Guild Wars 2

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

At least the ‘It’s because the lack of content’ argument as reason for lower results can now be completely shredded.

No the argument still stands and you explained why:

But those that left will not be likely to come back to see it at this point.

and also:

I always did think that HoT and the first half year after it was basically when Anet had to solve the problem because even if they fixed it now, people are just not here / coming back to see it.

Having such a lack of content after the release of HoT, and an equal content drought before HoT, is where the “lack of content” argument is coming from. The lack of content hurts the game long term.

It’s the same reason why the results of HoT weren’t as good as some expected. Huge content drought before HoT was released and a rather lacking LS2 led to many players leaving and not enough coming back to check out HoT.

The “lack of content” argument will remain forever as a reminder to the higher ups to never do it again for any reason.

If the arguments still stands and the reason simply is because people don’t return then we should have seen the same in the past, but we did not. Season 2 had lower results as the period after season 2. So back then people did return… just not for season 2 but more likely for the HoT announcement.

I do think it’s harder to get people to return at this time simply because they did come back for HoT, then got bored again and now don’t have faith in the game / company anymore. But the idea that lack of content is not the main issue is not only based on this data but also on older data from when people were still more willing to return.
Nonetheless, it still seems to show the LS approach is not working very well. They are not able to push them out all the time and the content is not able to get back people who did leave. And that is not because of bad patches because I think this episode 4 is really good, and many people have praised the whole season 3, however that other episodes were also not able to get people back.

“Having such a lack of content after the release of HoT, and an equal content drought before HoT, is where the “lack of content” argument is coming from. The lack of content hurts the game long term.”
Of course HoT was the content and many games have a ‘lack of content’ after an expansion but there it is less of a problem because the next expansion is on the horizon again.

Lack of content can hurt a game on the long term, however if expansions are close enough they should be able to solve that especially for the long term. And if the expansion is able to provide enough content and you have some smaller patches in-between that can fix the shorter term.

“It’s the same reason why the results of HoT weren’t as good as some expected. Huge content drought before HoT was released and a rather lacking LS2 led to many players leaving and not enough coming back to check out HoT.”
I did not hear many complains about the HoT results, other than that they did not get as many of the F2P players to buy the game as they hoped. In fact HoT did get back many people (something the LS does not seem to exceed in as well). So that was able to overcome the ‘content drought’ before to some extent. While I agree, they waited way to long with the first expansion what did do some irreversible damage.
They did believe too much in the LS approach and while going for that approach (season 2) results did only keep dropping. So then they had to come up with another plan (expansion) what was a little late and possible had to be rushed.

“The “lack of content” argument will remain forever as a reminder to the higher ups to never do it again for any reason.”
Sure, that is fine, but the real question is then what people (the masses) consider lack of content. Maybe for them these LS-patches is still ‘lack of content’ and what they need is good expansions with some love in-between. That is what I think at least.

Devata.6589:

And that is not because of bad patches because I think this episode 4 is really good, and many people have praised the whole season 3, however that other episodes were also not able to get people back.

The patches are good and LS3 is an improvement over LS2 and/or LS1, at least in my opinion. Maybe players ARE coming back to the game but they are not paying, the problem is elsewhere. The amount of “returning player” posts on these forums is also on the rise.

As an example of “another” reason, there is no doubt that players are becoming richer, it gets easier and easier to get gold in the game, despite the high requirement of some crafting materials. Yet since June 2016 (with some spikes here and there) the price of gems has been falling while previously it was climbing at a steady pace. If players are getting richer, but the price is falling, doesn’t that show that there is less interest for items on the gem store?

FrizzFreston.5290:

Devata.6589:

More hard core is something you do hear a lot lately indeed, then again those that have left are not here to complain about their reasons for leaving. You know I still blame the grind (and some mistakes like no seamless zones and no traditional quests). But whatever it is, it needs to get fixed and then they need to find a way to get players back.

Strange that you name things that were never a draw of this game as something that would make players come back. That seems more something that would simply draw other new players.

No new content is never an argument that can be shredded though. Nor any vaguely viable argument. It is all a factor in the whole thing.

I think for me Kartels reason for playing less rings the most true and also brings to light something that is hard to fix. Familiarity and the rate at which something becomes routine is much faster. So a new map is played through in a few days. And the content light but tech heavy expansion HoT is attributing to that.

The focus of ArenaNet should be playing on their strong points in content and less on upgrading old content. And hopefully they will bring lots of things to do in the next expansion and find a routine of bringing lots of content to us so that there is things to play.

I must say that I have a fairly hard time determining what GW2s strong point is though. And I think even ArenaNet has a hard time deciding what that is considering they keep coming with new ideas and new systems every so often. (Unless that is their strong point that keeps players interested.)

Yeah, I think some problems where here form the beginning and still exist. Did you see how good GW2 initially sold, but then it made a huge drop and ended up on a way lower level.

People complain about nothing to do, well if you have many quest / quest-chains with its own rewards that can already give you a lot to do. But it also helps to get more of a binding with the world what helps you to return to the game even if you did leave.

The last is also true for seamless zones. In the new map there is this broken kitten , but you can’t go to the other side, there is an invisible wall. We can finally see DR from another side but not walk in there. This all does not help getting a bound with the world and so does not help to keep people in the game or get them back.

Getting players to feel like they are part of the world is important, and for that you need to draw them into the world. Talking with NPC’s and helping them (quests) or simply walking from one zone into a new one can go a long way. I still have memories from walking into new zones in other MMO’s and it’s that what you need to retain players but also get them to return.
Yes the issues I mention are there pretty much from the beginning, results have also been dropping pretty much from the beginning.

