There are so many complaints everywhere on the forums and yet minimal progress is experienced.
There are so many people unhappy with the game I’m just trying to understand why or how the game can tolerate such bad PR. And whether it is even in the financial interests of the company to spend money fixing things.
How many people is “so many”? And how does Anet financials effect your gaming experience in GW2? Just asking out of curiosity. There could be an interesting discussion here.
You must be new to MMOs. I think you should go look at WoW’s forums. Or Archeage. Or anyone for that matter.
Active MMOs all have forums that read just like this one.
Point 1. That doesn’t mean most people are unsatisfied. It means a lot of people who are unsatisfied complain.
Let’s say we see 10,000 people complaining and there are half a million players (clue we haevn’t seen close to 10,000 people complaining). Also some who complain are just trolls, I know because they’ve admitted to me that the only reason they complain is to rile up fan boys.
When you have a million people together a bunch of them are going to be dissatisfied and they’ll complain. It means very little unless a majority are complaining about something. But it’s only really bad press if it’s a) reasonable and b) not happening the MMO forum for every successful MMO.
Point 2. A lot of the things people complain about are handled quickly. However some things people complain about are simply not going to change, no matter how many complaints. For example, when someone nerfs a profession, someone is going to complain that it’s not fair, whether it’s fair or not. Most people are actually reasonable. Most people know that certain professions needed a nerf.
Point 3. Anet is a company comprised of over 300 people. Those 300 people work a lot of hours to bring a program. But when you have that many people all working on different projects, sometimes things fall through the cracks. That’s because people aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. When I ran a store, I made thousands of decisions every week…a few dozen of them were bound to be wrong. It’s not reasonable to expect that mistakes won’t happen, and it’s even less reasonable to believe they can be fixed quickly, particularly if you’re talking about programming mistakes. These games are far more complex than most people think they are.
Point 4. None of us really know how many people by percentage are unhappy with the game, but of the unhappy people, they’re all complaining about disparate things. Which people do you listen to? I know for a fact Anet has made some changes to the game based on what people were saying. Are you suggesting they make a thousand changes to the game all at once? What would that do to their code.
Seriously. Go spend some time on the official forums of other MMORPGs. This is pretty much the norm. And the bigger the game gets, the more attention it gets, and the more people tend to complain.
The happy people? They’re playing the game. They have very little reason to be here.
You must be new to MMOs. I think you should go look at WoW’s forums. Or Archeage. Or anyone for that matter.
Active MMOs all have forums that read just like this one.
Point 1. That doesn’t mean most people are unsatisfied. It means a lot of people who are unsatisfied complain.
Let’s say we see 10,000 people complaining and there are half a million players (clue we haevn’t seen close to 10,000 people complaining). Also some who complain are just trolls, I know because they’ve admitted to me that the only reason they complain is to rile up fan boys.
When you have a million people together a bunch of them are going to be dissatisfied and they’ll complain. It means very little unless a majority are complaining about something. But it’s only really bad press if it’s a) reasonable and b) not happening the MMO forum for every successful MMO.
Point 2. A lot of the things people complain about are handled quickly. However some things people complain about are simply not going to change, no matter how many complaints. For example, when someone nerfs a profession, someone is going to complain that it’s not fair, whether it’s fair or not. Most people are actually reasonable. Most people know that certain professions needed a nerf.
Point 3. Anet is a company comprised of over 300 people. Those 300 people work a lot of hours to bring a program. But when you have that many people all working on different projects, sometimes things fall through the cracks. That’s because people aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. When I ran a store, I made thousands of decisions every week…a few dozen of them were bound to be wrong. It’s not reasonable to expect that mistakes won’t happen, and it’s even less reasonable to believe they can be fixed quickly, particularly if you’re talking about programming mistakes. These games are far more complex than most people think they are.
Point 4. None of us really know how many people by percentage are unhappy with the game, but of the unhappy people, they’re all complaining about disparate things. Which people do you listen to? I know for a fact Anet has made some changes to the game based on what people were saying. Are you suggesting they make a thousand changes to the game all at once? What would that do to their code.
Seriously. Go spend some time on the official forums of other MMORPGs. This is pretty much the norm. And the bigger the game gets, the more attention it gets, and the more people tend to complain.
The happy people? They’re playing the game. They have very little reason to be here.
I’m just looking for some concrete data. Almost everyone I talk to is dissapointed in things.
You mention the game is very complex. Can you elaborate for me what you meant? Its vary hard to see a 1 to 1 conversion between the amount of work shown in updates and the amount of time spent on them.
I agree with Vayne. Go read the WoW forums. That company makes billions (not millions) of dollars each year, but unhappy people post there and complain about the forum outrage of the day, profession nerfs, PvP happening to low level chars, low population servers, high population servers and how mixing low population servers together brings a lot of people into the maps, as well as how there aren’t enough updates, etc, etc, etc….
You must be new to MMOs. I think you should go look at WoW’s forums. Or Archeage. Or anyone for that matter.
