Guild Wars 2

Sorry for my bad English to everyone read this .

I write this only hope GW2 could succeed in China .

Chinese server was start running in 5,1,2014. GW2 has sold 1.5 million copies,His price is $15. One year past. Every my friends was AFK. GW2 active players only less than 50000 people.

Chinese player who is playing WOW,still have Six hundred and seventy thousand.
Chinese player who is playing LOL,still More than twenty million.

Why would GW2 so failure in China?I think ANET Should have a good reflection.

The following are some of my ideas:
1 Chinese players is generally believed that this is a well-made games but have nothing to do.
2 The game rewards are very bad.
3 Almost all of the new skin is by buying rather than the game content.
4 Poor PVP qualifying system,Individual players to be a team player played badly.
5 WVW , let a person feel boring, until one day Plugin completely destroyed WVW.
6 Pets are too realistic, no desire to purchase and collection.

Some of my personal advice:
1 More powerful challenge,Five people can kill Zetan is foolish.
2 More dungeons or BOSS in the world,Can drop the careful design of the skin.The production of fine some BOSS model also please
3 SAB can a month or two months open once, like next to the dark in the circus.
4 KDW is a high selling SAB’s skin, in April this year did not open, is the result of your conspiracy?
5 To a once a week based on the occupation of the city’s war, it is very interesting.At the same time give special reward.
6 Please continue to improve PVP queuing system,Otherwise the new players will be less and less.
7 Where is true sense of the guild war? A guild can have 250 people, they also have the elite in the 30 people or so
8 Let the arms and the lion’s skin can be gained through the game content, can add some limitations.
9 For the role of PVP players to design new medal, let players can show in his own name, just like players hate VIP badge.
10 PVE area will allow players to a duel.
11 HOT in some special areas to allow Talking of cabbage players can kill contract team players.
12 I am super like GW1, but disappeared in GW1 many advantages in GW2.
13 If you want to earn more money, GW2 need larger player base, and Chinese players are rich enough and full of taste, rough design items, Chinese players is purchased.

Chinese server is waiting for ANET redemption.

Add a piece of advice?
Three different classes of players for a city or a regional territorial rights, only a week in a weekend at a specific time of war. This is based on Chinese history and novels. Now the WVW occupied the city but has no influence on PVE, to reward WVW player is also very low.

To be honest, most of what you said are a number of the complaints that players here have as well. Players are very much hoping for improvements and changes in direction with the upcoming Heart of Thorns release. Your concerns are definitely valid, and no surprise that they are universal.

Prototypemind.4026:

To be honest, most of what you said are a number of the complaints that players here have as well. Players are very much hoping for improvements and changes in direction with the upcoming Heart of Thorns release. Your concerns are definitely valid, and no surprise that they are universal.

These I understand, as to why to ask, because China’s agency KDW is very bad, if HOT can’t achieve good performance, then China’s agents might not give GW2 chance.

alberte.2685:

Prototypemind.4026:

To be honest, most of what you said are a number of the complaints that players here have as well. Players are very much hoping for improvements and changes in direction with the upcoming Heart of Thorns release. Your concerns are definitely valid, and no surprise that they are universal.

These I understand, as to why to ask, because China’s agency KDW is very bad, if HOT can’t achieve good performance, then China’s agents might not give GW2 chance.

We are all hoping for HOT

If it can’t achieve good performance then no one will give GW2 a chance.

Certainly agree with you friend. Like Prototype mentioned, your concerns are also shared here, which I think speaks volumes regarding the state of the game. It crosses borders and two different cultures have the same opinions. What more do you need Anet?

I wonder if OP could post the source of his claim that the current active Chinese players is less than 50k. That’s quite a drop from a year ago of 3.8 million.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=851365

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I wonder if OP could post the source of his claim that the current active Chinese players is less than 50k. That’s quite a drop from a year ago of 3.8 million.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=851365

The most intuitive is the number of guild online, I am a Taiwan and the mainland, mixed 250 guild at the height of ten people online.

This link is the heat of the guild wars 2 keywords retrieval in mainland China region
http://index.baidu.com/?tpl=trend&word=%BC%A4%D5%BD2

alberte.2685:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I wonder if OP could post the source of his claim that the current active Chinese players is less than 50k. That’s quite a drop from a year ago of 3.8 million.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=851365

The most intuitive is the number of guild online, I am a Taiwan and the mainland, mixed 250 guild at the height of ten people online.

This link is the heat of the guild wars 2 keywords retrieval in mainland China region
http://index.baidu.com/?tpl=trend&word=%BC%A4%D5%BD2

That pulls up a Chinese link with no information when I try it and requires a login.

2. Game rewards are bad. Period

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I wonder if OP could post the source of his claim that the current active Chinese players is less than 50k. That’s quite a drop from a year ago of 3.8 million.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=851365

Anet already said that this information is false. The numbers presented were characters created, not accounts.
This has been discussed countless times on these forums and others.

Fernling.1729:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I wonder if OP could post the source of his claim that the current active Chinese players is less than 50k. That’s quite a drop from a year ago of 3.8 million.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=851365

Anet already said that this information is false. The numbers presented were characters created, not accounts.
This has been discussed countless times on these forums and others.