But then we go too much into things I see as a problem with the game, something I wanted not to go into too much in this thread. Many people already know what I see as the biggest issues with GW2.

About the ‘lack of content’, I did already clarify what I did mean with that exactly.

darkace.8925:

You can blame a lack of content if you want, but I believe Heart of Thorns gave this game a mortal wound from which it won’t recover. Asking an industry-high $50 for an expansion that delivered an egregiously low amount of content, not fully delivering on advertised content, and the stark shift in design philosophy to appeal to a more hardcore but less numerous group of players really hurt this game in a time when Guild Wars 2 needed all the good will and good publicity it could get.

I don’t think the price itself was a problem, but this game is being handles as a cash-shop-game and for a cash-shop game that price is indeed too high. If the game was more focused on expansions from the beginning (and we also had more expansions by now) the same price would not have been an issue imho.

It’s like Anet wants to have the cake and eat it to.

I don’t think this ‘focus on HC’ is true or the problem. Yes we did get raids for that group, and it happens to be the part of the content that did get most attention lately. But I don’t think Anet really shifted to that, they simply added it.

Bruno.3812:

Ayrilana.1396:

darkace.8925:

You can blame a lack of content if you want, but I believe Heart of Thorns gave this game a mortal wound from which it won’t recover. Asking an industry-high $50 for an expansion that delivered an egregiously low amount of content, not fully delivering on advertised content, and the stark shift in design philosophy to appeal to a more hardcore but less numerous group of players really hurt this game in a time when Guild Wars 2 needed all the good will and good publicity it could get.

Raids was just a very small part of the expansion compared to the other 99% that isn’t all that challenging.

Personally I thought he was referring to the harder hitting and more tightly packed trash mobs that made moving through the maps harder. Lots of complaints were about that.

Ah, but that was not based making it more hardcore. They wanted to get people to play together, because this is an MMO and there people are supposed to play together according to Anet at least. They talked about that during the presentation of HoT.

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

Well if other games are have less ‘free’ content and if they are better at retaining people (what might or might not be true depending on the game) with expansions then that might be what works better for many people.

Let’s take a look at those other games then.

The first one in numbers of revenue is Lineage. To my knowledge the game is still subscription based and is only active in Korea. I have no idea how expansions work with this one.

The second is Blade & Soul. B&S is free to play with an optional premium membership. “Expansions” have no cost.

Third one is Lineage II. Lineage II is also free to play, no cost for expansions, with an online marketplace.

Next up is Aion. Aion, just like the others, is free to play with free expansions and a cash shop again.

So all the games that surpass Guild Wars 2 in revenue have no paid expansions and the only NCSoft game on that list with paid expansions is Guild Wars 2…

I was talking in general, not about the NCSoft games specifically. In fact especially not about those games.

My comment was to EdgarMTanaka.7291 who said “Many other more non-korean MMO-games does not give half as much content for free as what Anet gives GW2.”

The games you now refer to are mostly focused on Korean. There people seem to me fine with heavy grind games. In that case this might indeed work.

You know I say I think this approach leads to grind what burns people out. Well here that might be true, in Korea that might not be true.

Devata.6589:

The games you now refer to are mostly focused on Korean. There people seem to me fine with heavy grind games. In that case this might indeed work.

That’s true. I wish we could see how much of those games is coming out of Korea and how much is coming from NA/EU, the markets that GW2 is active at.

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

And that is not because of bad patches because I think this episode 4 is really good, and many people have praised the whole season 3, however that other episodes were also not able to get people back.

The patches are good and LS3 is an improvement over LS2 and/or LS1, at least in my opinion. Maybe players ARE coming back to the game but they are not paying, the problem is elsewhere. The amount of “returning player” posts on these forums is also on the rise.

As an example of “another” reason, there is no doubt that players are becoming richer, it gets easier and easier to get gold in the game, despite the high requirement of some crafting materials. Yet since June 2016 (with some spikes here and there) the price of gems has been falling while previously it was climbing at a steady pace. If players are getting richer, but the price is falling, doesn’t that show that there is less interest for items on the gem store?

That could be a reason. And that might also correlate with those people who are left being more positive about the game.
However if Anet is not generating (enough) money with the gem-store they need to generate it some other way and it still does not look like they go to the expansion-based model I have been hoping for. If they did I expected an expansion 1 to 1,5 years between each other.
We are already 15 months after the release of HoT but so far no news about the next expansion.

So financially (what we are looking at here) it’s still an issue.

And like I said before, even if they manage to fix the problems with GW2, I think that now it will be at least so hard to get players back.

Devata.6589:

And like I said before, even if they manage to fix the problems with GW2, I think that now it will be at least so hard to get players back.

They could market a big LS release as an “expansion”, an LS release that is multiple episodes combined. Just by adding the word “expansion” should bring people back right?

I log in once every two weeks since around 3 months. I used to play every day, but now I will probably also only come back on patchday at least for now. I will probably order another expansion, but I am not buying stuff I don´t need or want.

I also re-learned from the class primus that needing a tank and a healer makes people more forgiving when they need someone for their group and I don´t have to open up my wallet to change my gear, farm for 30+ days or play garbage I hate if there are options in other games where you are “come as who you are as long as you can heal or tank” .

HoT was hastily assembled together from two or three episodes of ls 2 after an emergency meeting and had to be heavily cut on the ginish line to meet the deadline, I am still sure about that.

