Guild Wars 2

correcction of forum bug, (forum software tech is decades old now, why does this forum have this bug when older softwares have no problem with it)

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

~

So GW1 had a steady player-base while GW2 is always declining? Got any data to back that up? Because the actual data we do have tells a different story:

This is a graph of GW1 sales:
[img]http://images.mmorpg.com/features/9427/images/GW2-Feb23-1.jpg[/img]

and this is a graph of GW2 sales:
[img]http://images.mmorpg.com/features/9427/images/GW2-Feb23-2.jpg[/img]

As you can very clearly see from the graphs, the worst point in GW2 history (Q4 2014) had more income than the BEST point in GW1 history (Q4 2006)

Yes GW2 has a problem with sales. GW2 has a very steady income, with the big spike at release and another possible spike when HoT is released, but otherwise the game is very stable when it comes to income.

Maybe when you are talking about a steady decline in income you were watching the GW1 data and not the GW2 data? Because the data suggest otherwise. I’d love to see where you get your info, besides “that’s what I think” which is where you are basing everything. Well what you think and reality are different.

According to you, a game that at it’s lowest point outperforms GW1 is going to “die” some day soon? I don’t think that makes any kind of sense. I guess GW1 was always a second-rank MMO to you, if at it’s best couldn’t perform better than how GW2 is performing now….

Yes I have that data, in fact it’s the same as you have. You notice how GW1 managed to on average stay on the same level for its life-spawn (yes after Anet shifted focus to GW2 it obviously dropped but if you don’t mind I do not use that part into consideration. If you would do that you don’t know how to use statistics).

Let’s start with noting that the total income is completely irrelevant. GW2 is a much bigger game with much bigger exposer and also a bigger team. To compare the two I indeed use these two graphs and use the initial sales (the spike in both graphs) as 100%. That’s how you compare the two eliminating the fact that one project is much bigger than the other. Next thing you do is taking the ‘life-spawn’, in my case that means ‘during the time the game is fully supported’ and you can also use that as 100% (while a little harder because GW1 was only supported for about 2 years until they shifted their focus to GW2).

Then you look at GW2 sales and there is the drop after initial sales but more important also after that it keeps going down. A little harder to see in your graph (because the initial spike / drop makes the scale not very detailed) but basically every quarter (not counting Q4 quarters) it dropped a little more.

When you talk about a steady decline in income with GW1 you are literally fooling yourself, likely watching to the numbers after Anet shifted focus to GW2. Because looking at the time that GW1 was still fully supported the income stayed at about 100% (100% being the initial sale spike).

I can’t help it if you don’t know how to read the data available to you, but this is what it shows.

I also did never say the game would die. I did say I think there was also some irreversible damage done, something we will not see until the HoT release as the irreversible damage is having scared people away who won’t come back / created a lesser name for itself. I can also explain how I think (yes that is a think) will be visible with the release of HoT. You notice how every expansion (or campaign) for GW1 generates about the same amount of income as the initial sale. That is exactly how GW1 manage to keep that ‘steady’ income over its life spawn (again that being for the time the game was fully supported). So I expect that HoT will obviously be reason for another spike in GW2 but that it will not be around the same height as its original spike (like was the case with GW1). I expect it to not be higher then maybe 75% of the initial spike. But here you are right, this is what I think, the rest that I said (about income dropping in GW2 vs being more steady in GW1) was based on the numbers you show here.

And then the dying part. I did not say that, I said that I do think that IF the game would stay as grindy and they would scare people away again with this grind in HoT. (That is an IF, if I was 100% convinced that would happen I would not be in this forum taking about it. I do hope Anet does take this problem serious and so does something about it) then I expect that about half a year after HoT the game will likely get the status of one of those many “was a nice MMO once, but not something people suggest to each other or talk about. While still having some loyal player-base”. The best way you would notice that would be the size of the development-team being deceased.

So everything I said about what is going on was simply based on numbers. All predictions I made where indeed things I think, as we don’t life in the future so don’t have those numbers yet.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Devata.6589:

Where did ‘they’ say their model was completely grind free?

If you define different smaller farms as a grind (that depends on the person) it could be less grind and smaller junks of grind but nowhere did I see anybody say their model would dissolve all grind in the game for everybody completely.

And ANet never said their game was completely grindless either, yet . . .

If you define anything with RNG as grind I don’t think you can completely remove grind (while again that depends on how you define it. Like somebody else stated here. An item with a drop-change of 75% is rarely considered a grind while it still is RNG) but reduce it and make smaller chunks of different farms of it and combine it more with non-grindy ways to get rewards.

Which you keep saying, but you offer no ideas of how it would work other than “it just would”. In fact, I seem to recall you also said it wasn’t your job to work anymore on it other than to offer a vague idea.

As good an idea as it looks, maybe it’s just another one of those which doesn’t work out when introduced to players. I mean it’s not like there’s a shortage
of things which look fun but really don’t work that way when put to the test . . .

I explained how it worked (in short again, give a direct way to work towards your item instead of the never ending currency grind) and I said I was detailed enough giving multiple examples. You were talking about how the developers would need to work it out into details and I said that was indeed a task for them, not for me.

phys.7689:

gw2 did not provide enough depth of play to keep people interested when they reached 80.

That depends on the player. I personally dont much care for end game dungeons / raids. in most MMOs I end up quiting once I reach max level because of that. Most MMOs tend to become too repetitive at max level, sometimes even much before then.

phys.7689:

people talk about raid progression, and dont really realize, the raids themselves are more important than the rewards.

somehow i doubt that because if that were true why do most games hide their best gear behind raids? cant talk specifically about WoW never raided there.

phys.7689:

Gw2 rewards the least compelling parts of the game, or makes you play things with so many people that it becomes uncompelling.

Thats not true, Gw2 rewards everything. Its also not true saying the least compelling parts of the game reward more. The game itself doesnt make you do anything either. Its people who decide that they dont want compelling content they want quick rewards… what can the game do about that? Champion fights? Ever tried to take them one as 2 person team? they can be really fun and challenging. As we all know they only scale up to 10 people though so when people decide to band into trains of 100 people they obviously get steamrolled but who’s creating that issue? the game? what can the game do? stop rewards altogether when there are more then 10 people? Scale up numbers in definitely so much so at 100 people the champion essentially becomes unbeatable? Stop giving full rewards to everyone and start instead sharing it based on the number of people so much so 100 people get essentially nothing out of champion mob? there is no easy answer!

phys.7689:

Most people didnt stop playing GW1 when they hit 20, do you know why? because there was still a lot to do. There was still challenges to overcome. Still things to find. The truth is, its not the rewards that drive MMOs, its the content.

The same is true for Gw2 but you know whats also true for both games? in both games the vast majority of players where only interested in how to make money as fast as possible. That was no different in Gw1 which is why you can find tons of guides how to solo farm the most profitable content quickly and efficiently. While its impossible to say I somehow doubt the majority of the players where found in the open world zones seeing the sights rather then farming profitable instances such as Auspicious Beginnings.

phys.7689:

gw2 reward system generally works against the content. Very few satisfying rewards, they focus on giving you a lot of stuff, rather than giving you quality stuff. Very few people ever got a very satisfying drop playing gw2, even though they may have earned a lot of wealth over time.

do you really believe that? you never had a nice skin drop for you? A nice dye you wanted? a nice rare mini pet? a nice rare weapon skins (when they used to drop) ?
thats also excluding the ones you could earn every update!

phys.7689:

Now, this doesnt mean you make getting everything easy, but you dont design things as simply as we want people to play this game for 200 hours before they get X item.

thats basic game design. Every single game does it. Some do it through step requirements others do it through evil RNG. just take unique items in gw1, you know those unique skins that dropped from specific bosses. why did they have a low drop rate? just because they wanted to keep them in play for X hours.

phys.7689:

your goal isnt to give people something for playing 200 hours, your goal is to make them want to play for 200 hours. Reward can be a part of that, but you have to design it so that it reinforces compelling play.

I am not saying dont do compelling play just do awesome rewards. I am saying compelling play means nothing without awesome rewards (unfortunately). The compelling play is there regardless. Now its true Gw2 lacks a bit, well quite a bit in the hard content camp but there is some. There is a lot if you team up in small teams of 2 – 3 people. Hey I am sure no one thats still playing this game doesnt find some of it that is enjoyable to do. Those same rewards are achieveable doing that compelling content yet people skip that compelling content for brain death boring content (overwhelmed by numbers its not designed for) because it gets them, that reward quickly.

You seem to think people value content more then rewards but this situation itself makes it clear the opposite is true. people value rewards first and foremost which is why its the reward that dictates the content they play rather then their personal tastes.

phys.7689:

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

Well if you take the WoW example. Sure they go up and down, but over the 10 years total they did manage to keep up a big player-base.

GW1 was also able to keep a steady player-base over it’s life-spawn GW2 on the other hand has seem a drop ever since release (in income at least).

About people talking about a doomsday for 3 years. Personally I always looked at it for the long-term (2-5 / 3 years) because GW2 simply had a good core so has a good momentum. With HoT coming in this period I would add another half year to that (3,5 year), but not in the dooms-day scenario that it would be completely dead after that (IF they would not fix some of these core problems like the grind) but that it simply would become some second rank MMO while at the moment I think it is still a first rank MMO. However also now it’s not as popular as it could have been imho.

While I must also say Anet is very good at preventing a real drop in players to happen. Not so much with the LS but with the right solution just in time. For example when people got tired pretty soon after release Fractals was a good way to solve that. Then the temporary content of the LS was a real thread to the game and also that got solved imo just in time to prevent to many people getting burned out by that. Then now somewhere between the 2,5 and 3 years they come with the expansion. So who knows what they come with 5 / 6 months after release, maybe something that solves this grind or at least puts enough other things in the game to keep people busy with that moving away from the cosmetics as their focus point.