Active MMOs all have forums that read just like this one.
Point 1. That doesn’t mean most people are unsatisfied. It means a lot of people who are unsatisfied complain.
Let’s say we see 10,000 people complaining and there are half a million players (clue we haevn’t seen close to 10,000 people complaining). Also some who complain are just trolls, I know because they’ve admitted to me that the only reason they complain is to rile up fan boys.
When you have a million people together a bunch of them are going to be dissatisfied and they’ll complain. It means very little unless a majority are complaining about something. But it’s only really bad press if it’s a) reasonable and b) not happening the MMO forum for every successful MMO.
Point 2. A lot of the things people complain about are handled quickly. However some things people complain about are simply not going to change, no matter how many complaints. For example, when someone nerfs a profession, someone is going to complain that it’s not fair, whether it’s fair or not. Most people are actually reasonable. Most people know that certain professions needed a nerf.
Point 3. Anet is a company comprised of over 300 people. Those 300 people work a lot of hours to bring a program. But when you have that many people all working on different projects, sometimes things fall through the cracks. That’s because people aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. When I ran a store, I made thousands of decisions every week…a few dozen of them were bound to be wrong. It’s not reasonable to expect that mistakes won’t happen, and it’s even less reasonable to believe they can be fixed quickly, particularly if you’re talking about programming mistakes. These games are far more complex than most people think they are.
Point 4. None of us really know how many people by percentage are unhappy with the game, but of the unhappy people, they’re all complaining about disparate things. Which people do you listen to? I know for a fact Anet has made some changes to the game based on what people were saying. Are you suggesting they make a thousand changes to the game all at once? What would that do to their code.
Seriously. Go spend some time on the official forums of other MMORPGs. This is pretty much the norm. And the bigger the game gets, the more attention it gets, and the more people tend to complain.
The happy people? They’re playing the game. They have very little reason to be here.
I’m just looking for some concrete data. Almost everyone I talk to is dissapointed in things.
You mention the game is very complex. Can you elaborate for me what you meant? Its vary hard to see a 1 to 1 conversion between the amount of work shown in updates and the amount of time spent on them.
Of course the game is complex. It’s got multiple modes. it’s got probably a million lines of code and everything interacts with everything else. I can’t even imagine the amount of work it takes to get everything to work nice together. How can you think ANY MMO isn’t complex? And why do ALL MMO forums look like this?
Have you even looked at the patch notes?
You’ll never get an honest answer to this question, but it’s no secret that the current situation isn’t anything praiseworthy, it’s probably the lack of communication and proper leadership that’s making it stand out so obvious. Just make sure you’ve got your popcorn when beep hits the boop :p
How many people is “so many”? And how does Anet financials effect your gaming experience in GW2? Just asking out of curiosity. There could be an interesting discussion here.
Because financials show where priority lies. A cash shop company just has to look pretty, it doesnt neccesarily have to have depth. While a company that needs successful expansions at least has to put more effort into getting people buy it.
How many people is “so many”? And how does Anet financials effect your gaming experience in GW2? Just asking out of curiosity. There could be an interesting discussion here.
Because financials show where priority lies. A cash shop company just has to look pretty, it doesnt neccesarily have to have depth. While a company that needs successful expansions at least has to put more effort into getting people buy it.
That’s funny. If there’s no depth there’s no game, and no one will pay just to look pretty. You might not like the direction of the game, but there’s plenty of people who are enjoying it. I have about 100 people in my guild who log in every week and 2 of them aren’t enjoying the expansion as far as I can tell. Everyone else is enjoying themselves.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t problems.
But if you make something easy, the people who want hard core content complain. If you make something hard, the people who want easy content complain. Everyone has a threshold. We saw that the Garent fight was too hard, and people complained about it. Anet made it easier. Now people are complaining it’s too easy but they’re different people.
@Vayne Well lets look at the patch notes.
Most of the balance changes are not major code changes, they are variable changes.
Set piercing to yes. Set base duration to this. You are just setting variables to alternate values. Most of this is something 1 entry level programmer could do in 3 days. I have spoken extensively with programmers about this. Altering table values and then debugging does not take that much time. If they have other priorities to other parts of the game thats fine. But if you say its over 300 people, shouldn’t there be dedicated people for each content?
How many people is “so many”? And how does Anet financials effect your gaming experience in GW2? Just asking out of curiosity. There could be an interesting discussion here.
Because financials show where priority lies. A cash shop company just has to look pretty, it doesnt neccesarily have to have depth. While a company that needs successful expansions at least has to put more effort into getting people buy it.
So you think Anet’s financial model leads the game to have little depth? I think its probably deep enough for many of the people who play it and which then would probably be the target audience. There are all sort of things to do in the game, and while probably everyone (might be safe to say that) has something to grizzle about I’d imagine many can work around their pet peeves or just work through them. Not everyone can do this of course, which leads to forum threads.
@Vayne Well lets look at the patch notes.
Most of the balance changes are not major code changes, they are variable changes.