K

It still would have been interesting to see a source for the claim of less than 50k players, if there was one in English.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

alberte.2685:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I wonder if OP could post the source of his claim that the current active Chinese players is less than 50k. That’s quite a drop from a year ago of 3.8 million.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=851365

The most intuitive is the number of guild online, I am a Taiwan and the mainland, mixed 250 guild at the height of ten people online.

This link is the heat of the guild wars 2 keywords retrieval in mainland China region
http://index.baidu.com/?tpl=trend&word=%BC%A4%D5%BD2

That pulls up a Chinese link with no information when I try it and requires a login.

I signed up for an new email address and account, you can use.
Account and password are as follows.

abbebate@163.com
abbebate163

Yall do know Raid Dungeons are coming right? Its in the works…

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Fernling.1729:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I wonder if OP could post the source of his claim that the current active Chinese players is less than 50k. That’s quite a drop from a year ago of 3.8 million.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=851365

Anet already said that this information is false. The numbers presented were characters created, not accounts.
This has been discussed countless times on these forums and others.

K

It still would have been interesting to see a source for the claim of less than 50k players, if there was one in English.

What he’s linking to is the Chinese version of Google, and specifically their analytics page (thank you alberte :V ). It’s showing an overall trend of 94% downward of people searching the game in comparison to last year (with a trend downwards of 2% of the searches still being made on a week per week basis).

While that’s not exactly true evidence of there being less players, that’s a pretty extreme trend of people not searching for the game.

WhiteCrow.5310:

Certainly agree with you friend. Like Prototype mentioned, your concerns are also shared here, which I think speaks volumes regarding the state of the game. It crosses borders and two different cultures have the same opinions. What more do you need Anet?

I don’t think the young people in China and the United States, young people have too big difference, westernized Chinese young people very much, also love watching American movies and TV, play the game, if there is any different, so is the Chinese players almost only playing PC games and mobile games, PS and XBOX is very small like the Japanese young people to play.

If ANET hope LW may turn to a TV drama, so need to understand the Chinese way of watching TV series, in all of China’s TV drama are free, americans may set a week, and the Chinese is a day to see ten sets. Of course this is just a metaphor, that means ANET requires a lot of improve the efficiency of your work. LOL and WOW can be a huge success in China, GW2 cannot, then it must be a reason for that.

We won’t get more dungeons or small raid like content unfortunately. That’s what this game is really missing for me. I think having hard content in general is a challenge for gw2 because of the combat system (even though I love it). In games with the triad you have classes that have skills you need to time and coordinate which makes it challenging. But in gw2 we don’t have that. All they have to work with is dodge and evades. Granted some content like fractals is much easier with reflects, blocks, noon strip, might stack ect. But you can accomplish pretty much everything in game without these things.

If Anet could develop fights that required certain classes to complete the content then we would be able to have more challenging content. Although we would need more skills such as reflect or projectile block and make it more deadly for when you do not use your utility skills to counter whatever this new attack would be.

Maybe I’m not being very clear here and it’s kind of hard to explain. An example would be conditions. Rework them so enemies using them have them hit harder. And rework condi cleanse so that certain classes can only condi clease certain conditions. That would require actual coordination. That isn’t the best example but it’s what I am getting at. Unfortunately I don’t see this ever happening though.

Everyone burnt out grinding ascended junk
I still have 4yrs to go to gear grind all of my 8 characters… that I hardly play any longer for being under-geared. No wait, I just don’t care any longer, I only play one now. I might spend the time getting another college degree.. or two, instead hehe. Too much of a time sink and I don’t want to unload huge loads of money into the gem store for them. I’m a core player, not hard-core and not casual. GW2 has seemed to try to take the two extremes, less in the middle where core players like to spend many years in.

Yes, active accounts are low here too. If we didn’t have megaservers, the game would be entirely unplayable apart from everyone guesting to a few servers. Well HoT is coming, but really should have been here a year ago, over a year ago. GW2 started bleeding active accounts the first year when they put off an expansion and started making temp content, and focusing on the gem store. Sadly for them I guess, I’m not much of a cash cow, I don’t fall into the impulsive youth category that most cash shops make most of their money from (casual and hard-core). Not cheap, just prefer to pay for expansions, then maybe a little more into the gem store. Well at least it’s not a full blown f2p, hate those, even a pure subscription game is far better. There are some left, won’t mention them here as an example.

Years ago, first expansion would make or break a game. Look at what happened to Earth and Beyond. EA pulled funding for an expansion and the game died. Then they just shifted all the funding to The SIMS Online (renamed EA Land), which flopped really hard. EnB was actually fun, but it just cried out for a real expansion.

Well, let the miracle workers work behind the scene, they may pull off a save. But between now and maybe then, yeah population will stay as it is, with some turnover as is the norm of the business. “Sometimes you just have to roll the hard six” -Adama

Daywolf.2630:

Everyone burnt out grinding ascended junk
I still have 4yrs to go to gear grind all of my 8 characters… that I hardly play any longer for being under-geared. No wait, I just don’t care any longer, I only play one now. I might spend the time getting another college degree.. or two, instead hehe. Too much of a time sink and I don’t want to unload huge loads of money into the gem store for them. I’m a core player, not hard-core and not casual. GW2 has seemed to try to take the two extremes, less in the middle where core players like to spend many years in.