Torolan.5816:

I log in once every two weeks since around 3 months. I used to play every day, but now I will probably also only come back on patchday at least for now. I will probably order another expansion, but I am not buying stuff I don´t need or want.

I also re-learned from the class primus that needing a tank and a healer makes people more forgiving when they need someone for their group and I don´t have to open up my wallet to change my gear, farm for 30+ days or play garbage I hate if there are options in other games where you are “come as who you are as long as you can heal or tank” .

HoT was hastily assembled together from two or three episodes of ls 2 after an emergency meeting and had to be heavily cut on the ginish line to meet the deadline, I am still sure about that.

One of the worse options imho. Even if they come back (I am not sure if an expansion does it now because they already left after HoT, I think only ‘GW3’ would trigger a lot of people to come back) they will then be dissatisfied about what there is. Even if Anet fixes all the issues left and manages to have a good LS setup, people would expect an expansion and will not get that.

Really the only way I can see it happen is if they would announce the next expansion as basically being GW3, but even then it also has to be different enough to be GW3 or people will be dissatisfied again. And that would then really be the last opportunity. If they would sell it as GW3 and it’s not GW3 (in many people’s eyes) then the name ArenaNet and the name Guild Wars are pretty much dead in the water for the big public.

So it’s tricky, but I really wonder if even the announcement of a new expansion would be enough to get enough people back and if it does and what they get is not an expansion they will be dissatisfied again. (Even if what they get is good, if it’s not an expansion when you promised an expansion that is bad).

Anyway, I don’t want tis thread to become a discussion between us two. It’s interesting to also see other people’s ideas about the subject and the results.

Healix.5819:

Expansions are really the only thing that’ll bring people in. People simply don’t care about some patch an MMO gets, whereas expansions are much more visible.

This.

Regular patches only help with retention. Unfortunately 100% retention rate never happens, which means games invariably have to start appealing to new players. And to do that a game needs something that will get headlines. Expansions bring headlines. Expansions bring attention. Expansions bring players.

Crinn.7864:

Regular patches only help with retention. Unfortunately 100% retention rate never happens, which means games invariably have to start appealing to new players. And to do that a game needs something that will get headlines. Expansions bring headlines. Expansions bring attention. Expansions bring players.

A bundle of multiple LS releases can also be marketed as an expansion.

maddoctor.2738:

A bundle of multiple LS releases can also be marketed as an expansion.

No they can’t. A bundle would get as good of a reception as EA’s season passes do. Which is to say scathing criticism from every quarter.

People aren’t stupid, playing them for stupid will always blow up in your face.

Subtract the minigames, revenant and the elite specs, reduce the intensity of the metas a little and then you see how similar HoT and 4 episodes of ls really are. Not on the same level, but quite close.

Lack of content is still the main problem. Living world releases do not generate that much hype, really, and hype is what causes people to spend the most money. People want real, substantial content – new continents to explore, new armors, new dungeons, new skills, new systems, maybe some mounts, etc. Expansions are the only answer here. Anet really screwed up by not doing them sooner and better – the game should have had 3 by now at least, all bigger than HoT was – and they’ll probably never fully recover.

The second main problem is just how bad Anet is at iterating the game. They don’t do balance changes with nearly enough frequency, and they still haven’t gotten a handle on how to do an attractive endgame that doesn’t revolve around a berserker meta and no vertical progression. Neither open-world content nor FotM replaces traditional dungeon content due mostly to the immersion factor, and the fact that Anet doesn’t seem to care about addressing this is really hurting GW2.

The third biggest problem I think is the loot and gear system. I don’t think we need a lot of power creep, we just need interesting gear. Right now, gearing is very uninteresting. It’s too uniform and systemized. There are essentially no exciting potential drops in the game, which is a huge problem.

Crinn.7864:

No they can’t. A bundle would get as good of a reception as EA’s season passes do. Which is to say scathing criticism from every quarter.

I meant to release them for free just like other LS episodes but Instead of one episode, bundle up 4 of them and call it an “expansion” to reach the headlines of news sites and gaming forums.

Torolan.5816:

Subtract the minigames, revenant and the elite specs, reduce the intensity of the metas a little and then you see how similar HoT and 4 episodes of ls really are. Not on the same level, but quite close.

Exactly.
HoT gave us 4 zones, LS3 gave us 4 zones
HoT gave us 1 raid (although not at release), LS3 gave us 1 raid wing and 2 new fractals
HoT gave us 1 pvp map and 1 game mode, LS3 gave us 2 new maps and 1 remake
Of course HoT zones are more packed full of events than the LS3 zones but that’s beside the point.

What’s really missing are new skills (elite specializations), armor sets and mastery points.

If anyone’s like me after the hot experience, which pretty much everything they added sucked and then they announce another expansion and stuff from the first one isn’t even here never mind fixed why would we give them our money when all they’re doing is putting out gem stuff to get our money even though we’ll have to pay for the new exp too.
I’m not saying I’m right or even know what I’m talking about but most of my guild and I are pretty average gamers and this is how most of us feel, most of us hardly manage to log daily anymore cuz we feel sour over the last year or so.
Also with games going into funding skin creation to try and fund their games and just ending up in a circle of spending money on making skins and then making money off them to make more and then so on. This is the game where I decided to walk away. I think gw2 ruined f2p for me tbh.

