Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

Right it’s based on what I don’t like. Obviously no other group of people could possibly have the same likes or dislikes as me. or the same interests. Obviously I’m not in a guild was a couple of hundred people, many of whom I speak to each week. Obviously I have no power of observation and can’t draw conclusions from what I’ve seen and heard.

Yes, there are people out there frustrated by the fact that they have to do specific content that they don’t like to get rewards they really want. I know this because some of them have actually posted threads about it. They’re usually shot down pretty fast, but stuff has been posted.

And more than that I’ve seen people talking in map chat about stuff, heard people in guild talk about stuff like that, and yes, some people are frustrated. Now that’s not to say they’re leaving, or threatening to leave, but you know, I don’t have to see someone get hit by a car to know that if cars are driving too fast, it’s likely going to happen at some point.

The direction of the game, reward-wise is moving in a way that some people are definitely asking for and some people are definitely disenfranchised by. Not just me.

Now if you have evidence that no one else feels like this, or about numbers, I’d sure be glad to listen. I don’t know how big my group is. What I do believe is the people who want challenging content tend to be a fringe group.

This is a funny thing to bring up. Ive seen the exact same evidence of a huge amount of players wanting new dungeons, new instanced content and greater challenge and even in some cases exclusive rewards to that content. Your side is no less a fringe group than the other groups despite what you may think. You always see less of the groups you arent part of and more of the groups you are part of.

Vayne.8563:

Bloodstealer.5978:

Vayne.8563:

Bloodstealer.5978:

…SNIP…

…SNIP…

..SNIP…

Right it’s based on what I don’t like. Obviously no other group of people could possibly have the same likes or dislikes as me. or the same interests. Obviously I’m not in a guild was a couple of hundred people, many of whom I speak to each week. Obviously I have no power of observation and can’t draw conclusions from what I’ve seen and heard.

Yes, there are people out there frustrated by the fact that they have to do specific content that they don’t like to get rewards they really want. I know this because some of them have actually posted threads about it. They’re usually shot down pretty fast, but stuff has been posted.

And more than that I’ve seen people talking in map chat about stuff, heard people in guild talk about stuff like that, and yes, some people are frustrated. Now that’s not to say they’re leaving, or threatening to leave, but you know, I don’t have to see someone get hit by a car to know that if cars are driving too fast, it’s likely going to happen at some point.

The direction of the game, reward-wise is moving in a way that some people are definitely asking for and some people are definitely disenfranchised by. Not just me.

Now if you have evidence that no one else feels like this, or about numbers, I’d sure be glad to listen. I don’t know how big my group is. What I do believe is the people who want challenging content tend to be a fringe group.

You are the one making the assumption statements not me, your the one calling it the majority based on yours or your guildies personal feelings, which fyi in no way signifies a majority. Fact is you don’t really know what the heck your actually arguing for and against your only aim is to derail what is a very interesting thread, which to some of us (yes some, not a minority or a majority but some!) might just agree with.. I know that doesn’t sit well with you, but yes some of us don’t feel the need to agree with you so get over yourself.
No one but you chose to throw the tangents to call out exclusive rewards, no one was asking for it or said it was or wasn’t the direction things are or should /would be going.. you once again took that all on yourself to call that monkey out of the cage based on YOUR feelings. So as I said before give us this evidence to substantiate your claims and stop your backpeddling and smokescreens.
Hey I get it.. you don’t want instanced content cos you feel it will lock you out of something cos you don’t like the idea of running stuff unless its got a zergball to hide you or a “BUY NOW” sign over it.

NOTE – Instanced content does not mean it has to be overly hard and can be include a variety of different challenges not just combat, it doesn’t mean it has to hold exclusive rewards, doesn’t require players to revolve their RL around when an event is going to spawn and still have to be there an hour earlier to try to get a slot on the megaserver map copy, doesn’t have to rely on a few larger guilds or community guilds to organise exclusive event runs, but it does allow some better organised team play, does allow players to think about builds a little more than it does in zergfest openworld content, which in turn lends itself to some of the new trait reworking/expansion.

So sorry I missed this party … I like how the OP doesn’t even explain why this content is needed. Seems to me GW2 does just fine without it.

dlonie.6547:

Vayne.8563:

dlonie.6547:

I hear ya Vayne, that’s a valid concern, but:

James Quall.6029:

You should be saying “make everything tradeable” instead of “don’t make dungeons”, because unless you follow that up with “…or pvp modes, or wvw maps, or living story episodes, or special world bosses” you’re a hypocrite who just wants to edge out the part of the game you don’t like so nobody else will have new dungeons either.

still this^

And I’d be saying it, if this is what Anet had been doing but it hasn’t. So I don’t want raids if the reward structure doesn’t change, because I don’t suspect it will change.

If everything was tradeable I’d have a lot less issues. But I think it’s more likely we won’t get instanced raids than Anet will change their loot policies of recent months.

So you why aren’t you protesting stronghold, PvP, LS, etc etc? Why just instanced content?

You really think including a few dungeons with HoT would kill the game? You think that would be “catering” to a minority, by adding a few things for hardcore players alongside a ton of casual content? You’re not making any sense.

The problem are not some dungeon .. the problem is the cry for hardcore
dungeons for a limited player base with exclusive rewards that only these
few players will get.

For me you can have dungeons where you need 20 hours to kill one single mob
as long as the rewards are not significant different than in the normal version

Problem is, without those better rewards nearly nobody will play that stuff
so its wasted developer time.

And i can’t remember to hear from the PvP or WvW Players all the time that
they want exclusive stuff.

Beldin.5498:

dlonie.6547:

Vayne.8563:

dlonie.6547:

I hear ya Vayne, that’s a valid concern, but:

James Quall.6029:

You should be saying “make everything tradeable” instead of “don’t make dungeons”, because unless you follow that up with “…or pvp modes, or wvw maps, or living story episodes, or special world bosses” you’re a hypocrite who just wants to edge out the part of the game you don’t like so nobody else will have new dungeons either.

still this^

And I’d be saying it, if this is what Anet had been doing but it hasn’t. So I don’t want raids if the reward structure doesn’t change, because I don’t suspect it will change.

If everything was tradeable I’d have a lot less issues. But I think it’s more likely we won’t get instanced raids than Anet will change their loot policies of recent months.

So you why aren’t you protesting stronghold, PvP, LS, etc etc? Why just instanced content?

You really think including a few dungeons with HoT would kill the game? You think that would be “catering” to a minority, by adding a few things for hardcore players alongside a ton of casual content? You’re not making any sense.

The problem are not some dungeon .. the problem is the cry for hardcore
dungeons for a limited player base with exclusive rewards that only these
few players will get.

For me you can have dungeons where you need 20 hours to kill one single mob
as long as the rewards are not significant different than in the normal version

Problem is, without those better rewards nearly nobody will play that stuff
so its wasted developer time.

And i can’t remember to hear from the PvP or WvW Players all the time that
they want exclusive stuff.

Not exclusive but “better” or “more” would be good for the start.
Just did 2 hours of super hard content? Get stuff that you normally get for 6 hours of super easy content.

Beldin.5498:

dlonie.6547:

Vayne.8563:

dlonie.6547:

I hear ya Vayne, that’s a valid concern, but:

James Quall.6029:

You should be saying “make everything tradeable” instead of “don’t make dungeons”, because unless you follow that up with “…or pvp modes, or wvw maps, or living story episodes, or special world bosses” you’re a hypocrite who just wants to edge out the part of the game you don’t like so nobody else will have new dungeons either.

still this^

And I’d be saying it, if this is what Anet had been doing but it hasn’t. So I don’t want raids if the reward structure doesn’t change, because I don’t suspect it will change.

If everything was tradeable I’d have a lot less issues. But I think it’s more likely we won’t get instanced raids than Anet will change their loot policies of recent months.

So you why aren’t you protesting stronghold, PvP, LS, etc etc? Why just instanced content?

You really think including a few dungeons with HoT would kill the game? You think that would be “catering” to a minority, by adding a few things for hardcore players alongside a ton of casual content? You’re not making any sense.

The problem are not some dungeon .. the problem is the cry for hardcore
dungeons for a limited player base with exclusive rewards that only these
few players will get.