Yes, active accounts are low here too. If we didn’t have megaservers, the game would be entirely unplayable apart from everyone guesting to a few servers. Well HoT is coming, but really should have been here a year ago, over a year ago. GW2 started bleeding active accounts the first year when they put off an expansion and started making temp content, and focusing on the gem store. Sadly for them I guess, I’m not much of a cash cow, I don’t fall into the impulsive youth category that most cash shops make most of their money from (casual and hard-core). Not cheap, just prefer to pay for expansions, then maybe a little more into the gem store. Well at least it’s not a full blown f2p, hate those, even a pure subscription game is far better. There are some left, won’t mention them here as an example.

Years ago, first expansion would make or break a game. Look at what happened to Earth and Beyond. EA pulled funding for an expansion and the game died. Then they just shifted all the funding to The SIMS Online (renamed EA Land), which flopped really hard. EnB was actually fun, but it just cried out for a real expansion.

Well, let the miracle workers work behind the scene, they may pull off a save. But between now and maybe then, yeah population will stay as it is, with some turnover as is the norm of the business. “Sometimes you just have to roll the hard six” -Adama

With American cultural reply I want to read some sweaty, but I noticed the gem store. Almost all of China’s domestic game has gem store, this let the game become don’t like game, more like some kind of violence, this is also the reason why I don’t want to enter the game company in China.

ANET actually spend a lot of time in gems shops, props are fewer CPU result in the second quarter of the game. Lead to loss of players. Actually China domestic game gem mall will sell the props is probably GW2 game props in more than 10 times.

But an MMORPG is based on the content of the game itself, not the player base will not be able to promote consumption, like American companies are thought of China to make money. In fact the Chinese people are very pay attention to reputation and quality. If a game for a long time not updated, or substantial playable content is too little, so players will leave quickly. If ANET want play gem mall, then make is equal to the quantity more than 5 times the skin now. Yes, game companies in China that was all day and night to work overtime production, and, of course, is what I hate.

alberte.2685:

2 The game rewards are very bad.
3 Almost all of the new skin is by buying rather than the game content.
4 Poor PVP qualifying system,Individual players to be a team player played badly.
5 WVW , let a person feel boring, until one day Plugin completely destroyed WVW.
6 Pets are too realistic, no desire to purchase and collection.

Those have been common complaints from players in the US and EU almost since day 1.

When you see a list of all the things added to the game since it’s been released and 75% of the changes or new things are for the gem store it gets kind of depressing.

ii agree with alberte same as all of us do i guess.
The problem is not the game itself, the game is well designed and executed, it has a very good quality and is entertaining.
Unfortunately, as i have said before, it falls in the same problem as any MMORPG PvE oriented game out there. It is completely scripted.
That grow old really fast as the players can’t do 3 or 4 times the same event without feeling bored. The player ultimately feels disconnected from the game because nothing that they do really matters. Next time he loads the maps will be the same as always.

First tried with releasing new content often. Unfortunately is really difficult to keep up that new content race same case as could be a power equipment race.
Anet tried to reduce the “nothing matter” creating the ascended grinding that actually make the problem worst. Now the players would be forced to grind so will repeat the same events over and over aggravating the burned player effect.

So although I’m repeating myself a lot I think the answer for this is to:

• Improve AI in mobs. If they are hard because they are smart and not because they kill you with one hit or has an incredible amount of hit points the reward for playing the game would be better. It does not need to be too hard to improve:
  [quote]
• Make the mobs to dodge/move is is in an AOE. This is already applied to some mobs in Frostgorge Sound. Give it a cooldown so it hasn’t unlimited dodges.
• Give them two sets. One long range other melee if is applicable and depending on target swap weapons.
• Give them more than one special attack and use random trigger as less as possible. A good example of this is already applied to the same sons of svanir in Frostgorge Sound. When you get close some of them use Whirling Defense that can take you down if you don’t pay attention. That’s a good step but one skill is not enough diversity. Fussion together the svanir bowman and swordman and give them more player like skills .
  [/quote]
• Improve the live world feeling making the world itself mutable changing with the tides of war. Cities might be destroyed and rebuild, but using a system like is applied in WvW although should a take much longer and harder to take down a city in PvE.
• Giving a mobs and PNJ faction an AI rts like where the AIs decide to invade and fight other factions would benefit the feeling of a world struggling. The players could join in sieges against mobs outpost and cities, having in mind that this could take days or weeks even.
• That would mean the events would be based in AIs necessity instead an scripted time table, making the players to actually interact with PNj to learn the news and whee they would be needed.
• Having mobs factions would allow the players at some point to choose sides you could fight for the dragons and then would have to fight the players in the pact. That would allow a very interesting battles.
• All this would make the word bosses to became mobile and not tied to a place. Because of this the players would need to haunt or follow this champion and his minions giving more importance to the commander figure.
• Also would make the players to get the feeling they are actually helping Tyria by saving that city or defeating that champion.