I don’t understand how its hard to understand why we have left GW2 and why we don’t come back.
1. Lack of Content.
2 Content that is put out is lacking and I see people comparing LS to DLC’s. but DLC usually are much more than what you get in a LS.
3. GW2 alienated the players with the hype of HOT, than didn’t deliver and worse they time gated stuff when it was released so you didn’t even get all of what you bought. Players didn’t want to wait 8 months of building a guild hall to get the arena set up.
4. Other games are constantly coming out with more expansions/trailers/hype and way better than GW2. ESO has had 5 in less than 2 years with another huge one coming this summer “ESO also just got one hell of a housing update”, Final Fantasy has had 4 big updates "as in adding continents and new classes/races in the last 2 years and another coming this year. Just about ever big MMO will have gotten a big expansion or update between November 2016 and April 2017 beside GW2.
5. GW2 keep relying and recycled content. but not the ones we loved the most like Dragon Bash and the Queens Gauntlet.
6. THE GEM STORE. It was fun at first than you realize that all the new armor “outfits” and all the gliders and anything you would actually want is sitting in the Gems store . This created an adventure vacuum. Because next to nothing is being put into the game, The players have no real motivation/reason to go adventuring, besides to go look at the beautiful landscapes.

7. GW2 has to me the best graphics and animations and it hurts that it turned out how it has and that the developers have some how always made the worst decisions causing the player to realize that they don’t listen to us one bit. I mean for instance lets look at heart of the mists. Why would you add a second WvW category on top of the one you have meaning you have to splitting your player base or that the players will just ignore one which is what happened in GW2’s case.

So if you didn’t know now you know.

Interesting to see some of these comments. My main complain about the game always was the cash-shop focus. I did not expect many people still on the forums that complain about the direct effects of it (because they left). And in fact when I did bring that up usually I get a reaction like ‘I don’t see many people complain about that’.

But now in this thread I see multiple people who complain exactly about the things I consider a consequence of that focus. Sind Bowdragon namens a few of those things (especially “This created an adventure vacuum.” that is the lack of goals I mentioned many times as a consequence), just as DeeSystm and Einlanzer names a few of those things. There is also another thread at this moment https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/a-world-with-no-transmutation-charges/page/1 that hits the same subject.

Interesting to still see people here who have / see those same issues (even if they don’t talk about the focus itself).

The problem in this game is the lack of progression.

While everyone claims to hate the gear treadmill, because I for the most part do as well, a huge part of mmos is the feeling of progressing and getting new gear.

This game has NOTHING to do besides chase skins and most of the best ones are in the gem store.

Its boring and its annoying. Ive been playing FF14 and WoW (only a little) lately and I completely look forward to the level cap increase and new gear ill eventually have to get

Question for people who put their reasons for leaving, or their vision why results are going down, here.

What do you think that has to change (and how) to get the game good again, and then how to get people back?

Because even if it is good, if there is nobody to see, it’s not helping.
It would be interesting to also see that in the comments.

Azure.8670:

Its boring and its annoying. Ive been playing FF14 and WoW (only a little) lately and I completely look forward to the level cap increase and new gear ill eventually have to get

Boring and annoying as that might be, it’s the reason players play GW2 in the first place. If they ever changed that and made the game progression like in those other games then that would send away those still playing the game. Is it worth bringing new players into the game while alienating those who are still playing?

And a level cap increase and new gear tiers will have a much higher impact on the players than the introduction of Ascended tier, the increase of difficulty in the expansions or Raids ever did.

Devata.6589:

Question for people who put their reasons for leaving, or their vision why results are going down, here.

What do you think that has to change (and how) to get the game good again, and then how to get people back?

Because even if it is good, if there is nobody to see, it’s not helping.
It would be interesting to also see that in the comments.

I think loot needs to be more exciting. Imagine just going around an area doing events and suddenly an item drops and it is a focus that reduces cantrip recharge by 3 seconds every time you blind an opponent. This could completely change how you play your character. Loot in an rpg is part of the adventure and people should be excited every time something drops because maybe… just maybe it’ll be something really fun to play with.

I left GW2, because I was tired of it all. It is completely awesome at first, but eventually it just becomes too repetitive to endure any longer.

maddoctor.2738:

I meant to release them for free just like other LS episodes but Instead of one episode, bundle up 4 of them and call it an “expansion” to reach the headlines of news sites and gaming forums.

SW:TOR (EA Bioware) experimented with that during that game’s 2.x patch cycle. They called them “digital expansions.” The term was dropped after underwhelming response to the first two “digital expacs”

Personnaly, user created content would provide me an infinite renewed interest (be it skins, dungeons, skills and what not). But even if they wre willing and able to pull it out, there are so many ways to screw also this…

Vayne.8563:

Yep this thread is about how things are. You’re trying to determine WHY they are, and you don’t have the information to do so, nor have you ever had that information.

The players and ex players are likely the best source for that explanation so I just ask them here.

Vayne.8563:

We know that the game isn’t making as much money as it used to, but we don’t know if that’s expected or not expected. We don’t know the expectations of the companies or the stockholders and without knowing that, there’s no way to judge it’s success.

The game is still successsful, even having had its lowest quarter. At least I think it is. I don’t really see any reason to believe otherwise.

Great how you keep doing that (dismissing people ideas because they can’t be factually proven while making a lot of claims yourself), even here where you end once sentence telling there is no way to judge it’s success, trying to dismiss somebodies opinion or data. And then making a similar claim yourself.

I mean.. look at this " there’s no way to judge it’s success. The game is still successsful, even having had its lowest quarter."

Anyway, it might still be successful from the investors perspective, I think it makes perfect sense that the more income, and the more stable the income, the better is is for the game and so the player. So dropping results is something you would not want to see. Even if the investor is happy because he made his money.

