Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

@Just a flesh wound.3589 (and forum-bug-fix in one)
After my last comment to you I did a little google-search and found something I expected no to be available. But it was.

A chart that shows what the average user spends on a free to play game in a year. It even includes Guild Wars 2.

https://mmos.com/editorials/whats-a-free-to-play-user-worth
https://cdn.mmos.com/wp-content/gallery/editorials/MMO-ARPU-table-mmos.jpg

That is $3,88. (And that was a lot, GW2 was third with that number)
Now lets say that you sell an expansion once every 1,5 year and price it at €50,- (What is reasonable for a true B2P game). That means you could do with 1/8th of the player-base to earn about the same amount of money. (3,88 * 8 = 31,04 * 1,5 = 46,56).

However you can make a better game because you don’t have to mess with the games because you try to get people to sell stuff in-game. That means that overtime you are likely to lose less people (as we did see with GW1). So you can maintain that healthy income over a longer period of time.

Better game, and over-time better income. If the game is any good obviously.

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

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Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Well if you read the fine print it’s TTM (trailing twelve months) ending 1Q14, which was 112,077 million South Korean Won. That’s roughly $100 million dollars. So to be $3.88 per player per year, which is what they said it was, the average monthly number of players playing GW2 from April 2013 to March 2014 was 26.25 million.

Wait, sanity check says that’s wrong so lets say $3.88 per month per player. That drops it to a bit over 2 million active players per month during that time. That number makes more sense as ANet announced in August 2013 that they had sold 3.5 million copies.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-the-first-year/

So $3.88 per month is about $46.50 per active player per year.

Hmm.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

(edited by Behellagh.1468)

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

@Just a flesh wound.3589 (and forum-bug-fix in one)
After my last comment to you I did a little google-search and found something I expected no to be available. But it was.

A chart that shows what the average user spends on a free to play game in a year. It even includes Guild Wars 2.

https://mmos.com/editorials/whats-a-free-to-play-user-worth
https://cdn.mmos.com/wp-content/gallery/editorials/MMO-ARPU-table-mmos.jpg

That is $3,88. (And that was a lot, GW2 was third with that number)
Now lets say that you sell an expansion once every 1,5 year and price it at €50,- (What is reasonable for a true B2P game). That means you could do with 1/8th of the player-base to earn about the same amount of money. (3,88 * 8 = 31,04 * 1,5 = 46,56).

However you can make a better game because you don’t have to mess with the games because you try to get people to sell stuff in-game. That means that overtime you are likely to lose less people (as we did see with GW1). So you can maintain that healthy income over a longer period of time.

Better game, and over-time better income. If the game is any good obviously.

For the millionth time, Guild Wars 1 had virtually no competition. You keep going back to it. Guild Wars 1 did it so we should be able to do it today.

There are a lot of things that happened ten years ago that couldn’t be repeated today.

Let me ask you this. When Guild Wars 1 was lauched, how many multi-player fantasy games existed that didnt’ have a monthly charge?

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

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Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419

IndigoSundown.5419

  • The OP vilifies GW2’s “cash shop focus.” The shop has been there since launch. If anything, new armor sets are now being placed as rewards for play rather than items to purchase. I haven’t seen a, “GW2 should be B2P/XPac only” post since the OP stopped posting ~12 months ago — at least until this thread. There is little evidence that an overwhelming desire for an XPac-only business model is a driving force in the revenue numbers dropping.
  • “Perceived Grind” has been in the game since launch, also. While new things to work toward have been introduced in the last year or two, there have been complaints about “takes too long” since people were going for their first dungeon armors in Fall, 2012. Some people suggest that grind is there to get people to buy gems for gold, though those accusations have always been with us. There is little evidence that dislike of perceived grind is anything new.
  • HoT launched, and generated somewhere in the neighborhood of $23-25M (estimated based on NCSoft statements that store revenues were stable, meaning amounts above the ongoing store revenue trend should be attributed to HoT). That’s not quite 2 quarters worth of store revenue (current quarters, less if you compare to quarters prior to HoT launch) for an expansion that took them a minimum of 9 months to produce with mostly all hands on deck (nine months from announcement to release, if they started production at announcement, which I don’t for a second believe). Given the time it took to produce the XPac and its relative lack of success, I see little to support the OP’s contention that an XPac-only business model would be better for ANet.
  • There were a myriad of complaints about HoT. Grind was one. There were also a lot of complaints about value-for-money, perceived slights to veteran players, bundling core with HoT and the nature of HoT’s content.
  • People who chose not to purchase HoT for the many reasons cited on these boards have been thereby disenfranchised. Not only is the new LS content unavailable, the Elite Specs are unavailable and are deemed to be essential to both PvE and PvP play, at least on the sharp end. This is a big problem for retention. While ANet has every right to charge for new content and ways to play characters, the buy-in comes with an XPac that turned a lot of people off. If I had to pick a single factor for why revenues dropped, this would be it. If a player cannot play the new content, and can no longer compete in competitive play, why stick around?
  • We’ve had two content droughts, a 9+ month one pre_HoT release and another ~9 month one post release. This is also a strong contender for revenue drop-off. Bored players are unhappy players.
  • The game has aged. Many games drop revenue over time.
  • Other games, including the latest XPac for the 500# gorilla MMO, have released. Any game population will lose some players when this happens.

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

Anet said directly that expansion sales didn’t meet expectations, mostly due to free to play players not picking it up. It’s not a secret. It’s not some deeply buried conspiracy theory. The expansion didn’t do well as expected.

Anet has made mistakes, and NcSoft even admitted “mistakes were made”. What those mistakes are we can only guess, but the odds are the lackluster sales was attributed to many things, not just a couple.

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

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Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419

IndigoSundown.5419

Anet said directly that expansion sales didn’t meet expectations, mostly due to free to play players not picking it up. It’s not a secret. It’s not some deeply buried conspiracy theory. The expansion didn’t do well as expected.

Anet has made mistakes, and NcSoft even admitted “mistakes were made”. What those mistakes are we can only guess, but the odds are the lackluster sales was attributed to many things, not just a couple.

Yep, fully agree. “If I had to pick one thing…” does not mean I would prefer to.

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Wait, sanity check says that’s wrong so lets say $3.88 per month per player.

Yeah that’s far more reasonable, 3.88 per year is way too low.

I found this link which is far more recent (July 2016): http://massivelyop.com/2016/08/25/superdatas-july-2016-data-show-guild-wars-2-surging-pokemon-go-on-top/

Weird huh?

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

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Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

So ~ about $46.50 per active player per year.

Yeah, I had to wrack my brains over that one as well, and make me second thought it.

I remember once calculating something that was also more in line with the $46,50 from your calculation (did that a few years ago so can’t remember the details). However that was the average between spending money on the cash-shop and buying a game. The idea was that a expansion-based game would be better at holding people so overtime it would result in more money while in the short term the cash-shop approach would be better. It was in a similar discussion as this one but without the data we have now. Anyway, for that reason I also first figured the $3,88 was to low.

However the $3,88 is the average for people playing, not for people spending. The article itself says that most money comes from less then 1% “a small subset of players (1% or less) that typically outspend the rest of the player-base combined.”.

With a little more searching I fount this source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-04-09-only-2-2-percent-of-free-to-play-users-ever-pay-report that says that only 2.2% of Free-to-Play players spend money.
Now while this might be different for GW2, it’s likely somewhere around that percentage (also taking the 1% statement into consideration).

Knowing that and going by your number of $46,50 average spending for any active GW2 player, it would mean that the average spending per year for those who in fact spend money would be $2113,63. Now it would still be a little lower because not all the money in the 112077 million skw are from the cash-shop, and that is what we are talking about. Also you could argue that because you had to buy GW2 people where also more likely to spend money in the cash-shop (In fact I did see multiple articles suggesting that) But even if we divide it by 2 you are still getting an average of > €1000,- per paying player.

So yeah, sanity check says that’s also wrong.

Now lets say the 3,88 is correct and we keep the 2,2% as percentage of people who do spend money. That means that the average money paying people are spending is about $176,36. That is still a lot, but if we then take into consideration that the 112077 million skw is not all from the cash-shop and that GW2 likely has more then the 2,2 percent then we get in more reasonable numbers. It’s impossible to get a good accurate number here, but if we divide it by two (like we did before) you get to a number of around $88,0

If we then also look to this source: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/269618/The_average_US_paying_mobile_game_player_spent_87_on_F2P_IAP_last_year.php is says that “In the U.S., people who spent money in their mobile games last year shelled out an average of $87 on in-app purchases in free-to-play mobile games: a figure that’s just $5 shy of the $92 average spend of PC and console game players.” So according to that article the average of people who in fact spend money if about $92.