I think I would love to play a game like this, and the fact that should be always different, like if you don’t play for a while you could find that Tyria has became a completely different place that when you left would make people to be more engaged in the game.
Otherwise the only thing that could keep the players in once the PVE content is done is competitive play. But we have other titans playing in that league.

This is a very intresting thread subject. Also this is a very Important situation problem that never should be ignored but it it did. I do not know if Arena net purposely ignore it or did not do enough investigation before releasing Guild Wars 2 to the Asian market but they did already. It will destroy the game unless Arena net make serious change.

The consequences is already affecting the western market but affecting the Asian market in a very fast rate.

So what is the important situation problem?

Nothing Required- Easy Only Required>No Risk Required-No Hard Work Required-No Effort Required- No Challenges Required

As long this is the value for this game: there will never be Redemption.

But this raise very serious situation problem:

Asian values and cultures: Hard-Work, Effort and Risk and be Reward for it.

Did Arena net already destroy Guild Wars 2 for the Asian market by not making Guild Wars 2 with Holy Trinity System?

Guild Wars 2 with no Holy Trinity System > Requirement: -No hard work? -No effort? No Risk? No Challenging? No Team Play? No Innovation, No Fun? No Learning Curve? short contents, Reward than No/Risk? No Skills? Escape from consequences? Escape from punishments?

-Team Play=zerg? 1 profession do everything: tank-melee-range/heal/support= Team play?
-Stealth= only rewards? no counter, no risks? Escape from all risks? Remove all Punishments?
-High Damage= no cool-down, no long cool-down= skills? hard-work?
-Instant Death=challenging? fun?
-Skills= Spam?

HolyTrinity System > Requirement: Hard work, Great Effort, Risk, Challenges, Team Play, Team Effort, Risk-Reward, Hard Skills, Innovation, Fun: alot of Fun, Learning Curve, long contents, Consequence for actions, Punishment for consequences….

alberte.2685:

WhiteCrow.5310:

Certainly agree with you friend. Like Prototype mentioned, your concerns are also shared here, which I think speaks volumes regarding the state of the game. It crosses borders and two different cultures have the same opinions. What more do you need Anet?

I don’t think the young people in China and the United States, young people have too big difference, westernized Chinese young people very much, also love watching American movies and TV, play the game, if there is any different, so is the Chinese players almost only playing PC games and mobile games, PS and XBOX is very small like the Japanese young people to play.

If ANET hope LW may turn to a TV drama, so need to understand the Chinese way of watching TV series, in all of China’s TV drama are free, americans may set a week, and the Chinese is a day to see ten sets. Of course this is just a metaphor, that means ANET requires a lot of improve the efficiency of your work. LOL and WOW can be a huge success in China, GW2 cannot, then it must be a reason for that.

That is only an educated guess, but from perceiving at a distance (and the few chinese students I have known), there is a vast difference. Western people are completely enveloped in entitlement and “everyone is special” inclusive culture, the chinese mindset is more like the western one used to be 20 years ago. Western gaming audience is casual today, they approach gaming pretty much as they approach their whole lives. They don´t want to be invested in a game, they don´t enjoy acquiring skills or competence, they don´t want to achieve. They want to be diverted, not excited. As far as I know, that is very different from the asian market. So many things you bring up actually are making the game appealing to westerners.

Hello China….welcome to our world. It’s been like that for us also….no change they made improved the situation. Most likely will never change. All their solutions seem “temporary” and “patched in” instead of solid future-proof solutions. They seem like they reached the limit of what their game has to offer.

Algreg.3629:

alberte.2685:

WhiteCrow.5310:

Certainly agree with you friend. Like Prototype mentioned, your concerns are also shared here, which I think speaks volumes regarding the state of the game. It crosses borders and two different cultures have the same opinions. What more do you need Anet?

I don’t think the young people in China and the United States, young people have too big difference, westernized Chinese young people very much, also love watching American movies and TV, play the game, if there is any different, so is the Chinese players almost only playing PC games and mobile games, PS and XBOX is very small like the Japanese young people to play.

If ANET hope LW may turn to a TV drama, so need to understand the Chinese way of watching TV series, in all of China’s TV drama are free, americans may set a week, and the Chinese is a day to see ten sets. Of course this is just a metaphor, that means ANET requires a lot of improve the efficiency of your work. LOL and WOW can be a huge success in China, GW2 cannot, then it must be a reason for that.

That is only an educated guess, but from perceiving at a distance (and the few chinese students I have known), there is a vast difference. Western people are completely enveloped in entitlement and “everyone is special” inclusive culture, the chinese mindset is more like the western one used to be 20 years ago. Western gaming audience is casual today, they approach gaming pretty much as they approach their whole lives. They don´t want to be invested in a game, they don´t enjoy acquiring skills or competence, they don´t want to achieve. They want to be diverted, not excited. As far as I know, that is very different from the asian market. So many things you bring up actually are making the game appealing to westerners.

Look at what you said let me have a new harvest, thank you very much, I think Chinese are just from one extreme to come out, under the communist ideology of a new generation of young people and the world at first, but from childhood to accept the education is still on 60 years ago that a set of “obedience” and “don’t need to be independent” grew up, blindly follow and lack of ideas.Younger than me, of course, some of the young people began to have more and more western.

