Guild Wars 2

(Copy pasted from the Reddit thread by Morlewen.)

NCsofts published the earnings report 1Q16. The company showed stable sales and operating profit. Net income increased significantly. GW2 showed still a strong performance driven by HoT and/or item promotions.

Sales of several games in bln Korean Won:
GW2: 30.6
Wildstar: 1.28
Blade & Soul: 54 (around 20 from NA/EU)

Figure of the sales: http://i.imgur.com/QEp8Y9o.png
whole report: http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx
The conference call will start 3:00 CEST.

GW2:

• Effect of HoT launch continued.
• The performance of HoT was not as expected. We learnt the lesson. A second expansion is in work and will be released as soon as possible.
• The contribution of item sales to the total sales is much stronger than the box sales. The revenue will weaken over time. The second expansion should address this fact.

Blade & Soul:

• 2nd quarter should develop similar to the pattern in Taiwan.
• launch in Russia in this month.

This is going to get at least 400 replies..

I am as qualified as anyone else to open the hostilities then ^^ :
Not that many people as Anet expected like or bought SuperMarioWars 2 aka HoT.
Shocker.

penelopehannibal.8947:

This is going to get at least 400 replies..

And I wonder how many of those 400 will be trying to spin it that GW2 is dying, LOL.

~EW

The performance of HoT was not as expected. We learnt the lesson.

This part is what I found most intriguing. What lesson did they learn?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The performance of HoT was not as expected. We learnt the lesson.

This part is what I found most intriguing. What lesson did they learn?

“More people will come if they think we have punch and pie.”
– Eric Cartman South Park

So, obviously the next expansion will include punch and pie.

~EW

It is more intriguing for me that NCsoft told two times that the 2nd expansion will be launched “soon/as soon as possible”. It is a quite concrete statement for the company and will create certain expectation among the analysts and players.

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

penelopehannibal.8947:

This is going to get at least 400 replies..

And I wonder how many of those 400 will be trying to spin it that GW2 is dying, LOL.

~EW

Aye, my thoughts exactly. The words ‘this is proof’ will be used a lot!!

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The performance of HoT was not as expected. We learnt the lesson.

This part is what I found most intriguing. What lesson did they learn?

Thinks that comes up in my head.

- Not too hard content.
- Less content to farm/grind.
- Not too much vertical content where usage of spacebar is needed.
- Not to promice more than they can deliver at release.
- Not to charge as much as a new full game.
- Not to create content for WvW players, they will hate it anyway.
- Putting more focus on ammount of content instead of details.

This has nothing to do what I like or not, this is something that has been complaints about in the forums.

I think that with the new mastery system in place, they wont have to spand as much time and manpower to finalize that mechanic and can aim for more content in next expansion. As usuall I do beleave in Anet that they will do good, now it is up to the players and not keep the grudge from HoT.

Most of those things people wouldn’t actually know until they already purchased.

Personally I think what had a big effect was the price and not being 100% clear about what’s actually in the expansion – like for a long time people were seriously thinking there will only be one map.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The performance of HoT was not as expected. We learnt the lesson.

This part is what I found most intriguing. What lesson did they learn?

Thinks that comes up in my head.

- Not too hard content.
- Less content to farm/grind.
- Not too much vertical content where usage of spacebar is needed.
- Not to promice more than they can deliver at release.
- Not to charge as much as a new full game.
- Not to create content for WvW players, they will hate it anyway.
- Putting more focus on ammount of content instead of details.

This has nothing to do what I like or not, this is something that has been complaints about in the forums.

True but a lot of that is just terribads complaining about having to actually put in effort to play the game (jumping, “too hard” mobs).

Trying to lure in raiders when they have WoW and FF14 was a mistake even if raids seem to be working out. Their other major sin was the supreme grind in the xpack in both the masteries and insane material cost of the new gear and guild halls.

As far as WvW content. It’s not to never make any stuff for it, it’s don’t make stuff for it, beta test it, and then throw 100% of feedback in the toilet thinking you know better than your customers. People told them everything that was wrong with the DBL during the whole publicity beta test and Anet basically ignored all of it.