So GW1 had a steady player-base while GW2 is always declining? Got any data to back that up? Because the actual data we do have tells a different story:

This is a graph of GW1 sales:
[img]http://images.mmorpg.com/features/9427/images/GW2-Feb23-1.jpg[/img]

and this is a graph of GW2 sales:
[img]http://images.mmorpg.com/features/9427/images/GW2-Feb23-2.jpg[/img]

As you can very clearly see from the graphs, the worst point in GW2 history (Q4 2014) had more income than the BEST point in GW1 history (Q4 2006)

Yes GW2 has a problem with sales. GW2 has a very steady income, with the big spike at release and another possible spike when HoT is released, but otherwise the game is very stable when it comes to income.

Maybe when you are talking about a steady decline in income you were watching the GW1 data and not the GW2 data? Because the data suggest otherwise. I’d love to see where you get your info, besides “that’s what I think” which is where you are basing everything. Well what you think and reality are different.

According to you, a game that at it’s lowest point outperforms GW1 is going to “die” some day soon? I don’t think that makes any kind of sense. I guess GW1 was always a second-rank MMO to you, if at it’s best couldn’t perform better than how GW2 is performing now….

that shows that guildwars1 was able to build or maintain its earnings throughout its life(keep in mind gw was primarily box sales), whereas Gw2 has been downhill since release.
GW1 decline basically occurs when they decide to put most resources to gw2, which makes sense.

basically, gw1 was able to maintain its intial playerbase, and even expand on it, whereas the first 2.5 years of gw2 show a fairly consistent decrease.

Now, you are right, gw2 has earned more than gw1 by far, but if you are talking about maintaining/increasing earnings(and probably playerbase) GW2 was failing.

now, with the expansion coming out, that may change, but that remains to be seen. I personally believe they waited too long, and wont have enough in this expansion to go back to initial sales numbers, or beat it, like they did with gw1, but they will probably do pretty well.

Indeed. Exactly my point.

maddoctor.2738:

But after Nightfall was released it never really expanded the playerbase, EotN had less appeal than Nightfall.

Of course it had. After all, they announced, even before they released EotN, that GW1 is going to be sidelined and will be no longer where their attention would be. That would be a death warrant for any MMO, starting an exodus.
Announce that GW3 is in the works, and we will see how fast gw2 population will plummet.

maddoctor.2738:

How do you come to that conclusion? The GW2 graph is a very stable one, aside from the huge spike and decline at release. And even at its worst point it’s still higher than GW1 ever did.

Again to complete income is irrelevant, it’s a much bigger project (also with much higher cost). And that ‘stable graph’ really is only going down with the exception of one Q4 (usually you don’t even count Q4 in sales if you want to see the overall line because Q4 tent to always be higher). It might not seem to be going down a lot but that is also because the graph is not very detailed because of the initial spike that scales everything up. If you look at the end of the initial spike and look where it is now it’s about half of that. If your income get cut in half in 2 years’ time you consider that a steady income?

[quote=4912869;maddoctor.2738:][quote=4912869;maddoctor.2738:]

phys.7689:

But GW2 DOES maintain the same level of player interest, the graph is stable, it’s the GW1 graph that shows the complete opposite with high fluctuations.

it doesnt maintain its initial earnings/players. It has consisdently loss player interest/earnings.

you are looking at the graph wrong. look at the total earnings per year, compared to the total earnings per year.

when you look at it that way you will see that for the first 2-3 years, gw1 basically increased or maintained earnings, whereas GW2 consistenly goes down.

first year of release, 43k million kwan
2nd year of release 53k million kwan
3rd year of release 41k million kwan
fairly consistent, even considering halfway through 3rd year they took resources away from eye of the north, and put them towards gw2, and officially told people gw1 was ending.

now look at gw2
year one 160k million kwan (only 2 quarters)
year two 126 million kwan (4 quarters)
year three 84 million kwan (4 quarters)

did they make a lot more? hell yeah, are they maintaining earnings/interest in the game as well as gw1 did? not really.

if the same business plan worked as well as it did for gw1, based on gw2 initial sales, the numbers should have looked like this
year one 160
year two 192
year three 152

it doesnt really matter how much sales fluctuated throughout the year with gw1, its business plan was based on selling boxes, so of course when there will be drop offs, gw2 is nowhere near as consistent as gw1 is in interest/earnings when you look at it by year.
[/quote]

I fail to see the correlation between money and interest you’re making. There are just so many variables you’re ignoring really.

1. do all the players that are ready to buy an expansion also always pay for stuff in the cash shop? of course not. So there is no relationship between box sales and cash shop sales which in turn means the spike for the gw1 campaigns sale dont indicate any more / less interess when compared to gw2 gemshop sales.

2. Is no sale indicative of no play? b2p is a subset of free to play which means you can play the game without spending anything (outside of buying the box of course) ergo when we compare Q2 2013 with Q4 2014 on gw2 we can clearly see a drop but can we say for sure its because people stopped playing? could it be because say people are now richer in game and using in game money more then gems for example? or could it be Q2 2013 had more stuff people desired then Q4 2014?

3. box sales to gem ratio… we dont know how much of it is box sales and how much is gem shop… if its 1:10 in favor of gems that tells one story, if its 10:1 in favor of boxes that tells a completely different story.

4. Box price to average gem shop transaction. Campaign sales show a nice spike but boxes cost might be a lot more then average cash shop transaction. what I mean is if a box sale is say $60 while the average player spends $10 on the cash shop a $600k box sale spike may seem to represent more players then $200k cash shop sales when in truth cash shop sales may actually be twice as many people.

5. box sales fall but dont really go down to 0. looking at the graph for gw1 it may seem that every new campaign release generated more interest than the last but because they were so close to each other it may simply be sales of the previous campaign made the current release look more successful than it really was. Its impossible to say if each subsequent one was more successful or that each subsequent one was less successful.

Also your premise is based on the notion that it is possible for Anet to come up with an expansion per year. Creating content for gw2 isnt the same as creating content for gw1. takes way more work to do stuff for gw2 without a doubt perhaps they just cant do it any faster then every 2 years. how would that change things?

Cyninja.2954:

Devata.6589:

So in the end, 2,5 years after release we are left with a game that is not for those who like cosmetics but mainly for those who like stats or are fine with grinding. Of course that is also undermining their complete business model. Sure their is still a group left they is fine with simply buying what they want but the big question is if that group is big enough.

“I get more and more the feeling this game really isn’t for you.”
If it comes to the cosmetics parts no it isn’t indeed. Funny thing is, this game all being about cosmetics it should be.. Now you obviously not caring so much about cosmetics you can wonder if it should have been your game.

And you still do not understand what I’ve been trying to point out. This game was NOT catered to people who like to play dress-up. It was catered to people who don’t like powercreep. How is this so hard to understand?

Why would I quit? I enjoy the game as is, get cosmetic items if I want to and set personal goals as needed. Why is it so hard for you to let go of this game and realize, it won’t change to what you want it to be due to 1 simple reason: companys need to make money and Anet business model draws revenue from optional cosmetics.

you mean who like cosmetics and other fluff right? Something you clearly don’t like as you talk about it in this negative way.

Really all I have to say about that statement is lol. This game promoted to be for casuals where the biggest goals are not stats but gear that let you shoot rainbows with one-horns was not meant to be catering towards people who like cosmetics.

On the other hand, this statement of you says a lot and even only supports what I said. At least for everybody who does think the game was supposed to cater towards that group.

“Why would I quit?” I don’t know. Why you ask me? It’s not like I said you had to quit.

Devata.6589:

Yes I have that data, in fact it’s the same as you have. You notice how GW1 managed to on average stay on the same level for its life-spawn (yes after Anet shifted focus to GW2 it obviously dropped but if you don’t mind I do not use that part into consideration. If you would do that you don’t know how to use statistics).

Yet it wasn’t on the same level for its life-span. So you don’t consider Eotn in your calculation? We are talking about what first year only?

Let’s start with noting that the total income is completely irrelevant.

Actually it is the most relevant factor. There is a reason they changed to a bigger game using a different system, using a bigger team. To get a higher total income, and it worked. So saying it’s irrelevant isn’t going to work because it is the MOST relevant fact.

GW2 is a much bigger game with much bigger exposer and also a bigger team. To compare the two I indeed use these two graphs and use the initial sales (the spike in both graphs) as 100%.

Guild Wars 1 had drops in income in-between expansions while Guild Wars 2 is still stable. Instead of going up and down GW2 stayed at the same place after the release sales. So what’s your point?

Then you look at GW2 sales and there is the drop after initial sales but more important also after that it keeps going down. A little harder to see in your graph (because the initial spike / drop makes the scale not very detailed) but basically every quarter (not counting Q4 quarters) it dropped a little more.

The decline is smaller than the decline in GW1 after Nightfall. They were still working on GW1 until EotN. It was a very much supported game at the time.

When you talk about a steady decline in income with GW1 you are literally fooling yourself, likely watching to the numbers after Anet shifted focus to GW2. Because looking at the time that GW1 was still fully supported the income stayed at about 100% (100% being the initial sale spike).

Not really. Just take a look at EotN while it was fully supported, it didn’t reach 100% at all.

I can’t help it if you don’t know how to read the data available to you, but this is what it shows.