I think the game is now part of the Chinese youth life, especially for students, they can not go to class (those who are behind in textbooks don’t know how many years), but not without games, play a game with a computer during the day, sleep go to bed with a mobile phone to play games, I think these young people are going to ruin.Of course this is part of is also a common phenomenon.So GW2 too leisure with nothing to do like this game is neglected.

kitten , young Chinese people can’t stop to read book more?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I wonder if OP could post the source of his claim that the current active Chinese players is less than 50k. That’s quite a drop from a year ago of 3.8 million.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=851365

I have to query where the 3.8million came from, anyone who read a recent news article that mentioned GW2 would have seen where they said that GW2 has sold around 4million copies total.

In running with that another massive MMO since xmas has had 2.9million ppl stop playing, so 1 game has lost nearly as much as the total game count of GW2, reason cited was that there was no end game,

Hold on a minute there is no end game in GW2 either, I would say that the playerbase for GW2 globally has to be under 500k, this game is dying at an alarming rate, and the OP has stated it is dying in China also, and Anet banked a lot on that China release, at this moment in time with people getting bored and not logging in no more, combined with other great games coming out, it may not be worth Anet’s time or money to release an expansion.

Nearly all the things the OP mentioned have been posted on this forum a dozen times, and everytime it goes ignored for weeks, usually followed by an invisible mod closing and removing the topic, if they will not listen to the playerbase, they have no chance, I would love a dev to come on here and tell us what there is to do ingame, there are only so many broken fractals/dungeons you can run, only so many times you can be bothered to run Silverwastes for no drops, it will end badly at some point if these issues are not addressed.

Garth Thurgen.1380:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Fernling.1729:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I wonder if OP could post the source of his claim that the current active Chinese players is less than 50k. That’s quite a drop from a year ago of 3.8 million.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=851365

Anet already said that this information is false. The numbers presented were characters created, not accounts.
This has been discussed countless times on these forums and others.

K

It still would have been interesting to see a source for the claim of less than 50k players, if there was one in English.

What he’s linking to is the Chinese version of Google, and specifically their analytics page (thank you alberte :V ). It’s showing an overall trend of 94% downward of people searching the game in comparison to last year (with a trend downwards of 2% of the searches still being made on a week per week basis).

While that’s not exactly true evidence of there being less players, that’s a pretty extreme trend of people not searching for the game.

Not really an extreme trend at all. The game launched in China last year on May 10th. Before then was the Betas, trials, and things of that nature. In fact, with it being a launching title, most cursory searches were to find out about the game to see if it was worth purchasing and investing into. After launch, why would people be searching for it as much? The same thing happened to western searches of the game as well after it launched. However, I’m certain that the trend will once again move upward when Heart of Thorns sets a release in China either after or during the EU/US one.

A short answer might be, that chinese players like the hardcore games more. GW2 is much more for casual players.
I love my WvW when I finish diner at home, and only have short time to play. So it’s kinda perfect for me.

Yall do know Raid Dungeons are coming right? Its in the works…

Sourcerino?

Veydar.5017:

Yall do know Raid Dungeons are coming right? Its in the works…

Sourcerino?

Hope and imagination. All we know so far about “challenging group content” is open world boss pve zergfest. Many hope it’s otherwise, but really, unprobable.

Siphaed.9235:

Garth Thurgen.1380:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Fernling.1729:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I wonder if OP could post the source of his claim that the current active Chinese players is less than 50k. That’s quite a drop from a year ago of 3.8 million.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=851365

Anet already said that this information is false. The numbers presented were characters created, not accounts.
This has been discussed countless times on these forums and others.

K

It still would have been interesting to see a source for the claim of less than 50k players, if there was one in English.

What he’s linking to is the Chinese version of Google, and specifically their analytics page (thank you alberte :V ). It’s showing an overall trend of 94% downward of people searching the game in comparison to last year (with a trend downwards of 2% of the searches still being made on a week per week basis).

While that’s not exactly true evidence of there being less players, that’s a pretty extreme trend of people not searching for the game.

Not really an extreme trend at all. The game launched in China last year on May 10th. Before then was the Betas, trials, and things of that nature. In fact, with it being a launching title, most cursory searches were to find out about the game to see if it was worth purchasing and investing into. After launch, why would people be searching for it as much? The same thing happened to western searches of the game as well after it launched. However, I’m certain that the trend will once again move upward when Heart of Thorns sets a release in China either after or during the EU/US one.

You say it’s a kind of situation, in addition to search game strategy and update the news, it can be hard to have new players to enter, illustrate the GW2 also lose enthusiasm in the game. Actually my guild, President, vice-presidents, officials, most of the members are left. On HOT now whether there will be substantially improved, otherwise back players will continue to leave quickly.

Gyler.8150:

Veydar.5017:

Yall do know Raid Dungeons are coming right? Its in the works…

Sourcerino?

Hope and imagination. All we know so far about “challenging group content” is open world boss pve zergfest. Many hope it’s otherwise, but really, unprobable.

I got excited for a moment :[

Garth Thurgen.1380:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Fernling.1729:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I wonder if OP could post the source of his claim that the current active Chinese players is less than 50k. That’s quite a drop from a year ago of 3.8 million.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=851365

Anet already said that this information is false. The numbers presented were characters created, not accounts.
This has been discussed countless times on these forums and others.