Finally we get some consistency in the number.

However I must note that the article also says “The company notes that such a unique spending pattern doesn’t occur in the realms of traditional gaming, where around 28 percent of the audience makes up 90 percent of game sales.” what makes everything even more confusing. However there is no source so it’s hard to say where that 28% is based upon. It’s possible that includes the game-sales itself?

If we also look at the chart “Spend per player, top 25 mobile games (2015)” that shows average per player you see there are a few huge ones, but also that number 25 is already down to $6,50. So maybe those low numbers are not that strange after all?

Of course that still does not solve the question of why you come to 26.25 million players.

Reading the text below the chart again it starts with saying “Average dollar amount spend by a player in the last twelve months on top free-to-play on-line games, ending in March 2014”. That seems clear to me that they indeed mean per year, not per month. But then “Numbers calculated based on monthly transactions ~ and dividing the estimated total dollar earnings by the monthly active user base.”.

So the number $3,88 is based on a year, but they calculated it per month based on the active players in that month. You can then take the average of those 12 months, add them up and you get the average for the full year (the $3,88). The statement that that is the average for what people have spend over the year is then correct, however when you use that data to calculate the number of players you get a completely wrong number. Because active player x could be active on all 12 months and so counts 12 times.

Because there are some conflicting statement on the Internet maybe it would best to just mail them and ask them. But I think the way I explain it here is the most likely as it fits with most of the data you can find.

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

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Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

@Just a flesh wound.3589 (and forum-bug-fix in one)
After my last comment to you I did a little google-search and found something I expected no to be available. But it was.

A chart that shows what the average user spends on a free to play game in a year. It even includes Guild Wars 2.

https://mmos.com/editorials/whats-a-free-to-play-user-worth
https://cdn.mmos.com/wp-content/gallery/editorials/MMO-ARPU-table-mmos.jpg

That is $3,88. (And that was a lot, GW2 was third with that number)
Now lets say that you sell an expansion once every 1,5 year and price it at €50,- (What is reasonable for a true B2P game). That means you could do with 1/8th of the player-base to earn about the same amount of money. (3,88 * 8 = 31,04 * 1,5 = 46,56).

However you can make a better game because you don’t have to mess with the games because you try to get people to sell stuff in-game. That means that overtime you are likely to lose less people (as we did see with GW1). So you can maintain that healthy income over a longer period of time.

Better game, and over-time better income. If the game is any good obviously.

For the millionth time, Guild Wars 1 had virtually no competition. You keep going back to it. Guild Wars 1 did it so we should be able to do it today.

There are a lot of things that happened ten years ago that couldn’t be repeated today.

Let me ask you this. When Guild Wars 1 was lauched, how many multi-player fantasy games existed that didnt’ have a monthly charge?

Yeah and all those million times I answered the same.

Yes back when GW1 launched most other similar games where P2P and so GW1 was unique with it’s true B2P model. However today most modern MMO’s are using the cash-shop model (some with, some without having to buy the game) so GW2 would still be pretty unique if it used a true B2P model.

The fact that it uses the cash-shop model makes it less unique on that frond, what means it has a lot of competition on that frond.

“Let me ask you this. When Guild Wars 1 was lauched, how many multi-player fantasy games existed that didnt’ have a monthly charge?”

Probably similar to the number of multi-player fantasy games that do not have a cash-shop or P2P model today. Very little to none.

So that model would still make is pretty unique. It was a selling point back then and would be a selling point now.

Edit: Said B2P where I did mean P2P. Fixed it.

(edited by Devata.6589)

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

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Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

There is little evidence that an overwhelming desire for an XPac-only business model is a driving force in the revenue numbers dropping.

I said the grind is to blame, and the grind is created by the cash-shop focus. Basically I said the grind is what burns people out and why I predicted they would leave. Something I said indeed until about 12 months ago when I said that making any more suggestions would be useless from that moment on as Anet would need to be working on them already because else they would not be in-time before people would leave in the half year after HoT.

Now you might not like this theory, but the prediction I made based on it is spot on. The thing is that many people complain about the problem they face (or they leave) and I try to look what is behind the problem.

Like it or not. But the people who fight of most complains and defend most decisions Anet made have supported the reason the numbers are down.. whatever reason that might be. So maybe it would be decent if those people would at least be a little more considerable of other ideas. (Not going to happen, ever. I know)

The shop has been there since launch.

Now watch this:

“Perceived Grind” has been in the game since launch, also.

This does not proof a correlation, but it might just be there.

Given the time it took to produce the XPac and its relative lack of success, I see little to support the OP’s contention that an XPac-only business model would be better for ANet.

If you compare 2 quarters together you are completely right and the cash-shop model would be much better. However, as always I looked at a longer period. The idea is that with the cash-shop focus you are losing more players overtime (because of the grind). Taking that into consideration that the cash-shop model is more profitable overtime. Of course only if you indeed manage to keep those players.

If you look where GW1 came from and where GW2 came from then you can see that GW2 lost way more of it’s initial player-base then GW1 did. That is also the comparison I did show in the Excel.

There were a myriad of complaints about HoT. Grind was one. There were also a lot of complaints about value-for-money, perceived slights to veteran players, bundling core with HoT and the nature of HoT’s content.

Obviously you need a good expansion. When you are suddenly forced to make one you because numbers are going down that is not good for the quality. (If only somebody suggested them to start building on an expansion soon enough). Anyway, the numbers where going down before HoT, so the complains about HoT are less relevant. But indeed there are more problems and they should all be solved.

If I had to pick a single factor for why revenues dropped, this would be it.

What makes perfect sense… Well, when you forget that revenues where dropping before HoT. If you continued that dropping line, revenues would be just as low or even lower then they are now.

We’ve had two content droughts, a 9+ month one pre_HoT release and another ~9 month one post release. This is also a strong contender for revenue drop-off. Bored players are unhappy players.

And the 9+ month one pre_HoT right afther the announcement of HoT, the revenue finally did go up again.

But I agree bored players are unhappy players. People take only so much of grind before it bores them out.

The game has aged. Many games drop revenue over time.

That is true. While a good expansion can do wonders. But your right aging is a factor as well.

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

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Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

Anet said directly that expansion sales didn’t meet expectations, mostly due to free to play players not picking it up. It’s not a secret. It’s not some deeply buried conspiracy theory. The expansion didn’t do well as expected.

Anet has made mistakes, and NcSoft even admitted “mistakes were made”. What those mistakes are we can only guess, but the odds are the lackluster sales was attributed to many things, not just a couple.

Ah yeah, but now we are kinda mixing up two things. Not really your fault because GW2 has the somewhat different approach of the expansion also being the game.

Anyway, yes they said that the numbers of F2P players that did also buy the game was way lower then they expected. So from that extend you can say sales are also lower.

But I was looking at it from the perspective of a real expansion, a way to retain players. That is one of the elements of the Excel remember.

With the launch of HoT Anet did go for 2 new things.. The expansion and the F2P. I still have to see any source that those expansion sales itself where bad.. as in players who did play the game already. The F2P approach however did not work out as they hoped, not many of those people did buy the expansion. Thing is, they did mainly see the original GW2, not the HoT part. So it’s hard to blame HoT for that.

But yes, if you do consider those sales as well then it might have sold less then they hoped for. However from the perspective of retaining players or the expansion itself you should not look at that.

We are not talking about their F2P approach here are we?

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

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Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

Anet said directly that expansion sales didn’t meet expectations, mostly due to free to play players not picking it up. It’s not a secret. It’s not some deeply buried conspiracy theory. The expansion didn’t do well as expected.

Anet has made mistakes, and NcSoft even admitted “mistakes were made”. What those mistakes are we can only guess, but the odds are the lackluster sales was attributed to many things, not just a couple.

Yep, fully agree. “If I had to pick one thing…” does not mean I would prefer to.

It’s never one thing, but there can be one main thing. Anyway, not sure what the one thing you pick here is? The F2P approach is what resulted in revenue drop?