I could say the same about you. You can’t choose which part of the data you will focus on. I look until EotN, you choose to ignore it, there is no 100% until EotN at all. Also you completely fail to realize, or for some reason can’t understand, that maintaining the sales/numbers of GW2 is different to maintaining the little numbers of GW1. Maintaining 10k people for any given activity is harder than maintaining 1k. It’s just that simple.

I also did never say the game would die. I did say I think there was also some irreversible damage done, something we will not see until the HoT release as the irreversible damage is having scared people away who won’t come back / created a lesser name for itself. I can also explain how I think (yes that is a think) will be visible with the release of HoT. You notice how every expansion (or campaign) for GW1 generates about the same amount of income as the initial sale.

They didn’t though. EotN didn’t reach the same amount of sales. Also, the GW1 campaigns were sold separately at full price. There is a difference here.

That is exactly how GW1 manage to keep that ‘steady’ income over its life spawn (again that being for the time the game was fully supported). So I expect that HoT will obviously be reason for another spike in GW2 but that it will not be around the same height as its original spike (like was the case with GW1). I expect it to not be higher then maybe 75% of the initial spike. But here you are right, this is what I think, the rest that I said (about income dropping in GW2 vs being more steady in GW1) was based on the numbers you show here.

Yes because reaching a spike of GW2 sale is the same as reaching the same level of sale as GW1… the difference is, at the worst point in income history for GW2 it still has more income than the best point of GW1.

And then the dying part. I did not say that, I said that I do think that IF the game would stay as grindy and they would scare people away again with this grind in HoT.

But GW1 was more grindy than GW2, how do you explain that?

So everything I said about what is going on was simply based on numbers. All predictions I made where indeed things I think, as we don’t life in the future so don’t have those numbers yet.

Not really.

Galen Grey.4709:

counter points.

endgame, when i say it, doesnt refer to raids specifically, it refers to what you do when you reach max level. GW2, on ship, didnt have that much to do. later on the added living story for this purpose, and it did improve things, at that point ascended was already a factor.

I didnt say people only care about content, im saying what they really want is content, the reason they put their best gear in raids, is because that is the best designed content they have (by raids i mean instances) open world content in most games is generally not that good, and mostly about being/going to new places (which is fine but it doesnt last)
Essentially you put the best rewards into the thing that you have designed best, that ensures the players are playing the best parts of your game.

the game rewards the least compelling parts. Champion fights might be compelling, when you two-5 man them, but its not very compelling when you 20 man them. But its most rewarding to 20 man them.
Is there an easy answer? maybe not. but it doesnt change the fact that the least compelling gameplay is the most rewarding. Their solution is to make things of value require a lot of everything to balance everyone earning easily. Problem is, this basically means trying to obtain most rewards is going to feel grindy.
too easy, not compelling, and needing a lot of something.

I do think people value content more than rewards, but they also desire rewards. thats why your reward system has to work WITH your content systems to reinforce each other.
people will be disatisfied if the do something but get nothing, or less for it
people will be dissatisfied if they get something, but in order to get it, they have to be bored.

Thats why you put your best rewards in your most compelling gameplay.

to be clear, compelling isnt only about difficulty, although that is one method of making things compelling. Intially, newness works very well at making things compelling, but it has a short shelf life. Making things the right type of unpredictable can also increase compellingness, making something extremely pleasurable is another means.

Its not easy to do in any case, but thats the aim.

regardless the rewards themselves are also very poor carrots. instead of chasing the carrots, you chase pennies to buy 20 dollar carrots.
you probably wont be too excited to get a penny, knowing you have to get 1999 more.

and no, i never had a nice skin i would use drop, (though wardrobe has made getting skins, even if you arent going to use them any time soon, better than it was)
dont think mini’s drop, oh tequatl has one, and worm, are there any others? (not that i care much about minis)
dyes, i never got one of the high brow dyes, that was actually cool through normal play, anyhow for me, dyes are more about selection than any dye in particular, most of them i bought or, created dyes to get.
basically, almost everything i recieved that i personally valued, i traded tokens, gold, crafted, or mystic forged to get. All of my drops were destroyed, npced, or repackaged, crafted in order to get something i actually wanted.
its not that satisfying for a lot of people.

basic game design, isnt good game design. Its what you do when you are average. Call of duty has progression, but they expect people to be playing way beyond unlocking everything. Dark souls lets you level, and hunt items, but people play it over and over again. Tetris doesnt say you must play 300 hours to unlock the hardest level.

yeah, its a simple way to solve your game design problem, to simply make people have to do something for 100 hours in order to reach your goal, but doing it that simply is a very low level technique, and generally leads to player disatisfaction.

for example, rpgs found out that they could extend game time by having you have more random encounters, however, games that went too far with this, and didnt design in enough content, enough progress, and enough rewards, or enough gameplay were less appreciated, and sold less.

yes, you calculate, and predict how many hours people are going to play, but you cant do simple i want people to do this 100 times before they get a reward, does the content warrant 100 repetitions?

I would say fractals, SAB and probably marionette had the best designed reward systems.
SAB rewarded you fairly well for running through the level, and knowing all the tricks, getting better at it made you make money faster, and it was full of little hidden tricks and compellng moments.
fractals is very varied, and earning up to 10 gave you a chance at getting bis rings, getting higher gave you more attempts (this starts to break down later on, but the inital levels/ascended ring aquisition was pretty good)
Marrionette, had a good balance of zerg, and personal fight, difficult enough that if your map played well, you could win, but yall had to pay attention you had chances at drops for new recipes, and fairly good chance at ectos, from the hidden room chests. You got more the better your map played.

Galen Grey.4709:

I fail to see the correlation between money and interest you’re making. There are just so many variables you’re ignoring really.

1. do all the players that are ready to buy an expansion also always pay for stuff in the cash shop? of course not. So there is no relationship between box sales and cash shop sales which in turn means the spike for the gw1 campaigns sale dont indicate any more / less interess when compared to gw2 gemshop sales.

2. Is no sale indicative of no play? b2p is a subset of free to play which means you can play the game without spending anything (outside of buying the box of course) ergo when we compare Q2 2013 with Q4 2014 on gw2 we can clearly see a drop but can we say for sure its because people stopped playing? could it be because say people are now richer in game and using in game money more then gems for example? or could it be Q2 2013 had more stuff people desired then Q4 2014?

3. box sales to gem ratio… we dont know how much of it is box sales and how much is gem shop… if its 1:10 in favor of gems that tells one story, if its 10:1 in favor of boxes that tells a completely different story.

4. Box price to average gem shop transaction. Campaign sales show a nice spike but boxes cost might be a lot more then average cash shop transaction. what I mean is if a box sale is say $60 while the average player spends $10 on the cash shop a $600k box sale spike may seem to represent more players then $200k cash shop sales when in truth cash shop sales may actually be twice as many people.

5. box sales fall but dont really go down to 0. looking at the graph for gw1 it may seem that every new campaign release generated more interest than the last but because they were so close to each other it may simply be sales of the previous campaign made the current release look more successful than it really was. Its impossible to say if each subsequent one was more successful or that each subsequent one was less successful.

Also your premise is based on the notion that it is possible for Anet to come up with an expansion per year. Creating content for gw2 isnt the same as creating content for gw1. takes way more work to do stuff for gw2 without a doubt perhaps they just cant do it any faster then every 2 years. how would that change things?

Money made does represent interest, though its not easy to say how.
The overall point is that gw1 retained or expanded on its initial interest/earnings while under the initial business model, even when they dropped off in the 3rd year, its still a minor drop off compared to gw2

this is not to say they are capable of duplicating this for gw2. But the point is, gw1 and other games are able to retain interest/earnings with other business models.

Now that gw2 has a new business model, they may be able to better compete.

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

Yes I have that data, in fact it’s the same as you have. You notice how GW1 managed to on average stay on the same level for its life-spawn (yes after Anet shifted focus to GW2 it obviously dropped but if you don’t mind I do not use that part into consideration. If you would do that you don’t know how to use statistics).

Yet it wasn’t on the same level for its life-span. So you don’t consider Eotn in your calculation? We are talking about what first year only?

EotN happened after gw2 (and thus gw1 sidelining) announcement, so yes, it has to be considered differently.

maddoctor.2738:

When you talk about a steady decline in income with GW1 you are literally fooling yourself, likely watching to the numbers after Anet shifted focus to GW2. Because looking at the time that GW1 was still fully supported the income stayed at about 100% (100% being the initial sale spike).

Not really. Just take a look at EotN while it was fully supported, it didn’t reach 100% at all.

Because it stopped being fully supported at the moment EotN got announced (before it even shipped), as that’s when Anet’s major effort shifted to GW2. And people knew it, because they were informed about it. Of course things got downhill from there.

phys.7689:

Galen Grey.4709:

I fail to see the correlation between money and interest you’re making. There are just so many variables you’re ignoring really.

1. do all the players that are ready to buy an expansion also always pay for stuff in the cash shop? of course not. So there is no relationship between box sales and cash shop sales which in turn means the spike for the gw1 campaigns sale dont indicate any more / less interess when compared to gw2 gemshop sales.

2. Is no sale indicative of no play? b2p is a subset of free to play which means you can play the game without spending anything (outside of buying the box of course) ergo when we compare Q2 2013 with Q4 2014 on gw2 we can clearly see a drop but can we say for sure its because people stopped playing? could it be because say people are now richer in game and using in game money more then gems for example? or could it be Q2 2013 had more stuff people desired then Q4 2014?

3. box sales to gem ratio… we dont know how much of it is box sales and how much is gem shop… if its 1:10 in favor of gems that tells one story, if its 10:1 in favor of boxes that tells a completely different story.