Vayne.8563:

You’re trying to make a point using this as data.

uhm.. no? I am not trying to make a point in this thread. It’s just about sharing opinions and discussing data.

I am passed the try making a point. I did do that when I did think it was still useful if things changed and so making my point could be helpful. But I do find it interesting to look at this data and see people opinions and ideas, and than looking back ad old data and in the future looking back at what people are saying now and what did happen. That is interesting to me. If you do that a lot you might train yourself at predicting trends.

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Yep this thread is about how things are. You’re trying to determine WHY they are, and you don’t have the information to do so, nor have you ever had that information.

The players and ex players are likely the best source for that explanation so I just ask them here.

Vayne.8563:

We know that the game isn’t making as much money as it used to, but we don’t know if that’s expected or not expected. We don’t know the expectations of the companies or the stockholders and without knowing that, there’s no way to judge it’s success.

The game is still successsful, even having had its lowest quarter. At least I think it is. I don’t really see any reason to believe otherwise.

Great how you keep doing that (dismissing people ideas because they can’t be factually proven while making a lot of claims yourself), even here where you end once sentence telling there is no way to judge it’s success, trying to dismiss somebodies opinion or data. And then making a similar claim yourself.

I mean.. look at this " there’s no way to judge it’s success. The game is still successsful, even having had its lowest quarter."

Anyway, it might still be successful from the investors perspective, I think it makes perfect sense that the more income, and the more stable the income, the better is is for the game and so the player. So dropping results is something you would not want to see. Even if the investor is happy because he made his money.

Vayne.8563:

You’re trying to make a point using this as data.

uhm.. no? I am not trying to make a point in this thread. It’s just about sharing opinions and discussing data.

I’m not dismissing your idea. I’m saying there’s no evidence to support it. You MIGHT be right. You just as surely MIGHT be wrong.

It’s like having a huge box, filled with an unknown substance. We can speculate all day about the substance, but in this case, there’s no way to open the box to check.

Feel free to speculate. But in this case the data simply isn’t there to draw any kind of conclusion realistically. All we know is that total income is down. That’s it. It’s too complex to really get a bead on.

Pointing that out is not dismissive. It’s just factual. We can’t know this.

Yseron.8613:

Personnaly, user created content would provide me an infinite renewed interest (be it skins, dungeons, skills and what not). But even if they wre willing and able to pull it out, there are so many ways to screw also this…

In a way guild-halls do offer this with the decoration system. That does not do it for you?

Not sure what the point of your threads is. They’ve gone to an expansion model, and are releasing them as soon as they are ready. I know you feel they should remove (or mostly remove) the Gem Store, but I don’t think the Studio feels that would be productive at this time, nor do I.

What more do you want from them? A ‘Devata was right’ announcement? Probably what happened to the last thread is as much acknowledgement as is forthcoming.

Good luck.

Vayne.8563:

It’s like having a huge box, filled with an unknown substance. We can speculate all day about the substance, but in this case, there’s no way to open the box to check.

Feel free to speculate. But in this case the data simply isn’t there to draw any kind of conclusion realistically. All we know is that total income is down. That’s it. It’s too complex to really get a bead on.

Pointing that out is not dismissive. It’s just factual. We can’t know this.

I have to disagree. You can shake the box, look at the shape and size of the box, way the box, look where the box came from, who gave it to you, the colors of the box. All that information can give you a better idea of what is in the box.

You don’t know for sure, but you can get an accurate idea. And in a way that is what we are doing here, and what I have been doing a long time.

It is also very important and because it helps you to at least narrow the possibilities and that is also why companies make big decisions in a similar way. There is almost never a 100% certainty about how something will work out. So they look at the information they do have and try to figure out what it means.

But let’s not make this a discussion between you and me. We have had enough of those discussions and agree to disagree on this.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Not sure what the point of your threads is. They’ve gone to an expansion model, and are releasing them as soon as they are ready. I know you feel they should remove (or mostly remove) the Gem Store, but I don’t think the Studio feels that would be productive at this time, nor do I.

What more do you want from them? A ‘Devata was right’ announcement? Probably what happened to the last thread is as much acknowledgement as is forthcoming.

Good luck.

The point of this thread was to talk about the results. There has been a thread like this with almost every result every released. I just now happened to see the report before a thread was created so I created it.

It is not about what I feel they should do. Like I said to Vayne, we are passed that point.

And no, I do not need an acknowledgment.

Crinn.7864:

maddoctor.2738:

I meant to release them for free just like other LS episodes but Instead of one episode, bundle up 4 of them and call it an “expansion” to reach the headlines of news sites and gaming forums.

SW:TOR (EA Bioware) experimented with that during that game’s 2.x patch cycle. They called them “digital expansions.” The term was dropped after underwhelming response to the first two “digital expacs”

And then they can be lucky that they named it “digital expansions.”, because if they named it “expansions” and they would come with a true expansions there was also nobody to pay attention anymore imho. I really think these type of small things can be important.

Now because they named it “digital expansions.” and the reposes where underwhelming, once they talk about “Expansions” again, people are paying attention.

That is the same reason why I think GW2’s best way to get into the spotlight again is to promote their next expansion basically as GW3. But that is a risk as when they don’t deliver on that there are no more cards to play.

Crinn.7864:

maddoctor.2738:

I meant to release them for free just like other LS episodes but Instead of one episode, bundle up 4 of them and call it an “expansion” to reach the headlines of news sites and gaming forums.