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

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Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

Wait, sanity check says that’s wrong so lets say $3.88 per month per player.

Yeah that’s far more reasonable, 3.88 per year is way too low.

I found this link which is far more recent (July 2016): http://massivelyop.com/2016/08/25/superdatas-july-2016-data-show-guild-wars-2-surging-pokemon-go-on-top/

Weird huh?

Very strange indeed. Especially because we now have the numbers of Q3 and they are lower then those of Q2. So how could GW2 be ‘new to the list’ if we now know results where lower then before.

Also if you go to the source site now https://www.superdataresearch.com/us-digital-games-market/ you see the information from October and GW2 is off the list. You would expect the numbers to be higher. October had more S2 and Halloween.

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

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Posted by: Killthehealersffs.8940

Killthehealersffs.8940

I am sorry old hag, Pocahonta’s method is too slow :P

If you make good content and have an expansion every year – 1,5 year with maybe one bigger batch in-between the expansions and a minor story (small patches like the beginning of season 1) working towards that expansion then imho you have a pretty healthy and over the longer term sustainable player-base.

Wait a sec …. when you said in the past … to drop the 2-week circle updates
(because ppl that aimed to get the gemstore item where ’’forced’’ to grid gold and GET IN NOW NOWNOWNOWNONOW (no ETA to be removed from the store…ever) and they quited by your predictions FOR THAT )
for 3 months updates , just like GW1 and so they can create faster x-packs instead ?
….how the community react to it ?
And now you do an 180 degree flip flop , regadles of your predictions ? ……..
3 Devata Megathreads (this is your 4th) and we are back in ground zero ?

BTW in what price the next pack should be sold ….
So the rest of the readers can see , your numbers and how many money they are FORCED to spent :P

I really love you btw :P

In the one hand you are saying that the next x-pack will sold less x-pack because ppl are fed up with the grind to gold>gems and wont buy it …
And if they follow the formula of GW1 (shorter 8-12 months x-packs , the game will survive……..) .

And when some1 else say to you that , ppl dont want to pay real money to buy x-packs and that will create backlash just like in HOT (price too high) … you give the exact oposite answer that is sold good and the population liked it (exept the content draught) …
that why NCsoft said that they will make shorter scheduled x-packs

And then resume to the first part again ?

And i was the only one getting whipped for 15 days ?!!!!
/repeatedly pound chest *MEEEEEE ?
????!!!!!*

..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t29feiHZMcM
(Soldier =this is hopeless … surender your weapons
Defender=come and get them)

(edited by Killthehealersffs.8940)

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Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419

IndigoSundown.5419

Anet said directly that expansion sales didn’t meet expectations, mostly due to free to play players not picking it up. It’s not a secret. It’s not some deeply buried conspiracy theory. The expansion didn’t do well as expected.

Anet has made mistakes, and NcSoft even admitted “mistakes were made”. What those mistakes are we can only guess, but the odds are the lackluster sales was attributed to many things, not just a couple.

Yep, fully agree. “If I had to pick one thing…” does not mean I would prefer to.

It’s never one thing, but there can be one main thing. Anyway, not sure what the one thing you pick here is? The F2P approach is what resulted in revenue drop?

The “one thing” from my prior post was disenfranchisement of players who chose not to buy HoT for whatever reason being locked out of both new content and the (deemed necessary due to power creep) Elite Specs.

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Posted by: Distaste.4801

Distaste.4801

@Just a flesh wound.3589 (and forum-bug-fix in one)
After my last comment to you I did a little google-search and found something I expected no to be available. But it was.

A chart that shows what the average user spends on a free to play game in a year. It even includes Guild Wars 2.

https://mmos.com/editorials/whats-a-free-to-play-user-worth
https://cdn.mmos.com/wp-content/gallery/editorials/MMO-ARPU-table-mmos.jpg

That is $3,88. (And that was a lot, GW2 was third with that number)
Now lets say that you sell an expansion once every 1,5 year and price it at €50,- (What is reasonable for a true B2P game). That means you could do with 1/8th of the player-base to earn about the same amount of money. (3,88 * 8 = 31,04 * 1,5 = 46,56).

However you can make a better game because you don’t have to mess with the games because you try to get people to sell stuff in-game. That means that overtime you are likely to lose less people (as we did see with GW1). So you can maintain that healthy income over a longer period of time.

Better game, and over-time better income. If the game is any good obviously.

For the millionth time, Guild Wars 1 had virtually no competition. You keep going back to it. Guild Wars 1 did it so we should be able to do it today.

There are a lot of things that happened ten years ago that couldn’t be repeated today.

Let me ask you this. When Guild Wars 1 was lauched, how many multi-player fantasy games existed that didnt’ have a monthly charge?

GW1 didn’t charge a subscription because they couldn’t. There was tons of competition back then and they knew they couldn’t release with a sub. You had EQ, EQ2, WoW, Final Fantasy XI, SWG, Lineage, Lineage 2, Ultima, Ragnarok online, and a bunch of others. Keep in mind that when WoW was released 56k was still a thing, DSL and Cable internet was just starting to become widespread. The population of gamers was nowhere near what it is today and yet there was more MMO competition back then.

How many didn’t charge a sub? more than you think. I played MU Online, it was completely free. I’m not going to do the research, but they certianly existed.

They could easily do what GW1 did today and find even more success. The MMO market has stagnated. The countless WoW clones made it hard to invest in them when they inevitably failed. So you have less compeitition than when GW1 released, a much larger online population to sell to, and you don’t think it could sell?

I think if we learn anything its that properly supporting your game and building on it is important. ArenaNet failed at that with GW2 for years and the damage is done.

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Posted by: ProtoGunner.4953

ProtoGunner.4953

Wow guys, where do you find the time and motivation to write such long comments and discussions? It’s even hard to follow the thread it’s so long…

‘would have/would’ve been’ —> correct
‘would of been’ —> wrong

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Posted by: Mr Clean Magic Eraser.4736

Mr Clean Magic Eraser.4736

As someone who spent thousands of dollars in the gemstore for the last couple of years; I have stopped spending because:

1) I have everything I need. I have maxed out account inventory and 28 alts. There’s no real incentive to buy more character slots. I also have all the shared inventory slots and 5 characters with max inventory.

2) Majority of the outfits are ugly especially the newer ones.

3) Majority of the black lion skins weapons are ugly and it’s cheaper and faster to just buy them with gold.

4) They nerfed the black lion chest rewards. Really no point in buying the black lion keys.

5)I don’t need anymore harvesting tools because of the shared inventory slots.

6) The glider wings are also ugly.

At this point in the game, the veterans players probably bought all the stuff that they could buy. They are at a point where they don’t need or want to buy stuff on the gem store anymore. So it’s inevitable that the revenue would decline.

New players conversion rate to the expansion aren’t that great (and if they can’t bother to upgrade, they’re probably not buying stuff on the gem store), so you can’t rely on them.

Even if there were no issues with the game and everybody is happy, if there’s nothing on the gemstore to buy because you either already have it or it’s ugly, revenue will continue its downward trend.

The game’s revenue will continue to decline if it were to rely solely on it’s current cash shop model. They need the paid expansions to bring in guaranteed income.

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

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Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

In the one hand you are saying that the next x-pack will sold less x-pack because ppl are fed up with the grind to gold>gems and wont buy it …
And if they follow the formula of GW1 (shorter 8-12 months x-packs , the game will survive……..) .

And when some1 else say to you that , ppl dont want to pay real money to buy x-packs and that will create backlash just like in HOT (price too high) … you give the exact oposite answer that is sold good and the population liked it (exept the content draught) …
that why NCsoft said that they will make shorter scheduled x-packs

I could not translate the rest so will just comment to this. Obviously they will have to make a good expansion else you still have a problem. It’s how Vayne talks about how there are multiple problems and that is correct. However if you have a good expansion but the content is grindy you still scare people away. This expansion-based model is not the holy grail that makes any game by definition good.

Then about why I expect the next expansion to sell bad while I did say they should have gone for a expansion-based model.

In my opinion Anet did already alienate many people with their approach before HoT (because of the grind), something they might not have done if they did go with the expansion-based model from the beginning.