• If in fact the lesson that was learned is spot on with the reasons that HoT sales did not meet expectations
• If ANet produces a new expansion that addresses those issues

…then the whole, "Buy the latest XPac and get everything from before might serve ANet in good stead. Those who bypassed HoT would not need to purchase HoT to get current. I can’t help but think this might boosts sales among HoT non-adopters, despite the inevitable, “I should get a discount because I bought X.” posts.

Frankly, I expected total GW2 revenue to be back in the range of quarters prior to HOT, i.e., around 20,000 – 22,000 Million KW. That it’s about half again that suggests that gem sales are up, that HoT boxes continue to sell, or both. This is undoubtedly a plus for the game, and removes in my mind the idea of a possible sense of desperation to the Legendary postponement. This strengthens (again, in my mind) the likelihood that the postponement was caused by massive inefficiencies in the Legendary Journey creation process.

Hopefully the lesson they have learned is that an expansion needs to cater for the whole range of difficulty levels rather than just one end of the scale. GW2 is a casual game, that’s why it is so popular.

penelopehannibal.8947:

This is going to get at least 400 replies..

Well, obviously. This information is conclusive proof for whatever preconception you had before viewing the data.

Just when I started to have some faith in A.Net restored by their latest decisions and actions we get this…

• We learnt the lesson. A second expansion is in work and will be released as soon as possible.

Is it just me or is anyone else having a baaaad feeling about those two statements right after one another…?

I hope those learnt lessons confine on map design, boring map meta events as endgame content and to not gate story/content behind mastery grind and not the “difficulty” increase.
But this announcment somehow smells like the next xpac will be a precipitous and unfinished one

Hopefully they learned not to tailor an expansion to a single platforming demographic.

For me HoT was all stick and no carrot.

Nash.2681:

Just when I started to have some faith in A.Net restored by their latest decisions and actions we get this…

• We learnt the lesson. A second expansion is in work and will be released as soon as possible.

Is it just me or is anyone else having a baaaad feeling about those two statements right after one another…?

I hope those learnt lessons confine on map design, boring map meta events as endgame content and to not gate story/content behind mastery grind and not the “difficulty” increase.
But this announcment somehow smells like the next xpac will be a precipitous and unfinished one

I think people are reading this the wrong way.

We see soon as possible and think “oh kitten, not another rush job…” but an investor sees that and thinks “okay cool, Anet is keeping busy and should have another big revenue injection soon”.

I mean, lets be real here. The xpac is going to come out “as soon as possible” they aren’t going to take longer than necessary nor are they going to finish it but then wait to release it. Neither make sense for a studio to do when they already saw a massive dip in revenue and player activity after a long content drought.

Soon as possible just means an optimized pipeline producing the product as efficiently as they can. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re half assing anything or cutting corners.

^But, did ArenaNet make those statements, or was it NCSoft? Are the lessons learned (no such word as learnt) the same for publishers as they are for developers? Does ArenaNet even agree with the statements made by NCSoft?

Questions to mull over, perhaps?

I think it’s safe to say that Anet has learned it’s lesson after we got dungeon rewards back, WvW is getting support again, and HoT got revamped.

They seem to understand where they went wrong, and, as much as I hate to place this at the feet of Collin, him leaving seems to coincide with this change in the studio.

MO won’t be the game director forever but I feel pretty confident that whatever the next Xpac will be, it won’t be HoT 2.0 when it comes to repeating past mistakes.

As far as the NCsoft vs Anet idea, I’m not sure. Anet has been self publishing for a while now and to my knowledge that essentially means they are responsible for their own studio income rather than getting funding from NCsoft. What level of autonomy this affords them is anyone’s guess but I’ll just assume that NCsoft is letting them do their thing as long as they meet earnings marks since that’s the simplest arrangement I can think of.

I would say we saw the lesson they learned in this April’s patch which tried to address the issues with HoT.

If you watched the Guild Chat about the April patch you would have learned that it was members of the 2nd expansion group coming back to fix the 1st expansion. Hopefully they took the reasons behind the changes to HoT into the next expansion design.

