Guild Wars 2

A Massive Headache.1879:

as i’m sure was stated before. there is no grind for anything necessary. Leveling curve is absolutely fine, and exotic gear drops enough. As for fractals and ascended gear, that’s a bit of a grind but it’s not too bad, especially if you enjoy eotm

That is just not true. First of all, exotic gear does not drop enough. Second, best in slot is ascended and ascended is a grind to get. First to get the materials (and gold) to level up the required crafting disciplines, then again to get the material and gold to craft the actual gear.

Galen Grey.4709:

And you know what even if we only get 2hrs of gameplay out of every release and its way more then that when you factor in NPC dialog, exploration, replayability etc.. but lets leave it at 2hrs like you suggest… that means 104 hrs of new gameplay a year… thats more then single player RPG blockbusters that generally advertize they offer 80hrs – 100 hrs of content if you exclude replayability.

These are games that generally take years of development to delivery those 100hrs and all that time you cannot do anything but wait. Yet with Gw2 you get 2 hrs of stuff to do every 2 weeks. However while people praise those single player rpgs development teams for providing tons of content here we bash Arenanet for essentially not doing a thing even though they’re actually doing just as well.

I am sorry if I sound a bit too harsh but people seriously, you dont like the content fine, you wish for a different type of content fine, you want it all permanent fine but please stop trying to twist things or coming up with contorted reasons to make it sound like all the content we were given never really exsited.

I don’t know how you can compare a single player RPG to an MMO.
A single player is a movie-like, engrossing experience. Usually with deep stories, great dialogue, deep battle systems and fight mechanics.
GW2 is like a half-hour cartoon by comparison. A quick fix of mindless zerg content every 2 weeks, that’s forgettable as soon as you’re done it.
I really wouldn’t consider 104 hours of new gameplay to be that, when the majority of it was this :
Heres a new boss, zerg it.
Here’s a new event, zerg it.
Here’s a new treasure hunt.
BTW your builds and gear don’t matter, since it’s zerg feel free to do it naked and your presence does not matter.
Repeat.

It’s not adding anything to the actual game.
It’s not engrossing, since it doesn’t matter what build I am or what gear I have or if I’m even there. That’s not quality content, IMO.

Anet seems to think quantity is better than quality. I feel it should be the other way around.
Who cares that they push out 2 hours of content every 2 weeks when its forgettable zerg fluff? I’d much rather one big quality release than rushing out these half-kitten ones just because they can and want to claim how often they update.

Devata.6589:

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

Jasper.9341:

Tho this is a buy to play game, so we are willing to accept it

Strange that you look at it that way. The way I look at it. Because this is a B2P game we should not get the F2P cash—shop focus but get an expansion every year we have to pay for if we want the content.

That is how I look at it. sadly it tunred into a cash-shop game that has the F2P negatives.

btw, I meant to ask this but never got around to it. Every single B2P game has a cash shop what makes you say B2P games should not have a cash shop? Now a days even P2P games have cash shops! But save for Gw1 at the beginning which technically isnt even an MMO every single B2P to ever come out had a cash shop!

So I have to ask, whats the bases of your statement?

If you pay good attention I mainly (sometimes I talk about a cash-shop focus. I am fine with a cash-shop if it sells only out-of-game items / services. Like changing your name, a full make-over kit, race-changer that sort of stuff. I could even be ok with a vip-service if it only gave out-of game things (Like beta access).

It’s the focus that is the problem. And while you could say GW1 was not a true MMO because it had all instances you can say the same about GW2 with the difference that in GW1 only the city was ‘public’ and in GW2 it’s per map but also not a true open world. That however does not change much for the feasibility to use a true B2P model so without a cash-shop focus.

Now a days even P2P games have cash-shops indeed yeah. That does not mean it’s needed or good, it means companies will try anything to get as much money as they can (what I do understand) and especially MMO’s are seen as moneymakers and so sadly they also get more and more purely treated as that.

That does not mean the companies and there so called smart business people know what there doing. No this is not me telling I am smarter as them, this is me pointing out some facts. After WoW got released many companies tried to copy the income. All creating sub-based games. What did is result in so far? That over the last 10 years (all after WoW) they where forced to go F2P or even got closed down. So just because something is the standard or just because something is done a lot does not mean it works or it is the best. They do it because they think it’s the best way to get the highest income and even if that’s true then I personally are also looking at the game from a game and quality viewpoint.. you know being the customer and stuff.

only every single MMO thats b2p and you can include Gw1 if you want include far more then that, they all sell cosmetic stuff, mini pets, etc… Gw2 isnt the only b2p that runs this type of cash shop they all do!

As for if said content is effecting game play and thus making the game worst then it could be thats all speculation no one can say conclusively if thats the case or not. Every coin has 2 faces after all.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

Not to argue about the amount of content (I do think an expansion would have likely delivered more content).