4. Box price to average gem shop transaction. Campaign sales show a nice spike but boxes cost might be a lot more then average cash shop transaction. what I mean is if a box sale is say $60 while the average player spends $10 on the cash shop a $600k box sale spike may seem to represent more players then $200k cash shop sales when in truth cash shop sales may actually be twice as many people.

5. box sales fall but dont really go down to 0. looking at the graph for gw1 it may seem that every new campaign release generated more interest than the last but because they were so close to each other it may simply be sales of the previous campaign made the current release look more successful than it really was. Its impossible to say if each subsequent one was more successful or that each subsequent one was less successful.

Also your premise is based on the notion that it is possible for Anet to come up with an expansion per year. Creating content for gw2 isnt the same as creating content for gw1. takes way more work to do stuff for gw2 without a doubt perhaps they just cant do it any faster then every 2 years. how would that change things?

Money made does represent interest, though its not easy to say how.
The overall point is that gw1 retained or expanded on its initial interest/earnings while under the initial business model, even when they dropped off in the 3rd year, its still a minor drop off compared to gw2

this is not to say they are capable of duplicating this for gw2. But the point is, gw1 and other games are able to retain interest/earnings with other business models.

Now that gw2 has a new business model, they may be able to better compete.

But after the initial sale point drop, GW2 barely dropped in income from then on. The decrease is very minor, the graph is nearly a flat line.

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

Yes I have that data, in fact it’s the same as you have. You notice how GW1 managed to on average stay on the same level for its life-spawn (yes after Anet shifted focus to GW2 it obviously dropped but if you don’t mind I do not use that part into consideration. If you would do that you don’t know how to use statistics).

Yet it wasn’t on the same level for its life-span. So you don’t consider Eotn in your calculation? We are talking about what first year only?

EotN happened after gw2 (and thus gw1 sidelining) announcement, so yes, it has to be considered differently.

maddoctor.2738:

When you talk about a steady decline in income with GW1 you are literally fooling yourself, likely watching to the numbers after Anet shifted focus to GW2. Because looking at the time that GW1 was still fully supported the income stayed at about 100% (100% being the initial sale spike).

Not really. Just take a look at EotN while it was fully supported, it didn’t reach 100% at all.

Because it stopped being fully supported at the moment EotN got announced (before it even shipped), as that’s when Anet’s major effort shifted to GW2. And people knew it, because they were informed about it. Of course things got downhill from there.

So in other words, the GW1 “system” of fast expansion releases was successful / doable for about 1.5 – 2 years only

@Devata

did you really say “income is irrelevant”. not once but twice?

Do you think NCsoft will care more about getting 100% sale numbers more then they care about the actual money? I find that pretty hard to believe.

but anyhow lets assume thats true somehow its still to early to draw your own conclusion. Because you’re not factoring in HoT sales.

Lets add stuff up. Numbers in KRW

income starting from mid 2012 → 164m+123m+85m+206m* = 579M

Now you might be asking where did that 206m come from. it assume hot comes out at the end of q2 and that it sells as much as the original game like expansion did for gw1 it also adds 1/2 the cash shop sales of 2014.. ie 42m+164 = 206m
if we take that 579M and average it for the 3 years we get 193m which is more then 100% income you mentioned.

This doesnt even factor in that now that people know there is going to be expansion and that living story is just the stuff we get in between not the whole story, more people might actually join the game or come back increasing the year to year gemshop income.

Thats not even counting the chinese revenue either.

if we compare that to gw1, in the first 3 years it generated 117m making gw2 on average 5x more money.

even if gw2 costed 5x more to make which i doubt in the long run it will always be more profitable. income isnt irellevant its like everything.

see it like this… which would you rather have product A that cost 10 to develop and makes 50 every year
or product B that cost 50 to make but makes 250 , 150,80 then 300,150,80 and so on and so forth? ?

would you really care you’re getting 60% and 40% the 2nd and 3rd year when over all you’re making so much more?

maddoctor.2738:

phys.7689:

Galen Grey.4709:

I fail to see the correlation between money and interest you’re making. There are just so many variables you’re ignoring really.

1. do all the players that are ready to buy an expansion also always pay for stuff in the cash shop? of course not. So there is no relationship between box sales and cash shop sales which in turn means the spike for the gw1 campaigns sale dont indicate any more / less interess when compared to gw2 gemshop sales.

2. Is no sale indicative of no play? b2p is a subset of free to play which means you can play the game without spending anything (outside of buying the box of course) ergo when we compare Q2 2013 with Q4 2014 on gw2 we can clearly see a drop but can we say for sure its because people stopped playing? could it be because say people are now richer in game and using in game money more then gems for example? or could it be Q2 2013 had more stuff people desired then Q4 2014?

3. box sales to gem ratio… we dont know how much of it is box sales and how much is gem shop… if its 1:10 in favor of gems that tells one story, if its 10:1 in favor of boxes that tells a completely different story.

4. Box price to average gem shop transaction. Campaign sales show a nice spike but boxes cost might be a lot more then average cash shop transaction. what I mean is if a box sale is say $60 while the average player spends $10 on the cash shop a $600k box sale spike may seem to represent more players then $200k cash shop sales when in truth cash shop sales may actually be twice as many people.

5. box sales fall but dont really go down to 0. looking at the graph for gw1 it may seem that every new campaign release generated more interest than the last but because they were so close to each other it may simply be sales of the previous campaign made the current release look more successful than it really was. Its impossible to say if each subsequent one was more successful or that each subsequent one was less successful.

Also your premise is based on the notion that it is possible for Anet to come up with an expansion per year. Creating content for gw2 isnt the same as creating content for gw1. takes way more work to do stuff for gw2 without a doubt perhaps they just cant do it any faster then every 2 years. how would that change things?

Money made does represent interest, though its not easy to say how.
The overall point is that gw1 retained or expanded on its initial interest/earnings while under the initial business model, even when they dropped off in the 3rd year, its still a minor drop off compared to gw2

this is not to say they are capable of duplicating this for gw2. But the point is, gw1 and other games are able to retain interest/earnings with other business models.

Now that gw2 has a new business model, they may be able to better compete.

But after the initial sale point drop, GW2 barely dropped in income from then on. The decrease is very minor, the graph is nearly a flat line.

you are looking point to point, but missing the big picture even ignoring the first 2 quarters, it went from 126 to 88, thats a drop of 31% whereas gw1 goes from startng increases by 23% in the second year, and the third year only drops by 5% (even though they officially pulled support from eye of the north)

just because the line is smoothly going down, doesnt mean its average is better overall.
gw1 maintained, gw2 declined. even not considering initial sales.

Galen Grey.4709:

@Devata

did you really say “income is irrelevant”. not once but twice?

Do you think NCsoft will care more about getting 100% sale numbers more then they care about the actual money? I find that pretty hard to believe.

but anyhow lets assume thats true somehow its still to early to draw your own conclusion. Because you’re not factoring in HoT sales.

Lets add stuff up. Numbers in KRW

income starting from mid 2012 -> 164m+123m+85m+206m* = 579M

Now you might be asking where did that 206m come from. it assume hot comes out at the end of q2 and that it sells as much as the original game like expansion did for gw1 it also adds 1/2 the cash shop sales of 2014.. ie 42m+164 = 206m
if we take that 579M and average it for the 3 years we get 193m which is more then 100% income you mentioned.

This doesnt even factor in that now that people know there is going to be expansion and that living story is just the stuff we get in between not the whole story, more people might actually join the game or come back increasing the year to year gemshop income.

Thats not even counting the chinese revenue either.

if we compare that to gw1, in the first 3 years it generated 117m making gw2 on average 5x more money.

even if gw2 costed 5x more to make which i doubt in the long run it will always be more profitable. income isnt irellevant its like everything.

see it like this… which would you rather have product A that cost 10 to develop and makes 50 every year
or product B that cost 50 to make but makes 250 , 150,80 then 300,150,80 and so on and so forth? ?

would you really care you’re getting 60% and 40% the 2nd and 3rd year when over all you’re making so much more?

its pointless for you to add your HoT predictions to the equation, because Devata has always claimed that expansions is a better model. If hot is big, it will only further show that perhaps expansions was always the way to go, and a cash shop focus is not really the best plan.

also, i doubt hot will sell as well as the initial sales, because i feel they waited too long and lost too many players before releasing the expansion. Also, HoT seems like it will be fairly small by expansion standards, it may not have enough to make people think they should come back.
time will tell though

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

Obtena.7952:

I didn’t say you did. The fact it’s subjective is why anything that is a grind is not Anet’s fault though. Their definition is pretty crafty that way. It’s basically saying “If you choose to not play the game in a way that’s not boring to you, it’s not a grind”. Brilliant IMO.

Anet simply provide many different ways for players to enjoy themselves that reward play to get gear, even ascended. It’s, in essence, what a sandbox MMO allows you to do.

What I consider fun / not boring it working directly towards items, doing task that belong to the items (Like getting a dragons head for.. well killing that dragon).. Hunting down items. Not grinding gold to buy them.

This is a bit perplexing though.

so lets say if you repeat a dungeon 100 times to earn 200g to buy a certain great sword. doing the 100 dungeon runs is boring.

but doing 100 dungeon runs where 99 times you get absolutely nothing, not even 1c but on the 100th run the great sword you’re after drops. you find that fun?

I mean is it really possible the content you’re playing has no baring on your enjoyment only the reward and how exactly you got that dictates is whatever you’re doing is fun or not?

“but doing 100 dungeon runs where 99 times you get absolutely nothing, not even 1c but on the 100th run the great sword you’re after drops.

you find that fun?”

