Show HN: My Guild Wars 2 data viz weekend experiment using D3 and SVG filters | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My Guild Wars 2 data viz weekend experiment using D3 and SVG filters

guildwars2viz.com

49 pointsenoex115 comments

As a design project it's cool. I think you did a good job and I don't mean to rain on your parade. But of course now I will. I think as a data visualization exercise, it's mostly what Tufte would call "chart junk". The graphics don't aid into understanding, and actually sort of distract you from the point. It would be a lot easier to read if the axis labels said things like "Warrior" instead of an obscure graphic, that even as a GW2 player myself, I have to think about. Also, the pie chart...pie charts are problematic for understanding data because we don't do a good job at interpreting area. A bar chart is considered more effective. Again, as a purely visual exercise, I think it looks cool.

This looks nice! And I like the link between the rings and the bars.

I'm a bit thick. It took me a few minutes to realise that the rings of the circle are independent. For example, there can be female humans, all the humans are not male.

On the bar charts you start at 0% (which is good), but you don't finish at 100%, nor on a similar number. One chart finishes at about 15% and another at about 30%. So at a glance the hight of the bars looks similar. I guess the width of the bars compensates? (And the race bar chart numbers add to 99%. Is that a rounding thing?)

Thanks! You're not thick, it's just that this isn't really the best visualization choice for the data since the rings are independent and not hierarchical (like in http://mbostock.github.com/d3/ex/sunburst.html).

You are absolutely right about the scale for the bar charts, oversight on my part which I have fixed now. The adding to 99% is a rounding error (you can see the fully number value by mousing over a bar) - thanks a ton for your feedback!

Very cool!

GW2 is currently my favorite game and am really surprised to see it on HN frontpage.

I'm astounded at the amount of data ANet is making available. And, how cleanly and robustly they've done it - all in JSON.

Another bit you might want to play with is their TP (Trading Post) JSON data. These guys (http://www.gw2spidy.com, source is on github) do a really good job, but I'm sure there are tons more things, and ideas, that can come from all that data!

Good luck!

> GW2 is currently my favorite game

How do you think it compares to GW1? I have GW1, but found it a little lonely after leaving the cities because outside the cities, the regions were instanced.

Only personal story and dungeons are instantiated.

The open world is shared, and very collaborative.

I'm quite fond of both games, but it's dangerous to directly compare them. GW1 is a Diablo style game that flirts with massive elements, whereas GW2 is much more of a traditional MMO. They certainly have plenty of things in common - a similar approach to/focus on PvP, similar action bar combat with a lot of attention paid to status effects - but they're not even really in the same genre, and GW2's focus on ad-hoc collaboration means that GW2 plays much differently moment-to-moment.

GW2 does some great things with quests, their PQ-ish Dynamic Events work well, and their huge raid-boss-y world dudes are a ton of fun. The way you can join multiple guilds and the way you are scaled down in level based on where you are makes it really easy to play with friends regardless of your individual progression. It's definitely worth a look.

This is pretty rad. It reminds me of our designer (Joe Golike)'s master's project, visualizing the economy of WoW, also built in d3:

http://golike.com/2.0/mmox.htm http://mmox.org/demo

It looks great, but I noticed that the black outline animation lags heavily behind the rest, which makes the site feel incredibly sluggish, even though it's probably only just the one animation that ruins the perception.

Great job all in all.

Thanks! I removed the transition delay effect, it should appear to select it a bit faster now.

Very cool, my buddy has been harping me to get GW2-- Where did you get the data for this?

Cheers

The data comes from a recent image published on the GuildWars official blog: http://guildwars2viz.com/static/img/viz/gw2_data.jpg

I just calculated the percentages based on the pixel coverage of each bar. I'll also add in on your buddy's harping - get it, it's a fun game! ;)

Loads slow in Firefox. Sigh.....

Why the "sigh....."?

Need a key for the icons.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com