For me you can have dungeons where you need 20 hours to kill one single mob
as long as the rewards are not significant different than in the normal version

Problem is, without those better rewards nearly nobody will play that stuff
so its wasted developer time.

And i can’t remember to hear from the PvP or WvW Players all the time that
they want exclusive stuff.

Again…that is an argument against exclusive rewards, not instanced content. One does not imply the other.

If your issue is with exclusive rewards, say “I don’t like when rewards are exclusive”, not “This game shouldn’t have instanced content”. Very different statements, yes?

spoj.9672:

Vayne.8563:

Right it’s based on what I don’t like. Obviously no other group of people could possibly have the same likes or dislikes as me. or the same interests. Obviously I’m not in a guild was a couple of hundred people, many of whom I speak to each week. Obviously I have no power of observation and can’t draw conclusions from what I’ve seen and heard.

Yes, there are people out there frustrated by the fact that they have to do specific content that they don’t like to get rewards they really want. I know this because some of them have actually posted threads about it. They’re usually shot down pretty fast, but stuff has been posted.

And more than that I’ve seen people talking in map chat about stuff, heard people in guild talk about stuff like that, and yes, some people are frustrated. Now that’s not to say they’re leaving, or threatening to leave, but you know, I don’t have to see someone get hit by a car to know that if cars are driving too fast, it’s likely going to happen at some point.

The direction of the game, reward-wise is moving in a way that some people are definitely asking for and some people are definitely disenfranchised by. Not just me.

Now if you have evidence that no one else feels like this, or about numbers, I’d sure be glad to listen. I don’t know how big my group is. What I do believe is the people who want challenging content tend to be a fringe group.

This is a funny thing to bring up. Ive seen the exact same evidence of a huge amount of players wanting new dungeons, new instanced content and greater challenge and even in some cases exclusive rewards to that content. Your side is no less a fringe group than the other groups despite what you may think. You always see less of the groups you arent part of and more of the groups you are part of.

Except that it’s not as likely a fringe group. Devs have been saying across many games for many years all sorts of variations on casuals are the most numerous players of any game but hard core are the most vocal.

You don’t have to believe it, but it doesn’t change what’s been said. The most recent example I can think of is from a lotro dev who said less than 10% of the population of the game raided since launch, but they account for 50% of forum posts.

Vayne.8563:

spoj.9672:

Vayne.8563:

Right it’s based on what I don’t like. Obviously no other group of people could possibly have the same likes or dislikes as me. or the same interests. Obviously I’m not in a guild was a couple of hundred people, many of whom I speak to each week. Obviously I have no power of observation and can’t draw conclusions from what I’ve seen and heard.

Yes, there are people out there frustrated by the fact that they have to do specific content that they don’t like to get rewards they really want. I know this because some of them have actually posted threads about it. They’re usually shot down pretty fast, but stuff has been posted.

And more than that I’ve seen people talking in map chat about stuff, heard people in guild talk about stuff like that, and yes, some people are frustrated. Now that’s not to say they’re leaving, or threatening to leave, but you know, I don’t have to see someone get hit by a car to know that if cars are driving too fast, it’s likely going to happen at some point.

The direction of the game, reward-wise is moving in a way that some people are definitely asking for and some people are definitely disenfranchised by. Not just me.

Now if you have evidence that no one else feels like this, or about numbers, I’d sure be glad to listen. I don’t know how big my group is. What I do believe is the people who want challenging content tend to be a fringe group.

This is a funny thing to bring up. Ive seen the exact same evidence of a huge amount of players wanting new dungeons, new instanced content and greater challenge and even in some cases exclusive rewards to that content. Your side is no less a fringe group than the other groups despite what you may think. You always see less of the groups you arent part of and more of the groups you are part of.

Except that it’s not as likely a fringe group. Devs have been saying across many games for many years all sorts of variations on casuals are the most numerous players of any game but hard core are the most vocal.

You don’t have to believe it, but it doesn’t change what’s been said. The most recent example I can think of is from a lotro dev who said less than 10% of the population of the game raided since launch, but they account for 50% of forum posts.

Yeah but id be willing to bet the group that wants more instanced content is larger than the group that doesnt want exclusive rewards anywhere. Id agree the open world fanbase is larger than the hardcore community. But then you have to consider how many different groups there are in GW2. 10% is a pretty huge group when you consider sPvP, WvW, roleplayers, open worlders and do it all players.

Open world players can be further divided up and you can never appease all of them at the same time. I have seen very casual open world players saying they want to see more instanced content and raids. So yeah… I think appealing to a pretty tight shipped large group like the hardcore community is actually quite a safe investment. Because the other groups seem to have members that would like to dabble in that content as well.

There is high demand for instanced content whether you like it or not. Believe what you want but the numbers ive seen are far from small. And its very difficult to consider it a minority from my observations. If it is a minority, its not a very small one. An example of a very small minority would be speedrunners. But thats only a minority subsection of the dungeon/fractal community.

spoj.9672:

Vayne.8563:

spoj.9672:

Vayne.8563:

Right it’s based on what I don’t like. Obviously no other group of people could possibly have the same likes or dislikes as me. or the same interests. Obviously I’m not in a guild was a couple of hundred people, many of whom I speak to each week. Obviously I have no power of observation and can’t draw conclusions from what I’ve seen and heard.

Yes, there are people out there frustrated by the fact that they have to do specific content that they don’t like to get rewards they really want. I know this because some of them have actually posted threads about it. They’re usually shot down pretty fast, but stuff has been posted.

And more than that I’ve seen people talking in map chat about stuff, heard people in guild talk about stuff like that, and yes, some people are frustrated. Now that’s not to say they’re leaving, or threatening to leave, but you know, I don’t have to see someone get hit by a car to know that if cars are driving too fast, it’s likely going to happen at some point.

The direction of the game, reward-wise is moving in a way that some people are definitely asking for and some people are definitely disenfranchised by. Not just me.

Now if you have evidence that no one else feels like this, or about numbers, I’d sure be glad to listen. I don’t know how big my group is. What I do believe is the people who want challenging content tend to be a fringe group.

This is a funny thing to bring up. Ive seen the exact same evidence of a huge amount of players wanting new dungeons, new instanced content and greater challenge and even in some cases exclusive rewards to that content. Your side is no less a fringe group than the other groups despite what you may think. You always see less of the groups you arent part of and more of the groups you are part of.

Except that it’s not as likely a fringe group. Devs have been saying across many games for many years all sorts of variations on casuals are the most numerous players of any game but hard core are the most vocal.

You don’t have to believe it, but it doesn’t change what’s been said. The most recent example I can think of is from a lotro dev who said less than 10% of the population of the game raided since launch, but they account for 50% of forum posts.

Yeah but id be willing to bet the group that wants more instanced content is larger than the group that doesnt want exclusive rewards anywhere. Id agree the open world fanbase is larger than the hardcore community. But then you have to consider how many different groups there are in GW2. 10% is a pretty huge group when you consider sPvP, WvW, roleplayers, open worlders and do it all players.

Open world players can be further divided up and you can never appease all of them at the same time. I have seen very casual open world players saying they want to see more instanced content and raids. So yeah… I think appealing to a pretty tight shipped large group like the hardcore community is actually quite a safe investment. Because the other groups seem to have members that would like to dabble in that content as well.

There is high demand for instanced content whether you like it or not. Believe what you want but the numbers ive seen are far from small. And its very difficult to consider it a minority from my observations. If it is a minority, its not a very small one. An example of a very small minority would be speedrunners. But thats only a minority subsection of the dungeon/fractal community.

By the same token, you do have far more people who don’t need harder content than those that do, no matter how vocal that group is.

Because I can guarantee if that group was that big, they’d have that kind of content. Sort of telling that they don’t. Not in most games.

The trend is to make everything easier and dumb everything down for a reason. Even WOW does it. Why? Because it’s where the bulk of the playerbase is.

Now, that’s not to say we can’t have harder content too…but it’s a narrow line to how that can be introduced. What you don’t want to do is change the perception of people playing that the game is too hard for them.

Liadri was done right because it could be mostly ignored by people, but there is a fine line there.

