Guild Wars 2

This article is comparing two non-GW2 games, but the description of what these two studios have done seems eerily familiar…

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/05/27/eve-evolved-lessons-from-38-studios/

Excerpt:

The shutdown of 38 Studios is a sobering reminder of the problems in EVE Online’s development that led to monoclegate. Both studios were mismanaged, with the jobs of hundreds of developers gambled on the outcome of poorly researched business decisions. EVE Online thankfully survived CCP’s failed microtransaction gamble, but 38 Studios’ Project Copernicus may never see the light of day.

Scroll down to the header “Stop chasing the number one spot” in particular.

But I doubt you will see an apology from a CEO here. That was quite a courageous move from Hilmar basically giving in and admitting that things have gone wrong. And I “paid” my respect with resubbing.

I’m sure people would have more respect for devs if they didn’t distance themselves from the community whenever they are called on for being wrong. For us we have no in game GM’s. No support supposably responding to the twitter. Seems they’re keeping a good margin of separation between us and them and information getting through is clearly filtered. Anet was off to an awesome start, but why they’re hiding away in their fortress of solitude and not returning any calls is beyond me.

There is one major difference in Monoclegate and GW2’s introduction of Ascended gear:
– Monoclegate didn’t go against the core concepts of Eve. It just ate up development resources to produce a really stupid addition. Then CCP backed down quickly.
– The manifesto made “no grinding for stats” seem a core part of GW2. Ascended items directly contradict that. ANET is silent.

Then we come into removing the problem:
– For CCP, all they needed to do was to apologise and focus towards spaceship content again. Did they ever remove any of the stuff they added in Monoclegate ?
– For ANET, removing Ascended gear is going to be painful however they do it. Drop the stats, people complain. Make them quicker to acquire, or boosting exotics to their power, and the higher stats make all the content easier than before. Rebalance existing PvE to for Ascended gear will be a lot of work.

Some of us have been through the majority of every english speaking fantasy MMO launches since UO (or before). It’s all so predictable now.

AN markets and sells GW2 to community of gamers that hate “new” traditional MMO model.

Shortly after GW2 launches, all FOTM traditional MMO players also purchase GW2, because 1) they either don’t read it’s premise, 2) don’t care and just want a game to “finish” in a month, or 3) predicted this change?

Most of these people get angry at the lack of linear progression and leave at endgame. Although AN was not originally marketing to this audience, losing that many players sucks, they want them back!

In comes gear progression, under the spin of comparing a cosmetic legendary weapon upgrade to an imaginary statistical gap that needs to be filled for all slots.

The stupid thing about this is that anyone who knows MMOs knows that you never win back a significant portion of your players that quit out of disappointment near release.

I think they confused the population leveling off to the niche audience they were marketing to with an uncontrollable bleed of players. Obviously most MMO players like linear progression. Obviously not all MMO players like linear progression; this MMO was supposed to be for them.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

There is one major difference in Monoclegate and GW2’s introduction of Ascended gear:
– Monoclegate didn’t go against the core concepts of Eve. It just ate up development resources to produce a really stupid addition. Then CCP backed down quickly.

No, but the leaked internal newsletter suggested plans to do so for the future- namely, introducing pay-to-win microtransactions. That’s what really pushed the community over the edge.

Kolache.3964:

I think they confused the population leveling off to the niche audience they were marketing to with an uncontrollable bleed of players.

Undoubtedly they have. The impetus behind trying to do so I think is that, like 38 Studios, they overreached and have spent beyond their base. How much massive new content have we had in less then 3 months? A VERY in-depth holiday, and a full content addition with Lost Shores. They must have a huge team of people working on concurrent projects if this is the pace they plan to keep. If GW2 survives, I predict a large reduction in personnel, and fewer, more modest content additions. This means simpler things like more skins, skills, DE chains, titles and such. New zones and one-time events will become rarer.

What I really hope is that they return to their original vision, and find a way to make a profit within that market. Which isn’t small BTW- a lot of gamers grew up with WoW, and WoW brought a lot of non-gamers into the market. Now those people are getting older, graduating/ed from college, and getting busier lives. Lives that include disposable income. An open, accessible game with just enough depth like GW2 could make a large, consistent profit by marketing to these people.

Anet’s (and many others) mistake was aiming for WoW status, or thinking they ever could with so many competitors. WoW came into the market at a unique time, when the competition was a bunch of stagnant EQ clones with barely working software code. WoW delivered a casual-friendly (at least at first- we know where that went), highly polished product that not only knocked the competition flat, but drew in customers from outside the market as well. Now, with so many WoW copies and the market already so large, sudden success on that scale simply won’t happen again.