Haven’t listened to the conference call yet but I’m going to guess the analyst who asked about HoT last call asked what’s been done.

Sounds like the “everyday in March” sale worked. Also makes me wonder how much they get from the iam8bit merch like the quaggans and t-shirts.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

^But, did ArenaNet make those statements, or was it NCSoft? Are the lessons learned (no such word as learnt) the same for publishers as they are for developers? Does ArenaNet even agree with the statements made by NCSoft?

Questions to mull over, perhaps?

I don’t think Anet wrote that, it is more NCsoft’s notations. Anet sind it and NCsoft noted it like ‘oh it better be good’.

Belenwyn.8674:

It is more intriguing for me that NCsoft told two times that the 2nd expansion will be launched “soon/as soon as possible”. It is a quite concrete statement for the company and will create certain expectation among the analysts and players.

NCSoft has always said something about an expansion coming, even back when ArenaNet had no plans to do one. In this case, they’re probably referring to season 3, which was ArenaNet’s original alternative to expansions. Expansions will however likely be on a 2-3 year cycle. With season 3 starting nearly a year after, and assuming it’s still the same, running for a year, the next expansion won’t feel that far off. They need to work on their flow however, with all these year long breaks, pre and post expansion.

Nash.2681:

Just when I started to have some faith in A.Net restored by their latest decisions and actions we get this…

• We learnt the lesson. A second expansion is in work and will be released as soon as possible.

Is it just me or is anyone else having a baaaad feeling about those two statements right after one another…?

I hope those learnt lessons confine on map design, boring map meta events as endgame content and to not gate story/content behind mastery grind and not the “difficulty” increase.
But this announcment somehow smells like the next xpac will be a precipitous and unfinished one

Remember back in 2012 and 2013, NCSOFT conference calls said an expansion was coming only to have to walk it back when ANet told them no it wasn’t. The purpose of these calls is to make analysts feel that the company knows what it’s doing and things are fine. I don’t expect the expansion this year. And I don’t expect the kind of content drought we had last year when it does get announced.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

- Not to create content for WvW players, they will hate it anyway.

This. Is. Hilarious Thank you sir. You made my day

April patch, AMAs, WvW polls etc. indicate to me that ANet is moving in the right direction or is at least making an effort to get in better touch with their player base. If the WvW poll were any indication though it’s that the “general” player base is not nearly as single minded as most people probably think and “just do what the players want” is far more difficult to determine than many of us realize.

Also I came into this thread expecting a lot more drama. Got popcorn and everything. C’mon guys!

Hopefully they learned that they need to launch more than 50% of an expansion and not make the other 50% a grind fest.

I expected as much.

I do think that their next expansion will be a significant improvement over HoT overall, albeit I wasn’t one of the ones who really had a issue with how HoT played out.

“The performance of HoT was not as expected. We learnt the lesson.”

After playing WoW for several years, that’s not something I thought I would ever hear from an MMO company – admitting they made mistakes.

kurfu.5623:

“The performance of HoT was not as expected. We learnt the lesson.”

After playing WoW for several years, that’s not something I thought I would ever hear from an MMO company – admitting they made mistakes.

Been hearing it since Southsun Cove was released. :/

Substance E.4852:

They seem to understand where they went wrong, and, as much as I hate to place this at the feet of Collin, him leaving seems to coincide with this change in the studio.

MO won’t be the game director forever but I feel pretty confident that whatever the next Xpac will be, it won’t be HoT 2.0 when it comes to repeating past mistakes.

I hope from now on they will go with their guts and dont listen to ’’ppl’s’’ opinion too much .
When ’’everyone’’ dont have anything to loose , regadles of failue/success and can simple jump to other games if something goes wrong , the only victim left behind is the Game

“The performance of HoT was not as expected. We learnt the lesson. A second expansion is in work and will be released as soon as possible.”

Make new expansion ELONA for 45€ , new elites new infinite grinding no rewards, 5 maps, no extra slot,1 armor for heavy,medium,light, gem shop weekly updates.

“The performance of ELONA was not as expected. We learnt the lesson. A third expansion is in work and will be released as soon as possible.”