So I’m not against hard content on principle. I’m concerned about how that hard content would be introduced and the affect it might have on the bulk of the playerbase. Keep in mind, the way things have been done lately, I personally feel affected.

And there are certainly less people in my guild that have luminscent armor than those that do. It’s just too much effort for some of them.

You keep doing that and you end up with people FEELING disenfranchised. It’s not right, or fair, or logical. But it is business.

I dont see how that counters anything i said.

spoj.9672:

I dont see how that counters anything i said.

I don’t see how you can’t see it.

The affect that hard content has on casual players isn’t non-existence. It’s a palpable thing. It HAS an effect.

Half this thread is people saying that other people are selfish because they’re trying to stop something that has NO EFFECT on them. That’s simply not the case.

So IF this content is going to be introduced it comes with a risk. You might believe that risk isn’t a large risk and it MIGHT not be. But you can’t say it doesn’t affect those people who aren’t interested in it, because it does.

So it has to be handled very carefully.

My guess is, if Anet puts enough hard stuff in to satisfy the hard core crowd, they’re going to lose at least some of the casual crowd. Again the risk is there.

It’s easy to tell a company to take the risk because you want something…because it’s not your money that’s going to go if that risk doesn’t pay off.

I, personally, would rather have more content like LS Season One than LS Season Two. So, more open world…less instances.

Just one vote, of course. =)

If I had to guess, I’d guess that the game’s “silent majority” doesn’t give a kitten one way or another about anything requested in the forums.

Jockum.1385:

uhohhotdog.3598:

I didn’t say it has no open world. You’re twisting my words.

My point was:

You should not take every advertisement as truth. They will always exaggerate.
When Anet tells you about “super innovative Events” you will get some kind of events. When Anet tells us about super challenging dungeons we get some dungeon stuff.
I showed you a dungeon interview. So if you want Anet to keep their promises (which is understandable) you should understand, that other players want Anet to keep their promises too. So where’s the underworld like content? There is none. But you don’t care, but you’re using not kept promises as an argument? …………

Anet has exaggerated. For all players. For open world players, for instance players – well…look at “esports PVP”. Should Anet now stop developing open world content until their pvp is good at esports? Should they stop developing open world content until their dungeons are “UW like”? No. No one wants that. But you, you ask Anet to stop developing everything and just develop open world content?

And this is why i twisted your words. To show you: there is open world content. Maybe Anet exagerated a bit, but there is an open world. There are event chains. There is pvp, there are dungeons. So maybe not as good as expected, but all modi are fine.
And all modi should be developed, improved. I’m not asking Anet to stop open world content. Many players like it, so ofc they should add open world content.
So why are you asking for “no instances”? Anet has broken other promises, too.

uhohhotdog.3598:

When a game sells you on the point that it would be filled with event chains that have a lasting affect on the world, they should try that. I don’t want “one time” events. I want event CHAINS.

Chains have no lasting effects on the world. Their effect will be gone in 2 minutes or so. Only one-time events can provide a lasting effect.
SW is a huge eventchain – if you fail to defend you have to invade the camp again, when defending phase is over bosses will spawn, then vinewrath starts.
Orr is full of eventchains. Fireelemental? Eventchain. Centaur events in harathi? Event chain. The game has tons of eventchains. You want improved eventchains? I can understand it. But thats no reason to block instanced content. HoT seems to become SW like, so its very likely Anet will improve their event system. It might not become perfekt, but Anet will try to offer some “better event chains”.
Image I would say “dungeons are not challenging enoug, stop all open world content until Anet brings challenging dungeons of my taste. They promised us challenging content.”. Well…I don’t ask for that. But you do.

I should not take advertisement as truth? Are you serious? It should absolutely be taken as truth. There’s laws about that you know. Not that they’re all well enforced but they exist. When a company advertises content it should deliver on that content.

Your idea of event chain seems to be attack a camp and then defend it. Sorry no that’s not a chain. The Balthazar chain is a pretty good one but it can be expanded on. And I didn’t say there were no event chains in the game I’m just saying there isn’t enough. All events should be part of something larger. Every event. And they can be made to not be over in 2 minutes.

uhohhotdog.3598:

Jockum.1385:

uhohhotdog.3598:

I didn’t say it has no open world. You’re twisting my words.

My point was:

You should not take every advertisement as truth. They will always exaggerate.
When Anet tells you about “super innovative Events” you will get some kind of events. When Anet tells us about super challenging dungeons we get some dungeon stuff.
I showed you a dungeon interview. So if you want Anet to keep their promises (which is understandable) you should understand, that other players want Anet to keep their promises too. So where’s the underworld like content? There is none. But you don’t care, but you’re using not kept promises as an argument? …………

Anet has exaggerated. For all players. For open world players, for instance players – well…look at “esports PVP”. Should Anet now stop developing open world content until their pvp is good at esports? Should they stop developing open world content until their dungeons are “UW like”? No. No one wants that. But you, you ask Anet to stop developing everything and just develop open world content?

And this is why i twisted your words. To show you: there is open world content. Maybe Anet exagerated a bit, but there is an open world. There are event chains. There is pvp, there are dungeons. So maybe not as good as expected, but all modi are fine.
And all modi should be developed, improved. I’m not asking Anet to stop open world content. Many players like it, so ofc they should add open world content.
So why are you asking for “no instances”? Anet has broken other promises, too.

uhohhotdog.3598:

When a game sells you on the point that it would be filled with event chains that have a lasting affect on the world, they should try that. I don’t want “one time” events. I want event CHAINS.

Chains have no lasting effects on the world. Their effect will be gone in 2 minutes or so. Only one-time events can provide a lasting effect.
SW is a huge eventchain – if you fail to defend you have to invade the camp again, when defending phase is over bosses will spawn, then vinewrath starts.
Orr is full of eventchains. Fireelemental? Eventchain. Centaur events in harathi? Event chain. The game has tons of eventchains. You want improved eventchains? I can understand it. But thats no reason to block instanced content. HoT seems to become SW like, so its very likely Anet will improve their event system. It might not become perfekt, but Anet will try to offer some “better event chains”.
Image I would say “dungeons are not challenging enoug, stop all open world content until Anet brings challenging dungeons of my taste. They promised us challenging content.”. Well…I don’t ask for that. But you do.

I should not take advertisement as truth? Are you serious? It should absolutely be taken as truth. There’s laws about that you know. Not that they’re all well enforced but they exist. When a company advertises content it should deliver on that content.

Your idea of event chain seems to be attack a camp and then defend it. Sorry no that’s not a chain. The Balthazar chain is a pretty good one but it can be expanded on. And I didn’t say there were no event chains in the game I’m just saying there isn’t enough. All events should be part of something larger. Every event. And they can be made to not be over in 2 minutes.

There are quite a few events that chain. And chain doesn’t have to be a long chain. There are events in almost every zone that chain. You may not like that, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there.

Anet said from the beginning, from long before launch, events would be persistent but not permanent.

They also told us, straight out, that not all events would chain.

It’s simple really they need to add a new category / game type in the game called “Dungeons” or something. Make 4 daily categories PVE/Dungeon/PVP/WvW and have this new type of content work like any of the others. Putting all types of PVE in one big label “PVE” is wrong not all types of PVE are the same, much like how we have separate PVP and WvW they are both PVP

Vayne.8563:

spoj.9672:

I dont see how that counters anything i said.

I don’t see how you can’t see it.

The affect that hard content has on casual players isn’t non-existence. It’s a palpable thing. It HAS an effect.

Half this thread is people saying that other people are selfish because they’re trying to stop something that has NO EFFECT on them. That’s simply not the case.

So IF this content is going to be introduced it comes with a risk. You might believe that risk isn’t a large risk and it MIGHT not be. But you can’t say it doesn’t affect those people who aren’t interested in it, because it does.

So it has to be handled very carefully.

My guess is, if Anet puts enough hard stuff in to satisfy the hard core crowd, they’re going to lose at least some of the casual crowd. Again the risk is there.

It’s easy to tell a company to take the risk because you want something…because it’s not your money that’s going to go if that risk doesn’t pay off.

I’m going to back this up because it’s a very real thing that people ignore; the business aspect of MMO gaming is something that very few players consider when they request changes. There is a finite pool of resources. Guaranteed that anything that gets developed must get past the muster of the business guys.