How so ? do you think that by doing the LS and sticking to a 2 week schedule some developers were more relaxed and thus less productive then if they had to deliver content in 1 – 2 years time? Cause i have a feeling the oppsite is likely true. People keep comparing this to gw1 and thus expecting an expansion to be delivered in the same 6 month time frame which isnt realistic. Gw2 content requires a lot more work, just compare LA in Gw1 and Gw2, in Gw2 not only every building / structure contains more detailed topoplogy and more textures and added detail but there is also a ton more models. Same goes for the open world, terrain is more complex, more models all around, outposts arent simply a few houses together but a whole lot more work etc.. Even back in the Gw1 days they said releasing expansions every 6 months was too hard. I am sure you know as well as I if not even more that in 10 years processing power shot up and that means that we now expect a much higher graphical fidelity in our games which in turn doesnt simply mean program your engine to display 10 year old stuff nicer but things now have to have very fine detail and tons of secondary movement and stuff and thats all stuff that takes a ton more time to create.

Simply speaking if they had done no living story an expansion would still have taken 1 – 2 years to create most likely and no employee remained idle in the meantime so yes the big expensive stuff to create like zones probably took longer to create then if there was no living story but in the meantime we got stuff to enjoy! Provided this year they release new zones and all the good stuff what Anet did is absolutely ideal in my opinion and I am confident people will be more open to LS too because lets face it no one like to wait. even 1-2 month break created stress imagine 1 – 2 year breaks. with minor repeatable stuff in between. Nightmare!

As for the temporary content, I know your opinion on that and I respect that so nothing to add to that.
~

I did say “Not to argue about the amount of content” so not sure why you then want to. It’s not the big issue for me. But to answer the question. I think that because expansions in general have more to offe (including those from GW1, and I don’t expect it in 6 months but about 1 year what should be realistic. Yes details have gone up and that does increase the work but tools have also become better decreasing the work. So the 1 year should work.) The LS does also cost a lot of time, it are all groups working on a little part of the story that then gets removed again. Lets see all the instances and mini dungeons we have had. If they where building an expansion then that would have been maybe 3 new big dungeons. But now it are different smaller groups that deliver all small chunks of content that gets removed afterward so it’s content does not have the same amount of overall value. You might do a dungeon multiple times but many of the mini instances we have had is something you would and could only do once so has a way lower content value.

The many mini games fit great in the LS content but how much overall value do those add to the game? Maybe if they added fighting with mini’s it would because then you also had to train the mini’s but then it would not fit into the LS because it’s stuff to do in that two weeks period.

It’s like building 100 small toy cars or one big real car. In time and effort it might be the same but in product value the car gives me much more then 100 toy cars.

Much of the activities we did see in the LS could have gone into events and quest on new maps and so on.

Voice-acting for story-telling that you see once (and so has no real content value just story-telling value) and then is gone vs voice-acting for stuff (npc’s, events and so on) on a new map or for a new race.

So yeah in time it might have been about the same (maybe that is the saddest part) but in content value it’s not. I don’t consider many of the mini instances as content (more as a little story telling or somewhere you had to go to quickly to get your achievement) and at this moment they are factual no content anymore but they all did take time to build.

Also there is a little flaw in your comment. You say that it would take longer so if they released now we would have the same amount of content but next season we will see the new maps. That makes no sense as those people have been building the LS. So that time is gone, maybe there is another team working on expansion-like content but then if the LS people would also have worked on a expansion then it might have been done in a year.

This is what happened.

I love how it’s always the same people who are so quick to defend ANet.

MrRuin.9740:

I don’t know how you can compare a single player RPG to an MMO.
A single player is a movie-like, engrossing experience. Usually with deep stories, great dialogue, deep battle systems and fight mechanics.
GW2 is like a half-hour cartoon by comparison. A quick fix of mindless zerg content every 2 weeks, that’s forgettable as soon as you’re done it.
I really wouldn’t consider 104 hours of new gameplay to be that, when the majority of it was this :
Heres a new boss, zerg it.
Here’s a new event, zerg it.
Here’s a new treasure hunt.
BTW your builds and gear don’t matter, since it’s zerg feel free to do it naked and your presence does not matter.
Repeat.

It’s not adding anything to the actual game.
It’s not engrossing, since it doesn’t matter what build I am or what gear I have or if I’m even there. That’s not quality content, IMO.

Anet seems to think quantity is better than quality. I feel it should be the other way around.
Who cares that they push out 2 hours of content every 2 weeks when its forgettable zerg fluff? I’d much rather one big quality release than rushing out these half-kitten ones just because they can and want to claim how often they update.

honestly this zerging thing is perplexing. Except for 2 living story events (the queen’s pavilion and the final battle with scarlet) arenanet didnt say here is a new event go zerg it or here is a new boss go zerg it.. they said here is an event, zerg it and you fail, here is a new boss zerg it and you fail.

