tanithryudo: (Guild Wars)
tanithryudo ([personal profile] tanithryudo) wrote2012-02-20 02:27 pm

Playerbase quality

You know, say what you will about GW's playerbase, but I have noticed that they are generally quite... anally hardcore? :-p Yeah, even...especially the PvE folks.

I don't know how other pay-to-play games like WoW has it, but I've been reading some general whining on the PWI/STO forums about grab bag items and how the players demand transparency from the devs on the percentages of certain rewards.

And I can't just help but compare it to the Guild Wars fan base, which instead of demanding hard numbers...start tallying up the #'s themselves across large numbers of people, and then estimate a drop rate/spawn rate/etc. from there which then gets posted to the wiki or wiki discussion page. Now, yes, I do get that there is a difference here in that the GW players are crunching numbers on largely non-purchased stuff (drop rates, spawn rates, holiday mystery box rates, etc.) But given how fast the grab boxes in STO/PWI sell (only the keys need to be purchased with $$), I don't think there are any less sources of datapoints there either; just no one getting together to crunch some numbers.

Even in general, the GW wiki (and related wikis like PvX) is a pretty awe-inspiring place. Quick updates, complete records of every bit of minutae in the game, strategy suggestions that get updated according to game/skill balance, statistical analysis of all sorts of stuff...

They're all free-to-play games. But what's so unique about the GW crop of players?

[identity profile] tanithryudo.insanejournal.com 2012-02-23 01:45 pm (UTC)(link)
No dev of any game will give out drop rates. I don't think KoL does either. Nor does PWI or STO or GW... Does WoW really?

[identity profile] cashew.insanejournal.com 2012-02-25 09:49 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't know about WoW, but Warcraft is an RTS, so all the percentages are transparent. I imagine some of that followed over into WoW. Of course, never having played it, I don't know.

Maybe STO has a more demanding fanbase because it started off as pay-to-play and only recently converted to f2p? So the community mentality still hasn't completely turned around yet in terms of demanding more from developers? I don't know.

Although, weren't there threads that demanded devs to answer drop rate questions back when GW had a lot of farming regarding the loot distribution (if I recall, it was debate over is it better to solo or go with a full group of hench). It kinda died down, but I think that's because farming became so much less profitable over time.

[identity profile] tanithryudo.insanejournal.com 2012-02-28 03:12 am (UTC)(link)
There has *always* been demands on the DE's to be transparent about drop rates and other hidden stats stuff, now that I think about it. I've seen it on the KOL forums, the GW forums, STO forums, and I'd bet you they'd be around on WoW forums too.

I think the main difference between a good and bad community is that in the good ones, there would actually be people who'd take the initiative to find out the stats themselves.