Now HoT was their first expansion and their opportunity to make it right. Because as I see it many of the old players are likely to come back and have a look at the first expansion (So HoT) hoping to find they enjoy the game more or longer this time. However, if they get bored by the game again in the first half year after the expansion they are not likely to come back again. That is why I said I expect the next expansion to not sell well.

I also don’t say that switching to the expansion-based model at this time will still do any good (That had to be done before, and is why I stopped being active on this forum a year ago) because people have left and are not very likely to come back. The only way I can see them getting people back is if they can market it as basically GW3.

(edited by Devata.6589)

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Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

Anet said directly that expansion sales didn’t meet expectations, mostly due to free to play players not picking it up. It’s not a secret. It’s not some deeply buried conspiracy theory. The expansion didn’t do well as expected.

Anet has made mistakes, and NcSoft even admitted “mistakes were made”. What those mistakes are we can only guess, but the odds are the lackluster sales was attributed to many things, not just a couple.

Yep, fully agree. “If I had to pick one thing…” does not mean I would prefer to.

It’s never one thing, but there can be one main thing. Anyway, not sure what the one thing you pick here is? The F2P approach is what resulted in revenue drop?

The “one thing” from my prior post was disenfranchisement of players who chose not to buy HoT for whatever reason being locked out of both new content and the (deemed necessary due to power creep) Elite Specs.

Idk, we don’t have any numbers about how many of the people who where actively playing GW2 before HoT did buy HoT and how many did not and stopped playing around that time.

I do however think it would be strange. Maybe many people did grew into the idea of LS but don’t forget that LS is something they introduced after launch so if people should have any expectations before launch going into the game, it would be that they did get expansions just like GW1 did.

Anyway, we do not have those numbers so hard to say how many people did leave because they did not want to buy HoT and so missed part of the new content. Personally I don’t think it are that many.

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Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

Wow guys, where do you find the time and motivation to write such long comments and discussions? It’s even hard to follow the thread it’s so long…

Motivation, well back in the day it I tried to help the game in my way. That was the motivation back then I guess.

I did make many claims back then and most would not have it’s effects until now. So while I pretty much left the forum a year ago I did feel it was just decent behavior to come back now and let people have there go at the numbers and me for that matter, looking back at what was said back then and the numbers we have now.

The reason why they are so long is because I always try to explain what I am saying. Just saying ‘x is stupid’ is not very useful. So I am like ‘I do not like x, I think x is the result of y. Look at source z, so x can best be solved by doing a’. Then you get long comments.

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Posted by: ProtoGunner.4953

ProtoGunner.4953

Yes, I followed this thread very eagerly, I am on your side btw. They made a mistake by first trying to go without expansions and now they try to recover from it. Let’s hope Expansion 2 will be a bit more compelling.

‘would have/would’ve been’ —> correct
‘would of been’ —> wrong

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Some interesting statistics on player retention, it’s important to note that it’s hard to 0 those due to how they are earned and how they are spent:

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.airshipParts
It’s clear that a vast majority of players (90%), at least of those registered on gw2eff, have Airship Parts, which means they bought Heart of Thorns

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.lumpsOfAurillium
Aurillium is different, about 75% of the total continued to Auric Basin, which means a lot of players lost interest in the expansion before even leaving the first zone. This tells us a lot about the accessibility of the expansion and how the first zone has to be accessible enough to grab the player’s attention.

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.leyLineCrystals
Ley Line crystals tell us the same story.

Take a look at Bloodstone Rubies next:
https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.bloodRubies
We are down to 50% playing. Did they stop before Dragon’s Stand, or after Dragon’s Stand? We don’t know because there is no statistic for Dragon’s Stand.

Petrified Wood and Fresh Winterberries come next and it’s quite clear that even more players stopped playing:
https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.petrifiedWood
https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.freshWinterberries
We are now at 20% of the original playerbase that continue playing

We can’t get exact numbers, a 75% might be 76% or 89%, so got to work with what is available, even though they are by no means accurate, they do show us a lot about player retention. The data could also mean that players don’t visit the new zones, but still continue to play the game otherwise. There are lots of assumptions here but I think the data can be used constructively, they show a clear downward trend.

90% of players on that website got Heart of Thorns, 75% progressed beyond Verdant Brink, 50% remained active when LS3 started, dropped to 20% with episode 2, and remains at 20% with episode 3.
It does look like the game is struggling in keeping the players busy, maybe Q4 2016 results won’t be as good as I wanted.

Do remember that many people on these forums claim that those with registered accounts are the more hardcore players which means they are the kind of players that will unlock their elite specializations and more likely to complete the meta of a zone and get the rewards. Which means the actual numbers will be lower.

(edited by maddoctor.2738)

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Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

Some interesting statistics on player retention, it’s important to note that it’s hard to 0 those due to how they are earned and how they are spent:

Thanks, that is some interesting data.

While it might be not be the same for everybody, I can say something about my personal experience in the new HoT maps.

The first map (VB) I completed, however when I did go into the next map (AB) I had not yet unlocked all the masteries to complete the next map. With only about half of the map available, you also have a harder time unlocking the masteries you need, so by the time I had completed the map as far as I was able to (about 50% i think?) I did go for the next map (TD). Again I missed abilities to unlock the full map. After having unlocked that as far as I could I still did not have the masteries to go back and complete the maps. So I could not unlock AB or TD.

I did know the last map (Dragon’s Stand) was more like a big event and so I did not even go in there.

If I was to get those masteries it would mean I had to go do repeating events in the maps just to level the masteries, what would feel like a grind to me so I did go back to the old maps and to the Guild Hall. However that did also result in my not getting the masteries.

If I translate that back to the original way of leveling in an MMO including GW2. It is important that if you are in a level 60 map, by the time you complete most of that map you are of the level needed to go into the next map that has a higher level. If you complete the map but are still way to low to go into the next map that is bad. The HoT maps do have this problem.

So I had the expansion but still was locked out of content. Maybe I made bad decisions with selecting what masteries I was leveling, but imho that should not make a difference.

Back to statistics. It is good to see that indeed the biggest part of the active player-base did buy the expansion. So the fact that people had to buy an expansion does not seem to be a factor.

(edited by Devata.6589)

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Posted by: Scipio.3204

Scipio.3204

We can’t get exact numbers, a 75% might be 76% or 89%, so got to work with what is available, even though they are by no means accurate, they do show us a lot about player retention. .

As I said in another thread, you can check the graph below the table to check the more accurate percentages, for example aurilium is 87%.

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

As I said in another thread, you can check the graph below the table to check the more accurate percentages, for example aurilium is 87%.

Right how do I always forget the graph.

Actual numbers:
Airship Parts: 91%
Lump of Aurillium: 87.5%
Ley Line Crystal: 82%
Bloodstone Rubies: 52%
Petrified Wood: 43%
Fresh Winterberries: 36.5%

91% of the site’s population bought Heart of Thorns.
3.5% of those never moved beyond Verdant Brink to Auric Basin
5.5% of those never moved beyond Auric Basin to Tangled Depths
30% of those never started playing LS3 Episode 1
9% of those never moved to Episode 2
6.5% of those never moved to Episode 3

I’ll record these and check again next month (with the sale more people should be playing) we’ll see the results

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

@Just a flesh wound.3589 (and forum-bug-fix in one)
After my last comment to you I did a little google-search and found something I expected no to be available. But it was.

A chart that shows what the average user spends on a free to play game in a year. It even includes Guild Wars 2.

https://mmos.com/editorials/whats-a-free-to-play-user-worth
https://cdn.mmos.com/wp-content/gallery/editorials/MMO-ARPU-table-mmos.jpg

That is $3,88. (And that was a lot, GW2 was third with that number)
Now lets say that you sell an expansion once every 1,5 year and price it at €50,- (What is reasonable for a true B2P game). That means you could do with 1/8th of the player-base to earn about the same amount of money. (3,88 * 8 = 31,04 * 1,5 = 46,56).

However you can make a better game because you don’t have to mess with the games because you try to get people to sell stuff in-game. That means that overtime you are likely to lose less people (as we did see with GW1). So you can maintain that healthy income over a longer period of time.

Better game, and over-time better income. If the game is any good obviously.

For the millionth time, Guild Wars 1 had virtually no competition. You keep going back to it. Guild Wars 1 did it so we should be able to do it today.

There are a lot of things that happened ten years ago that couldn’t be repeated today.