Assuming this game doesn’t have a significant potion of people that don’t like hard instanced content … why would business guys approve of adding more of it? Of course we don’t have those numbers but I think it’s obvious from the lack of hard, instanced content that the population doesn’t support adding more of it.

Next argument? Why not add it to get those players into the game? Again, because there are finite resources. Do you add that and not do something else that impacts the present population loyal to the game that may consider that an affront to them? There are very plausible explanations for these things.

I honestly can’t argue with that. It certainly fits what we’ve seen coming out of ArenaNet.

ArenaNet Exec 1: “Dungeon folks are unhappy and leaving, but the casuals are sticking around, and honestly, they’re just running around in circles in SW and EotM.”

ArenaNet Exec 2: “Hmm…let’s add more circles then.”

>.<

Now if only there was a game out there that did care about their instanced PvE. Just sayin.

Except there obviously is demand because they are adding “challenging group content”. Whatever that might be. And like i said a 10% group is pretty big. If you divide all the groups up the hardcore community doesnt look so small. You guys are are saying we are ignoring the business side. Thats not really true. If anything you are ignoring some of the most important parts of the business side.

There are other aspects you are completely overlooking. Like who creates the most fan made content and advertises the game through that? Is it the casual players? Nope. Its the big reviewers and the hardcore community that uploads videos of their organised dungeons/raids/achievements. The hardcore community is very vocal. Thats actually a good thing. It means they often have influence and the ability to advertise the game to a wide range.

The casual players that say nothing and dont produce any content certainly dont bring any extra sales in except for maybe the odd friend or two. On the other hand content creators have the potential to bring in hundreds of new players or even encourage current players to try different parts of the game that they previously overlooked.

Also big influencers like MattVisual and WoodenPotatoes arent really part of the hardcore community but they have stated they want things like raids and more instanced content. And they had a surprisingly large amount of support for those comments. There is demand and there are a lot more people who want this stuff than you think.

Obtena.7952:

Vayne.8563:

spoj.9672:

I dont see how that counters anything i said.

I don’t see how you can’t see it.

The affect that hard content has on casual players isn’t non-existence. It’s a palpable thing. It HAS an effect.

Half this thread is people saying that other people are selfish because they’re trying to stop something that has NO EFFECT on them. That’s simply not the case.

So IF this content is going to be introduced it comes with a risk. You might believe that risk isn’t a large risk and it MIGHT not be. But you can’t say it doesn’t affect those people who aren’t interested in it, because it does.

So it has to be handled very carefully.

My guess is, if Anet puts enough hard stuff in to satisfy the hard core crowd, they’re going to lose at least some of the casual crowd. Again the risk is there.

It’s easy to tell a company to take the risk because you want something…because it’s not your money that’s going to go if that risk doesn’t pay off.

I’m going to back this up because it’s a very real thing that people ignore; the business aspect of MMO gaming is something that very few players consider when they request changes. There is a finite pool of resources. Guaranteed that anything that gets developed must get past the muster of the business guys.

Assuming this game doesn’t have a significant potion of people that don’t like hard instanced content … why would business guys approve of adding more of it? Of course we don’t have those numbers but I think it’s obvious from the lack of hard, instanced content that the population doesn’t support adding more of it.

Next argument? Why not add it to get those players into the game? Again, because there are finite resources. Do you add that and not do something else that impacts the present population loyal to the game that may consider that an affront to them? There are very plausible explanations for these things.

I don’t get it. How do you know if there is or there isn’t support for more instanced hard content if there is only so little of it around? How do the devs know if the playerbase will like more hard instanced content if there hasn’t been any new of it to play?

As for difficult content itself:
A) They are adding challenging group content whatever that means, so they DO want to make the game harder. They’ve been revamping bosses and nerfing farms, leading players to harder content. It’s not like the devs want their playerbase to be mindless drones doing the SW chest farm only, that’s hardly healthy for a game
B) Silverwastes and Dry Top (except for the lame Chest farm) are both harder than the Queensdale of Frostgorge trains, or the World Boss trains, yet they attract loads of people, so the GW2 playerbase DOES like harder content, if they didn’t then SW/DT would be empty and everyone would be doing their regular trains only
C) From the very recent Anet presentation about PVP they said that players who play sPVP tournaments are more loyal to the game, they log for more hours than players who do not play in tournaments. It would be interesting to see the average playtimes of players who do regular (daily) dungeon runs and players who just go and farm. We might all be surprised with the results.

Going around and farming won’t keep players interested, they will eventually get bored, good and challenging content will keep interest more. It’s to Anet’s best interest to have players loyal to the game that log for as many hours as possible and pursue more and more rewards rather than simple farmers.

maddoctor.2738:

Obtena.7952:

Vayne.8563:

spoj.9672:

I dont see how that counters anything i said.

I don’t see how you can’t see it.

snip

So it has to be handled very carefully.

My guess is, if Anet puts enough hard stuff in to satisfy the hard core crowd, they’re going to lose at least some of the casual crowd. Again the risk is there.

It’s easy to tell a company to take the risk because you want something…because it’s not your money that’s going to go if that risk doesn’t pay off.

I’m going to back this up because it’s a very real thing that people ignore; the business aspect of MMO gaming is something that very few players consider when they request changes. There is a finite pool of resources. Guaranteed that anything that gets developed must get past the muster of the business guys.

Assuming this game doesn’t have a significant potion of people that don’t like hard instanced content … why would business guys approve of adding more of it? Of course we don’t have those numbers but I think it’s obvious from the lack of hard, instanced content that the population doesn’t support adding more of it.

Next argument? Why not add it to get those players into the game? Again, because there are finite resources. Do you add that and not do something else that impacts the present population loyal to the game that may consider that an affront to them? There are very plausible explanations for these things.

I don’t get it. How do you know if there is or there isn’t support for more instanced hard content if there is only so little of it around? How do the devs know if the playerbase will like more hard instanced content if there hasn’t been any new of it to play?

As for difficult content itself:
A) They are adding challenging group content whatever that means, so they DO want to make the game harder. They’ve been revamping bosses and nerfing farms, leading players to harder content. It’s not like the devs want their playerbase to be mindless drones doing the SW chest farm only, that’s hardly healthy for a game
B) Silverwastes and Dry Top (except for the lame Chest farm) are both harder than the Queensdale of Frostgorge trains, or the World Boss trains, yet they attract loads of people, so the GW2 playerbase DOES like harder content, if they didn’t then SW/DT would be empty and everyone would be doing their regular trains only
C) From the very recent Anet presentation about PVP they said that players who play sPVP tournaments are more loyal to the game, they log for more hours than players who do not play in tournaments. It would be interesting to see the average playtimes of players who do regular (daily) dungeon runs and players who just go and farm. We might all be surprised with the results.

Going around and farming won’t keep players interested, they will eventually get bored, good and challenging content will keep interest more. It’s to Anet’s best interest to have players loyal to the game that log for as many hours as possible and pursue more and more rewards rather than simple farmers.

The devs don’t have just one game to go by. They have lots of games to go by. They don’t just have one bit of research, they have lots of research.

The idea that harder content isn’t that popular has been floating around this industry for years and years. This isn’t like new or sudden info. It’s not info I’ve made up.

In all the years I’ve been following MMOs I’ve never seen an MMO dev come out and say our fans want more hard instanced content. What I have seen those, is games like Rift which was centered around raids, having devs coming out and saying, we got it wrong, we see that we need more content for people who are more casual…that’s paraphrased but it’s what they said after the big initial exodus from the game, which I was part of.

They then tried to put these adventures in there which were flawed for all sorts of reasons.

Wildstar devs said, straight out, they didn’t expect so many people want solo content. Scott Hartsman of Rift fame said, that no developer could ignore the solo player base and expect to be successful. Most recently a lotro dev gave up the percentage of people in that game that actually raided, and at one point,. even the head dev of blizzard said less than 5% of the game’s population play the hardest content.

I’m wondering if you ever remember a dev saying that more people harder content over all. Because I don’t recall that ever even being implied.

spoj.9672:

Except there obviously is demand because they are adding “challenging group content”. Whatever that might be. And like i said a 10% group is pretty big. If you divide all the groups up the hardcore community doesnt look so small. You guys are are saying we are ignoring the business side. Thats not really true. If anything you are ignoring some of the most important parts of the business side.