Set piercing to yes. Set base duration to this. You are just setting variables to alternate values. Most of this is something 1 entry level programmer could do in 3 days. I have spoken extensively with programmers about this. Altering table values and then debugging does not take that much time. If they have other priorities to other parts of the game thats fine. But if you say its over 300 people, shouldn’t there be dedicated people for each content?
This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time.
Okay most of the balance changes are tweaking numbers. You win. That’s easy.
However, getting them to play nice together over all with other balance changes aren’t. You can tweak a million numbers and end up with an unmitigated disaster, because every single change you make to balance is going to affect something else.
I believe Anet did get some of the balance issues wrong in this patch but not most of them. However the time and complexity of balancing has nothing at all to do with how easy it is to change a number.
We know for a fact Anet has a QA team that tests things. They have to go and play against each other in say PvP and figure out which changes are too strong, which are acceptable, which work and which don’t.
So why changing a number is easy, putting the right number in it’s place is complex.
Do you know, when they send rockets into space, it’s very easy for them to change variables. It’s just the press of a button. But what do you think happens if they plug in the wrong numbers? lol
@Vayne Well lets look at the patch notes.
Most of the balance changes are not major code changes, they are variable changes.
Set piercing to yes. Set base duration to this. You are just setting variables to alternate values. Most of this is something 1 entry level programmer could do in 3 days. I have spoken extensively with programmers about this. Altering table values and then debugging does not take that much time. If they have other priorities to other parts of the game thats fine. But if you say its over 300 people, shouldn’t there be dedicated people for each content?This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time.
Okay most of the balance changes are tweaking numbers. You win. That’s easy.
However, getting them to play nice together over all with other balance changes aren’t. You can tweak a million numbers and end up with an unmitigated disaster, because every single change you make to balance is going to affect something else.
I believe Anet did get some of the balance issues wrong in this patch but not most of them. However the time and complexity of balancing has nothing at all to do with how easy it is to change a number.
We know for a fact Anet has a QA team that tests things. They have to go and play against each other in say PvP and figure out which changes are too strong, which are acceptable, which work and which don’t.
So why changing a number is easy, putting the right number in it’s place is complex.
Do you know, when they send rockets into space, it’s very easy for them to change variables. It’s just the press of a button. But what do you think happens if they plug in the wrong numbers? lol
That is a false comparison. A rocket with improper numbers blows up or whatever, this is a computer program they can test and debug.
There is nothing in the code of arenanet that will destroy the game if the coefficient for x variable is altered. The planning and the testing for this is not that complicated. There is minimal debugging. I understand the complication in editing aftercasts and working with the skill facts. But its disingenous to claim that variable alterings will have huge consequences.
My favourite anet bug is when if you stopped spectating rangers in hotjoin you game would crash. That is a complicated bug. It also shows how weird their code is. But the balance patch had nothing on that scale.
(edited by Daniel Handler.4816)
How many people is “so many”? And how does Anet financials effect your gaming experience in GW2? Just asking out of curiosity. There could be an interesting discussion here.
Because financials show where priority lies. A cash shop company just has to look pretty, it doesnt neccesarily have to have depth. While a company that needs successful expansions at least has to put more effort into getting people buy it.
So you think Anet’s financial model leads the game to have little depth? I think its probably deep enough for many of the people who play it and which then would probably be the target audience. There are all sort of things to do in the game, and while probably everyone (might be safe to say that) has something to grizzle about I’d imagine many can work around their pet peeves or just work through them. Not everyone can do this of course, which leads to forum threads.
Please note that I am asking what financial model they have. I am stating what a Cash Shop company is, not that ANET is that type of company.
People need to understand that game programmers are not the same as game developers/designers.
Game programmers fix bugs and create new engine features. These people have strong comp-sci backgrounds and pretty much just delve in code. These people optimize code for performance and develop new API’s for both in-house development use and external API functions for community-driven projects.
Game “developers” use game engine tools build by programmers and assets created by artists to create content. They do animation, make decisions regarding level design, get invested with game balance, asset management, and design for playability with the mechanics behind everything in mind. Rarely is the truly complex code exposed here, and in instances where it would become very complex, this task gets handed to the programmers to work on and optimize for new frameworks.
Many people vouching that making numbers tweaks is “difficult” frankly do not have any experience working in the game industry or in a game engine. Frankly, making these kinds of adjustments is extremely simple, and which is why it surprises me so much time is taken between any balance adjustment patches, as rapid iteration typically works better in regards to competitive games.
The design changes are the more complex ones, and take much more manpower. New assets, animation, concepts, and re-balancing everything repeatedly while not removing existing styles/builds while fixing core problems with old ones is a much more difficult task. That said, we largely haven’t seen any since the game launched, and it’s really getting to the point where many classes and builds desperately need help or are being carried by power-creeped abilities or specs preventing the rest of the class/builds getting love.
As far as financial stability goes, ANet is doing fine. Trust me. The big issue with video games these days is selling the initial copies when the game launches. And they absolutely made their money back with how successful the game was at launch with the $60+ price tag. The cash shop is just icing and to keep it supported long into the future with top-notch customer service.
