plenty of people wh would rather be alone by themselves. And there is no predicting if the interaction will be positive or negative. For me, too many interactions with other people have been negative, so obviously I want to be on my own. I should be offended that you would force this kind of setting into my life.

**I don't want what you want.** Do you understand? And especially during pandemic, it is in interest of everyone's safety to stay as far away from each other as is possible. When I pass by someone in need, I might help them, and over 90% of the time they say nothing to me about it, or turn tail and run while I'm still fighting a mob. I prove this time and time again, as if I don't want to believe it. In real world, if I trusted anyone ever again, I would get hurt physically or mentally. I honestly have no time for other people's bullshit. Everyone are out there to get you or your money. Nobody can be trusted. People are selfish and hurt others even if they don't acknowledge that. In game, it would be just a longer distance and would have no purpose to me because I have personal goals and if I cannot do it alone I will seek others help in /map chat. If you would do us a favor and try to understand other points of view than just your own. Thank you for reading.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

> @"Pockethole.5031" said:

> Why are you keen on manipulating everyone into interacting with each other?

 

Because interaction, both good and bad is required to maintain a growing/healthy population. Competition and Cooperation are cut from the same cloth, and they both live in consort with one another in order to get things to happen in society. You can choose to be alone, which is perfectly okay, but when you consider that, your knowledge doesn't pass down to anyone because you're alone, then you are a final link in a chain. It's okay for a few to be the final link in the chain, but if everyone is the final link in the chain, then that is the end of it as a whole.

 

What i'm saying here is that if you choose to play alone, then your lack of interaction with other people, means those people also lose an interaction with you. If everyone was like you, then everyone would lose interaction with everyone else. That's the macroscopic picture of such a behavior. Interaction leads to growth of a society, while no interaction leads to degradation of a society.

 

[Obtena.7952]

> @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

> > @"Pockethole.5031" said:

> What i'm saying here is that if you choose to play alone, then your lack of interaction with other people, means those people also lose an interaction with you. If everyone was like you, then everyone would lose interaction with everyone else. That's the macroscopic picture of such a behavior. Interaction leads to growth of a society, while no interaction leads to degradation of a society.

>

Hey that's fair ... But that has nothing to do with convenience. Targeting convenience features is a bad strategy if you want to push the social interaction aspect of an MMO ... at least in my opinion.

 

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

> @"Obtena.7952" said:

> > @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

> > > @"Pockethole.5031" said:

> > What i'm saying here is that if you choose to play alone, then your lack of interaction with other people, means those people also lose an interaction with you. If everyone was like you, then everyone would lose interaction with everyone else. That's the macroscopic picture of such a behavior. Interaction leads to growth of a society, while no interaction leads to degradation of a society.

> >

> Hey that's fair ... But that has nothing to do with convenience. Targeting convenience features is a bad strategy if you want to push the social interaction aspect of an MMO ... at least in my opinion.

>

 

The idea behind the attack on having too much conveniences is that it causes individuals to be self-sufficient. Self Sufficiency is an isolationist behavior, and the thing about convenience is that it is an optimal strategy for accomplishing goals...so despite it being bad for the overall growth of a society, a convenience is often the most optimal choice to have on an individual level.

 

For example, If the path between point A and point B is dangerous, so much so that it requires individuals that want to go from point A to Point B to band together in order to get there, Introducing a mount that allows individuals to bypass this danger means that these individuals no longer need to rely on each other to get from Point A to Point B. This means that the introduction of said mount allows the individual to be more self-sufficient. Additionally In this case, using a mount to bypass this dangerous path is the most optimal strategy to get from Point A to Point B, so this self-sufficiency behavior is further re-enforced. This mechanism is also true for waypoints and other travel enhancing conveniences.

[Swagger.1459]

Ok, so, the game isn’t dying and the devs aren’t removing waypoints, mounts, convenience items. So where do we go from here?

[Swagger.1459]

“Because interaction, both good and bad is required to maintain a growing/healthy population. Competition and Cooperation are cut from the same cloth, and they both live in consort with one another in order to get things to happen in society.”

 

There is always interacting between players somewhere in the game. What’s your point?

 

“What i'm saying here is that if you choose to play alone, then your lack of interaction with other people, means those people also lose an interaction with you”

 

Customers can do whatever they want. We don’t get to dictate and control what other humans do with their time in-game.

 

Worry about yourself. Don’t worry about what other people do.

[Julischka Bean.7491]

Err are you studying for a test, or writing a paper, and wrote this post to get your thoughts in proper working order?

 

Either way...it was a good read :)

 

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.

 

Example, I stood at the bank for 30 minutes the other day outwardly quiet...but...I was not banking. I was having a hilarious conversation in whisper mode about why I use the torch on power builds :)

[Swagger.1459]

> @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

> > @"Obtena.7952" said:

> > > @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

> > > > @"Pockethole.5031" said:

> > > What i'm saying here is that if you choose to play alone, then your lack of interaction with other people, means those people also lose an interaction with you. If everyone was like you, then everyone would lose interaction with everyone else. That's the macroscopic picture of such a behavior. Interaction leads to growth of a society, while no interaction leads to degradation of a society.

> > >

> > Hey that's fair ... But that has nothing to do with convenience. Targeting convenience features is a bad strategy if you want to push the social interaction aspect of an MMO ... at least in my opinion.

> >

>

> The idea behind the attack on having too much conveniences is that it causes individuals to be self-sufficient. Self Sufficiency is an isolationist behavior, and the thing about convenience is that it is an optimal strategy for accomplishing goals...so despite it being bad for the overall growth of a society, a convenience is often the most optimal choice to have on an individual level.

>

> For example, If the path between point A and point B is dangerous, so much so that it requires individuals that want to go from point A to Point B to band together in order to get there, Introducing a mount that allows individuals to bypass this danger means that these individuals no longer need to rely on each other to get from Point A to Point B. This means that the introduction of said mount allows the individual to be more self-sufficient. Additionally In this case, using a mount to bypass this dangerous path is the most optimal strategy to get from Point A to Point B, so this self-sufficiency behavior is further re-enforced. This mechanism is also true for waypoints and other travel enhancing conveniences.

 

Make your own guild of buddies that avoids using waypoints, mounts, and quick travel items... and don’t worry about what another customer does with their time and money inside of GW2

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

> @"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.

 

 

[Seera.5916]

> @"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.