There are other aspects you are completely overlooking. Like who creates the most fan made content and advertises the game through that? Is it the casual players? Nope. Its the big reviewers and the hardcore community that uploads videos of their organised dungeons/raids/achievements. The hardcore community is very vocal. Thats actually a good thing. It means they often have influence and the ability to advertise the game to a wide range.

The casual players that say nothing and dont produce any content certainly dont bring any extra sales in except for maybe the odd friend or two. On the other hand content creators have the potential to bring in hundreds of new players or even encourage current players to try different parts of the game that they previously overlooked.

Also big influencers like MattVisual and WoodenPotatoes arent really part of the hardcore community but they have stated they want things like raids and more instanced content. And they had a surprisingly large amount of support for those comments. There is demand and there are a lot more people who want this stuff than you think.

And yet I suspect those guys would still be here if instanced raids aren’t introduced. As I said, I suspect the new hard content won’t be instanced. If it is, well then you guys win. Then we see how that affects the game’s playerbase over all.

But if I were you, I wouldn’t be surprised if any new hard instanced content ended up nerfed, because too many frustrated people is bad for the game. This is what happens in most MMOs.

I’m sure instanced content, like dungeons and fractals, are on some table, but anet is focusing on maximizing open world content they already designed and adding reward tracks to keep preexisting content relevant. These designs are more cost effective because it allows them to use a lot of stuff they already built.

I would much rather have them devote resources to making REALLYBIGHUGEAWESOME improvements to professions and profession related stuff at this point than instanced content, but to each their own.

Vayne.8563:

I’m wondering if you ever remember a dev saying that more people harder content over all. Because I don’t recall that ever even being implied.

I think there is a huge misunderstanding here about what “challenging content” might mean. I don’t think their idea of a challenge is what other MMORPGs call “Raids”. For me “challenging content” can mean ANYTHING that is not afkable like the current game. The thing is none-easy mode afkable content might not even be able to be created in the open world, therefore there is a need for instances.

I answered above why I believe the devs are actively looking in ways to have more challenging content in THIS game, it doesn’t matter what the industry does, what Lotro or WoW does or what anyone else might think. And I repeat them all:

They stated they are adding “challenging content”, that’s a fact, some content in HoT WILL BE harder than we currently have. How much more challenging I don’t know, but if it’s anything that isn’t afkable it will be huge plus for the game, doesn’t need to be heroic raid difficulty
The community itself, this easy going/casual community as people claim it is, embraced SW and DT although they are more challenging than the old content
The more invested the players are, like with the PVP tournaments example, the more they stay online, the more they play and the more they pay

Simple facts. There is question if the devs WANT their game to be more challenging, since the first release of LS1 it’s obvious

maddoctor.2738:

Vayne.8563:

I’m wondering if you ever remember a dev saying that more people harder content over all. Because I don’t recall that ever even being implied.

I think there is a huge misunderstanding here about what “challenging content” might mean. I don’t think their idea of a challenge is what other MMORPGs call “Raids”. For me “challenging content” can mean ANYTHING that is not afkable like the current game. The thing is none-easy mode afkable content might not even be able to be created in the open world, therefore there is a need for instances.

I answered above why I believe the devs are actively looking in ways to have more challenging content in THIS game, it doesn’t matter what the industry does, what Lotro or WoW does or what anyone else might think. And I repeat them all:

They stated they are adding “challenging content”, that’s a fact, some content in HoT WILL BE harder than we currently have. How much more challenging I don’t know, but if it’s anything that isn’t afkable it will be huge plus for the game, doesn’t need to be heroic raid difficulty
The community itself, this easy going/casual community as people claim it is, embraced SW and DT although they are more challenging than the old content
The more invested the players are, like with the PVP tournaments example, the more they stay online, the more they play and the more they pay

Simple facts. There is question if the devs WANT their game to be more challenging, since the first release of LS1 it’s obvious

See this I agree with. My real issue is against instanced content that divides the player base. I don’t mind more challenging content or AI generally. It’s the instanced bit that bothers me.

I like the idea of more instanced content because of its flexibility.

Variable difficulty (normal, hard, nightmare modes)
Vanquishing (kill all mobs in all instances.)
Personal storytelling.
Small scale unique environments.

I dont mean replacing open world development with instances, but some more could add a lot to the game.

dlonie.6547:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t believe that instanced content is really the goal of the company.

^ This. Just look at how hard they’ve been dodging the issue of whether or not the “challenging group content” in HoT will be instanced or not.

Other games take it seriously. If it’s what you’re looking for, you won’t find it here.

notice how all other mmo’s that took raiding seriously have gone free to play ? lmfao and gw2 is still on it’s feet lol pretty sure gw2 is doing something right, i’ve raided in wow for 8 years and personally raiding aint kitten, nothing fun about working so hard to get gear, only for it to be irrelevant 6 months later, it’s the worst experience ever

Leonhardt.8164:

dlonie.6547:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t believe that instanced content is really the goal of the company.

^ This. Just look at how hard they’ve been dodging the issue of whether or not the “challenging group content” in HoT will be instanced or not.

Other games take it seriously. If it’s what you’re looking for, you won’t find it here.

notice how all other mmo’s that took raiding seriously have gone free to play ? lmfao and gw2 is still on it’s feet lol pretty sure gw2 is doing something right, i’ve raided in wow for 8 years and personally raiding aint kitten, nothing fun about working so hard to get gear, only for it to be irrelevant 6 months later, it’s the worst experience ever

If it was the worst experience ever why did you continue doing it (paying for the privilege) for most of a decade?

Vayne.8563:

I understand all the advantages that instances have. But a lot of people in favor of instances don’t seem to understand the disadvantages, or they deny them when other people point them out.

Having played many games centered around instances, I think I know some of the problems they cause. You can even see some of them here. The divide between “elitist” speed runners and casuals. The abuse of people who aren’t quite as efficient because the people they’re running with are so pro. The exclusion of certain professions from runs altogether.

That stuff doesn’t happen in the open world. It’s an equalizer. It allows people to play what they want, not in the most efficient manner. And you know, not all people see an RPG is as a system that has to be beat.

So if you lock the challenging content away in instances that are so hard you need specific builds to beat them, as was sometimes the case in Guild Wars 1, you end up with people demanding certain builds and you have a more toxic community in general. You may not see this as a problem but I do.

Even in the open world, harder content can cause tensions but no one can stop you from participating. That’s a big thing to some people.

So as much as I’d like to see forms of content that are challenging in the open world, I don’t want to see this stuff locked away instances so a small percentage of gamers can do harder content, particularly if that harder content rewards them in such a way that people who don’t want to do it are pressured to do it for those rewards.

That’s how it works in most games and I’ve always thought it sucked.

Here’s the problem you are not acknowledging. This is a game. Games are meant to be fun and challenging. For a significant portion of the player base, open world is not challenging. For this player base, open world is not even fun. I personally only grind open world when there is some specific reward there that I cannot get elsewhere. When I get that reward…bye bye open world. There are players who play games to push the limits of what they can do with their characters…you can’t get that in open world. That’s where instanced content comes in. Instanced content is the only venue where you can maximize the output of your character and game mechanics such as combo fields and cooperative teamwork. Open world is too full of those same people you described earlier as actually being challenged by open world….meaning that they have trouble just pressing 1 apparently. It leads to frustration trying to force these disparate groups to always have to play together…hence the beauty of instanced content.

No one is being excluded from any content…even in instanced content. That’s also the beauty of how ANET designed instanced content…anyone can beat dungeons/fractals…even people that have trouble pressing 1. If you are really wanting challenging content…then the difficulty level of instanced content can’t be what people are really objecting to? I’d say it has to be solely about wanting others to accept them unconditionally into their groups without the possibility of a kick. I’d say that’s just an unreasonable expectation…nothing to do with instances being a problem. That’s a people problem. There are plenty of groups that do accept anyone unconditionally. In fact, that would be the majority of groups that do accept unconditionally. There are no rewards locked away that are outside of anyone’s reach, people just need to learn to do more than press 1 and learn to play together…which is more than you ever get in open world. It isn’t unreasonable to expect people to learn to play the game in order to get the game’s rewards. People don’t expect to get pvp rewards by doing pve…no more unreasonable to expect people to learn to actually play pve to get all the pve rewards.