Adding this which I just learned:

Lord Funk over in the Threadnaught mentioned that the new jumping puzzle is called “Under New Management.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-vCstPnTd4

I think we may be on to something here.

Between NCSoft’s stock, their decisions to close down one of their games abruptly, and the sudden change in ArenaNet’s design philosophy, I think something very, very bad is happening internally.

Do we have another Funcom on our hands?

Tempest.1254:

Between NCSoft’s stock, their decisions to close down one of their games abruptly, and the sudden change in ArenaNet’s design philosophy, I think something very, very bad is happening internally.

Do we have another Funcom on our hands?

I’ll give the game 3 more months before Mike O’Brien is fired and then posts that he’s leaving the company to ‘pursue other projects’, i.e. I got kitten canned but was given the option to resign. This seems to be the trend in the industry now when games are developed like this one is.

Hey guys.

The reason they dont care about our opinions is because there is no monthly fee.

They got 60$ outta all if us including me.

Now they will do whatever they think is best. Not wht we wanted. Lied and said no grind and gear treadmill. I believed it and spent 60$

GG

Starhawk.2958

I’ll give the game 3 more months before Mike O’Brien is fired and then posts that he’s leaving the company to ‘pursue other projects’, i.e. I got kitten canned but was given the option to resign. This seems to be the trend in the industry now when games are developed like this one is.

QFT So true it would not surprise me at all, although it seems premature to jump to such conclusions it’s definatly textbook by now.

This is a good topic of discussion and needs to be read by a lead systems designer and also the director of cash shop product design.

Jelle.2807:

Starhawk.2958

I’ll give the game 3 more months before Mike O’Brien is fired and then posts that he’s leaving the company to ‘pursue other projects’, i.e. I got kitten canned but was given the option to resign. This seems to be the trend in the industry now when games are developed like this one is.

QFT So true it would not surprise me at all, although it seems premature to jump to such conclusions it’s definatly textbook by now.

Agreed, I’m jumping to huge conclusions and won’t be shocked if I’m wrong all together. Unfortunately there’s a pattern that’s started to develop in this industry both in the way games are developed and managed and the subsequent fallout from said pattern.

They didn’t get the £65 from my digital collector’s edition purchase (at least for longer than 3 months) – http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/6020/notanidlethreat2.png

Tempest.1254:

Between NCSoft’s stock, their decisions to close down one of their games abruptly, and the sudden change in ArenaNet’s design philosophy, I think something very, very bad is happening internally.

Do we have another Funcom on our hands?

I was thinking about this case too.

TSW have a really good recension, but the previuos delusion about AOC have really invalidate this project. Yes its really sad, but companies cant pretend to delude people and then sell a new product like nothing happend before.

Then you have fans telling people to go play something else if you don’t like it. How does that help?

I have an idea why they changed:

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

There is one major difference in Monoclegate and GW2’s introduction of Ascended gear:
– Monoclegate didn’t go against the core concepts of Eve. It just ate up development resources to produce a really stupid addition. Then CCP backed down quickly.
– The manifesto made “no grinding for stats” seem a core part of GW2. Ascended items directly contradict that. ANET is silent.

Then we come into removing the problem:
– For CCP, all they needed to do was to apologise and focus towards spaceship content again. Did they ever remove any of the stuff they added in Monoclegate ?
– For ANET, removing Ascended gear is going to be painful however they do it. Drop the stats, people complain. Make them quicker to acquire, or boosting exotics to their power, and the higher stats make all the content easier than before. Rebalance existing PvE to for Ascended gear will be a lot of work.

Let’em fuse those items into existing ones, making the items we already have viable for this kind of content while removing them from the game, having new players attune their gear for new dungeons by other means.

Rhyse.8176:

Adding this which I just learned:

Lord Funk over in the Threadnaught mentioned that the new jumping puzzle is called “Under New Management.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-vCstPnTd4

I think we may be on to something here.

Wonder why the puzzle is called “Under New Management”? lol…

LadenSwallow.1468:

I have an idea why they changed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNXGktfGm1Q

Absolutely perfect post, I smiled. =)

I guess what we are seeing here is to an extend related to GW2’s sales haven’t met NCSoft’s expectations. If you’ve followed several polls and discussion before release, alot of people assumed that GW2 will break the 3mio+ mark in it’s first week with ease.
According to official statements some weeks ago, at that time they have been at somewhere slightly above 2mio close to 3 month after release. And like after every release of an mmorpg, many players have left again already. Let’s say they are sitting on 1mio+ active players, no monthly sub and not everyone spending enormous amounts in the itemshop (as to be expected in a game annoucend for casuals who now take is casual)…this is nothing for a game of this scope.