If I know for a fact it will drop at run 100? No. But if it’s a just a random drop that on average drops once every 100 runs for me it feels much less like a grind. Likely because every run basically is a separate chance. It can drop every time, there is always that rush of ‘will it drop’. With the currency where you know you need to do 100 runs it simply is counting up to 100. What indeed is more of a grind.

“Is it really possible the content you’re playing has no baring on your enjoyment.”
When content does not involve other players / pvp or very, very good AI (so every run will be pretty much the same, and at some point you simply did learn the trick) then the joy of the content will dissipates after you have done it a few times, but the reward can be the reason you still enjoy it, yes. That is similar to many casino games. A lot of the games are really boring if you look at the content but people enjoy is simply because of that same rush of ‘will I win’.

So this question depends on some factors but you could say for most PvE content after having done it a few times, then yes. The first few times you do it or if there is some more competition / pvp going on than no, in fact then you would not need a reward at all. So from that perspective these mini leader-board per specific content in HoT can be a really, really good addition to the game. (While I don’t think it will resolve the grind, it will however be able to keep content fun for a longer time when implemented correctly imho)

phys.7689:

Galen Grey.4709:

@Devata

did you really say “income is irrelevant”. not once but twice?

Do you think NCsoft will care more about getting 100% sale numbers more then they care about the actual money? I find that pretty hard to believe.

but anyhow lets assume thats true somehow its still to early to draw your own conclusion. Because you’re not factoring in HoT sales.

Lets add stuff up. Numbers in KRW

income starting from mid 2012 -> 164m+123m+85m+206m* = 579M

Now you might be asking where did that 206m come from. it assume hot comes out at the end of q2 and that it sells as much as the original game like expansion did for gw1 it also adds 1/2 the cash shop sales of 2014.. ie 42m+164 = 206m
if we take that 579M and average it for the 3 years we get 193m which is more then 100% income you mentioned.

This doesnt even factor in that now that people know there is going to be expansion and that living story is just the stuff we get in between not the whole story, more people might actually join the game or come back increasing the year to year gemshop income.

Thats not even counting the chinese revenue either.

if we compare that to gw1, in the first 3 years it generated 117m making gw2 on average 5x more money.

even if gw2 costed 5x more to make which i doubt in the long run it will always be more profitable. income isnt irellevant its like everything.

see it like this… which would you rather have product A that cost 10 to develop and makes 50 every year
or product B that cost 50 to make but makes 250 , 150,80 then 300,150,80 and so on and so forth? ?

would you really care you’re getting 60% and 40% the 2nd and 3rd year when over all you’re making so much more?

its pointless for you to add your HoT predictions to the equation, because Devata has always claimed that expansions is a better model. If hot is big, it will only further show that perhaps expansions was always the way to go, and a cash shop focus is not really the best plan.

also, i doubt hot will sell as well as the initial sales, because i feel they waited too long and lost too many players before releasing the expansion. Also, HoT seems like it will be fairly small by expansion standards, it may not have enough to make people think they should come back.
time will tell though

If they started with an expansion model it would mean there would be no Living World, no gem store, and no income between the expansion and the main game (like in the case of GW1) how can you be so sure that the total income over the same period of time would’ve been the same, more or less?

Unless HoT really reaches the original sales (although I’d love it if it does, I somehow doubt it) it would still be irrelevant. They already have lots of releases on the gem store, unless they stop upgrading the gem store completely before the next expansion you’d never see the difference.

maddoctor.2738:

phys.7689:

Galen Grey.4709:

@Devata

did you really say “income is irrelevant”. not once but twice?

Do you think NCsoft will care more about getting 100% sale numbers more then they care about the actual money? I find that pretty hard to believe.

but anyhow lets assume thats true somehow its still to early to draw your own conclusion. Because you’re not factoring in HoT sales.

Lets add stuff up. Numbers in KRW

income starting from mid 2012 -> 164m+123m+85m+206m* = 579M

Now you might be asking where did that 206m come from. it assume hot comes out at the end of q2 and that it sells as much as the original game like expansion did for gw1 it also adds 1/2 the cash shop sales of 2014.. ie 42m+164 = 206m
if we take that 579M and average it for the 3 years we get 193m which is more then 100% income you mentioned.

This doesnt even factor in that now that people know there is going to be expansion and that living story is just the stuff we get in between not the whole story, more people might actually join the game or come back increasing the year to year gemshop income.

Thats not even counting the chinese revenue either.

if we compare that to gw1, in the first 3 years it generated 117m making gw2 on average 5x more money.

even if gw2 costed 5x more to make which i doubt in the long run it will always be more profitable. income isnt irellevant its like everything.

see it like this… which would you rather have product A that cost 10 to develop and makes 50 every year
or product B that cost 50 to make but makes 250 , 150,80 then 300,150,80 and so on and so forth? ?

would you really care you’re getting 60% and 40% the 2nd and 3rd year when over all you’re making so much more?

its pointless for you to add your HoT predictions to the equation, because Devata has always claimed that expansions is a better model. If hot is big, it will only further show that perhaps expansions was always the way to go, and a cash shop focus is not really the best plan.

also, i doubt hot will sell as well as the initial sales, because i feel they waited too long and lost too many players before releasing the expansion. Also, HoT seems like it will be fairly small by expansion standards, it may not have enough to make people think they should come back.
time will tell though

If they started with an expansion model it would mean there would be no Living World, no gem store, and no income between the expansion and the main game (like in the case of GW1) how can you be so sure that the total income over the same period of time would’ve been the same, more or less?

Unless HoT really reaches the original sales (although I’d love it if it does, I somehow doubt it) it would still be irrelevant. They already have lots of releases on the gem store, unless they stop upgrading the gem store completely before the next expansion you’d never see the difference.

to be clear, i am not sure, no one can be sure of anything that didnt happen

however, IF it did perform like gw1 did, then it would have been more profitable.

And is that likely? well if the game is appealing then yes. People bought madden every year, and call of duty every year, and gw1 campains every 6 months to a year.

regardless, we should probably focus more clearly on the grind discussion

phys.7689:

endgame, when i say it, doesnt refer to raids specifically, it refers to what you do when you reach max level. GW2, on ship, didnt have that much to do.

Didnt have much to do ? It took me around 800hrs more or less to finish all the zones I was max level by the 70th hour or so? That not counting PvP and WvW which I dont do much off. and it wasnt just the living story by the end of the first month they were already adding stuff each and every month. Thats also not counting that even know some 2000hrs in I still havent done every personal story line.

phys.7689:

I didnt say people only care about content

okey this could be true, its kind of hard to say… its a bit of like what comes first the chicken and egg question… do people get the gear because they want to experiance the next raid or do they do the raid to get the best gear? could be either way. not enough data.

phys.7689:

Essentially you put the best rewards into the thing that you have designed best, that ensures the players are playing the best parts of your game.

which is a problem in Gw2 because by design its trying to avoid funneling people. it wants them to play everywhere and keep the whole world relevant that I personally think is the right thing to do !

phys.7689:

the game rewards the least compelling parts. Champion fights might be compelling, when you two-5 man them, but its not very compelling when you 20 man them.

But who’s fault is that? naturally 20 man against a champion is going to easier / quicker then 2 man vs champion and naturally because its faster its going to be more rewarding. thats not what the design is though is it? design is 5 vs champion like you stated yourself, the 20+ vs champion is essentially allowed “abuse” of the system.

phys.7689:

it doesnt change the fact that the least compelling gameplay is the most rewarding.

but its not! thats like saying society is design in such a way that breaking the law is most rewarding ( its true that breaking the law is profitable else we wouldnt have phrases like crime pays) but is that social design? society doesnt its upmost to reward lawful contribution (bonus systems, employee of the month etc..) but there are limits on how much it can prevent unlawful stuff without hurting law abiding members. Its unfair to blame society for people who choose to abuse though dont you think?

phys.7689:

I do think people value content more than rewards, but they also desire rewards. thats why your reward system has to work WITH your content systems to reinforce each other.

Then why is this an issue? I like many others have no problem playing the content I enjoy without giving up on the rewards I am interested it. The only ‘downside’ to it is it will take longer for me to get said rewards. but why should that be a problem for someone who values content more then the reward?

phys.7689:

people will be disatisfied if the do something but get nothing, or less for it
people will be dissatisfied if they get something, but in order to get it, they have to be bored.

none of that is a thing though. whatever they do they will get something for it. less? there is always something that more profitable thats unavoidable should that make you unhappy? should I be unhappy because I dont make as much money as a drug lord?

phys.7689:

Thats why you put your best rewards in your most compelling gameplay.

thats a mistake simply because whats most compelling for you might not be most compelling for me. What Anet do though they let you play whatever you feel is more compelling and get rewarded for it.

phys.7689:

and no, i never had a nice skin i would use drop

not one? really? I dont farm or anything of the sort and I had Arc, Cobalt, Knowledge is power , jormag’s needle, 3 dragon weapon tickets and my personal favorite (sarcastic) the game trying to kill me with a hearth attack I did get Khrysaor, the Golden Sword drop on me (shares the same skin with dawn ad the right stats I equiped it and I am like.. omg did I just equip dawn by mistake?)

phys.7689:

tequatl has one, and worm, are there any others?

They do part of some events like halloween we had quite a few.

phys.7689:

All of my drops were destroyed,
its not that satisfying for a lot of people.