Vayne.8563:

In all the years I’ve been following MMOs I’ve never seen an MMO dev come out and say our fans want more hard instanced content.

Likely because they already focused on it. I’ve never heard of another MMO that put in so few new group PvE instances over the course of two years.

What I have seen those, is games like Rift which was centered around raids, having devs coming out and saying, we got it wrong, we see that we need more content for people who are more casual…that’s paraphrased but it’s what they said after the big initial exodus from the game, which I was part of.

Exactly. You can’t ignore either. There are exoduses happening from this game as well over the lack of instanced content. Of the 150ish dungeon runners on my friends list (overwhelmingly laid back, casual, “all-welcome LFG” type people, too), maybe 4 get on and actively play. Ever.

Yes, I am one sample, but that is a large percentage of people who genuinely loved playing this game at one point who have been lost to other games over the lack of content. I’ve heard this same experience echoed around the game and forums many, many times, so I’m loathe to dismiss it as a sampling issue.

Scott Hartsman of Rift fame said, that no developer could ignore the solo player base and expect to be successful.

And you believe ignoring the social playerbase is going to make a multiplayer game successful?

Most recently a lotro dev gave up the percentage of people in that game that actually raided, and at one point,. even the head dev of blizzard said less than 5% of the game’s population play the hardest content.

Yes, but our “hardest content” is on par with their intro dungeons. ArenaNet doesn’t have to go to that extreme of difficulty, but they should still be providing fresh experiences for players who want to run challenging instances (if they want to keep them).

Leonhardt.8164:

notice how all other mmo’s that took raiding seriously have gone free to play ?

I’m failing to see how a game going F2P after settling into a healthy update routine implies a problem, especially when comparing it to a game that knew it couldn’t keep subbed players around from launch and went B2P off the bat. shrug

Have a look: http://wowwiki.wikia.com/Raiding_for_newbies

Important parts:
The culmination of the PvE endgame is the 25 player raids. Prior to WLK, only a few players got there; for example, only about half the number of players who killed a boss in Karazhan ever killed a 25 player boss, and less than 5% defeated the final boss of the expansion (Kil’Jaeden). In vanilla WoW, less than 2% of all players ever entered Naxxramas (the original version).

So only 2% of vanilla WoW entered Naxxramas, while less than 5% defeated the final boss of the expansion. This looks so dire for raiding indeed, I wonder if the percentages were kept like this, why in the world is Blizzard adding new raids all the time. The answer is simple, they split their raids in a “hard” and “Easy” version.

Let’s continue on reading:

With the changes in WLK, hardmodes now are the pinnacle of raiding. All other content has become very accessible and is regularly cleared by pickup groups. Due to this development raiding has become much more commonplace, and the following rules have lost much of their exclusivity and some of their importance.

So the "only 5% of the wow playerbase is doing raids is completely FALSE and I suggest everyone around threads like this one to stop using as an argument. 5% of the playerbase were Raiders back in the old days. Now raiding is commonplace in WoW because the “easy” raids are much easier than the heroic versions. Blizzard understood that having super hard inaccessible instanced content was a bad idea, that’s why they split their raids. There is no need to add new story/lore/dialogue, it stays the same, lots of bosses are the same content wise, the map/terrain is similar, so there isn’t as much DEVELOPMENT time needed to create the hardcore challenging versions, once they got the easy versions ready.

Let’s say that the “hard” versions of raids are beyond the scope of Guild Wars 2 and how casual/friendly it wants to be. That leaves us with the “easy” versions of raids. They are obviously INSTANCED content. Accessible (but more challenging) instanced content!

So what are people asking for when they ask for instanced challenging content? Normal versions of raids maybe?

Vayne.8563:

spoj.9672:

I dont see how that counters anything i said.

I don’t see how you can’t see it.

The affect that hard content has on casual players isn’t non-existence. It’s a palpable thing. It HAS an effect.

Half this thread is people saying that other people are selfish because they’re trying to stop something that has NO EFFECT on them. That’s simply not the case.

So IF this content is going to be introduced it comes with a risk. You might believe that risk isn’t a large risk and it MIGHT not be. But you can’t say it doesn’t affect those people who aren’t interested in it, because it does.

So it has to be handled very carefully.

My guess is, if Anet puts enough hard stuff in to satisfy the hard core crowd, they’re going to lose at least some of the casual crowd. Again the risk is there.

It’s easy to tell a company to take the risk because you want something…because it’s not your money that’s going to go if that risk doesn’t pay off.

What I get from this whole argument….“If its something I might have a hard time completing….then I don’t want anyone to have it!” This doesn’t seem to be a very mature standpoint.

This argument has gone from the false claim that adding instanced content will somehow take away from open world content….to now being about wanting all rewards to be purchasable/obtainable without earning them.

I’m sorry, but the core of your argument seems flawed. The core of this argument seems to be that you think exclusive rewards…that you have to beat something challenging to obtain…will lead to the abandonment of this game. That’s the opposite of what exclusive rewards do. Rewards that require effort are the corner stone of what gives a game longevity. It gives players something to work towards. People that bail out at even the thought of having to earn something…have weak attachments to begin with and will bail out eventually anyway.

maddoctor.2738:

Obtena.7952:

Vayne.8563:

spoj.9672:

I dont see how that counters anything i said.

I don’t see how you can’t see it.

The affect that hard content has on casual players isn’t non-existence. It’s a palpable thing. It HAS an effect.

Half this thread is people saying that other people are selfish because they’re trying to stop something that has NO EFFECT on them. That’s simply not the case.

So IF this content is going to be introduced it comes with a risk. You might believe that risk isn’t a large risk and it MIGHT not be. But you can’t say it doesn’t affect those people who aren’t interested in it, because it does.

So it has to be handled very carefully.

My guess is, if Anet puts enough hard stuff in to satisfy the hard core crowd, they’re going to lose at least some of the casual crowd. Again the risk is there.

It’s easy to tell a company to take the risk because you want something…because it’s not your money that’s going to go if that risk doesn’t pay off.

I’m going to back this up because it’s a very real thing that people ignore; the business aspect of MMO gaming is something that very few players consider when they request changes. There is a finite pool of resources. Guaranteed that anything that gets developed must get past the muster of the business guys.

Assuming this game doesn’t have a significant potion of people that don’t like hard instanced content … why would business guys approve of adding more of it? Of course we don’t have those numbers but I think it’s obvious from the lack of hard, instanced content that the population doesn’t support adding more of it.

Next argument? Why not add it to get those players into the game? Again, because there are finite resources. Do you add that and not do something else that impacts the present population loyal to the game that may consider that an affront to them? There are very plausible explanations for these things.

I don’t get it. How do you know if there is or there isn’t support for more instanced hard content if there is only so little of it around? How do the devs know if the playerbase will like more hard instanced content if there hasn’t been any new of it to play?

I don’t. That why I said ASSUMING this game doesn’t have a significant potion of people that don’t like hard instanced content …

You’re question is asking me if I think that’s a reasonable assumption. I do for as few reasons.

1. I believe this game would have tanked a year ago if most of the people playing it desired hard instanced content because as we know, it doesn’t really have much.
2. There are signs of the market Anet want to target with this game based on changes it’s gone through and some of it’s established concepts. I don’t believe that market is primarily made of the people who desire hard, instanced content.
3. I believe Anet is smart enough to direct their new offerings (LS, etc…) at the players that this game appeals to. HoT will definitely put to rest what Anet believes players of this game want. If we don’t get hard instanced content (team size), then I think you can pretty much forget about it ever happening to any degree that will satisfy players looking mainly for that kind of content.

I haven’t had time to read the whole thread, but I doubt I’d find anything surprising in it. I’ll have to agree with the camp that does NOT want more instanced content. Well, I like instances well enough purely for story telling reasons, but I don’t like having instances just for the sake of having instanced content.