My guess is that NCSoft expected GW1 to push the inital sales of GW2 way higher. All this back and forth with poor to no loot allover every level, diminishing return on farming and various blatant gold sinks smells like “hey guys, we haven’t sold as many copies as expected, so somehow we have to make ends meet another way” to me.
Bringing the idea of gear progression to the players seems like a way to test new waters.
It will fail, as GW2 is just not made to cope with vertical progression based games. People are already refusing to grind out two different sets of gear for two different builds, Anet/NCSoft are never going to get them to run the itemmill.

Zenith.1234:

Rhyse.8176:

Adding this which I just learned:

Lord Funk over in the Threadnaught mentioned that the new jumping puzzle is called “Under New Management.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-vCstPnTd4

I think we may be on to something here.

Wonder why the puzzle is called “Under New Management”? lol…

BUY-4373, Subdirector Blingg, Under New Management…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Thoughts-on-Ascended-Gear-Merged-threads/page/203#post780596

Honestly, in the end NCSoft is the one running the show.

I wouldn’t so much as blame Anet because there was probably someone in NCSoft HQ saying “hey your losing players, we tried it your way. Now you do it our way.” And bam you have progression.

Don’t think many people realize what the situation might actually be but its much easier to just sit and rage in the forums all day about how you were lied to or cheated rather then back up and accept the situation and everything that might be involved.

I warned many people from Aion that GW2 would fall under the horrible control of NCSoft and that Anet is NOT the same as they were when they made GW1 and controlled its fate themselves. This is what happens when you sell out to huge company’s like ncsoft.

Namu.5712:

Honestly, in the end NCSoft is the one running the show.

I wouldn’t so much as blame Anet because there was probably someone in NCSoft HQ saying “hey your losing players, we tried it your way. Now you do it our way.” And bam you have progression.

Don’t think many people realize what the situation might actually be but its much easier to just sit and rage in the forums all day about how you were lied to or cheated rather then back up and accept the situation and everything that might be involved.

I warned many people from Aion that GW2 would fall under the horrible control of NCSoft and that Anet is NOT the same as they were when they made GW1 and controlled its fate themselves. This is what happens when you sell out to huge company’s like ncsoft.

they have been fully owned and operated since before guild wars 1 launched.

also their foudnign exec presided over the entire aion debacle up until mid-late 2010.

absolving them of blame is silly. they are part and parcel on board with this. look at their personal twitter feeds and posts – they rather whine about us than do the right thing or own up to their own words or confront the issue or be upfront and honest with us.

anyways i learned the hard way they can’t even accept their own words being linked or quoted. it’s probably a bad idea to use the company name or name of any devs in any posts as well.

Why they changed? They are going after the Panda money but the problem is they might lose the people who bought the game because of the original design philosophy and not a 100th game with a gear treadmill.

Rhyse.8176:

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

There is one major difference in Monoclegate and GW2’s introduction of Ascended gear:
– Monoclegate didn’t go against the core concepts of Eve. It just ate up development resources to produce a really stupid addition. Then CCP backed down quickly.

No, but the leaked internal newsletter suggested plans to do so for the future- namely, introducing pay-to-win microtransactions. That’s what really pushed the community over the edge.

Fortunately that was only something CCP said. So CCP’s mistake was in not producing spaceship content, while saying something stupid. So their mistake was in what they did not do and what they said.

Now we have ANET who made the mistake in what they did, and what they didn’t say.

Anet’s (and many others) mistake was aiming for WoW status, or thinking they ever could with so many competitors.

Has any game aiming for WoW status ever done well in the long term ?

Amra.6028:

Let’em fuse those items into existing ones, making the items we already have viable for this kind of content while removing them from the game, having new players attune their gear for new dungeons by other means.

Come to think of it, if they just make the Ascended stats easy to acquire while saying that they there will be no more ascended items it will be a pretty good band aid on the situation. Keep infusions as the standard upgrade on rings/back braces, just like we have sigils for weapons and runes for armor.

Easy to acquire should also be easy to code: Create items with the stats and a different skin, then create a vendor who sells the Ascended items and the infusions at a cheap enough price.

This band aid will hold until ANET raises the level cap for the next expansion (I believe they have at least hinted at doing this), allowing higher level exotics with higher stats than current Ascended items.

Guild Wars 2 is such a humongous deviation from Guild Wars that it really makes me wonder who is calling the shots over at ArenaNet… I know they target different audiences but it’s hard to call Guild Wars 2 a Guild Wars game.