Its not that I dont understand your point, I did have zuzu the cat of darkness drop on me (and I wanted it) but I still value mini liadri more because it was FAR more challenging to get that one. Its more satisfying for sure, I just its a worthy trade off simple because I dont have to grind content I dont enjoy, if rewards were tied to content that would be a very distinct possibility though.

phys.7689:

its pointless for you to add your HoT predictions to the equation, because Devata has always claimed that expansions is a better model. If hot is big, it will only further show that perhaps expansions was always the way to go, and a cash shop focus is not really the best plan.

also, i doubt hot will sell as well as the initial sales, because i feel they waited too long and lost too many players before releasing the expansion. Also, HoT seems like it will be fairly small by expansion standards, it may not have enough to make people think they should come back.
time will tell though

How is it pointless when its actually whats happening? Thing is Devata believes that its somehow viable for Anet to release an expansion every year, what if the amount of work needed makes it impossible for them to release one more frequently then every 2 years.. maybe even 3 years? does it make sense then for them to focus excursively on an expansion and essenitally drop the cash shop?

if you feel HoT is going to be too small, keep in mind an expansion every year might be 1/3 the size of what we get in HoT!

Devata.6589:

If I know for a fact it will drop at run 100? No. But if it’s a just a random drop that on average drops once every 100 runs for me it feels much less like a grind. Likely because every run basically is a separate chance. It can drop every time, there is always that rush of ‘will it drop’. With the currency where you know you need to do 100 runs it simply is counting up to 100. What indeed is more of a grind.

now see funny thing is thats its exactly the opposite for me, never mind I wouldnt be able to run 100 times the same dungeon the thought alone would make want to quit the game but getting nothing for 10, 20, 50, 100, maybe even 200 runs would be super demoralizing while doing a single event I am got 2s closer to my goal. ooo green drop 1.5s closer. ooooo wow yellow drop 50s closer. No way, exotic drop… 1.5g closer! I still get my lucky moments and without having to repeat anything and without having to live with being unlucky and getting absolutely nothing for it. what you find none grindy is exactly what grind is to me i am afraid so Anet can never do this one right I am afraid

Devata.6589:

When content does not involve other players / pvp or very, very good AI (so every run will be pretty much the same, and at some point you simply did learn the trick) then the joy of the content will dissipates after you have done it a few times, but the reward can be the reason you still enjoy it, yes. That is similar to many casino games. A lot of the games are really boring if you look at the content but people enjoy is simply because of that same rush of ‘will I win’.

which is why Gw2 is so great, you dont need to do it again for 100s more hours!

Devata.6589:

So this question depends on some factors but you could say for most PvE content after having done it a few times, then yes. The first few times you do it or if there is some more competition / pvp going on than no, in fact then you would not need a reward at all. So from that perspective these mini leader-board per specific content in HoT can be a really, really good addition to the game. (While I don’t think it will resolve the grind, it will however be able to keep content fun for a longer time when implemented correctly imho)

yeah the mini leader boards can be interesting… It will be fun to try getting onto them i guess

maddoctor.2738:

phys.7689:

anyhow, devata is correct, that IF guild wars 2 was able to duplicate the continued interest and desire that gw1 had, and released a game every year, they would have made more money than they made with the current model.

Not really true, Devata is incorrect. What continued interest and desire? GW1 graph is going up and down BECAUSE it’s an expansion based release while GW2 is at a stable pace. Having a stable income (with occasional spikes with expansions) is better than spikes with nearly no income at all in between.

Releasing a game every year is different for a coop rpg and a true MMORPG, they could do it with the lobby game that was GW1 but can’t really do it with GW2. So they went for something different, and that different earns then far more money than the old model, there is no denying this.

“Having a stable income (with occasional spikes with expansions) is better than spikes with nearly no income at all in between.” If you really think this you really have no idea’s how businesses work. Income on a yearly base is not problem whatsoever for many companies (including game-companies). A company is not like a person who needs his income on a monthly basis. Just as a person also does not need income on a daily basis. Some companies can even be fine with an investments that gets paid back 50 years later. But back to games. Yearly income is stable income and could also be just fine for MMORPG’s, many non-mmorpg’s release a new version every 3 years (now that might not work for MMORPg’s for multiple reasons, but yearly should not be a problem).

“and that different earns then far more money than the old model, there is no denying this.” Except if you look at the numbers that is.

Galen Grey.4709:

• 1) Didnt have much to do….

• 2) okey this could be true, ..
• 3)
  which is a problem in Gw2 because by design its trying to avoid funneling people..

• 4)
  But who’s fault is that? naturally 20 man against a champion is going to easier / quicker ..

• 5)
  but its not! thats like saying society is design in such a way that breaking the law is most rewarding…
• 6)
  Then why is this an issue? I like many others ..

• 7)
  none of that is a thing though. whatever they do they will get something for it. …

• 8)
  thats a mistake simply because whats most compelling for you might not be most compelling for me. What Anet do though they let you play whatever you feel is more compelling and get rewarded for it.

phys.7689:

and no, i never had a nice skin i would use drop

not one? really? I dont farm or anything of the sort and I had Arc, Cobalt, Knowledge is power , jormag’s needle, 3 dragon weapon tickets and my personal favorite (sarcastic) the game trying to kill me with a hearth attack I did get Khrysaor, the Golden Sword drop on me (shares the same skin with dawn ad the right stats I equiped it and I am like.. omg did I just equip dawn by mistake?)

phys.7689:

tequatl has one, and worm, are there any others?

They do part of some events like halloween we had quite a few.

phys.7689:

All of my drops were destroyed,
its not that satisfying for a lot of people.

Its not that I dont understand your point, I did have zuzu the cat of darkness drop on me (and I wanted it) but I still value mini liadri more because it was FAR more challenging to get that one. Its more satisfying for sure, I just its a worthy trade off simple because I dont have to grind content I dont enjoy, if rewards were tied to content that would be a very distinct possibility though.

1)Completing every map didnt take that long, i probably did it shortly after hitting 80, it may have taken me a couple extra hours. and by that point i had done most of the things to do. The things i hadnt done werent really implied by the game design.

3) you dont have to funell people, you should have compelling design built into each one of your mini designs/encounters. If they want to design a game that has an open world focus, they should reward the best designed open world things. They did this pretty poorly. Aside from a champion chest, which generally contained junk, most bosses barely rewarded more than a basic one shot dynamic event. Mini dungeons had fairly poor rewards, even though they were generally better designed than dynamic events.
basically you should reward many different types of play, and things, but you should put the rewards into the best designed stuff.
4) its the fault of the design, If they really want open world to be their focus, they need to come up with ways of either not letting people go 20 versus 1, or making it not really more easy/profitable to go 20 versus 1. Definately not easy, but its really what they need to figure out how to do.
5) a society that is designed where people breaking the law win most of the time is flawed. But the key here is they are not breaking the law, they are playing the game in the ways the law says. Its like if the law said that if you could beat someone up, you can take whatever they have legally, Now you are creating a society where people are rewarded for beating people up.
6) because there is the third option between content or reward. play less, or quit. Someone who wants both reward, and to be happy is not served in the situation.
Some one who only cares about reward is happy
Some one who only cares about content could be happy

but people who want both in varying degrees? they are unhappy, and there are a lot of people like that.

7) One solution to make the rewards better fit the content and have those rewards that fit the content be obtained primarily(most effeciently, even if there are other methods) by playing said content Things that would amuse jumping puzzle people in jumping puzzles, things that amuse battlers in battle, open worlders in the open world, etc.

8) as i said before, they dont have to reward just one thing, they just have to reward the best designs of various things.

I can’t believe people cry about the grind in GW2 ..

I can level up in less than a week .. a month IF I am leveling slowly and MMOs are meant to be persistent and you have something to do .

grinding for gear has always bee part of a game BUT now all the games have made leveling really fast so you whine when you have to do something ..

give a few months and unless account bound on pu the items you want will be selling for next to nothing in the store

Galen Grey.4709:

maddoctor.2738:

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

Obtena.7952:

I didn’t say you did. The fact it’s subjective is why anything that is a grind is not Anet’s fault though. Their definition is pretty crafty that way. It’s basically saying “If you choose to not play the game in a way that’s not boring to you, it’s not a grind”. Brilliant IMO.

Anet simply provide many different ways for players to enjoy themselves that reward play to get gear, even ascended. It’s, in essence, what a sandbox MMO allows you to do.

What I consider fun / not boring it working directly towards items, doing task that belong to the items (Like getting a dragons head for.. well killing that dragon).. Hunting down items. Not grinding gold to buy them.

This is a bit perplexing though.

so lets say if you repeat a dungeon 100 times to earn 200g to buy a certain great sword. doing the 100 dungeon runs is boring.

but doing 100 dungeon runs where 99 times you get absolutely nothing, not even 1c but on the 100th run the great sword you’re after drops. you find that fun?

I mean is it really possible the content you’re playing has no baring on your enjoyment only the reward and how exactly you got that dictates is whatever you’re doing is fun or not?

That’s the GW1 system, to get some high end skins you had to grind the specific content that dropped them for ages. Alternatively, you could earn gold by doing things you actually liked and buy those items.

In GW2 they removed the first option (grind specific content) and use the second option (earn gold how you want without grinding by enjoying the game). However there are lots of items that are acquired through content lately, glorious armor, carapace / luminescent armor etc

The GW1 system was equally grindy, or even way more grindy based on if you liked the content or not because it was pure RNG.

The Collection system is far superior than both systems and if it’s successful with precursors, maybe they will use it for lots of other things too

I’ve been there and done that in Gw1 too

yeah I also have high hopes for the collection system, the only think I would improve on it is making it tell the player where they can get items from the collection, or better yet have some npcs give you direction when you talk to them about collections.