…

:D

second expansion as soon as possible which means q3 or q4 2017 in my opinion.
gw2 still doing fine and things will get better with LW/LS back next update.
wildstar goodby.
blade and soul doing much better than gw2 for now but i think the revenue will drop.

saye.9304:

second expansion as soon as possible which means q3 or q4 2017 in my opinion.
gw2 still doing fine and things will get better with LW/LS back next update.
wildstar goodby.
blade and soul doing much better than gw2 for now but i think the revenue will drop.

Actually B&S isn’t doing much better than GW 2 in Europe and the US. GW 2 about 33% more than BS and the US and Europe. Much of it’s income is from other markets. And it’s a new release here.

Ragnarox.9601:

“The performance of HoT was not as expected. We learnt the lesson. A second expansion is in work and will be released as soon as possible.”

Make new expansion ELONA for 45€ , new elites new infinite grinding no rewards, 5 maps, no extra slot,1 armor for heavy,medium,light, gem shop weekly updates.

“The performance of ELONA was not as expected. We learnt the lesson. A third expansion is in work and will be released as soon as possible.”

…

:D

LoL. I can almost see this exact thing happening. Only, ain’t nobody gonna bother with 5 maps. I’d say 3, to be realistic. And new specs prolly be like ULTRA specs. Don’t forget they need to rek the “elite” specs to suck more money from those that bought HoT.

Good news for me, I like HOT and it’s considered a disappointment. Can’t wait for next.

I heard that they were just going to add another three layers above each of the HoT maps accessible only by an infernally difficult jumping puzzle and gated by a new adventure where you have to shoot invisible sparks with a bent rifle whilst standing on a greased branch in a negative gravity sandstorm.

I might be wrong though.

DoctorDing.5890:

I heard that they were just going to add another three layers above each of the HoT maps accessible only by an infernally difficult jumping puzzle and gated by a new adventure where you have to shoot invisible sparks with a bent rifle whilst standing on a greased branch in a negative gravity sandstorm.

I might be wrong though.

I think you’ve given them some ideas for next April, 1st

DoctorDing.5890:

I heard that they were just going to add another three layers above each of the HoT maps accessible only by an infernally difficult jumping puzzle and gated by a new adventure where you have to shoot invisible sparks with a bent rifle whilst standing on a greased branch in a negative gravity sandstorm.

I might be wrong though.

I like you.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Hopefully they learned that they need to launch more than 50% of an expansion and not make the other 50% a grind fest.

To this day, this mindset about things being too “grindy” just escapes me. Like, I have not grinded in HoT. Not once. I hate grinding. Yet I am still enjoying what HoT has to offer. So I don’t have 166 mastery points…but I am earning them, slowly, as I explore the jungle.

I almost feel like people label something as “grindy” just because they can’t get it right away. Or rather, to get it right away requires continuous spam through effectively rewarding content. But I’m here to say that you don’t need it right away — most masteries are only usable in the jungle anyway, so you won’t be at a loss without them in the rest of Tyria. Instead, just enjoy the content itself; things like masteries, mats, and elite specs will come with time as a byproduct of having fun.

If you are going for Legendaries, then that is another situation. But legendaries them-self are not reflective of all HoT content enough to label the expansion as grindy.

Those are my 2-cents anyway; this is how I tend to look at the expansion. If you still feel that HoT is grindy even now, then all I can do is feel sorry for you.

tl;dr: It’s like I see all these people barking at HoT — an expansion I love — labeling it as grindy for what I can only perceive as self-imposed time requirements.

My apologies if my mindset conflicts with yours.

Just hope they dont abandon the game for a year again while thy make next expansion…

Killface.1896:

Just hope they dont abandon the game for a year again while thy make next expansion…

Which is why the division of devs is 2/3 live – 1/3 expansion.

Killface.1896:

Just hope they dont abandon the game for a year again while thy make next expansion…

They’re aware of that problem. That’s why they removed the team off Legendary weapons on to making new content.

Put the xpac on hold, fix what needs fixed, and start the process to moving GW2 to consoles...profit

Bring back the feeling of pre-searing in the next expansion – profit.