What did players do ?
at first it was we dont care that we fail we just want rewards and we get more rewards if we zerg.

Arenanet responded to that by putting rare rewards that you can only earn if you win.
Players: we dont care about your rare rewards we want gold and we get more of that if we zerg so once again we dont care if we fail.

Now Arenanet tried a new approach with the queen pavilion, you only get rewards at the end and if you zerg you get less if you dont zerg you get more.
Personally I have a feeling in a couple of days players will be like, this is not profitable enough we’re back to our usual zerg farming champions.

and ofcourse thats all the time while complaining about how zergy the game is.

I was there for every single LS release and having fun wasnt that hard, you see the zerg going east you turn west and join up with a small group of like minded adventures you find along the way. Clockwork invasions were actually fun doing in small groups of 3 – 5 or so. The tower of nightmares was actually challenging doing it in a small group of 3 – 5 players. Escape from LA? same thing.

I simply dont understand people complain about zerging yet in these events what you see most is people in zone chat asking people to spread out that they very rarely actually do and then fail.

Are people unable to play a game in a way they enjoy if they’re not forced to by said game?

Flytrap.8075:

I love how it’s always the same people who are so quick to defend ANet.

Why isnt it logical? Us who like the game defend it. People who rather things where done differently well argue against it.

I honestly see nothing out of the ordinary or are you of the opinion that its all bad no one likes the game yet there are these people who for some mysterious reason defend what they dont like themselves?

Galen Grey.4709:

Flytrap.8075:

I love how it’s always the same people who are so quick to defend ANet.

Why isnt it logical? Us who like the game defend it. People who rather things where done differently well argue against it.

I honestly see nothing out of the ordinary or are you of the opinion that its all bad no one likes the game yet there are these people who for some mysterious reason defend what they dont like themselves?

I just find it amusing that yourself and a few others never fail to rush to ANet’s defense.

I’m glad that you enjoy the game, but the fact of the matter is that GW2 has grown extremely stale and boring for a lot of us. I know that the majority of my guild is simply biding their time until another unnamed game is released and I myself haven’t logged in for almost a month now.

I’d love for ANet to release some substantial updates that breathe some much needed life into this game that I enjoyed for quite some time, but I simply don’t see it happening anytime soon. Don’t let that stop your white knighting, though

The real question is whether Anet feels new life is needed here. The obvious answer is no. They’re not adding content because they consider their gem store sales to be sufficient right now. Player opinion has nothing to do with it because players are already voting with their pocketbooks and the numbers are fine from Anet’s point of view.

Devata.6589:

I did say “Not to argue about the amount of content” so not sure why you then want to. It’s not the big issue for me. But to answer the question. I think that because expansions in general have more to offe (including those from GW1, and I don’t expect it in 6 months but about 1 year what should be realistic. Yes details have gone up and that does increase the work but tools have also become better decreasing the work. So the 1 year should work.) The LS does also cost a lot of time, it are all groups working on a little part of the story that then gets removed again. Lets see all the instances and mini dungeons we have had. If they where building an expansion then that would have been maybe 3 new big dungeons. But now it are different smaller groups that deliver all small chunks of content that gets removed afterward so it’s content does not have the same amount of overall value. You might do a dungeon multiple times but many of the mini instances we have had is something you would and could only do once so has a way lower content value.
snip..

Also there is a little flaw in your comment. You say that it would take longer so if they released now we would have the same amount of content but next season we will see the new maps. That makes no sense as those people have been building the LS. So that time is gone, maybe there is another team working on expansion-like content but then if the LS people would also have worked on a expansion then it might have been done in a year.

Tools have gotten better no doubt but its still a ton of a lot quicker to create a low poly model then a high poly model not mention having to create many more object to populate the same space which tools dont help you with.

If they did an expansion I would hope all the various content types would get the same attention, IE they’d still create new mini games, new jps etc..

Why would you say Voice acting that was shown only once is wasted? Most of the voice acting goes into story telling in all MMOs anyway and most of it you see it only a few times (depending on the number of alts you start) does it not count there either?

No there is no flaw in my argument because like they said a lot of times the teams working of the living story were just a fraction of the overall team size. They also have other teams some working on projects like EOTM that wasnt build by the living story team and they also reported there are 2 teams working on 2 big projects since at least january 2013. Of course its entirely my own speculation by personally I am pretty confident at least one of those teams was working on new zones that I imagine we’ll be seeing in Season 2 of the LS.

kept it short because of the not wish to argue part let me know if you want me to elaborate on anything

Flytrap.8075:

Galen Grey.4709:

Flytrap.8075:

I love how it’s always the same people who are so quick to defend ANet.