I really don’t see how collections would work to reduce the grind, in fact as I see it they might even make it worse, however maybe I did miss something some announcement somewhere that means collections work different from how I understand it / how it now works. So with collections you get a specific item for having a complete set of items right? Now there is completely nothing wrong with that by itself, but how does that reduce the grind? Getting those items for the set still is the same grind as it is now, I really don’t see how that changes. The only difference is then that to get the item rewarded by collection now requires you to first get all those other items that all are grinds. So when you have a system where getting items is a grind, this would only increase the grind. But maybe I missed something?

phys.7689:

1)Completing every map didnt take that long, i probably did it shortly after hitting 80, it may have taken me a couple extra hours. and by that point i had done most of the things to do. The things i hadnt done werent really implied by the game design.

That depends what completing a map means to you as someone who wanted to see the different dynamic events there was a lot of waiting involved and when you need to wait 30 mins for an event to trigger 20 – 30hrs go by rather quickly!

phys.7689:

3) you dont have to funell people, you should have compelling design built into each one of your mini designs/encounters. If they want to design a game that has an open world focus, they should reward the best designed open world things.

I have to strongly disagree here. The moment you have 1 content compelling or otherwise reward more you’ll be funneling people. Players made it happen even without being by design by using large numbers.

phys.7689:

4) its the fault of the design, If they really want open world to be their focus, they need to come up with ways of either not letting people go 20 versus 1, or making it not really more easy/profitable to go 20 versus 1. Definately not easy, but its really what they need to figure out how to do.

how can they do that without being too punishing on legitimate players? its easy to say they should do this or that but sometimes there just isnt a viable answer.

phys.7689:

5) a society that is designed where people breaking the law win most of the time is flawed. But the key here is they are not breaking the law, they are playing the game in the ways the law says. Its like if the law said that if you could beat someone up, you can take whatever they have legally, Now you are creating a society where people are rewarded for beating people up.

like i said society tries to stop people from breaking the law but it cannot entirely stop it without going full on 1984 which would be in a way much worst then what we have. Like wise they could stop this abuse going on sure, they could have the reward equaly split between the number of players, or stop rewarding anyone when numbers go over the threshold etc.. but then you destroy a lot of what makes this game great. You see a new player… ohh man i hate that guy he’s taking a fraction of my reward. Or even worst, “dude couldnt you see we’re already 5, thanks for ruining our event now go away” etc.. or simply introduce mob tagging. they’d all work but make the game a lot worst and all this because players need to be forced to play how they claim they want to play?

phys.7689:

6) because there is the third option between content or reward. play less, or quit. Someone who wants both reward, and to be happy is not served in the situation.
Some one who only cares about reward is happy
Some one who only cares about content could be happy

but people who want both in varying degrees? they are unhappy, and there are a lot of people like that.

??? People can have both content and reward. Thats the whole point of the system. The problem is people want reward first, as quickly as possible second and content third. content and as quickly as possible tend to not mix well together thats the problem.

phys.7689:

7) One solution to make the rewards better fit the content and have those rewards that fit the content be obtained primarily(most effeciently, even if there are other methods) by playing said content Things that would amuse jumping puzzle people in jumping puzzles, things that amuse battlers in battle, open worlders in the open world, etc.

Which is great if thats something you enjoy doing or a nightmare if its something that you hate. imagine the item you most want hidden behind months of repeating the content you most hate in the game, do you think thats better?

phys.7689:

8) as i said before, they dont have to reward just one thing, they just have to reward the best designs of various things.

which is exactly what they do right now. but of course brute forcing content to go quicker then is designed to go will naturally be more rewarding so thats what people do. its important to note grinding isnt the baseline income, its an accelerated form of income.

Devata.6589:

I really don’t see how collections would work to reduce the grind, in fact as I see it they might even make it worse, however maybe I did miss something some announcement somewhere that means collections work different from how I understand it / how it now works. So with collections you get a specific item for having a complete set of items right? Now there is completely nothing wrong with that by itself, but how does that reduce the grind? Getting those items for the set still is the same grind as it is now, I really don’t see how that changes. The only difference is then that to get the item rewarded by collection now requires you to first get all those other items that all are grinds. So when you have a system where getting items is a grind, this would only increase the grind. But maybe I missed something?

because of inflation essentially. lets take precursors as an example. lets say they want precursors to take a month to earn for the sake of argument. if you want to do that with crafting its problematic. if you use normal material, people who grind all the time can afford most of that easily so you really need to make it a steep requirement (or use time gating tricks) but with collections you can make it a lot more exciting. You can do things like say require 35 specific jumping puzzle essence from each of 35 different jumping puzzles. people can use the wealth gathered in the last 3 years to speed that up. everyone, new or otherwise can work towards it bit by bit.

maddoctor.2738:

phys.7689:

maddoctor.2738:

phys.7689:

However, the question is, could they do it? Who can say if they could make a new games worth of content in a year, or if they could maintain the same level of player interest that games like gw1, call of duty, or john madden were able to do.

But GW2 DOES maintain the same level of player interest, the graph is stable, it’s the GW1 graph that shows the complete opposite with high fluctuations.

it doesnt maintain its initial earnings/players. It has consisdently loss player interest/earnings.

you are looking at the graph wrong. look at the total earnings per year, compared to the total earnings per year.

when you look at it that way you will see that for the first 2-3 years, gw1 basically increased or maintained earnings, whereas GW2 consistenly goes down.

The earnings of GW1 during 2005 dropped after release, which is natural for every game, then increased in 2006 because of the two expansions. What about 2007 that had the release of EotN? It plunged downwards. The GW2 graph is flatter across the board, sure it has a decline in it, and probably that’s why they are releasing an expansion now.

But the real question is if a different system would’ve worked in GW2. I don’t think so, people who advocate the expansion system believe that an expansion every year would spike the sales of the game when it was released (like what happened in GW1) however, if there was an expansion every year, then we wouldn’t have a stable income in-between the expansions.

You can’t expect for the game graph to be as it is now, but with an added expansion spike, that’s unreasonable as someone must work on that expansion. So with an expansion every year, the graph would be full of spikes and times of nothingness in-between, you can’t be certain that it would result in better income overall.

“the graph would be full of spikes and times of nothingness in-between, you can’t be certain that it would result in better income overall.” You can also take that into account. In fact when I first calculated this (almost a year ago https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/NcSoft-earnings-1Q-14/page/3#post4029793 ) The earning are shown per quarter. So what I did for the comparison (based on the percentage of 100% being the initial spike) with GW1 I only looked at the income made with the spikes, completely ignoring the money made in-between. With GW2 I simply added the 4 quarters together to see what they made over the complete year. In that way you don’t ‘forget’ the parts in-between, well I did forget it for GW1 what would be in favor for GW2. However still the GW1 model (expansion based) when used in GW2 (using these numbers, just as phys explained) it suggested that model would have earned them more.

Of course there is no guarantee that GW2 would be so successful (being able to maintain its income) even when it used this model. To know that for sure we would need to life in some parallel universe but the numbers seem to suggest so. I also talked about this ever since Anet talked about their LS approach instead of expansions (half a year after release). Why do I think the other model works better? Simply because with that model the company ask itself the question “how do we get people to buy the next expansion. ”What imo will in most cases result in better content, the cash-shop model makes them ask the question “how do we get people to by gems”.

The answer to that last question basically results in the grind what brings us back to the subject of this topic. And it also explains why I think the grind is such a big issue (just as that model).

While grind is more the symptom of the underlying problem, that model.

Bottom line is they aren’t making money with GW2 consistently as most games aren’t at this time ..

Doesn’t matter the business end what the issue is that there are no innovations to MMOs at present and it is the same stuff regurgitated with different window dressing..

Don’t get me wrong I like GW2 as a rule but it is using the same game model as WoW because after and during WotLK with fast leveling to max level then grinding for gear .. and WoW has been steadily bleeding subs for years since’

this game doesn’t have the steady income from subs and relies on store sales which is putting out a lot of substandard items with inflated costs which a lot of people are avoiding.

until there is a new game with a completely different game model I doubt this slow bleed off will change

the new expansion will bring back a few players and it will give them and influx of capital but it won’t last unless they are willing to make pay to play expansions regularly which WILL also tick off the players and drive them away also ..

Bottom line I think is that the MMO world is is bad shape with far too many games out there for the actual market and ALL of them basically the same since EQ hit the market in 1999 (16 years ago now)

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Are you really sure there is not a way , or there is not an PvE Heart Vendor that sell soulbound 64-73 lvl gear in the Open world , for simply with Karma ?

Are you really sure you cant buy 200 Soulbound Blue Cloth Armors with the Karma , from that vendor and go straight to the Mystic forge to combine then ?

Are you really sure that if you combine 4 Soulbound (blue items) wont give an Unsoulbound item that you salvage for Silk ?

Are you really sure that buying 200 items, combining them in the forge 50 times, and salvaging them qualifies as “not grind?” I’m not. I believe that the Guild Wars 2 design manifesto would categorize this process as “preparing to have fun rather than just having fun.”

Cyninja.2954:

This. I think most people don’t understand what grind is. Anet never said there would be no grind, they said there would be no grind due to power creep (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_creep). Same as in GW1. Now you might object and think other things like gathering gold etc. to get skins, legendarys etc. constitutes grind, but none of those items are required but optional goals. On top of that there are multiple ways to aquire/reach said items/goals.

Except that they did say there would be no grind to get ascended gear:

ColinJohanson.2394:

When our company president said we have an anti-grind philosophy way back before Gw2 shipped, and when it has been repeatedly reinforced since then, our statement is simply: “We don’t think you should need to grind to get the best gear and stats in Guild Wars 2”.