Let me ask you this. When Guild Wars 1 was lauched, how many multi-player fantasy games existed that didnt’ have a monthly charge?

Yeah and all those million times I answered the same.

Yes back when GW1 launched most other similar games where P2P and so GW1 was unique with it’s true B2P model. However today most modern MMO’s are using the cash-shop model (some with, some without having to buy the game) so GW2 would still be pretty unique if it used a true B2P model.

The fact that it uses the cash-shop model makes it less unique on that frond, what means it has a lot of competition on that frond.

“Let me ask you this. When Guild Wars 1 was lauched, how many multi-player fantasy games existed that didnt’ have a monthly charge?”

Probably similar to the number of multi-player fantasy games that do not have a cash-shop or B2P model today. Very little to none.

So that model would still make is pretty unique. It was a selling point back then and would be a selling point now.

You’re still missing my point. Let me put it differently.

Guild Wars 1 existed at a time when there were about half a dozen multiplayer fantasy games. Maybe there were 6 and it was the only one that didn’t have a sub.

Today there aren’t six. There aren’t 12. There are probably 50 mmos, maybe more, most of which are free to play.

You do research and so understand the difference between buy to play and free to play and cash shop and what not. Not everyone does. In fact, I’d wager most people don’t.

So for you, the buy to play cash shop thing is a thing, because you’re thinking about it.

However, if a person born into this world today has experienced Facebook games and MMOs with cash shops, if they started with say Runes of Magic or Maple Story, when they come here, this is heaven to them.

They expect a cash shop. Even sub games have cash shops. But here the cash shop isn’t pay to win, and in many other games it is.

The cash shop is pervasive now. There are people who want to spend money to get stuff rather than play the game. My sons are both like that, because that’s the environment they grew up in.

They see a new game, they buy the game and then spend money on downloadable content or in the cash shop or whatever. That’s how they’re trained to think.

Not having the ability to do that could hurt the game, because people will have less options. As nuts as it sounds, not everyone wants to play a game they’re playing.

They’d rather take short cuts with cash.

Having a look at GW2 long-term results.

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Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Some interesting statistics on player retention, it’s important to note that it’s hard to 0 those due to how they are earned and how they are spent:

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.airshipParts
It’s clear that a vast majority of players (90%), at least of those registered on gw2eff, have Airship Parts, which means they bought Heart of Thorns

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.lumpsOfAurillium
Aurillium is different, about 75% of the total continued to Auric Basin, which means a lot of players lost interest in the expansion before even leaving the first zone. This tells us a lot about the accessibility of the expansion and how the first zone has to be accessible enough to grab the player’s attention.

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.leyLineCrystals
Ley Line crystals tell us the same story.

Take a look at Bloodstone Rubies next:
https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.bloodRubies
We are down to 50% playing. Did they stop before Dragon’s Stand, or after Dragon’s Stand? We don’t know because there is no statistic for Dragon’s Stand.

Petrified Wood and Fresh Winterberries come next and it’s quite clear that even more players stopped playing:
https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.petrifiedWood
https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.freshWinterberries
We are now at 20% of the original playerbase that continue playing

We can’t get exact numbers, a 75% might be 76% or 89%, so got to work with what is available, even though they are by no means accurate, they do show us a lot about player retention. The data could also mean that players don’t visit the new zones, but still continue to play the game otherwise. There are lots of assumptions here but I think the data can be used constructively, they show a clear downward trend.

90% of players on that website got Heart of Thorns, 75% progressed beyond Verdant Brink, 50% remained active when LS3 started, dropped to 20% with episode 2, and remains at 20% with episode 3.
It does look like the game is struggling in keeping the players busy, maybe Q4 2016 results won’t be as good as I wanted.

Do remember that many people on these forums claim that those with registered accounts are the more hardcore players which means they are the kind of players that will unlock their elite specializations and more likely to complete the meta of a zone and get the rewards. Which means the actual numbers will be lower.

Did they stop playing or simply not gotten to that content yet? I have HoT since it launched but haven’t done any of the story there or any of the LWS3 episodes even though I have them unlocked. Heck I’m on year 4 and haven’t finished the PS on any of my level 80 characters, stories in MMOs don’t float my boat.

Kudos on the clever use of GW2Efficiency.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Did they stop playing or simply not gotten to that content yet? I have HoT since it launched but haven’t done any of the story there or any of the LWS3 episodes even though I have them unlocked. Heck I’m on year 4 and haven’t finished the PS on any of my level 80 characters, stories in MMOs don’t float my boat.

Kudos on the clever use of GW2Efficiency.

The numbers aren’t accurate by any means but they show something. I’m way more interested in seeing the same numbers in the long run, say in one month, then 3 months, then 6, a year etc

Back to statistics. It is good to see that indeed the biggest part of the active player-base did buy the expansion. So the fact that people had to buy an expansion does not seem to be a factor.

No, but the lack of content before Heart of Thorns reduced significantly that active player-base. Expansions are good and all, but if you don’t release constant updates to keep the players interested there won’t be anyone to buy the expansion. I’d rather they slow down the expansion and allocate more people to the living world and less to the expansion, so the living world gets quality updates at a good pace.

I don’t really care how long it will take them to release the next expansion, if it’s 1 year or 2 years, the important part is to keep players interested in the time between them.

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

I don’t really care how long it will take them to release the next expansion, if it’s 1 year or 2 years, the important part is to keep players interested in the time between them.

Indeed.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

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Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

Yeah and all those million times I answered the same.

Yes back when GW1 launched most other similar games where P2P and so GW1 was unique with it’s true B2P model. However today most modern MMO’s are using the cash-shop model (some with, some without having to buy the game) so GW2 would still be pretty unique if it used a true B2P model.

The fact that it uses the cash-shop model makes it less unique on that frond, what means it has a lot of competition on that frond.

“Let me ask you this. When Guild Wars 1 was lauched, how many multi-player fantasy games existed that didnt’ have a monthly charge?”

Probably similar to the number of multi-player fantasy games that do not have a cash-shop or B2P model today. Very little to none.

So that model would still make is pretty unique. It was a selling point back then and would be a selling point now.

You’re still missing my point. Let me put it differently.

Guild Wars 1 existed at a time when there were about half a dozen multiplayer fantasy games. Maybe there were 6 and it was the only one that didn’t have a sub.

Today there aren’t six. There aren’t 12. There are probably 50 mmos, maybe more, most of which are free to play.

You do research and so understand the difference between buy to play and free to play and cash shop and what not. Not everyone does. In fact, I’d wager most people don’t.

So for you, the buy to play cash shop thing is a thing, because you’re thinking about it.

However, if a person born into this world today has experienced Facebook games and MMOs with cash shops, if they started with say Runes of Magic or Maple Story, when they come here, this is heaven to them.

They expect a cash shop. Even sub games have cash shops. But here the cash shop isn’t pay to win, and in many other games it is.

The cash shop is pervasive now. There are people who want to spend money to get stuff rather than play the game. My sons are both like that, because that’s the environment they grew up in.

They see a new game, they buy the game and then spend money on downloadable content or in the cash shop or whatever. That’s how they’re trained to think.

Not having the ability to do that could hurt the game, because people will have less options. As nuts as it sounds, not everyone wants to play a game they’re playing.

They’d rather take short cuts with cash.[/quote]

There might be more games now (while MMO’s where also very popular back then) however there is also a bigger group of potential players. It’s hard to know how many games there are vs how many potential players. But it’s also not that if the numbers of games is 10 times bigger, you have a 10 times smaller potential player-base.

You also say that many people don’t want to play the games these day, just buy items. I find that hard to believe but even if it’s true then it still might not be a player-base you want to go for IF you want a game to be successful over a longer period. Something I expect an MMO-developer wants. Because if people don’t play your game there is also less binding them to your game.

Then the idea that this cash-shop approach is what they are used to and so not going for that approach would mean they would not get into the game. While it’s true that many of people now play those F2P games, they also play games like Overwatch, Battlefield 1 and many other B2P games (Some with a minor cash-shop or even without). So they are used to the B2P model. The idea that they are not able to understand or are not interested in a B2P MMO is imho false.

But let’s say you are right on all these points. The potential player-base is much smaller, there are many people who don’t want to play a game, just buy items in a game and some people are just not interested in a B2P MMO.