K

It still would have been interesting to see a source for the claim of less than 50k players, if there was one in English.

What he’s linking to is the Chinese version of Google, and specifically their analytics page (thank you alberte :V ). It’s showing an overall trend of 94% downward of people searching the game in comparison to last year (with a trend downwards of 2% of the searches still being made on a week per week basis).

While that’s not exactly true evidence of there being less players, that’s a pretty extreme trend of people not searching for the game.

Is it though? I haven’t searched for the game in two years, because I don’t need to. I also don’t tend to search for games that have been out for a year or more, because by then I’m not actively looking for them, I’m being drawn to them by other articles. I don’t need to do searches because I’m following links.

Are people regularly and consistently searching for WoW? It’s still going strongish, so presumably if there is actually a relevant correlation it should be getting a lot of searches, right?

aspirine.6852:

A short answer might be, that chinese players like the hardcore games more. GW2 is much more for casual players.
I love my WvW when I finish diner at home, and only have short time to play. So it’s kinda perfect for me.

This. For whatever reason, in Asia, their player-base enjoys a steeper challenge . . . almost to the point where grinding is mandatory IMHO. In North America and Europe, their players enjoys more casual content overall.

Case in point, whenever there is more ‘challenging’ content on this side of the pond, the boards fill with complaints.

Still, given recent developments with the expansion, the population doesn’t appear to growing over here either. At least, not from what I’ve been seeing.

But, again, it’s just my humble opinion and observations.

The OP is clearly playing the same game in china we are. I agree with every point. I hope HoT marks a shift in Anet’s game design away from “now in the gemstore!” to rewards being earned in game. The pvp que imo should be split back to party and solo and I love the suggestion of a pvp rank icon by the player’s name (like the world completion star).

To the OP your English is much better than my Mandarin.

Just did quick look at trends. Both WoW and GW2 have been and continue trending downward at about the same pace, as is Star Wars: The Old Republic. TERA, Vindictus, EvE and upcoming games like Black Desert Online are all currently showing more stability or are trending heavily upwards. Interesting results; while they don’t tell the whole story, they do speak to general curiosity about the titles, more interesting still because WoW is the only one that uses any form of robust marketing.

Honestly, there’s not much choice as far as new and exciting MMOs to play. The majority of income now comes from loyal players who . . . ahem . . . don’t have anything better to play.

Harsh, but true. That reality kept DAoC #1 for a long time.

There’s not much, if anything, on the horizon. . . .

+1. Gw2 is lacking in re playability because the content is so easy and the rewards are non existent

Knighthonor.4061:

Yall do know Raid Dungeons are coming right? Its in the works…

Link or it didn’t happen.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Knighthonor.4061:

Yall do know Raid Dungeons are coming right? Its in the works…

Link or it didn’t happen.

Think it was sarcasm. They said all the major features of HoT are revealed just not details. Obviously raids would be a major feature which was not revealed. But yeah think it was sarcasm.

Beast Sos.1457:

+1. Gw2 is lacking in re playability because the content is so easy and the rewards are non existent

I haven’t played other games so I have nothing to compare it to. Is WoW that much harder, or archeage, or Elder Scrolls Online?

I gather Wildstar was significantly harder but didn’t it have a population crash for that reason?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Beast Sos.1457:

+1. Gw2 is lacking in re playability because the content is so easy and the rewards are non existent

I haven’t played other games so I have nothing to compare it to. Is WoW that much harder, or archeage, or Elder Scrolls Online?

I gather Wildstar was significantly harder but didn’t it have a population crash for that reason?

I wouldn’t say that they’re that hard, it’s just that GW2 is pretty trivial in terms of difficulty (mostly looking at WoW for the actual comparison, as that’s the only one I have any experience with at all, but the other two probably fall into the same boat). Even the hardest bosses in the game can easily be crushed if you have a full team of even remotely competent players, and pretty much the only challenging moments are when you are restricted in some manner (it’s why three man dungeons are becoming popular for speed clears, as the people doing them are really showing just how impressive they are and how much they understand the game’s core systems).

Wildstar, however, didn’t fail because it was a hardcore game, but because of poor management and generally not thought out systems. They tried to put in too much stuff to appeal to casuals towards the end (“the end” being the point where pretty much everyone left it), it failed to really accurately reward players for the difficulty (if you didn’t do things perfectly, as an entire group no less, your rewards were lowered. Regardless of the fact that it was still something difficult to even finish in the first place) until they decided to make it all too easy to get all of the rewards (more of the first issue), and their entire system wasn’t really too far stretched from “WoW… but hard!”

Mind you, the Wildstar complaints are ones that I heard, as I also haven’t played it/looked into it too deeply.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Beast Sos.1457:

+1. Gw2 is lacking in re playability because the content is so easy and the rewards are non existent

I haven’t played other games so I have nothing to compare it to. Is WoW that much harder, or archeage, or Elder Scrolls Online?

I gather Wildstar was significantly harder but didn’t it have a population crash for that reason?