Personally I’ll be alright with the current pricing if they throw in something (gems, skins, char/bank slots) etc to make up the value of already having bought the core game and HoT.

It’s expecting people to pay 50 for the third time and get the same content as someone who pays 50 once which would bug me.

I still think when looking at these you need to compare say Q1 15 to Q1 16 over Q4 15 to Q1 16. Buying habits and gaming habits do chase because of the season. So less ppl buy / play during spring and summer then say fall and winter.

I’m hoping they learned that “no armor in the gem store, only outfits” was a fantastic way to choke off a good revenue stream.

The performance of HoT was not as expected. We learnt the lesson. A second expansion is in work and will be released as soon as possible.

They’re learned their lesson eh? Does that mean they wont try charging $50 for a very content light xpack again?

I “hope” that one of the lessons “learned” is that “grinding” ain’t fun for anyone——-and HoT is little more than that————-insofar as achievements go. As a basic design, it’s nice—-especially the verticals—————but even that needs work! How many times have you tried to “just jump” and had those kittened “wings” carry you half way across the planet!

Blackhearted.1264:

The performance of HoT was not as expected. We learnt the lesson. A second expansion is in work and will be released as soon as possible.

They’re learned their lesson eh? Does that mean they wont try charging $50 for a very content light xpack again?

The two things they learned were the cost/grind balance in HoT wasn’t in line with the expectations of their players. This is why they switched gears to bring it back in line with the April patch. They saw their established community voting with their wallets. That problem is solved now, and we shouldn’t see such a radical change in the grind versus income level in future expansions.

The second lesson they learned is that GW2 players expected a MUCH larger amount of core-like content for kitten price tag.

PvP and WvW players will not pick up an expansion that has very little content for them. You’ll need more than one elite spec and three armor skins. You’ll need to give WvW heads a way to use your new systems without requiring them to do other stuff.

PvE players will not be content with both a lack of new repeatable content to play AND a lack of new easily available skins. People would be fine with the content of HoT’s maps if it also came with a metric ton of new loot. In GW2, stats are not loot for PvE players. Sure, they added some new stat sets, runes, and sigils, but GW2’s design necessitates that stat adjustments are easy to get and require very little player effort. “Loot” in GW2 is skins. All skins. Despite weapon skins being faster to implement, weapon skins are less desirable than armor skins due to the mechanics of the game. It is far more likely an individual player can use an armor skin than a weapon skin. Thus, there’s less player satisfaction when you add a massive range of weapon skins than armor skins simply because players look at the pool of avaliable loot and can use a third of the armor, and a tenth or less of the weapons.

Players will not be willing to put up with repeating four maps, even if they’re very good maps, (and I personally think the HoT maps are fantastic) when they’ve acquired all of the loot in just a couple weeks, most of it as guaranteed drops or vendor purchases.

In future expansions I’d expect to see multiple elite specs (as these have mass appeal to every part of the player base, regardless of content type) a much larger number of armor skins (again, rewards that the entire player base can get behind and that can be rewarded to all three game modes through various means) less weapon skins (as Anet has learned people are perfectly happy to buy black lion skins for weapons, and that weapons aren’t as good a value proposition per man hour for player satisfaction as they though) and a larger focus on expanding content rather than systems (they did the heavy lifting with HoT, and while people are generally supporting of the systems they bemoan there’s not enough content for any of those systems)

As well i think they’re realizing that attempting to make everyone happy all at once is impossible. They’re beginning to take a page out of blizzard’s book here and hyper-focusing on part of the player base in major ways, then moving to a different part, and so on. All groups of players are minorities, and thus any feature or content will only ever serve a minority. In Anet’s drive to respond to player needs they fell in to a mire of feature creep trying to simultaneously please every minority.

We’ll see how it shakes out, but since Mo took over for Colin, Anet seems to have a much closer understanding of the compromise between developer vision and player expectation. I’d expect every patch to be a big focus on one area of the game, with a reasonable rotation between focuses, and Expansions to be the big content drops that have something for everyone, most of that something being things like elite specs and skins that are easier to design once and deploy across the entire game.