- How does this game make money?
- Is it primarily through the cash shop?
- Is it through the initial sales?
- A bit of both?
There are so many complaints everywhere on the forums and yet minimal progress is experienced.
- How many people are employed at anet?
- Why does it take so long for them to do things?
There are so many people unhappy with the game I’m just trying to understand why or how the game can tolerate such bad PR. And whether it is even in the financial interests of the company to spend money fixing things.
The only data we have is ANet’s direct sales income which is reported in NCSOFT’s financials. It does not include China as that is a royalty situation and NCSOFT mixes all royalties into a single reported item.
ArenaNet makes their money from sales of GW and GW2 along with income from both game’s cash shops. They also earn royalties from GW2 in China which is run by KongZhong. I imagine they now also get a little from their merch sales through iam8bit.
It’s reported that ANet has roughly 300 employees. We have no idea how many are programmers, artists, animators, etc.
Things take a long time because they do. Software development and maintenance as well are developing game assets aren’t quick. Read this – http://www.lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
There are always comments and complaints from both sides of an issue and therefore any fix would likely tick off the group that “lost”. So there will always be a group complaining about any so called “fix” in the game. This also slows down implementing any fix if group A say do one thing while one or more other groups have their preference about fixing the issue. Who is “right”? What is the best fix that would annoy the fewest? This isn’t a snap judgement and often requires prototypes of each (which takes time) and then internally play tested which may yield none are descent enough to be done officially.
Last year and a half I would say the majority of the game’s personal were working on making the Oct drop dead deadline for the expansion to come out in 2015. Which is why we didn’t get a lot of new content pushed to live and what we did get were completed systems that would be a major feature for the expansion (Traits 3.0).
There are so many complaints everywhere on the forums and yet minimal progress is experienced.
I have a fair idea that most people who are enjoying the game are busy in the game, enjoying it!
You must be new to MMOs. I think you should go look at WoW’s forums. Or Archeage. Or anyone for that matter.
Active MMOs all have forums that read just like this one.
Point 1. That doesn’t mean most people are unsatisfied. It means a lot of people who are unsatisfied complain.
Let’s say we see 10,000 people complaining and there are half a million players (clue we haevn’t seen close to 10,000 people complaining). Also some who complain are just trolls, I know because they’ve admitted to me that the only reason they complain is to rile up fan boys.
When you have a million people together a bunch of them are going to be dissatisfied and they’ll complain. It means very little unless a majority are complaining about something. But it’s only really bad press if it’s a) reasonable and b) not happening the MMO forum for every successful MMO.
Point 2. A lot of the things people complain about are handled quickly. However some things people complain about are simply not going to change, no matter how many complaints. For example, when someone nerfs a profession, someone is going to complain that it’s not fair, whether it’s fair or not. Most people are actually reasonable. Most people know that certain professions needed a nerf.
Point 3. Anet is a company comprised of over 300 people. Those 300 people work a lot of hours to bring a program. But when you have that many people all working on different projects, sometimes things fall through the cracks. That’s because people aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. When I ran a store, I made thousands of decisions every week…a few dozen of them were bound to be wrong. It’s not reasonable to expect that mistakes won’t happen, and it’s even less reasonable to believe they can be fixed quickly, particularly if you’re talking about programming mistakes. These games are far more complex than most people think they are.
Point 4. None of us really know how many people by percentage are unhappy with the game, but of the unhappy people, they’re all complaining about disparate things. Which people do you listen to? I know for a fact Anet has made some changes to the game based on what people were saying. Are you suggesting they make a thousand changes to the game all at once? What would that do to their code.
Seriously. Go spend some time on the official forums of other MMORPGs. This is pretty much the norm. And the bigger the game gets, the more attention it gets, and the more people tend to complain.
The happy people? They’re playing the game. They have very little reason to be here.
And to add that, The Developers are not Robots. Nothing will be 100% Perfect, Want perfection? Hire Machines to replace us humans because machines are far more superior than us “humans”
How many people is “so many”? And how does Anet financials effect your gaming experience in GW2? Just asking out of curiosity. There could be an interesting discussion here.
Because financials show where priority lies. A cash shop company just has to look pretty, it doesnt neccesarily have to have depth. While a company that needs successful expansions at least has to put more effort into getting people buy it.
Anet make most of their money from cash shop. Because that’s what all mmorpg company without subscription do.
Either that or it’ll be like GW1 at the end of their cycle with 4 employee on it.
You should go play one of those subscription games which you need to pay 15$ per month and stop complaining.
Or you can just go play one of those low budget mmorpg. Some of them are actually not bad.
I still enjoy the game, yes it has it’s problems. But does that stop me from enjoying it? No it does not, As long as my fun don’t get smashed I am fine and dandy.
Not every problem will be fix and there will be some that sneaks by. That’s why I mentioned Machines as they make hardly no mistakes at all they have higher response times and can do a better job than humans can.