The problem with Gw2 is that they were working on the AI the same time they were working on the combat system, so they didnt know the potential that the combat system had. Which caused the dungeons and open world bosses to be much easier than they expected. Now that they know their combat system I am hoping HoT will bring that content Gw2 desperately needs.

Wildstar failed for two reasons. The lack of casual content, which is solved now, and the PvP gear ratings. You could be the best pvp player but if someone had better gear than you you would lose every time and if you didnt get the best gear within the first few weeks you were kitten out of luck, unless you paid to get your rating up.

Couldn’t agree more, OP.

Garth Thurgen.1380:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Beast Sos.1457:

+1. Gw2 is lacking in re playability because the content is so easy and the rewards are non existent

I haven’t played other games so I have nothing to compare it to. Is WoW that much harder, or archeage, or Elder Scrolls Online?

I gather Wildstar was significantly harder but didn’t it have a population crash for that reason?

I wouldn’t say that they’re that hard, it’s just that GW2 is pretty trivial in terms of difficulty (mostly looking at WoW for the actual comparison, as that’s the only one I have any experience with at all, but the other two probably fall into the same boat). Even the hardest bosses in the game can easily be crushed if you have a full team of even remotely competent players, and pretty much the only challenging moments are when you are restricted in some manner (it’s why three man dungeons are becoming popular for speed clears, as the people doing them are really showing just how impressive they are and how much they understand the game’s core systems).

Wildstar, however, didn’t fail because it was a hardcore game, but because of poor management and generally not thought out systems. They tried to put in too much stuff to appeal to casuals towards the end (“the end” being the point where pretty much everyone left it), it failed to really accurately reward players for the difficulty (if you didn’t do things perfectly, as an entire group no less, your rewards were lowered. Regardless of the fact that it was still something difficult to even finish in the first place) until they decided to make it all too easy to get all of the rewards (more of the first issue), and their entire system wasn’t really too far stretched from “WoW… but hard!”

Mind you, the Wildstar complaints are ones that I heard, as I also haven’t played it/looked into it too deeply.

I read the wow forums occasionally. From reading the forums I’ve gotten the understanding they do 10 levels with each expansion, which takes a few days, then run the same few dungeons over and over to get the gear they need to run the next few dungeons over and over to get the gear they need. The dungeons have a guide to tell them what to do and various addons are used also to give each person the rotation of skills.Then they do stuff like archeology, which is going from spot to spot that the game tells then to go to to dig up lore or they camp spots to get a mount or they do pet battles (not sure exactly what that requires).

Truthfully, none of it sounds very hard to me, from the outside looking in.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Garth Thurgen.1380:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Beast Sos.1457:

+1. Gw2 is lacking in re playability because the content is so easy and the rewards are non existent

I haven’t played other games so I have nothing to compare it to. Is WoW that much harder, or archeage, or Elder Scrolls Online?

I gather Wildstar was significantly harder but didn’t it have a population crash for that reason?

I wouldn’t say that they’re that hard, it’s just that GW2 is pretty trivial in terms of difficulty (mostly looking at WoW for the actual comparison, as that’s the only one I have any experience with at all, but the other two probably fall into the same boat). Even the hardest bosses in the game can easily be crushed if you have a full team of even remotely competent players, and pretty much the only challenging moments are when you are restricted in some manner (it’s why three man dungeons are becoming popular for speed clears, as the people doing them are really showing just how impressive they are and how much they understand the game’s core systems).

Wildstar, however, didn’t fail because it was a hardcore game, but because of poor management and generally not thought out systems. They tried to put in too much stuff to appeal to casuals towards the end (“the end” being the point where pretty much everyone left it), it failed to really accurately reward players for the difficulty (if you didn’t do things perfectly, as an entire group no less, your rewards were lowered. Regardless of the fact that it was still something difficult to even finish in the first place) until they decided to make it all too easy to get all of the rewards (more of the first issue), and their entire system wasn’t really too far stretched from “WoW… but hard!”

Mind you, the Wildstar complaints are ones that I heard, as I also haven’t played it/looked into it too deeply.

I read the wow forums occasionally. From reading the forums I’ve gotten the understanding they do 10 levels with each expansion, which takes a few days, then run the same few dungeons over and over to get the gear they need to run the next few dungeons over and over to get the gear they need. The dungeons have a guide to tell them what to do and various addons are used also to give each person the rotation of skills.Then they do stuff like archeology, which is going from spot to spot that the game tells then to go to to dig up lore or they camp spots to get a mount or they do pet battles (not sure exactly what that requires).

Truthfully, none of it sounds very hard to me, from the outside looking in.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that hard. It’s just that GW2 is that easy. Though it’s more challenging at its base, once you get past that basic level of understanding the game doesn’t really ramp up at all from there. The systems are complex, but the game only makes use of them to trivialize your encounters. Even though WoW is very easy as well, it’s not trivially difficult. GW2 is.

ArenaNet should create something similar to Wildstar’s PATHS, and build it in the game in GW2-style.

Game rewards are trash. Why because it is b2p mmo so microtransactions are the way to go. If you want something just use your credit card.

Beast Sos.1457:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Beast Sos.1457:

+1. Gw2 is lacking in re playability because the content is so easy and the rewards are non existent

I haven’t played other games so I have nothing to compare it to. Is WoW that much harder, or archeage, or Elder Scrolls Online?