People say they want “hard” content, and they say the only way to do that is in an instance. But after a while you master it, and then it’s not “hard” anymore. Tedious probably, but not hard. Besides, striving for ever harder and harder content has its downsides. It’s a tremendous burden on devs to even dream of keeping up with and making it harder each time. It also creates an increasing divide between the players who have lives and those who clearly don’t (and sorry, but the latter is getting to be more of a minority these days).

I go further though and denounce over-reliance on scripted content in general. Open World or Instanced, either way, that which is scripted will always become mastered and tedious, no matter how much time and effort the devs put into being clever or sadistic, their efforts can never truly contend with players. The only thing that can is other players, with the freedom to make decisions.

ODB.6891:

This argument has gone from the false claim that adding instanced content will somehow take away from open world content.

To be fair, every dollar spent developing instanced content is not being spent developing open world content. So, adding instanced content does take away from development of open world content.

I still think that adding more instanced would be a good idea.

You all keep arguing for and against instanced content without throwing any number out there…well I’ll give you some hypothetical numbers to play with…and then tell me which group you’d make content for.

This is just hypothetical, and only applies to PvE, but let’s say you have an MMO, which only consists of PvE, no sPvP or WvW, with a million active players, now let’s divide those players up into subgroups: Open World PvE, Instanced PvE. Let us use the 90%/10% breakdown between Open World(90%) and Instanced(10%), and let’s further add in that of those that post on the forums, 90% are Instanced and 10% are Open World(the reverse of the actual game playing community). Now take your limited development budget and tell me which group of players you would design new content for?

Both.

Lets just ignore the severely and unrealistically skewed in favour of open world example you gave.

Id say a more accurate guess would be 10% sPvP, 25% WvW, 15% instanced PvE and 50% open world. Even thats kind of generous.

spoj.9672:

Both.

Lets just ignore the severely and unrealistically skewed in favour of open world example you gave.

Id say a more accurate guess would be 10% sPvP, 25% WvW, 15% instanced PvE and 50% open world. Even thats kind of generous.

Reread my post again, I specifically stated my hypothetical game is PvE only, there is no sPvP or WvW, therefore my percentages are more accurate than you would care to believe(they are also based somewhat on reality, from a old post about WoW’s community breakdown). Also, from a purely business perspective, anyone that is of sound mind would concentrate on the 90% market and dismiss the 10%, let the smaller percentage go elsewhere and don’t waste resources on them.

ODB.6891:

Vayne.8563:

spoj.9672:

I dont see how that counters anything i said.

I don’t see how you can’t see it.

The affect that hard content has on casual players isn’t non-existence. It’s a palpable thing. It HAS an effect.

Half this thread is people saying that other people are selfish because they’re trying to stop something that has NO EFFECT on them. That’s simply not the case.

So IF this content is going to be introduced it comes with a risk. You might believe that risk isn’t a large risk and it MIGHT not be. But you can’t say it doesn’t affect those people who aren’t interested in it, because it does.

So it has to be handled very carefully.

My guess is, if Anet puts enough hard stuff in to satisfy the hard core crowd, they’re going to lose at least some of the casual crowd. Again the risk is there.

It’s easy to tell a company to take the risk because you want something…because it’s not your money that’s going to go if that risk doesn’t pay off.

What I get from this whole argument….“If its something I might have a hard time completing….then I don’t want anyone to have it!” This doesn’t seem to be a very mature standpoint.

This argument has gone from the false claim that adding instanced content will somehow take away from open world content….to now being about wanting all rewards to be purchasable/obtainable without earning them.

I’m sorry, but the core of your argument seems flawed. The core of this argument seems to be that you think exclusive rewards…that you have to beat something challenging to obtain…will lead to the abandonment of this game. That’s the opposite of what exclusive rewards do. Rewards that require effort are the corner stone of what gives a game longevity. It gives players something to work towards. People that bail out at even the thought of having to earn something…have weak attachments to begin with and will bail out eventually anyway.

Mature standpoint? A business invests millions in a product. Changing the product, and it would be changing the product, could affect that product…and I’m immature for pointing it out. Are you not even following the argument. Or how about we stop judging point of views and look at the facts.

It’s a fact that every single game company has limited man hours, limited time in which to produce content. It’s a fact that lobbying for specific content means other content won’t be made. It’s a fact that the company who makes the game decides from their knowledge what content to make.

I never came out and told Anet what to make or what not to make. That’s not what I do. I came out for people who say this game needs more of a specific content that I don’t believe most people would be playing and pointed out that I believe that’s the fact.

I never asked Anet to make or not make this content, because I assume they know what people play. When I point that out, people use words to try to say my point of view is immature.

Sure it’s much more mature to think you know what’s best for the game over what the company thinks. It’s more mature to think that your views are worth risking millions of dollars of investments and hundreds of jobs.

There’s no real evidence that more instanced content will mean more players or more money for the company.

I’m responding to people who are saying what the game needs, by responding that a bunch of people are going to be disenfranchised if they can’t do content whether it’s fair or not. That shows an understanding of human nature that other people seem to be unaware of.

Well, I think looking at human nature and how humans react and acknowledging it and how it may affect a businesses bottom line is pretty mature.

I think calling people immature for having another opinion is simply wrong.

At the end of the day, I believe Anet knows what’s going on with their game more than 99.9% of forum posters. They know their resources, their budget, their goals as a company.

Zaklex.6308:

spoj.9672:

Both.

Lets just ignore the severely and unrealistically skewed in favour of open world example you gave.

Id say a more accurate guess would be 10% sPvP, 25% WvW, 15% instanced PvE and 50% open world. Even thats kind of generous.

Reread my post again, I specifically stated my hypothetical game is PvE only, there is no sPvP or WvW, therefore my percentages are more accurate than you would care to believe(they are also based somewhat on reality, from a old post about WoW’s community breakdown). Also, from a purely business perspective, anyone that is of sound mind would concentrate on the 90% market and dismiss the 10%, let the smaller percentage go elsewhere and don’t waste resources on them.

You also said a million active players. Are you seriously suggesting to completely ignore 100,000 customers? The best option is always to appeal to both communities unless one is a very very small minority. But no matter the percentage difference. The instanced content community is not small enough to be totally ignored. Regardless of what bullkitten numbers you pull from totally different games.

Also as someone mentioned in an earlier post. Those numbers from WoW were inaccurate and only represent the very beginning of the game before they made raids appeal to a wider audience.

spoj.9672:

Zaklex.6308:

spoj.9672:

Both.

Lets just ignore the severely and unrealistically skewed in favour of open world example you gave.

Id say a more accurate guess would be 10% sPvP, 25% WvW, 15% instanced PvE and 50% open world. Even thats kind of generous.

Reread my post again, I specifically stated my hypothetical game is PvE only, there is no sPvP or WvW, therefore my percentages are more accurate than you would care to believe(they are also based somewhat on reality, from a old post about WoW’s community breakdown). Also, from a purely business perspective, anyone that is of sound mind would concentrate on the 90% market and dismiss the 10%, let the smaller percentage go elsewhere and don’t waste resources on them.

You also said a million active players. Are you seriously suggesting to completely ignore 100,000 customers? The best option is always to appeal to both communities unless one is a very very small minority. But no matter the percentage difference. The instanced content community is not small enough to be totally ignored. Regardless of what bullkitten numbers you pull from totally different games.

Also as someone mentioned in an earlier post. Those numbers from WoW were inaccurate and only represent the very beginning of the game before they made raids appeal to a wider audience.

But this isn’t a question of ignoring 100,000 customers. This is something else entirely which people don’t seem to get.

I’ve edited professionally for a long time, and during that time, one of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen authors make it is breaking the deal they made with the reader at the start of the book. Every book starts with the tone, genre, and other factors of the book being set. It’s an unwritten contract. You risk losing readers by changing those things as the book advances. If you start a comedy book that suddenly becomes serious, you risk alienating readers because you’ve already “advertised” to them a different experience. Changing that experience can absolutely be done, but most of the time doing so requires skill and finesse. It’s not something you do lightly. It’s something you do intentionally.

By changing the direction of a game, you risk alienating a percentage of the playerbase in the same way. If I see this as a casual game and play it as a casual game, and then see the game becoming less casual, I start to feel like it’s not the game I bought. This is normal. This isn’t selfish. It’s human nature.