SW:TOR (EA Bioware) experimented with that during that game’s 2.x patch cycle. They called them “digital expansions.” The term was dropped after underwhelming response to the first two “digital expacs”

Was the response underwhelming because those “digital expansions” lacked content or because of the term they used? There are expansions and there EXPANSIONS.

If they bundle 4 LS episodes in one big package and market it as an expansion how much different is it from Heart of Thorns in terms of content? Heart of Thorns was considered bad by many players for the price tag, what if we got Heart of Thorns for free? Would people still call it a failure?

maddoctor.2738:

If they bundle 4 LS episodes in one big package and market it as an expansion how much different is it from Heart of Thorns in terms of content? Heart of Thorns was considered bad by many players for the price tag, what if we got Heart of Thorns for free? Would people still call it a failure?

HoT was more than just map zones. It brought Masteries. It brought gliding. It brought new traitlines and skills. It brought raids. It brought new gear types and legendries.

HoT massively changed the game. LS is not even on the same level.

Was the response underwhelming because those “digital expansions” lacked content or because of the term they used? There are expansions and there EXPANSIONS.

They where underwhelming because they where not real expacs, and everyone knew it. Gaming sites gave those digi expacs no more coverage than any other random content patch. Doing the same with LS would net the same result.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Not sure what the point of your threads is. They’ve gone to an expansion model, and are releasing them as soon as they are ready. I know you feel they should remove (or mostly remove) the Gem Store, but I don’t think the Studio feels that would be productive at this time, nor do I.

What more do you want from them? A ‘Devata was right’ announcement? Probably what happened to the last thread is as much acknowledgement as is forthcoming.

Good luck.

I enjoy these threads. Devata brings an intelligent analysis to the topic that’s worth considering and discussing.

Crinn.7864:

HoT was more than just map zones. It brought Masteries. It brought gliding. It brought new traitlines and skills. It brought raids. It brought new gear types and legendries.

We got more Legendary weapons with the LS than with HoT.
We got a lot of new masteries too, maybe they’d need to up them in those 4 bundled episodes. Especially for gliding where we got 5 new skills while gliding. Also got one new downed skill.
Got 1 Raid wing, 2 new fractals and a redesign of another Fractal. The expansion wasn’t released with any Raids at all and the first wing was added a month after the expansion was out.

The only thing actually missing is new elite specializations.

Crinn.7864:

They where underwhelming because they where not real expacs, and everyone knew it. Gaming sites gave those digi expacs no more coverage than any other random content patch. Doing the same with LS would net the same result.

That’s a terrible “reason”. What’s a “real expac” anyway? Just because you need to pay to buy it doesn’t make it more of an expansion than a free one.

darkace.8925:

You can blame a lack of content if you want, but I believe Heart of Thorns gave this game a mortal wound from which it won’t recover. Asking an industry-high $50 for an expansion that delivered an egregiously low amount of content, not fully delivering on advertised content, and the stark shift in design philosophy to appeal to a more hardcore but less numerous group of players really hurt this game in a time when Guild Wars 2 needed all the good will and good publicity it could get.

You nailed the problem with GW2 right on the head with that statement. When HOT came out there were scores of people against how it was advertised and the cost for such a small expansion. And following its release people began to leave and continue to leave.
Anet ruined the game when they did not care to listen to the players who were part of GW2 from its start. There was great potential for GW2 but they shifted the emphasis away from what made the game great. I think their greed for getting more money out of their player base caused them to change the direction of the game and now it has caught up with them in falling sales and the player base from the beginning of GW2 having moved on.

I wish GW2 would follow finally the model of Blade & Soul, then it would go upwards again with Guild Wars 2 in every kind of way because that model would stabilize the incomes of Guild Wars 2 so much, that ANet will get again for everything more budget money to be able to improve this game where it is needed due to being able to hire more people to quicken their development processes.
Plus that model would take pressure away from the gemstore and anet could finalyl focus more on real issues of the game to be fixed, than instead focusing too much on the gemstore, just so that the game is able to survive..because the gemstore only model is way too weak for this game by now …

The game has already outgrown in regards of its fix costs a long time ago the gemstore only model, than the gemstore is able to generate incomes, especially due to more and more people leavign GW2 in masses whenever Anet makes its next ridiculous absurd and terrible design decision either, or make something, that massively disappoints alot of players, like underdelivering massively with half hearted, rushed and super unfinished products like HoT that they call an expansion, what players from other games like FF14 wouldn’t even call in their dreams just a worthy patch for their money they pay monthly

Aside from its payment model that needs a change and the problem that ANet has with retaining bettr players is, that the game has due to its many terrible design decisions of the past right now so many problems with Game Balance alone, that essentially Anet would have to completely redesign the whole Combat System just to fix the mess they created with the change of the Condition System and the way to fast rushed in Elite Specializations that were just more oil to the fire, when it would have been best for the game balance to fix first the changes made on the conditino system, before adding Elite Specs into the game at a moment, where the game balance was already totally out of control.

It would have been much better for GW2, if Anet would have waited with Revs and the E-Specs for the second expansion.