Even then, there might in total still be a lot of people who are interested in an B2P MMO (with no or almost no cash-shop) and would go for that. And because GW2 would have been pretty unique with that approach it would still have a pretty big potential player-base for itself.

While it now has to share that pool of potential players with the many F2P (with or without having to buy the game and expansions) MMO’s out there.

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Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

Back to statistics. It is good to see that indeed the biggest part of the active player-base did buy the expansion. So the fact that people had to buy an expansion does not seem to be a factor.

No, but the lack of content before Heart of Thorns reduced significantly that active player-base. Expansions are good and all, but if you don’t release constant updates to keep the players interested there won’t be anyone to buy the expansion. I’d rather they slow down the expansion and allocate more people to the living world and less to the expansion, so the living world gets quality updates at a good pace.

I don’t really care how long it will take them to release the next expansion, if it’s 1 year or 2 years, the important part is to keep players interested in the time between them.

“No, but the lack of content before Heart of Thorns reduced significantly that active player-base.” Where do you base this on? Again, looking at the results, they did get up before HoT after the announcement of HoT. They where higher in that period then there where during LS2.

I know this idea that the lack of content is the biggest problem, is an the accepted idea on this forum, but the numbers just don’t support that theory.

For me the reason the expansion should take 1 to 1,5 years has two reasons. One, to give people something to play. In a way that is similar to why you want the LS. You can’t let them wait to long.

The secondr reason is a financial reason. For ‘my’ model (B2P) to work you can’t wait much longer then 1,5 years. A company needs to make money. So when you take longer you will need a sub-model or more focus on the cash-shop. I don’t have to explain again why I think that is bad I guess

I would want them to have one bigger patch right in-between the expansions and you could have a small story leading from one expansion to the other expansion (with the bigger patch in-between). Really small. A new house, a new road that is being build, some new dialog and so on.

In my opinion that should work fine. You have the expansion itself that should be able to keep people busy for at least a year. They have a next expansion to look out to and a small story and a bigger patch right in the middle. I think that should be enough to keep people busy.

Ever wondered if to many LS patches can also not be a problem? People might feel like they have to do all those things, making the game feel like a job? That was for sure true with LS1 when it was all temporary content.

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Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419

IndigoSundown.5419

Anet said directly that expansion sales didn’t meet expectations, mostly due to free to play players not picking it up. It’s not a secret. It’s not some deeply buried conspiracy theory. The expansion didn’t do well as expected.

Anet has made mistakes, and NcSoft even admitted “mistakes were made”. What those mistakes are we can only guess, but the odds are the lackluster sales was attributed to many things, not just a couple.

Yep, fully agree. “If I had to pick one thing…” does not mean I would prefer to.

It’s never one thing, but there can be one main thing. Anyway, not sure what the one thing you pick here is? The F2P approach is what resulted in revenue drop?

The “one thing” from my prior post was disenfranchisement of players who chose not to buy HoT for whatever reason being locked out of both new content and the (deemed necessary due to power creep) Elite Specs.

Idk, we don’t have any numbers about how many of the people who where actively playing GW2 before HoT did buy HoT and how many did not and stopped playing around that time.

I do however think it would be strange. Maybe many people did grew into the idea of LS but don’t forget that LS is something they introduced after launch so if people should have any expectations before launch going into the game, it would be that they did get expansions just like GW1 did.

Anyway, we do not have those numbers so hard to say how many people did leave because they did not want to buy HoT and so missed part of the new content. Personally I don’t think it are that many.

No numbers? Yeah, it’s a WAG based on the many posts about refusing to buy HoT. Of course you don’t believe it because it doesn’t fit into your WAG about the cause of the recent drop in revenue after several quarters of relative stability. Psychologically speaking, my WAG is based on people feeling indignant and left due to having to pass a pay wall to continue to be vested in the product while believing that the XPac was not worth the money. Your WAG is based on people connecting perceived grind to the store, which I rarely see referenced by anyone but you. What I do see is some people blaming grind on gem conversion to gold.

I find it hard to believe that this player-base would be willing to wait a year for a new XPac with nothing in between XPacs. The complaints about nothing to do started within a couple of weeks after HoT dropped. I also find it hard to believe that any MMO company is going to be willing to forego store revenue. None of them do. Even in the 500# gorilla game, the items sold in the store could have been put in the game as rewards, and that game charges for XPAc’s and taps your credit card every month.

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Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

Anet said directly that expansion sales didn’t meet expectations, mostly due to free to play players not picking it up. It’s not a secret. It’s not some deeply buried conspiracy theory. The expansion didn’t do well as expected.

Anet has made mistakes, and NcSoft even admitted “mistakes were made”. What those mistakes are we can only guess, but the odds are the lackluster sales was attributed to many things, not just a couple.

Yep, fully agree. “If I had to pick one thing…” does not mean I would prefer to.

It’s never one thing, but there can be one main thing. Anyway, not sure what the one thing you pick here is? The F2P approach is what resulted in revenue drop?

The “one thing” from my prior post was disenfranchisement of players who chose not to buy HoT for whatever reason being locked out of both new content and the (deemed necessary due to power creep) Elite Specs.

Idk, we don’t have any numbers about how many of the people who where actively playing GW2 before HoT did buy HoT and how many did not and stopped playing around that time.

I do however think it would be strange. Maybe many people did grew into the idea of LS but don’t forget that LS is something they introduced after launch so if people should have any expectations before launch going into the game, it would be that they did get expansions just like GW1 did.

Anyway, we do not have those numbers so hard to say how many people did leave because they did not want to buy HoT and so missed part of the new content. Personally I don’t think it are that many.

No numbers? Yeah, it’s a WAG based on the many posts about refusing to buy HoT. Of course you don’t believe it because it doesn’t fit into your WAG about the cause of the recent drop in revenue after several quarters of relative stability. Psychologically speaking, my WAG is based on people feeling indignant and left due to having to pass a pay wall to continue to be vested in the product while believing that the XPac was not worth the money. Your WAG is based on people connecting perceived grind to the store, which I rarely see referenced by anyone but you. What I do see is some people blaming grind on gem conversion to gold.

I find it hard to believe that this player-base would be willing to wait a year for a new XPac with nothing in between XPacs. The complaints about nothing to do started within a couple of weeks after HoT dropped. I also find it hard to believe that any MMO company is going to be willing to forego store revenue. None of them do. Even in the 500# gorilla game, the items sold in the store could have been put in the game as rewards, and that game charges for XPAc’s and taps your credit card every month.

You missed a part of the thread I think. Maddoctor came up with data that strongly suggest most of the active players did buy HoT.

So far for that.

If an expansion is not able to keep people busy for more then a few weeks, that is a problem of the expansion. A good expansion should be able to keep people at least busy for a year. Also I did say I was in favor of a patch in-between. Honestly a complete LS would be fine but I don’t think that is reasonable when going for the B2P approach. Most attention should then go to the expansion. You know, so you can create a good expansion that keeps people busy for at least a year.

I do not know if companies are willing to drop it. There was a time that companies did not believe in F2P games.. Times can change.
Anyway, I don’t say they have to remove it completely. Best would if they only sold ‘out of the game’ things. Like race changer, server-transfer, total make-over, additional char-slots, race changer. That sort of stuff would be fine.
There is a big difference between having a cash-shop and focusing on it. Many of those sub games might have a cash-shop, but it plays a very small role compared to the number of items you get in-game by playing content.

Don’t get me wrong, in a game that has a sub and sells expansions like WoW, I would rather see no cash-shop at all. But still. It has 10 mounts, 12 mini’s and 3 helms. You can not compare that to a cash-shop like that of GW2. One cash-shop is not the other cash-shop. It’s the cash-shop focus I talk about not the cash-shop itself. If GW2 would have the cash-hop like that ‘500# gorilla game’ and have most other items available behind content in the game you would not hear me complain.

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Posted by: Killthehealersffs.8940

Killthehealersffs.8940

In my opinion Anet did already alienate many people with their approach before HoT (because of the grind), something they might not have done if they did go with the expansion-based model from the beginning.

