ANet recently announced their next game, Guild Wars 3; at the same time, they also announced that they're committed to the long-term success of Guild Wars 2 and intend to keep updating it with new content and expansions for a long time. As part of that commitment, they plan to make some updates to the existing game's content during the GW3 release period.
I, being the huge GW2 nerd that I am, am currently drafting an article where I go over my suggestions regarding what changes and additions ANet might make to introduce the greatest amount of new content with the least amount of work during this maintenance period. A point I keep returning to in said article is that GW2 already features a large amount of content which most players very rarely participate in, and that providing players with additional reasons to add that content to their daily rotations would be effectively adding entire new maps and metas to the game for the low cost of adjusting some rewards.
That brings us to the story of this article. As part of that above article, which I am still working on, I ended up going on a pretty big tangent about the extent to which rewards actually entice players to play certain meta-events over others. I reached some pretty interesting conclusions, and the section became so large that I ultimately decided to surgically remove it from that project and release it as its own article; that's the one you're reading now.
With that preface out of the way, let's get into the fun, nitty-gritty detail that you came here for. What makes a GW2 meta-event popular? Spoiler alert—"having good rewards" is actually one of the least surefire indicators. Prepare to learn a lot about the psychology of GW2's playerbase, which probably also includes learning a lot about yourself.
Data & Methodology
To get to the bottom of just what entices players to play certain metas over others, I compiled the following data on every major meta-event in the game. From left to right, the characteristics tracked in this spreadsheet's columns are:
- Requires: Which content you must own to access the meta
- Length: How long it takes to complete (in minutes), as per [fast] Farming Community
- GpH: The expected gold-per-hour of an efficient clear, as per [fast] Farming Community
- Difficulty: How difficult the meta is to organize as a commander ('Trivial' not needing a commander at all, 'Hard' requiring organized squads performing specific roles)
- Population: The number of players needed to stand a reasonable chance at clearing the meta
- SSR Drop?: Whether or not the meta has a super rare drop, such as an infusion ('Rare' is for any rare drop, '$$$' is for one that's tradable)
- Currency?: Whether or not the meta is useful for farming any non-gold currencies
- Timer?: What type of timer the meta is on ('Global' being anything you can find on the wiki's event timer, 'Dynamic' being events that trigger based on player activity in the map)
- Popularity: And, finally, my gauge of about how popular each meta is, to be compared against all the other characteristics.
Trends
Out of 71 major metas, the distribution of popularity is as follows, along with some interesting trends:
19 metas have 'Very High' popularity and get ran consistently every time they occur, often on multiple instances per timeslot.
- 14 of these metas are core content available to all players, and the only core metas not in this group are Triple Trouble and the three LW1 metas that take place in instances.
- Interestingly, almost every meta in this category—including those from expansions—has very low GpH, with the sole exceptions being Wyvern Matriarch, Karka Queen, and LLA.
- Every meta in this category is on a global timer except for Mordrem Vinewrath.
- Every meta in this category is relatively short.
- Every non-core meta in this category can drop a tradable infusion, with the exception of Wyvern Matriarch.
- Most of these have decent GpH and are easy to command.
- Every meta in this category is on a global timer except the cyclical Dragonfall and Drizzlewood.
- Most of these metas are good for farming map-specific currencies.
- Most of the best GpH metas are in this category, but it also includes many with very poor GpH.
- Most of the metas in this category are on global timers. The only dynamic metas here are Specimen Chamber, which is notable as the game's best year-round karma farm, and the eastern two Nayos metas.
- This is the first category to include any dynamic metas.
- Almost every EoD and SotO meta is in this category, as well as every global-timer LW4 meta except for The Oil Floes.
- Most of these metas have poor GpH, with the sole exception of Gyala Delve.
- Every Janthir Wilds meta except for A Titanic Voyage is in this category.
- Half of these metas are on dynamic timers.
- Most of these metas don't have tradable rare drops, with the exceptions of the Mistburned Barrens surveys.
- Most of these metas are very easy to lead and require very few players to complete, with the exception of Gyala Delve, Into the Spider's Lair, and Of Mists and Monsters, which are all more demanding on commanders and require large populations.
- Most of these metas are on dynamic timers. Two are instanced, and only one, the Ceremony of the Sacred Flame from Grothmar Valley, is on a global timer.
- Most of the dynamic metas from LW3&4 are in this category. The exceptions, Beacons of Koda and Orrian Shrine Power Grid, are in the above category because they can be easily solo'd by a single player, and thus get completed fairly regularly despite being very unpopular.
- None of these metas have a rare drop, and only the Tower of Nightmares is useful for farming currencies.
- Like the above category, most of these metas are easy to lead and require few players to complete.
- Serpent's Ire is very long, somewhat difficult to lead, requires a large player population, and has very poor rewards. Combined with the fact that it shares its main daily reward with Forged With Fire, which mogs it in all of those categories, it never gets ran.
- The Oil Floes, while short, is deceptively difficult and requires a large squad. It's hard to lead and provides poor rewards.