Anet changed something early on by introducing ascended gear and they lost a portion of the playerbase. At the time, the big argument was that this is a slippery slope and it’s going to keep happening and the company betrayed us. We now know that’s not true. It wasn’t a slippery slope. We don’t have a new tier of gear (as many said we would), but people still left the game based on them feeling betrayed.

The real question is do you risk changing the game in such a way that you risk a percentage of 900,000 people in order to placate 100,000 who might or might not stick around anyway, if an actual hard core game does make it on the market.

My argument is Anet will have harder content, but probably won’t have enough harder content for the people who crave harder content. They’ll be changing the nature of the game to make that content, but at the end of the day, if they provide enough of it, if they leave enough casuals left out of enough content, they risk the bulk of the playerbase.

Obviously the real question is even more complicated, because you have people in PvP or WvW who don’t PvE at all and don’t care if there is harder PvE content, because those people aren’t looking for a PvE experience. They’ll leave or not leave depending on what happens in PvP and WvW.

The real question is how much hard content will solve the problem for the hard core players and if Anet provides that even over time, do casual players, arguably the larger group, start wondering if this game is for them and do some of them leave?

Which group of players is more likely to stay anyway? A hard core crowd who’s thrown an occasional bone, or a casual crowd who constantly has stuff to do?

The game is running for three years without that much hard content, which means casual people now feel quite at home. Changing that comes with risks. It can be done, but gradually and only with really good reason.

Adding instanced content wouldn’t be “changing” the game. The game launched with instanced content. It’s continued to provide instanced content in FotM and LS S2 Episodes. The problem with LS S2 instanced content is that they’re intended for solo play, and don’t scale up for groups — in other words, it’s solo instanced content.

So, since FotM, we’ve had solo instanced content and group content zones. DT and SW are not designed as solo content, whereas older zones include plenty of soloable stuff. I’m not sure of the exact ratio of instanced to zone content, but I do know that small group instanced content has seem nothing but tweaks to FotM in quite a long time.

I’m not going to prejudge the HoT content, as I haven’t seen it. What I’ve heard about it sounds like more SW/DT stuff, which is not a plus for me, with the only instanced stuff being whatever they do to FotM. I may not ever see it, frankly. I’m certainly not going to pre-pay for it.

Vayne.8563:

one of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen authors make it is breaking the deal they made with the reader at the start of the book. Every book starts with the tone, genre, and other factors of the book being set. It’s an unwritten contract. You risk losing readers by changing those things as the book advances. […]

By changing the direction of a game, you risk alienating a percentage of the playerbase in the same way. If I see this as a casual game and play it as a casual game, and then see the game becoming less casual, I start to feel like it’s not the game I bought.

I saw it as a game with both casual open world and more challenging instanced content. That was the contract they established in my eyes. Not developing more instanced content would break that contract just as much as if they stopped developing open world content.

Your argument seems to hinge on the game launching with nothing but casual open-world content. It did not.

dlonie.6547:

Vayne.8563:

one of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen authors make it is breaking the deal they made with the reader at the start of the book. Every book starts with the tone, genre, and other factors of the book being set. It’s an unwritten contract. You risk losing readers by changing those things as the book advances. […]

By changing the direction of a game, you risk alienating a percentage of the playerbase in the same way. If I see this as a casual game and play it as a casual game, and then see the game becoming less casual, I start to feel like it’s not the game I bought.

I saw it as a game with both casual open world and more challenging instanced content. That was the contract they established in my eyes. Not developing more instanced content would break that contract just as much as if they stopped developing open world content.

Your argument seems to hinge on the game launching with nothing but casual open-world content. It did not.

My argument hinges that for the last couple of years, there hasn’t been that much hard challenging content added. This is how the game has grown and this is what the game has attracted. I’m pretty sure most people who wanted a challenging MMO have already left the game, except for a few stalwarts. The people left people the game are probably more casual.

And every time we say “people are leaving, this endgame isn’t cutting it”, we hear “that’s the great thing about GW2, you can always leave and come back!”.

Those people aren’t coming back. Not after the way ArenaNet has maintained/updated their instanced content.

Just so we’re on the same page, your argument is:

“Since GW2 has already driven off the folks who enjoy instances, let’s not drive away the casual crowd in an attempt to get them back.”

Am I understanding correctly? I’ll accept that as a valid argument against adding instanced content over the whole ‘exclusive rewards’ thing any day, because for years I’ve been watching those people leave with no intention of ever returning.

dlonie.6547:

And every time we say “people are leaving, this endgame isn’t cutting it”, we hear “that’s the great thing about GW2, you can always leave and come back!”.

Those people aren’t coming back. Not after the way ArenaNet has maintained/updated their instanced content.

Just so we’re on the same page, your argument is:

“Since GW2 has already driven off the folks who enjoy instances, let’s not drive away the casual crowd in an attempt to get them back.”

Am I understanding correctly? I’ll accept that as a valid argument against adding instanced content over the whole ‘exclusive rewards’ thing any day, because for years I’ve been watching those people leave with no intention of ever returning.

No. my argument is the game has spent almost 3 years now, without really offering great hard core content. You’ve never once heard ME use the argument you can always come back when a hard core player leaves. Not once, ever.

There are some people who leave because they are bored, and need new content end stop and those people I will say you can always take a break. But when I hard core player leaves, I think, this isn’t really the game for that player. That is my argument.

Orr was nerfed because it was too hard. Arah story mode was nerfed because it was too hard. Things that have been too hard have been consistently nerfed because the playerbase, as a whole, probably avoids the most challenging content. That’s my take on it.

So Anet is catering to the playerbase as a whole. It’s sad that a small percentage of the playerbase wants this game to be what it hasn’t been for years. I find it sad for those players that they don’t have what they want. I find it sad that they like the game enough to hang in there to wait for it.

But because the game has oriented itself that way for as long as it has, it’s embraced a different type of non-hard core player, there is never really going to be enough hard core content FOR hard core players.

Open world stuff isn’t great for hard core players but it gives a chance for those less hard core to participate without becoming hard core…which doesn’t work for hard core.

Instanced content will allow hard core players to sit around in their own little private tea parties, having fun in their hard core content, while players who can’t get their rewards start complaining about it. We’ve seen a couple of those complaints already, but at this time, there isn’t that much that you can’t get as a casual.

If that changes, you’ll start seeing casual players complaining about the stuff hard core people are now complaining about. And we STILL see posts, even now, that the game is too hard. Imagine that. We see posts that this game is too hard.

What do you think will happen if it’s made really hard? Or content is introduced that most people will never play? How does that really benefit the game?

dlonie.6547:

“Since GW2 has already driven off the folks who enjoy instances, let’s not drive away the casual crowd in an attempt to get them back.”

Am I understanding correctly? I’ll accept that as a valid argument against adding instanced content over the whole ‘exclusive rewards’ thing any day, because for years I’ve been watching those people leave with no intention of ever returning.

I think that’s exactly the way things have transpired. How long are people willing to hold out for content that they can get elsewhere? The offerings for that kind of content are numerous. There is no reason for Anet to even bother to try entering it. Even if Anet did, they would probably have to add a whole expansion’s volume of content to appease and cater to that crowd. Even then, how many of the people that did move on would come back and stay? Not to mention how it (not if) affects current players. I don’t think it’s a good business move.

I think we’re actually on the same page, Vayne — from your post, my summary of your argument seems spot on…?

I agree, it is sad, and I’ll add: a shame. The fluid and twitchy combat of this game really would lend itself for some amazing challenges.

Obtena: A lot of us are done holding out. I was very interested in Wildstar, but not for $60. Now its $20 with a free trial and soon F2P. Been playing it for about a week, and having a blast. I’ll miss GW2, but I think between ESO and WS, my gaming tastes will be covered. Still, I’ll regret not seeing the combat systems in GW2 taken to their full potential.

It all comes down to what the “Challenging Group Content” will be, and I’m about 95% certain I’ll be disappointed, going off of how hard they’ve been avoiding the ‘is it instanced’ question. They “broke the contract” they put in place at launch, but I’ll admit it’s too late for most of the people who enjoyed the instanced game.

kittening shame, too. So much lost potential, but that’s the path they’ve chosen.