I am sorry again , but once again …..
when the x-pack dropped ppl where trying to :
1) Reduce the price of the x-pack with raising kittenstorm about :
a) No extra character slot for ppl that didnt want to pre-order
b) PPl that bought the vanilia account 6 months prior , thought that they can trade it with HoT FOX FREE while there was difference in price (30 euro for vanilia….60 for hot)
c) *PPl linking threads over threads , that the Devs ’’promished’’ that they wouldnt need an x-pack or the promish free updates for EVER *
d) map are few
e) etc etc

OR
2) They got bored to grind gold …beaucase the outfits where so beautiful … that they couldnt resist ?(well ok … exept the wedding dress and the undress bottun :PP)

I also don’t say that switching to the expansion-based model at this time will still do any good (That had to be done before, and is why I stopped being active on this forum a year ago) because people have left and are not very likely to come back. The only way I can see them getting people back is if they can market it as basically GW3.

But the thread you are making now and the 3 previous states that ppl would love x-packs and less gemstore items , by your preditctions

How can you persuade those 2 million created accounts to buy the x-pack and charge 60 dollars for future x-packs , without need gemstore items ?
They currently cannot trade their gold for gems ….so they are not infested with this ’’disease’’
How we can persuade them

As you see talking is easy … the backfire is huge …
I was the only 1 that said that they should lower the gold from dungeons (so the elitism gtfo from infecting newer ppl and dropping to gold gems ratio to 158g for 800 gems) ….thus leading ppl to hate the company, while i walk free ….
Some1 will always left behind to try to glue the humogous mess that the minority of the community wants. …

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Posted by: Einlanzer.1627

Einlanzer.1627

Anet said directly that expansion sales didn’t meet expectations, mostly due to free to play players not picking it up. It’s not a secret. It’s not some deeply buried conspiracy theory. The expansion didn’t do well as expected.

Anet has made mistakes, and NcSoft even admitted “mistakes were made”. What those mistakes are we can only guess, but the odds are the lackluster sales was attributed to many things, not just a couple.

Yep, fully agree. “If I had to pick one thing…” does not mean I would prefer to.

I don’t necessarily think it was related to any specific feature (or lack thereof) of the expansion, except for maybe forcing veteran players to re-buy the entire game for full price, which was one of the dumbest business decisions I’ve ever seen in my life. But, mostly, I think it was maybe just that Anet had expectations that were too high based on the sales of the original title combined with the mediocre interest in the Maguuma Jungle as opposed to, say, Cantha.

A huge, huge number of buyers of the original game lost interest, probably forever, after the first few weeks of playing it. I have my hunches as to what the biggest culprits were, but who knows for sure. The majority of those players are unlikely to be lured back in by anything. Maybe some of them will respond to Cantha.

(edited by Einlanzer.1627)

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Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419

IndigoSundown.5419

You missed a part of the thread I think. Maddoctor came up with data that strongly suggest most of the active players did buy HoT.

So far for that.

If an expansion is not able to keep people busy for more then a few weeks, that is a problem of the expansion. A good expansion should be able to keep people at least busy for a year. Also I did say I was in favor of a patch in-between. Honestly a complete LS would be fine but I don’t think that is reasonable when going for the B2P approach. Most attention should then go to the expansion. You know, so you can create a good expansion that keeps people busy for at least a year.

I do not know if companies are willing to drop it. There was a time that companies did not believe in F2P games.. Times can change.
Anyway, I don’t say they have to remove it completely. Best would if they only sold ‘out of the game’ things. Like race changer, server-transfer, total make-over, additional char-slots, race changer. That sort of stuff would be fine.
There is a big difference between having a cash-shop and focusing on it. Many of those sub games might have a cash-shop, but it plays a very small role compared to the number of items you get in-game by playing content.

Don’t get me wrong, in a game that has a sub and sells expansions like WoW, I would rather see no cash-shop at all. But still. It has 10 mounts, 12 mini’s and 3 helms. You can not compare that to a cash-shop like that of GW2. One cash-shop is not the other cash-shop. It’s the cash-shop focus I talk about not the cash-shop itself. If GW2 would have the cash-hop like that ‘500# gorilla game’ and have most other items available behind content in the game you would not hear me complain.

GW2 Efficiency is designed to appeal to a portion of the population. As such, it is biased toward those who invest time in 3rd party sites. It is unlikely that biased data represents the population as a whole.

That said, I find it highly interesting that within that population the drop-off is significant. I suspect that the drop off might have been even worse in terms of players who owned core but did not buy HoT, though who knows.

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Posted by: Substance E.4852

Substance E.4852

The cash shop is pervasive now. There are people who want to spend money to get stuff rather than play the game. My sons are both like that, because that’s the environment they grew up in.

They see a new game, they buy the game and then spend money on downloadable content or in the cash shop or whatever. That’s how they’re trained to think.

Not having the ability to do that could hurt the game, because people will have less options. As nuts as it sounds, not everyone wants to play a game they’re playing.

They’d rather take short cuts with cash.

That sounds like a personal issue your kids have that you’re projecting onto others.

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Posted by: Obtena.7952

Obtena.7952

No matter what I read in this thread, not a single person can compare how a non-Gemstore version of GW2 would have faired against the current version; speculation is fun, but it’s not real, especially when it’s made on such thin data as what is available to us.

What I do know is that I’ve never seen anyone make a thread complaining that the game is free to play … think about that for a minute.

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Posted by: Einlanzer.1627

Einlanzer.1627

No matter what I read in this thread, not a single person can compare how a non-Gemstore version of GW2 would have faired against the current version; speculation is fun, but it’s not real, especially when it’s made on such thin data as what is available to us.

What I do know is that I’ve never seen anyone make a thread complaining that the game is free to play … think about that for a minute.

There’s an argument to be made that a traditional subscription based model might have worked out better for GW2. Fewer people would have bought it, but IMO it’s likely it would have gained traction and retained more players, because p2p sets up a psychology of personal investment in a game that you don’t otherwise have.

If they had done that and succeeded, the game probably would have grown a lot more than it has now. On the other hand, it may have just had really bad direction in its first 2 years or so and revenue wouldn’t have mattered that much, and is just still struggling to catch up now.

I don’t mind the Gem Shop. They just need to find more creative ways to use it. My biggest problem with it is that there’s way too skewed an economy gap between gold bought and gold earned. It takes too long to get by playing the game relative to how cheap it is in the gem store, creating a situation where you feel excessive pressure to just buy it with real money.

(edited by Einlanzer.1627)

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Posted by: Obtena.7952

Obtena.7952

There are arguments it would have worked out better, there are some where it’s worse. I do know that a sub based model would significantly impact development and content releases and since I think people that currently play are more or less pleased with paid content, free content and items in the Gemstore, I don’t think that impact would be positive to them.

At this point, there is no reason for threads like this. Gem store is a business decision and no data we have access to suggests it was a bad one … or a good one. It just IS. Granted, there have been games that move to different business models, but if anyone is under the illusion that moving away from the Gemstore at this point would be a good idea, they are going to be highly mistaken. In fact, the Gemstore is an integral part of what makes the game work. It CAN’T go. It needs to continue to grow.

Personally, I would not pay a sub for this game because Anet has shown they can provide good content without it, as well as interesting items with value in the Gemstore. Any introduction to a sub to play would be a significant screw over to loyal customers.

(edited by Obtena.7952)

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Posted by: Einlanzer.1627

Einlanzer.1627

There are arguments it would have worked out better, there are some where it’s worse. I do know that a sub based model would significantly impact development and content releases and since I think people that currently play are more or less pleased with paid content, free content and items in the Gemstore, I don’t think that impact would be positive to them.

At this point, there is no reason for threads like this. Gem store is a business decision and no data we have access to suggests it was a bad one … or a good one. It just IS. Granted, there have been games that move to different business models, but if anyone is under the illusion that moving away from the Gemstore at this point would be a good idea, they are going to be highly mistaken. In fact, the Gemstore is an integral part of what makes the game work. It CAN’T go. It needs to continue to grow.

Personally, I would not pay a sub for this game because Anet has shown they can provide good content without it, as well as interesting items with value in the Gemstore. Any introduction to a sub to play would be a significant screw over to loyal customers.

Oh, it’s out of the question now – they’d alienate way too many players trying to add one after the fact. It was purely conjecture about what would have happened if they had started out with one.

There’s no way we’ll ever know.

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Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419

IndigoSundown.5419

What I do know is that I’ve never seen anyone make a thread complaining that the game is free to play … think about that for a minute.

You didn’t look hard enough. You’re not likely to find them now, both because a lot of current players are on the new maps where the free players don’t go, and because forum use is down.