- The Ooze Pit Trials isn't nearly as difficult to clear as the other two metas, but it similarly suffers from being difficult to lead, requiring more players to complete it than are ever on its map nowadays, and having very poor rewards.
Conclusions
- We probably shouldn't consider the core world bosses in this discussion at all, as them being as popular as they are clearly has nothing to do with their rewards. They get ran frequently because they're short, easy, and basically AFKable, because new players happen to wander in and join the events, because they're the only thing core open-world players can really do, and because many players continue to do world boss runs out of nostalgia and/or routine as opposed to chasing rewards (or, alternatively, many people think these metas are still good rewards and have never bothered to actually check). Basically, we're pretending these don't exist for the rest of these conclusions, because they break every rule and trend established elsewhere. Moving on,
- Players like gambling more than they like making money. Many of the most popular non-core metas are those that provide rare chances at tradable infusions, while the metas that actually provide the best rewards have more middling popularity. In general, GpH seems to only be a significant factor for a minority of players. The veteran backbone of the community will run the actually profitable events, keeping them in the medium popularity zone, but most players flock to the 1/10000 chance at a jackpot instead.
- Longer, harder, and more complex metas are inherently less popular and need dramatically better rewards to be seen as 'worth it' to the players trying to optimize.
- Similarly, dynamic metas are inherently unpopular because you have no way of knowing when they will run, and can only check by joining the map or looking for a squad in LFG. These also require dramatically enhanced rewards to receive attention.
- Most players, even those trying to spend their time "optimally", aren't using external tools to check what the optimal metas to farm actually are; instead, they're making guesses about how profitable each meta is, and these guesses are incorrect just as often as not. Take Twisted Marionette, for example—if you were to ask any player in the last few years why it never gets ran, they would almost certainly respond "because it has poor rewards". This isn't actually true—its rewards are actually significantly better than much more popular events like Tequatl, Octovine, Gerent, or Pinata—but the average player thinks it is.
Improving Rewards
Based on the findings above, how could ArenaNet best improve the rewards of unpopular meta-events in order to make them more enticing?
- As established above, players seem to care more about rare item drops than they do about rewards that are actually good on average. Not every meta needs to drop a tradable infusion worth thousands of gold, but the presence of some sort of exclusive reward will attract the veteran gamblers.
- Since players are mostly making guesses about which metas are or aren't profitable, including the recognizable signposts of "good rewards" is more important than the rewards actually being good. For one example, take Amalgamated Gemstones. These are offered by most Hero's Choice Chests, and they are almost universally the best option to take from them. Players recognize these as the "main" reward from many of their favorite metas; therefore, a meta lacking one as a reward makes it seem less profitable. Adding HCCs to metas that lack them, and amalgamated gemstones as options to the HCCs that don't provide them (such as the 'Of Mists and Monsters' chest) will not only make these metas significantly more rewarding, but will also help them to feel rewarding to the average player.
- Additional signposting for how rewarding metas actually are could also help make many of them more popular. An example I used above is Twisted Marionette, a meta which most players falsely believe to have poor rewards despite actually being quite good. An in-game indicator of what its rewards actually are could help to dispel the myth that it's unprofitable.
- Continuing off of the fact that most players aren't chasing optimal GpH, another reason the average player tends to run metas and other events is to farm map-specific currencies. Most of the LW3&4 metas are comically bad options for farming their maps' currencies; changing this by adding a significant amount of currency as a daily reward would give players an additional reason to participate in these metas.
- At the end of the day, having decent GpH is still somewhat important, even if the average player isn't checking that value. There are a handful of players who will base their gameplay decisions off of that value, and those players are often the ones forming squads that the average players then join. Providing them with more content worth farming in turn creates more content for all players. Furthermore, for the metas with the worst of the worst rewards, even the average player can tell that they aren't worth much and decide to avoid them—such is the fate of the Mistburned Barrens surveys and the Grothmar Valley mini-metas.
- In my opinion, a good spot for ANet to aim for would be to bring unpopular metas up to ~30 GpH at a minimum. This would make many competitive enough to at least be worthy of consideration, and ensure that no event sticks out as particularly unprofitable.
Conclusion (Singular this time)
That concludes my findings regarding what actually makes metas popular. Were you shocked to learn that Octovine and Chak Gerent are actually pretty bad in terms of gold-per-hour? There were definitely a few surprises for me in this data—I never would've guessed that Dragon's Stand is the most profitable meta, or that third place would be A Titanic Voyage.
I hope this has been an interesting read and an insightful look into the beautiful mess that is my GW2-obsessed brain. If anyone from ANet happens to be reading—I know y'all have seen at least a few of my articles—I hope the conclusions I reached here can be of use to you during the upcoming maintenance period. Hire me! (That's a joke, unless you actually want to hire me, in which case it isn't)
Thanks for reading, and look forward to the article this was originally a part of coming next week! I've decided to try and commit to more frequent, weekly blog posts, so we'll see how long I'm actually able to keep that up.
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