I’m not twisting what Colin said, because we talked about the manifesto. Looking at Anet’s web page for Guild Wars 2, grind and vertical progression was barely mentioned at all. They talked about dynamic events, personal stories, and a living breathing world. That’s the main thing the game was marketed on.
If you can find 3 quotes over five years that say vertical progression….okay, you’ve found three quotes. So what? It’s three quotes over five years.
There were literally hundreds of hours talking about everything else. It’s people’s focus that make this the depth of the promise it was, not what was actually said.
By percentage, Anet talked about vertical progression very little.
No you are just making excuses, and stretching the truth to justify that excuse. As I said before, changing small things and backing out here and there is fine. But not when it goes against the core design philosophies you preached. It is if a game like WoW talked about Raiding and how important raiding is in their game and removed it a year after launch. Even if it didn’t take a lot of “percentage” of their time talking about it, it still is a major change for your core philosophy.
Regardless, it is idiotic to think importance is based on how long they talk about it. Talk about going the extra mile to defend this change.
I’m not going an extra mile to defend a change. I’m taking on people who say this is what the game was sold on. No. This may be what sold YOU on the game, but this was not what Anet PUSHED.
Again, I have a background in retail. I know what I push and what I don’t push. I know what Anet pushed. Lack of vertical progression wasn’kitten They pushed personal story. They pushed dynamic events. Those were what would have sold the game to most people.
There are a minority of people who even know what vertical progression is. Those are more likely to be people here on the forums. But the bulk of the population just sees something they think looks cool and buys it.
I’m not defending Anet adding vertical progression to the game. I’m calling out people who say this is the major thing Anet sold the game on.
It only takes one advertisement about a certain aspect of a product for the product to have been marketed in that way. It does not need to be repeated ad nauseum.
You frequently make reference to statements made subsequent to the Manifesto that were supposed to clarify, define, or even redefine what was meant. The fact of the matter is, and you should know this as you worked in retail management, that an advertisement for your product is not definable by alternate contemporary advertisements. Your first commercial’s statements cannot be modified by a subsequent commercial unless the first is removed.
If you state that your product provides X in one commercial you cannot explain that by X you meant Y (where Y differs from, or is a more limited version of, X) in another commercial unless you remove the first commercial. Anet continued to display the manifesto long after the subsequent statements you often quote were made, without altering the original advertisement (the manifesto) to include the supposed alterations to its meaning.
As to whether or not vertical progression is a major thing ANet sold GW2 on…they made a point of telling potential customers that it would not exist. They paid to distribute that information. They paid someone to tell people that there would not be gear progression beyond what was attained by level 80.
If a company pays to send a specific message about its product I would call that message a selling point of the product.