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Posted by: Shayne Hawke.9160

Shayne Hawke.9160

@OP: Here’s a super-short summary explaining ANet’s history for you: they made Guild Wars, it was a great game that became really successful, but the devs didn’t know what to do with it after that, so they made some changes that they didn’t know how to manage in the long term and were otherwise bound by restraints in the game’s engine, prompting them to mostly give up and make something else that was “better”, which they then hyped up and marketed at being tons of things to a lot of people, ended up delivering on little of substance, but kept all of the people who wanted to stay high on hype, which they continued to use to sell further goods and services and continued to lose people when they finally got tired of hype never materializing.

There is no “doing it better” for ANet than they did with Guild Wars if you’re looking for a quality game. That’s not the point though. The point is that GW2 is a cash cow for ANet and NCsoft that was way more profitable for them because of the game’s larger scope, the prominence of the cash shop (including gold and gem exchange), the lack of player-to-player trading, the audiences they marketed to, the hype they milked in the years between Eye of the North and GW2’s release, and the political landscape of the last six or seven years. You can talk about how GW2 faded faster than GW did and that ANet might have been able to do something to make GW2 not fade so fast, but the sad truth is that they couldn’t. Hype was their greatest weapon, and they wielded it well, but in order for them to deliver on such things as you would have liked them to, they would have needed the talent to back it up, which they didn’t have, or the time to pull it off, which would have clashed with their use of their primary weapon of hype. They’re starting to cast aside their weapon of hype though, trading it for a weapon of sympathy. It’ll work about as well as their hype trains did, given the caliber of people who have stuck around supporting them.

Also, if you wanted real answers to your analysis, you shouldn’t have brought it up on the official forum. I would offer you an alternative, but given how eager you are to fight the uphill battles you do of arguing against people who frequently post here, it’s not worth it.

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

I know this idea that the lack of content is the biggest problem, is an the accepted idea on this forum, but the numbers just don’t support that theory.

Maybe we have a disagreement about the numbers due to when we define that the “lack of content” started. I call the entire LS2 as “lack of content” too. Why? Because it catered to some part of the player base but not to everyone, it didn’t have varied enough content. Also, it was fun and exciting, but not for a very long time, about 16 months of farming the same things is too long.

Now the numbers don’t show it clearly because if you recall at the same time they did sales. Really really big sales and those sales obscure the effect of the lacking content. The numbers don’t support the theory? Maybe, but the massive sales at the same time frame should’ve resulted in a bump, not in an almost similar revenue.

You have the expansion itself that should be able to keep people busy for at least a year.

I don’t recall any expansion for any MMORPG I’ve ever played that kept me busy for a year, not even the full Campaigns of GW1 managed that. And what do you do next? Leave the game and return for the next expansion!

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

The cash shop is pervasive now. There are people who want to spend money to get stuff rather than play the game. My sons are both like that, because that’s the environment they grew up in.

They see a new game, they buy the game and then spend money on downloadable content or in the cash shop or whatever. That’s how they’re trained to think.

Not having the ability to do that could hurt the game, because people will have less options. As nuts as it sounds, not everyone wants to play a game they’re playing.

They’d rather take short cuts with cash.

That sounds like a personal issue your kids have that you’re projecting onto others.

Yes no one plays face book games and spends money on gems. Candy Corn Crush didn’t make a ton of money. Farmville didn’t make a ton of money. It was all just my kids. Keep telling yourself that.

Or maybe it’s endemic to the way the world works now and that’s why more and more games, like Archeage, and BDO are putting more and more emphasis on cash shops, in many of the same ways. People don’t copy the formula if it doesn’t work . At the very least you should realize that.

Sounds to me like you’re not paying attention to what’s actually been going on.

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Posted by: Sykper.6583

Sykper.6583

Vayne’s correct.

Cash Shops or variants of ‘Paying for extra content’ are the future of current gaming. I would even extend it outside of MMOs or Mobile Games, some recent shooters have iterations like Loot Boxes that have a similar reward system. Currently playing Titanfall 2, I can get random cosmetic rewards on a whim, but they recently introduced new ‘Prime’ Titans that I can pay a bit of cash for that give me an alternative, different cosmetic look to my Titan which carries different voiceovers and executions.

We are getting away from Subs folks.

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Currently playing Titanfall 2, I can get random cosmetic rewards on a whim, but they recently introduced new ‘Prime’ Titans that I can pay a bit of cash for that give me an alternative, different cosmetic look to my Titan which carries different voiceovers and executions.

It’s also worth mentioning that Titanfall 2 DLCs are completely free (at least so far) and there is no paid season pass, unlike how it is for other popular shooters. They expect to make money through those cosmetic rewards and offer their new gameplay content for free.

Which to me looks exactly how the LS1 of GW2 was. Free content/gameplay updates with lots of cosmetic-only paid updates. We’ll see how it goes and if in the end it’s better than the paid DLC approach. (paid DLC = paid expansions)

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

Currently playing Titanfall 2, I can get random cosmetic rewards on a whim, but they recently introduced new ‘Prime’ Titans that I can pay a bit of cash for that give me an alternative, different cosmetic look to my Titan which carries different voiceovers and executions.

It’s also worth mentioning that Titanfall 2 DLCs are completely free (at least so far) and there is no paid season pass, unlike how it is for other popular shooters. They expect to make money through those cosmetic rewards and offer their new gameplay content for free.

Which to me looks exactly how the LS1 of GW2 was. Free content/gameplay updates with lots of cosmetic-only paid updates. We’ll see how it goes and if in the end it’s better than the paid DLC approach. (paid DLC = paid expansions)

But the point I was making is a lot of us older gamers are uncomfortable with cash shops, because we didn’t grow up with them.

Devata played a game on computer 10 years ago which had a cash shop, but it was far less intrusive. The game wasnt’ centered around the cash shop. My point has always been times and expectations change. The cost of making games has changed. The competition has change. Players expectations have changed.

Saying I don’t like the cash shop because a ten year old game didn’t center as much around the cash shop and was still successful is irrelevant, unless you can prove that game with the same strategy would have made it today.

The problem is, there aren’t more and more computer game players there are less, because more people play games on consoles and now tablets and phones. So the computer game market tends to contract over time, but you have more product pulling people more ways.

The age of the MMO isn’t starting, it’s slowing down. There are probably less people over all playing a greater number of games, all expecting more and more for their dollar, which isn’t likely to happen.

People today come into the game and many of them ask, right away, how much do I have to spend to be relevant. I’ve heard the question a lot of times.

And they’re relieved to find out that the cash shop doesn’t sell power…at least many of them are.

This whole cash shop issue is simply a non-issue except for a few of us older veterans who remember how it used to be.

As for the grind aspect, it exists in every MMO and even existed in Guild Wars 1. The idea that any company can make content fast enough to satisfy the content locusts was crazy. I mean today we have sites like Dulfy and everyone runs through stuff a lot faster. It’s easier to find information today than it was one Guild Wars 1 launched. We play games differntly. There are more videos, more people sharing information. It’s not some kind of underground like it used to be.

The grind has to be there to keep certain types of players happy. There’s a fine balance to it, which Anet is constantly adjusting. HoT was too grindy when it came out, but it’s a lot less grindy now.

But there’s no way to make content fast enough in today’s gaming market to satisfy people without that grind, so it’s a lose lose situation. You’re either a themepark MMO with grind, or a sandbox MMo with less content and usually less players.

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Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

I know this idea that the lack of content is the biggest problem, is an the accepted idea on this forum, but the numbers just don’t support that theory.

Maybe we have a disagreement about the numbers due to when we define that the “lack of content” started. I call the entire LS2 as “lack of content” too. Why? Because it catered to some part of the player base but not to everyone, it didn’t have varied enough content.

But even then the 3 quarters after it had even less content and did have higher results. So how does that fit into the ‘lack of content is the problem’ theory. I mean, if that lack of content is the reason you would still expect it to drop even lower.

Not to mention Q3 2016. So we only have S1 to show that that content does keep people playing, however S1 was in the first 1,5 year when the game was still fresh so it’s hard to say that simply the reason that GW2 was still a fresh game was not the reason for higher results?

Besides, you should also not forget that expansions are great at delivering content for everybody.

[quote=6428783;maddoctor.2738:][quote=6428783;maddoctor.2738:]