I will continue to say for the rest of my life is, If you want a 100% Perfect Game don’t hire us weak humans who make mistakes, Instead hire machines they can do the job more perfectly for you than humans can.
You must be new to MMOs. I think you should go look at WoW’s forums. Or Archeage. Or anyone for that matter.
Active MMOs all have forums that read just like this one.
Point 1. That doesn’t mean most people are unsatisfied. It means a lot of people who are unsatisfied complain.
Let’s say we see 10,000 people complaining and there are half a million players (clue we haevn’t seen close to 10,000 people complaining). Also some who complain are just trolls, I know because they’ve admitted to me that the only reason they complain is to rile up fan boys.
When you have a million people together a bunch of them are going to be dissatisfied and they’ll complain. It means very little unless a majority are complaining about something. But it’s only really bad press if it’s a) reasonable and b) not happening the MMO forum for every successful MMO.
Point 2. A lot of the things people complain about are handled quickly. However some things people complain about are simply not going to change, no matter how many complaints. For example, when someone nerfs a profession, someone is going to complain that it’s not fair, whether it’s fair or not. Most people are actually reasonable. Most people know that certain professions needed a nerf.
Point 3. Anet is a company comprised of over 300 people. Those 300 people work a lot of hours to bring a program. But when you have that many people all working on different projects, sometimes things fall through the cracks. That’s because people aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. When I ran a store, I made thousands of decisions every week…a few dozen of them were bound to be wrong. It’s not reasonable to expect that mistakes won’t happen, and it’s even less reasonable to believe they can be fixed quickly, particularly if you’re talking about programming mistakes. These games are far more complex than most people think they are.
Point 4. None of us really know how many people by percentage are unhappy with the game, but of the unhappy people, they’re all complaining about disparate things. Which people do you listen to? I know for a fact Anet has made some changes to the game based on what people were saying. Are you suggesting they make a thousand changes to the game all at once? What would that do to their code.
Seriously. Go spend some time on the official forums of other MMORPGs. This is pretty much the norm. And the bigger the game gets, the more attention it gets, and the more people tend to complain.
The happy people? They’re playing the game. They have very little reason to be here.
I’m just looking for some concrete data. Almost everyone I talk to is dissapointed in things.
Maybe because not everything in an MMO as complex as this one satisfies every whim of each player you have talked to?
The assumptions you presented in your original post are bad.
Anet must be doing good enough to make GW2, serve it for 3 years and make an expansion …
People need to understand that game programmers are not the same as game developers/designers.
Game programmers fix bugs and create new engine features. These people have strong comp-sci backgrounds and pretty much just delve in code. These people optimize code for performance and develop new API’s for both in-house development use and external API functions for community-driven projects.
Game “developers” use game engine tools build by programmers and assets created by artists to create content. They do animation, make decisions regarding level design, get invested with game balance, asset management, and design for playability with the mechanics behind everything in mind. Rarely is the truly complex code exposed here, and in instances where it would become very complex, this task gets handed to the programmers to work on and optimize for new frameworks.
Many people vouching that making numbers tweaks is “difficult” frankly do not have any experience working in the game industry or in a game engine. Frankly, making these kinds of adjustments is extremely simple, and which is why it surprises me so much time is taken between any balance adjustment patches, as rapid iteration typically works better in regards to competitive games.
The design changes are the more complex ones, and take much more manpower. New assets, animation, concepts, and re-balancing everything repeatedly while not removing existing styles/builds while fixing core problems with old ones is a much more difficult task. That said, we largely haven’t seen any since the game launched, and it’s really getting to the point where many classes and builds desperately need help or are being carried by power-creeped abilities or specs preventing the rest of the class/builds getting love.
As far as financial stability goes, ANet is doing fine. Trust me. The big issue with video games these days is selling the initial copies when the game launches. And they absolutely made their money back with how successful the game was at launch with the $60+ price tag. The cash shop is just icing and to keep it supported long into the future with top-notch customer service.
So what is causing the delay?
They wouldn’t have gotten to work on the next expansion so soon if the last expansion didn’t turn a profit.
Hey, this is Gabriel. Since Anet isn’t stupid enough to answer your not-thought-through questions, I’ll have a go at it:
- How does this game make money?
Sales
- Is it primarily through the cash shop?
No
- Is it through the initial sales?
Yes, if by initial sales you include:
A) Purchasing the original game any time before HoT
B) Additional sales OF HoT
C) Other sales of the whole game post-HoT
- A bit of both?
Nope.
There are so many complaints everywhere on the forums and yet minimal progress is experienced.
Opinion, not a question. And it’s a very biased opinion because I just don’t agree.
- How many people are employed at anet?
“Over the years, ArenaNet has grown to 250+ employees”
Source: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/ArenaNet
- Why does it take so long for them to do things?
Loaded question based on a biased opinion.
THAT…and it’s software development…which I’m guessing you really don’t have any insight into just how complex that can be.
There are so many people unhappy with the game I’m just trying to understand why or how the game can tolerate such bad PR.