HoT should have rather brought instead only features, that would brign the game further.
Would have HoT brought instead of Revs and Elite Specs instead as new Features the implementation of Build Templates, Player Housing (way too similar as feature with Guild Halls, so totally not understandable why they didn’t put here 1+1 together and added PH as well together with the same GH system) and a rework of the Crafting System together with the implementation of Legendary Acessoires/Skill Skins, Ascended Upgrades/500 Jewler/Chef and msaybe eventually some good stuff like Fishing/Digging/Gardening instead, then these things would have brought GW2 further and would have made the game better, instead of causing just only much more Game Balance Chaos like the rushed in Rev and Elite-Specs did just only because NCSoft wanted to see Anet to cash in with HoT quickly, because of the weak Gemstore performing not good enough to do the job alone to finance the game and they and NCSoft needed the sales of Hot so badly, that they didn#t wanted to give HoT just the time that it would have needed to become a proper and good designed real expansion that would have been worth its money to be called an expansion.

darkace.8925:

You can blame a lack of content if you want, but I believe Heart of Thorns gave this game a mortal wound from which it won’t recover. Asking an industry-high $50 for an expansion that delivered an egregiously low amount of content, not fully delivering on advertised content, and the stark shift in design philosophy to appeal to a more hardcore but less numerous group of players really hurt this game in a time when Guild Wars 2 needed all the good will and good publicity it could get.

I have thought this myself while I took the last 6 months off of GW2 for burnout, so I agree with Darkface. But, in addition, while I took a self imposed sabbatical to take some time away to figure out what I loved out GW2 and what was causing the burnout, I am also wondering if part of the problem, which is discussed on another forum post, is why is the endgame so underwhelming? I think for me, it is because GW2 Core itself provided for me all that I really needed in the game, and I did it to ad-infinitum. 14 toons at 80th level, 3 with the elite specs, 10 legendaries, 6 more Dungeon legendary gifts should I ever feel like world completing again, 2 spare Gifts of Battle, and all of that was done by the 3rd month of HoT(2.5 years of game time overall). HoT itself really didnt add anything but gliding, the 3 elite specs, and completing Scribing by March 2016, of interest to me. With Core GW2 you could chat with guildmates and do guild missions, dungeons, or fractals and cut the fool or roleplay sometimes, but now with the excess grind in HoT and everyone off doing their own thing cause everything is account bound. Now it’s really hard to get people to congregate on TS or Discord and do things together, unless everyone happens to be waiting on the same map event, which now you can almost fall asleep waiting on. It is almost as if it would have been better if we only got 40 levels to work with on GW2 and each expac opening up 10 more levels.

That list won’t work for that, cause its simply more needed than such simple changes. but however its your opinion and for that this list is ok naturally as opinions naturally can be different.

This game need bigger, more powerful and well thought out changes to effectively be able to retain its players and to stabilizie its incomings again…

To stabilizie its incomings first, it is absolutely neccessary that Anet moves away from their stubborn gemstore/frre account only payment model. An optional subscription is is essential, if Anet wants to work against the constant growing fix costs of GW2 and to ensure, that the gemstore can lose some of its pressure that weights currently only on it, when it is clearly too weak to be responsible for everything.
The gemstore is more a burden for this game, than it is a blessing, as long it has to do the job of finanncing this game completely alone!.

Once this is solved, Anet has to work massively on this games BALANCE finally, because the second greates reason why people leave Guild Wars 2 and never come back its its current total terrible game balance that we have to endure since 23. June of 2015.

The simplest thing on the milestone list of balance improvements that Anet could do right now and that would bring efficiently GW2 forward alot would be by now first to completelya rework the Condition and boon System of GW2, reducing both sides to a least minimum and rebalancing the new system then on the skills and traits of the Classes and its Elite Specializations.

Then after that has been done as next step, redesign the Health System to individualize it for each Class and rework after that then the Upgrade System of Sigils, Runes and Gemstones from GW2 based on the last made Balance Changes, so that this part of the combat system will harmonize then with the new Condition and Boon System again.

if these steps have been done, then the game will be also ready for adding more new Elite-Specializations. If Anet adds now with another expansion more Elite-Specs, before they modernize and actualize the games combat systems to equal balanced terms, then they will ruin this game with them….

These balance changes are essentially needed, not only to retain tons of lost players that quit permanently with GW2 due to its horrible balance state, but also to give the game the needed foundation that is required to be able at all to add in the future more elite specializations, without that hell breaks out again anew every single time they do add new Elite Specs, just because the game was in a state of complete unpreparedness when they added like, like the game was when they released HoT, because Anet rushed it with HoT and didn’t care at all about it, if the expansion basically puts just only oil into the fire, because all about what they cared for in that moment was only, that cash comes into the purses ….

PS: hmm, the posting I refer to seems to have been gotten deleted ..
Should have quoted it >.<

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

It’s like having a huge box, filled with an unknown substance. We can speculate all day about the substance, but in this case, there’s no way to open the box to check.

Feel free to speculate. But in this case the data simply isn’t there to draw any kind of conclusion realistically. All we know is that total income is down. That’s it. It’s too complex to really get a bead on.

Pointing that out is not dismissive. It’s just factual. We can’t know this.

I have to disagree. You can shake the box, look at the shape and size of the box, way the box, look where the box came from, who gave it to you, the colors of the box. All that information can give you a better idea of what is in the box.

You don’t know for sure, but you can get an accurate idea. And in a way that is what we are doing here, and what I have been doing a long time.

It is also very important and because it helps you to at least narrow the possibilities and that is also why companies make big decisions in a similar way. There is almost never a 100% certainty about how something will work out. So they look at the information they do have and try to figure out what it means.

But let’s not make this a discussion between you and me. We have had enough of those discussions and agree to disagree on this.

Again we can’t even see the box that was a analogy. Unfortunately the box we’re discussing isn’t something we can pick up and hold. The box we’re talking about is in a locked room at Anet headquarters, and most likely even they don’t know all the reasons why something happens.

We have to at some point acknowledge the nature of causality. Western thinking teachs us there’s usually one major reason for everything, and it’s almost never the case.