So what exactly does that mean:

- The best gear/stats: This means to have statistically the best abilities in the game, you shouldn’t need to, by our definition of the word, grind. This goes for leveling and getting top gear (by our definition that’s ascended gear, legendary being an optional extra thing you can do, but don’t need to do.)

Yet here we are. Just because power creep is included in their no-grind philosophy doesn’t mean it’s the only component of it. As for requiring grind to get skins and legendaries, I personally have no objections. However, I don’t think a grind-only end game makes for a compelling play experience.

Devata.6589:

Cyninja.2954:

“I get more and more the feeling this game really isn’t for you.”

If it comes to the cosmetics parts no it isn’t indeed. Funny thing is, this game all being about cosmetics it should be.. Now you obviously not caring so much about cosmetics you can wonder if it should have been your game.

Devata.6589:

Cyninja.2954:

Devata.6589:

So in the end, 2,5 years after release we are left with a game that is not for those who like cosmetics but mainly for those who like stats or are fine with grinding. Of course that is also undermining their complete business model. Sure their is still a group left they is fine with simply buying what they want but the big question is if that group is big enough.

“I get more and more the feeling this game really isn’t for you.”
If it comes to the cosmetics parts no it isn’t indeed. Funny thing is, this game all being about cosmetics it should be.. Now you obviously not caring so much about cosmetics you can wonder if it should have been your game.

And you still do not understand what I’ve been trying to point out. This game was NOT catered to people who like to play dress-up. It was catered to people who don’t like powercreep. How is this so hard to understand?

Why would I quit? I enjoy the game as is, get cosmetic items if I want to and set personal goals as needed. Why is it so hard for you to let go of this game and realize, it won’t change to what you want it to be due to 1 simple reason: companys need to make money and Anet business model draws revenue from optional cosmetics.

you mean who like cosmetics and other fluff right? Something you clearly don’t like as you talk about it in this negative way.

Really all I have to say about that statement is lol. This game promoted to be for casuals where the biggest goals are not stats but gear that let you shoot rainbows with one-horns was not meant to be catering towards people who like cosmetics.

On the other hand, this statement of you says a lot and even only supports what I said. At least for everybody who does think the game was supposed to cater towards that group.

“Why would I quit?” I don’t know. Why you ask me? It’s not like I said you had to quit.

I do not wonder at why it should be my game. I knew exactly what type of game and what type of philosophy from anet I got into. You are the one having a major beef with the game and Anets approach to monetization.

The game is promoted for casuals. Yes. You can casually get to 80 with doing just about anything. Even at the most casual grinding you’ll get there in less than 3 days played. That is way less then any other MMO at release.

You can now get geared casually in not more than a week (exotics being close enough to ascended. But I’ve already stated, this I would accept as only step away from their original manifesto).

You will not encounter powercreep or treadmilling when introduced to new content.

Result, a casual friendly MMO.

On a side note, I have my fashion collector title (more than easy with dozens of cheap under 1-10 silver skins off the AH and Karma available skins). I even have my faction set 1,2 and 3. All easily aquired over 2.5 years of playing.

You want everythig handed to you on a silver platter while at the same time killing the hand that feeds you (Anet current monetization approach). Learn to live with it while hoping they might change, or leave. Your choice.

Cyninja.2954:

Your and my experience of WoW grind must have been a very different one. Take off the rose tinted glasses. The grind in WoW was just as bad if not worse crafting wise. Go some where and you had you materials after a couple of minutes? More like fly (ride for the vanilla players) for multiple hours hunting shared material nodes to craft useless items just to increase your crafting skill.

I didn’t play vanilla WoW because I was too busy playing the superior Guild Wars 1. I started playing at the end of TBC, but I didn’t max any of my crafting until WotLK hit. However, my experience from then on was that I gathered most of the mats I needed to max my crafting while levelling and never needed to spend more than a couple of hours at max finding the rest of the stuff. You could also make up deficiencies via the auction house without bankrupting yourself.

Cyninja.2954:

There is also one of the biggest differences. WoW crafting was primarily a tool to get to max crafting level for the next expansion to craft those 1-2 items that became obsolete 2 months into the expansion. In GW2 crafting actually provides items required in the ingame economy, big difference balance wise.

I agree that the aspect of WoW crafting that is so frustrating is the rate at which BiS gear goes obsolete. WotLK and Cataclysm did a decent job of keeping crafting relevant by giving out new BiS recipes with every content dump, but they backslid in MoP. That’s one of the reasons I decided to give this game a shot. +1 to WoW for making crafting more fun than GW2. -1 to WoW for rendering crafting useless. There’s a reason I don’t play WoW anymore.

Hylgeriak.8250:

It’s only grind if you make it a grind. Finished my full light ascended armor only recently…took me about a year (or when did anet introduce ascended armor crafting?). I gathered all materials by playing “the way I want”…it took me quite a while, but no reason to rush anything. You don’t loose track in GW2 if you’re not constantly playing like in most other MMOs.

And you don’t think a year is too long in a game that was touted as one that wasn’t following the crowd or doing things the old way?

This is what’s called irony in the posts who keep defending this in these forums.

This game was meant to have a grind about as much as it was meant to have ascended gear, it wasn’t at all. When you look at everything prelaunch and then you look at everything now, GW2 has become the game that it was never supposed to be in the first place and that’s the central point of threads like these. Defending these things isn’t doing anything to make the game better.

OP specifically said it shouldn’t be a thread about whether or not it’s an optional grind because that’s entirely irrelevant and I agree, the grind is still a grind and it’s still present that’s the entire point of threads like these, so how do you improve it. I’ve given several great examples from games that are immensely more rewarding in experience than this title. What can the defenders add to the list so it doesn’t take a whole year to make top tier gear in a game without raiding because that’s what the OP is asking for.

maddoctor.2738:

Yet it wasn’t on the same level for its life-span. So you don’t consider Eotn in your calculation? We are talking about what first year only?

first two year but we can also add EotN to it if you like. Numbers are then still way more stable then GW2.

Actually it is the most relevant factor. There is a reason they changed to a bigger game using a different system, using a bigger team. To get a higher total income, and it worked. So saying it’s irrelevant isn’t going to work because it is the MOST relevant fact.

A bigger game and bigger team is not related to the cash-shop and the different model isen’t really different until about half a year after release. (Before that most income did still come from the box-sales so had more in common with the GW1 model). In fact the game was sold as B2P where the cash-shop would only have a minor role. So in no way was this model responsible for the size (and so total income) for this game.. Really if anything was, that it was GW1 and it’s model. GW1 gave Anet it’s name and made GW2 possible.

Guild Wars 1 had drops in income in-between expansions while Guild Wars 2 is still stable. Instead of going up and down GW2 stayed at the same place after the release sales. So what’s your point?

It has been explained to you, those ups and down are the nature of the model, but that
it overall did keep a steady income. We could also change to graph to only show yearly figures. The graph would then still be completely fine but now you would see a way more strait line.

You are simply looking at the graph long. Stable over a 2,5 years is also stable, even if in that period there where drops. When you earns a stable amount of income over 5 years you would see huge ups and downs when making a graph that shows every day. So according to your logic you would then not have a stable income.

The decline is smaller than the decline in GW1 after Nightfall. They were still working on GW1 until EotN. It was a very much supported game at the time.

Not to mention that you are not looking at the data after the people where told GW1 was going to end (what will decrease playerbase and so should not be data you look at for good statistics) to proof, it’s still wong. EotN was >50% of initial sale. GW2 initial drop was already to > 33% of it’s initial sales (and never did go above that). Then at 2,5 year later after release (the time EotN was released for GW1) it was at 17% of initial sale.

Not really. Just take a look at EotN while it was fully supported, it didn’t reach 100% at all.

I was not looking at that (attention had already shifted to GW2!) but even if I did the average would still be way closer to 100% then what is the case with GW2.

I could say the same about you. You can’t choose which part of the data you will focus on. I look until EotN, you choose to ignore it, there is no 100% until EotN at all.

While there are many reasons why you shouldn’t look at that for good numbers, even if you do the numbers are still better (more stable).

Maintaining 10k people for any given activity is harder than maintaining 1k. It’s just that simple.

Thats why this is a bigger game with a bigger team. That should level it out. If it does not the GW1 team was to big or the GW2 team is to small. You see, the size of the team is related to the size of the project. Or that should be the case.

They didn’t though. EotN didn’t reach the same amount of sales. Also, the GW1 campaigns were sold separately at full price. There is a difference here.

Said enough why you shouldn’t look at EotN, sales where still higher (compared to initial sale) then when you compare GW2 gem sales to its initial sale.

Yes we are talking about a different model. That was why we where comparing the two remember.

Yes because reaching a spike of GW2 sale is the same as reaching the same level of sale as GW1… the difference is, at the worst point in income history for GW2 it still has more income than the best point of GW1.

This number might be positive compared to GW2 but it might also be a negative. GW2 is a bigger game but that means also a bigger team and all so bigger running cost.

This is the only part we don’t have the numbers for to say anything useful about. Thats why we take it out of the equation.

But even if it was a positive it does not mean it’s positive compared to GW1’s stable income because if GW2 had manage to keep that the same as GW1 it would have earned much more money.

But GW1 was more grindy than GW2, how do you explain that?

Simply, GW1 was more grindy to you. Maybe not to other people. In GW1 you could work more directly towards items.

The maps are so boring that I don’t notice any grind. Before this game was released, a friend of mine said that they’ll have all these different currencies but very little content to use it on or that the content will be useless. This is why my inventory is loaded with bandit crests and geodes. Nothing to use karma on either. I won’t be playing much longer anyway. The expansion looks like more of the same. Time to shop for a new MMO.