More people happy with this game than unhappy with this game. All the complainers go to the forums. Not so many people happy with the game come to the forums because it’s a cesspool of kittens complaining about stupid crap.
And whether it is even in the financial interests of the company to spend money fixing things.
Here’s the info you need to READ AND UNDERSTAND before you assume whatever PR you are referring to (I’m guessing just the forum’s kittens posting their daily rounds of hatemail).
http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx#none
Based on the income Anet has and the fact that their business is based on the concept of “going concern”, yeah, they have a vested interest in fixing things.
But because they are highly profitable, they’re going to do it in the priority THEY see as most income-generating.
https://taskandpurpose.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/FafHtxr.gif
Well anet could always have a public test server where the community and the devs could collaborate on new balance and feature patches before they hit the live server, and not have a week of bug fixes because you bug fixed 95% of the issues while it was in actual testing, not by a few QA guys that clearly dont know anything about the classes they are balancing.
nerf rev aa because you shouldnt aa spam and be top dps,
buff teef aa to crazy high dps lvls, teefs now spam 1 all day
( ????? )
also the fact that not every single class is on equal ground in every game mode, attributes to poor balancing decisions that can only stem from a lack of understanding of their own product. Were they to actually collaborate with the player base instead of these kitten forum posts we could have a game worthy of esports, but no ptr, and space balance updates that are more along the lines of gutting one class and overbuffing another 3-4 times a year, esports wont happen
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
The same can be said with MMO balance between classes. There will always be people who will think of interactions between traits, skills and the game’s mechanics that the devs will have never considered. Always. And it’s more advantageous to those players to keep that knowledge than share it with the developers. That’s why a PvP test server would never work, because once someone discovers an issue they will tuck it away until it goes live.
The only achievable balance is to remove the build meta. Everyone plays the same thing. Skill one weapon attacks regardless of class or weapon does the same thing. Everyone has the same stats and HP. Etc. Because as soon as you start to differentiate there will be situations where one profession is better than another. But that makes it a really boring MMO for the rest of us non PvPers.
Things take a long time because they do. Software development and maintenance as well are developing game assets aren’t quick. Read this – http://www.lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
Thank you, that is amazing!
We know for a fact Anet has a QA team that tests things. They have to go and play against each other in say PvP and figure out which changes are too strong, which are acceptable, which work and which don’t.
They nerfed the MtD rework right out of the gate because they “tested it on golems and found it too strong”, so no, I wouldn’t “know” they have a QA “team”.
I’ll just leave this here:
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
- Elie Wiesel
That being said, as long as people are willing to argue, complain, suggest or in any other shape way or form interact with the community and developer, you have nothing to worry about.
Do arenanet get it right all the time? No, absolutely no.
Do people complain over stuff? Sure, because they are involved. People who do not complain are enjoying the game (or have left).
Once people stop complaining, that is when you need to start worrying.
So as long as the official forums don’t go silent and arenanet start implementing massive shady ways of boosting their player numbers, I wouldn’t worry to much about how healthy the game is.
On topic:
- How does this game make money?
- Is it primarily through the cash shop?
- Is it through the initial sales?
- A bit of both?
Arenanets business model is a mixture of both. That’s how the vanilla game was able to be run for over 3 years before adding an expansion.
My personal guess is that the majority of steady income is generated via the gem store. The one time expenses incured via the original game and HoT are more to cover big chunks of game developement that went into both steps (release of vanilla and release of the expansion. )
We know for a fact Anet has a QA team that tests things. They have to go and play against each other in say PvP and figure out which changes are too strong, which are acceptable, which work and which don’t.
They nerfed the MtD rework right out of the gate because they “tested it on golems and found it too strong”, so no, I wouldn’t “know” they have a QA “team”.
I say we know they have a QA team because we’ve seen members of them in some videos. That’s how I know they have a QA team. And if you think the number of bugs coming through shows that things aren’t being tested, you’ve never been in a game software testing environment. Are their issues. Sure there are.
But if there wasn’t an QA team the issues would dwarf what we’re seeing.
They wouldn’t have gotten to work on the next expansion so soon if the last expansion didn’t turn a profit.
Before that they were giving it away for free as LS, so I think it’s 100% profitable. I’d do again too!
We know for a fact Anet has a QA team that tests things. They have to go and play against each other in say PvP and figure out which changes are too strong, which are acceptable, which work and which don’t.
They nerfed the MtD rework right out of the gate because they “tested it on golems and found it too strong”, so no, I wouldn’t “know” they have a QA “team”.
I say we know they have a QA team because we’ve seen members of them in some videos. That’s how I know they have a QA team. And if you think the number of bugs coming through shows that things aren’t being tested, you’ve never been in a game software testing environment. Are their issues. Sure there are.
But if there wasn’t an QA team the issues would dwarf what we’re seeing.
or any other software environment for that matter. Work with any software company and you’ll know. Do you think Adobe, Microsoft, any other major company dont employ QA? Do you software like say a pdf reader is as complex as an MMO? yet check any PDF reader of any company (not single anyone out here) and check their blogs. each one of them releases patches to fix issues regularly.