I gather Wildstar was significantly harder but didn’t it have a population crash for that reason?

The problem with Gw2 is that they were working on the AI the same time they were working on the combat system, so they didnt know the potential that the combat system had. Which caused the dungeons and open world bosses to be much easier than they expected. Now that they know their combat system I am hoping HoT will bring that content Gw2 desperately needs.

Wildstar failed for two reasons. The lack of casual content, which is solved now, and the PvP gear ratings. You could be the best pvp player but if someone had better gear than you you would lose every time and if you didnt get the best gear within the first few weeks you were kitten out of luck, unless you paid to get your rating up.

The reason I though wildstar failed because of too hard content was because of articles like this. http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/08/the-nexus-telegraph-wildstar-aint-doing-so-good/ which pointed out hard, old style raids and combat that required constant attention as a couple of the reasons why the game failed.

After the population crash the Devs reportedly went back and changed the game.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Beast Sos.1457:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Beast Sos.1457:

+1. Gw2 is lacking in re playability because the content is so easy and the rewards are non existent

I haven’t played other games so I have nothing to compare it to. Is WoW that much harder, or archeage, or Elder Scrolls Online?

I gather Wildstar was significantly harder but didn’t it have a population crash for that reason?

The problem with Gw2 is that they were working on the AI the same time they were working on the combat system, so they didnt know the potential that the combat system had. Which caused the dungeons and open world bosses to be much easier than they expected. Now that they know their combat system I am hoping HoT will bring that content Gw2 desperately needs.

Wildstar failed for two reasons. The lack of casual content, which is solved now, and the PvP gear ratings. You could be the best pvp player but if someone had better gear than you you would lose every time and if you didnt get the best gear within the first few weeks you were kitten out of luck, unless you paid to get your rating up.

The reason I though wildstar failed because of too hard content was because of articles like this. http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/08/the-nexus-telegraph-wildstar-aint-doing-so-good/ which pointed out hard, old style raids and combat that required constant attention as a couple of the reasons why the game failed.

After the population crash the Devs reportedly went back and changed the game.

It wasnt the fact that the content was hard-core it was because there was really no worth while casual content to do if you didnt feel like raiding. Plus the pvp gear rating and also itemization which I forgot to mention above, which are all solved now.

Beast Sos.1457:

+1. Gw2 is lacking in re playability because the content is so easy and the rewards are non existent

Well, this is true. Not just my personal opinion, but have heard it over and over by many vets that just don’t bother with this game any longer. Not so much the rewards, but with how easy this game is, or has become. In a few areas they improved difficulty (over what was), such as for teq, but the vast majority of the game was seriously dumbed down over time.

Even for temple assaults, my fav pve content, providing a type of old school openworld raiding experience (bleh to instanced raiding). Apart from maybe grenth late at night, it is almost impossible to see a wipe any longer. Balth no longer takes any real organization like it did, just a few people run the south invasion, the assault starts and 100 people WP in from other parts of the game to collect their reward after a short uncoordinated zerg. The only times I’ve seen it fail as of late is when some lone lb ranger decides to KB the vets into the escort npc’s for kicks, ending it pretty quickly. Just a couple of examples, I’m sure many 2yo+ vets are aware of the dumbing down in many parts of the game.

I’ll say though, the type of player that they targeted with the dumbing down of the game, they are fickle and don’t stick around but take their micro-transaction power to other games. The market is too over saturated with fly-by-night f2p games to really retain those few cash cow players that cant control their wallets and spend $1000’s of dollars each. And I don’t think high gem store prices really gain much in that; to get as much from those few cash cows (while being so few most likely) while prices being so high that the majority of players just see the prices as too unreasonable. It’s an aggressive formula that maybe worked for a short time in the past (sadly worked at all), maybe for a few games that came and left really quickly, but horrible for any game attempting to retain players so to contribute to the longevity of a game.

As for rewards, the rewards are not “non existent”, they are just micro rewards that constantly flow to you (e.g. gold medals and karma etc etc). There is a whole psychology behind that aimed towards a certain type of player marketers value, have read game industry papers written on it by psychologists for their marketing purposes. These add to conditioned responses, primarily targeted at compulsive players (often rather young) that are most likely to compulsively spend a lot of money in a short time. Very much textbook stuff. Yes, you may doubt, but rather than me going on and on about it, maybe google up the Gamasutra site with keywords like ‘monetization tricks’ (many other such articles there), you may start to see similarities in games you play, or a level thereof.

I played vanilla GW1, was it not a different business model compared to what GW2 has become? Was it not a successful business model with GW1? I don’t recall it relying on a micro-transactions early on but on expansions, and this seemed to propel the game forward with quality, retaining players. This was quite some time before the f2p craze (which the idea seemed pushed by publishers and their investor friends), before the monetization tricks that are now common among newer games. imo steady long-term income revenue really does have it’s value, it provides developer jobs and with some viable long-term security to that. Too many games crash and burn now chasing the formula, and I hope one day that the majority of the industry wakes up and remembers that truly good games really come from the art of game development, not simply a quick cash formula a psychologist dreamed up.