Edit: My guess is the company’s perceived change of direction with regards to the way the game itself is structured is one of the bigger reasons the game hasn’t made as much money. That and the fact that HOT sales were lacklustre, which would mean the expansion model hurt the game, rather than helped it.

I could be wrong, though. There’s simply no way to tell.

We know th utilities are going down slowly, but to put something clear, this time they have more people working on the expa, that count as another project, one that will give profits later.

That means if their costs are the same as before, some are in the new expa, meaning a drop in utilities for gw2 doesnt mean a drop in rentability.

Normally rentability its the way to go, only type of exceptions that come to my main could be if both projects have the same rentability but one cover all your assets the other not and the secondary projects offer less rentability, so you choose the better group of investment (the big budget project).

So, too little info. But yeah must of us will like gw2 to have ten times the income it gets and 100 times the quality and quantity in realeses xd.

Vayne.8563:

Edit: My guess is the company’s perceived change of direction with regards to the way the game itself is structured is one of the bigger reasons the game hasn’t made as much money. That and the fact that HOT sales were lacklustre, which would mean the expansion model hurt the game, rather than helped it.

I could be wrong, though. There’s simply no way to tell.

HoT sales were not lackluster (F2P people buying GW2/HoT was lackluster), income did get a huge boost with HoT, it just was not able to retain that boost. Looking at the results from pre-HoT, it’s safe to say the total income would have been lower without HoT, so it’s a strange conclusion you make.

I have seen a few people suggesting that HoT might have been the problem. I don’t think this is true, however HoT should have been the solution to an existing problem and it was not the solution. It was their main opportunity to get things on track again and that failed. So they wasted that opportunity and in that way you can say it was bad.

I simply based this on the fact that results where decreasing also before HoT. If you would have followed that downtrend we would be at similar results as we are today. HoT created a bump but then we did fall back where we likely would also have been without HoT. And with one additional problem, the many people who would give GW2 one more chance with the expansion, now are not giving GW2 another chance with the next expansion. (Some will, but I think many won’t)

In fact, I think the fact that results where going down is likely the main reason we did get HoT. For a very long time there was no plan for an expansion (A big mistake according to me), and a developer even said “if we do this right, there will never be an expansion”. So their philosophy clearly was to go for the LS approach, but that did not work out. Once HoT was announced many people who might else have left, waiting for HoT, other came back for Hot. But once HoT did not solve their reason for wanting to leave or leaving they simply left after-all / again.

Sure HoT did also bring it’s own problems, but I really don’t think HoT is the main reason for GW2’s current state. HoT did also bring a lot of good things (while not all implemented perfectly). Like raids, guild-halls, new maps, gliders and so on. However, it did not bring (enough) the one thing it definitely should have… the solution to the problem(s) that GW2 was already struggling with.

Lucius.2140:

We know th utilities are going down slowly, but to put something clear, this time they have more people working on the expa, that count as another project, one that will give profits later.

You have a point here. Where HoT did not seem to be planned ahead, the next expansion has likely already been planned even from before HoT was released. Work on it might now also already have been longer than the time they build HoT.

So that might result in a better next expansion.

Lucius.2140:

That means if their costs are the same as before, some are in the new expa, meaning a drop in utilities for gw2 doesnt mean a drop in rentability.

That is also how a true expansion-based model would work and then indeed the results in-between can be very low without being a problem. But then you would need an expansion really every 1 to 1,5 year. Considering we still have no information I am guessing the next one will at best be 2 years after HoT.

-

Problem does stay that people might not give the next expansion another try because the last one did not solve their problem. There is only so much people take before they give up trying / faith.

I think the problem was the direction, hardcore and raid should never be the focus of this game.

Slowpokeking.8720:

I think the problem was the direction, hardcore and raid should never be the focus of this game.

But is it the focus of this game? I don’t think it is. Yes there where more raid patches in the first period after HoT then other type of patches, but that might simply be because it’s from another team who might be able to release it faster.

The HoT maps are harder for solo-players but that has imho more to do with the fact that they wanted to make group-content then because they wanted to make it more hardcore.

I can not say the game as total now suddenly has a focus on HC content. You do think that is the case? And what do you base that on?

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Edit: My guess is the company’s perceived change of direction with regards to the way the game itself is structured is one of the bigger reasons the game hasn’t made as much money. That and the fact that HOT sales were lacklustre, which would mean the expansion model hurt the game, rather than helped it.

I could be wrong, though. There’s simply no way to tell.

HoT sales were not lackluster (F2P people buying GW2/HoT was lackluster), income did get a huge boost with HoT, it just was not able to retain that boost. Looking at the results from pre-HoT, it’s safe to say the total income would have been lower without HoT, so it’s a strange conclusion you make.

No, income didn’t in fact get a huge boost, and it was a far smaller boost than one would expect with an expansion. What’s your definition of a “huge” boost?

Yes, they sold boxes, but they stated directly that sales didn’t meet expectations. The expansion itself didn’t do well.

There are many possible reasons for this. Pricing and the character slot fiasco probably key among them. The community was angry, people came to look at the reddit and website saw that and it was overall bad for sales.

HoT didn’t do well, so of course, less people are playing now than would have been. Because people who didn’t buy HOT have no new content except for a couple of new fractals (which lesser rewards since they dont’ have masteries) and the shatterer revamp.

theres honeslty a little replayability value to most content pve wise the endgame is basically dailies and weeklys this and the fact that the cash shop in gw2 is very very playe firendly to the point that you can farmt he gems for what ever you like.