It is hard to imagine, I get that but software development is a monster of complexity. When you write a simple hello world program your programming language will access multiple libraries developed by other vendors and join them to your to make that happen.It will then convert all that code into another a different language. A simple hello world program will end up with 100s of 1000s of instructions the computer executes to make it run. And here we’re talking about programs that each element can be used one way and one way only. File → Open can always be used just to open a file, you can never use File → Open to print or to minimize the program. Games arent like that. You change a class walk speed for example and suddenly that has a million implications. Walk speed impacts jump range, it has implications for combat, it may have an effect on your targeting code, projectile code, animations and a bunch of other things people dont immediately think about.
Sure some balancing changes involve simply changing a number but how many systems actually consume that number in one way or another? guess what? each of those systems owners need to be consulted to make sure the change isnt going to adversely effect them. Not all of them are going to be able to give an answer on the spot, some will need to back and test that value to make sure it doesnt break anything. Then once that change is effected all the systems that it effects need to be tested individually and having some experiance in QA let me tell you QA no matter how big are always undermanned which makes the whole process take time.
Again lets assume for the sake of argument the walk speed is effected… it takes a few seconds to change the value sure. how much time and people it takes to test it though?
you have different classes you need to test, different races, combat between different them might be impacted different, targeting is effected by walk speed, projectile shooting, collision detection, jumping puzzles (it may be that with the additional speed some small jumps might be impossible to make, too much distance is covered before you can stop the jump), etc.. etc..
This means changes to simple variables will still need to be scheduled with QA availability in mind.
Changing stuff in software is never just as simple as changing a number trust me!
Well anet could always have a public test server where the community and the devs could collaborate on new balance and feature patches before they hit the live server, and not have a week of bug fixes because you bug fixed 95% of the issues while it was in actual testing, not by a few QA guys that clearly dont know anything about the classes they are balancing.
nerf rev aa because you shouldnt aa spam and be top dps,
buff teef aa to crazy high dps lvls, teefs now spam 1 all day
( ????? )
also the fact that not every single class is on equal ground in every game mode, attributes to poor balancing decisions that can only stem from a lack of understanding of their own product. Were they to actually collaborate with the player base instead of these kitten forum posts we could have a game worthy of esports, but no ptr, and space balance updates that are more along the lines of gutting one class and overbuffing another 3-4 times a year, esports wont happen
The designer/client problem is eternal.
Let’s say that you are painting someone’s portrait. This person has no artistic ability but is not happy with your painting and states that they will direct you in how to paint their portrait. Alright, so you take their directions and it looks significantly worse than the previous painting, but the question is fundamentally whose fault that is.
There is no right answer. Some would say it is the client because they wanted things their way and so totally got their way by directing the picture even though it turned out worse. Some would say it is the artist because the artist did not act in favor of the client by asserting that their depiction was accurate and the best direction to go in.
For programming in this case Thief had been, for a very long time, lagging behind. They are a burst class so their strikes, each one, needs to be deadly enough to mow down highly defensive builds meanwhile revenant was designed as the, from what I see anyway, the boon / condi heavy armored warrior. They aren’t supposed to press 1 and win because that requires none of their class specific energy, focuses on only one weapon making it a clear best choice, and with herald they run around draped in constant boons again at no cost to them.
The client wants the uber revenant (of course) and sees no value to boosting the thief. The artist wants their design to be respected and concept to be fleshed out and boosts the thief and does not want everyone pressing 1 with a sword and a single trait line powering their revenant.
Well anet could always have a public test server where the community and the devs could collaborate on new balance and feature patches before they hit the live server, and not have a week of bug fixes because you bug fixed 95% of the issues while it was in actual testing, not by a few QA guys that clearly dont know anything about the classes they are balancing.
Lol, you do realize even MMOs with extremely robust PTRs always have all kinds of fixes and balance tinkering after any major patch. What you are talking about is great in theory but PTRs just don’t workout that way for many reasons.
Hey, this is Gabriel. Since Anet isn’t stupid enough to answer your not-thought-through questions, I’ll have a go at it: (snip)
So I will admit that in hindsight looking over some of the questions they could have been better written to remove opinion.
However as for the software development part, I have talked with numerous people, and some people have even posted in this thread, that something weird is going on in their software development. And people in this thread are making unrealistic assumptions of what changing the coefficent on sword would do to the game client.
I know I wasn’t giving the benefit of the doubt to a lot of things. But again, on the software development side, the feedback I’m hearing from people in the industry is almost universal.
edit: the answer I’m coming up with is that this is there perception for good timing. They want enough balance changes to develop a meta, and when things become a concern they alter them at a time that matches the tournmanet schedules.
(edited by Daniel Handler.4816)
You must be new to MMOs. I think you should go look at WoW’s forums. Or Archeage. Or anyone for that matter.
Active MMOs all have forums that read just like this one.
Point 1. That doesn’t mean most people are unsatisfied. It means a lot of people who are unsatisfied complain.
Let’s say we see 10,000 people complaining and there are half a million players (clue we haevn’t seen close to 10,000 people complaining). Also some who complain are just trolls, I know because they’ve admitted to me that the only reason they complain is to rile up fan boys.
When you have a million people together a bunch of them are going to be dissatisfied and they’ll complain. It means very little unless a majority are complaining about something. But it’s only really bad press if it’s a) reasonable and b) not happening the MMO forum for every successful MMO.
Point 2. A lot of the things people complain about are handled quickly. However some things people complain about are simply not going to change, no matter how many complaints. For example, when someone nerfs a profession, someone is going to complain that it’s not fair, whether it’s fair or not. Most people are actually reasonable. Most people know that certain professions needed a nerf.
Point 3. Anet is a company comprised of over 300 people. Those 300 people work a lot of hours to bring a program. But when you have that many people all working on different projects, sometimes things fall through the cracks. That’s because people aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. When I ran a store, I made thousands of decisions every week…a few dozen of them were bound to be wrong. It’s not reasonable to expect that mistakes won’t happen, and it’s even less reasonable to believe they can be fixed quickly, particularly if you’re talking about programming mistakes. These games are far more complex than most people think they are.
Point 4. None of us really know how many people by percentage are unhappy with the game, but of the unhappy people, they’re all complaining about disparate things. Which people do you listen to? I know for a fact Anet has made some changes to the game based on what people were saying. Are you suggesting they make a thousand changes to the game all at once? What would that do to their code.
Seriously. Go spend some time on the official forums of other MMORPGs. This is pretty much the norm. And the bigger the game gets, the more attention it gets, and the more people tend to complain.
The happy people? They’re playing the game. They have very little reason to be here.
I’m just looking for some concrete data. Almost everyone I talk to is dissapointed in things.
You mention the game is very complex. Can you elaborate for me what you meant? Its vary hard to see a 1 to 1 conversion between the amount of work shown in updates and the amount of time spent on them.
Everyone I talk to is enjoying the game.
Hmm…I see. This can be a problem…
People need to understand that game programmers are not the same as game developers/designers.
Game programmers fix bugs and create new engine features. These people have strong comp-sci backgrounds and pretty much just delve in code. These people optimize code for performance and develop new API’s for both in-house development use and external API functions for community-driven projects.
Game “developers” use game engine tools build by programmers and assets created by artists to create content. They do animation, make decisions regarding level design, get invested with game balance, asset management, and design for playability with the mechanics behind everything in mind. Rarely is the truly complex code exposed here, and in instances where it would become very complex, this task gets handed to the programmers to work on and optimize for new frameworks.
Many people vouching that making numbers tweaks is “difficult” frankly do not have any experience working in the game industry or in a game engine. Frankly, making these kinds of adjustments is extremely simple, and which is why it surprises me so much time is taken between any balance adjustment patches, as rapid iteration typically works better in regards to competitive games.
The design changes are the more complex ones, and take much more manpower. New assets, animation, concepts, and re-balancing everything repeatedly while not removing existing styles/builds while fixing core problems with old ones is a much more difficult task. That said, we largely haven’t seen any since the game launched, and it’s really getting to the point where many classes and builds desperately need help or are being carried by power-creeped abilities or specs preventing the rest of the class/builds getting love.
As far as financial stability goes, ANet is doing fine. Trust me. The big issue with video games these days is selling the initial copies when the game launches. And they absolutely made their money back with how successful the game was at launch with the $60+ price tag. The cash shop is just icing and to keep it supported long into the future with top-notch customer service.
So what is causing the delay?
For action regarding profession balance and reworks?
The community, and subsequently the developers, does not know what it wants for said changes, nor can it come to an agreement on what fair and reasonable solutions may be. So long as the game is doing well and publicity isn’t bad, manpower allocated by those in charge will go primarily towards creating new content to boost revenue. Only when there is an apparent fix or problem will re-designs really need to occur to begin with, for doing so takes development resources away from other areas which could be more profitable.
It’s why you see the same developers working on wildly different parts of the game at different times, and why balance patches are rare and scheduled far in advance; the resources needed to make frequent and substantial changes would be extensive enough to the point where the return on investment isn’t worthwhile. Games are a business and not a charity to the gamer, and even if yes it means that revenue forecasts will decrease by not expending such resources, long-term said plan will likely be the most lucrative.
So long as the community isn’t able to agree on what needs to change (go to any profession balance discussion trying to make overhauls to something weak/strong to make it more fair and more interesting to play, and people will object with their own reasoning), spending dev time sitting around trying to solve complex and abstract problems that may or may not get anywhere is a waste.
I think they’re pretty stable; personally just spent a few hundred dollars in the gemstore.
A lot of events have people everywhere, world bosses always have people. The game is healthy. Yeah, people quit everyday, but there seems to be a lot of regular as well. I mean this game pretty much is the best MMO (that is non-subscribed).
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