Why isnt it logical? Us who like the game defend it. People who rather things where done differently well argue against it.

I honestly see nothing out of the ordinary or are you of the opinion that its all bad no one likes the game yet there are these people who for some mysterious reason defend what they dont like themselves?

I just find it amusing that yourself and a few others never fail to rush to ANet’s defense.

I’m glad that you enjoy the game, but the fact of the matter is that GW2 has grown extremely stale and boring for a lot of us. I know that the majority of my guild is simply biding their time until another unnamed game is released and I myself haven’t logged in for almost a month now.

I’d love for ANet to release some substantial updates that breathe some much needed life into this game that I enjoyed for quite some time, but I simply don’t see it happening anytime soon. Don’t let that stop your white knighting, though

you realize the same argument could be applied in reverse seen from our point of view right?

we dont rush to Anet defense on everything there are stuff we dont like too or that we wish were implemented already.

I didnt like Ascended gear getting in game, I wish they’d do guild halls and housing, I wish they’d increase waypoint costs drastically, that there would be more hard content. But that doesnt change this is still my favorite MMO and is the one that most comes close to what would be my perfect MMO.

Galen Grey.4709:

No there is no flaw in my argument

I think you covered it all right there.
You are complete 100% fact, allowing for whatever derogatory comments you care to sling and cannot be wrong.
No, not white-knighting at all…..
Its completely pointless to have any sort of debate or discussion with someone hellbent on themselves being the only point of view and completely rejecting any other opinion at all.
Glad you enjoy game that much.
I don’t.

Galen Grey.4709:

~

“Oh come on, of course its a reward to specific content, sure you dont have to go after a specific champion true but you have to go after a specific class of champions which can only be found in a specific area. If it was one champion it wouldnt change the fact people do go and farm the item directly.“
It’s a pretty big group of champions and even if people don’t farm them many people run into them many times meaning they have a bigger change it drops from them on accident (while not trying to get it).

That is very different from if lets say the bandits in some cave somewhere have the change to drop an specific item and it only drops there from that group of bandits. Then people are much less likely to get the drop accidentally.

One specific mob is indeed also an option.

Now imagine you do that with most loot in the game. Now if I want item X that is dropped from mob Y why would I not just go kill mob Y if I want it but in stead go kill mob Z hoping he drops his special item so I can sell that and then buy the other item. The only time I would really do that if I really don’t want kill mob Y.
(replace killing mob by any type of content you can do)
So you still.. no now you really have your ‘play the way you want’. Also people who just like to grind gold can still do that but it’s completely different from champions have in general ‘good’ loot and there are many places where there are many champs so we go there to grind them for gold.

In fact if you would try to use the zerg-grind tactic (what is really hard because drops are much more spread) it would not work because then suddenly that one item gets dropped more and so gets put on the TP more lowering it’s value meaning you would be making less gold.

“as for the low drop rate, if it is so low and people dont farm them how exactly are there 112”
Thats it exacly one of the problems, and I did explain this in the sentence you reacted on. It has a very low drop-rate and has a general drop so you can’t really work towards that specific item. But many people just grind many champions because in general they have good loot that means many people (not interested in that item) still get it and put it on the TP meaning the value on the TP drops. So while the drop-rate might be to low to work effectively towards it alone because many people are grinding those mobs all day long the TP will still have many of them on it.

“Also I dont get how you feel its a very low drop rate if you farm specifically for it ”
No people do NOT farm specificly for that item. They just grind champions because in general it has good loot. There are many of those rare drops that it can drop and also other stuff. They are not farming the champions for that one item. Not one person is having a high change but if a lot of people do it there is a high change multiple people (who don’t specifically want that item) do get it.

If we pick a number under the 10 and 10 people pick all a different number the change that I have the correct one is very low but the change that any of us 10 has it is 100%.

“I hope you realize there are just 6 champions in all of tyria that could drop this. 4 are in 1 zone and 2 in another.”
As far as I know those get farmed a lot by people running it in trains much like the queens-dale train. So so much for that one item but for it;s frops in general. But I must say I am not really into the grinding scene as you might understand so I could be wrong.

“and wouldnt that make it worst rather then better? I mean if in 1 zone you get 4 chances arent you more likely to try and farm it then if you only get 1 chance per zone? “
Thats not how it works. Sure have 4 mobs that drop one specific item will work as well. Champions are farmed because they in general have good loot and people need money because they can’t get most the items they like in any other way then gold.

“Which brings us back to rarity. if you only need to kill a champion a couple of times ”
It might be rare, I never say it drops easily rather have one the change that one mob drops that one good item the same as it is now that you have the change that a champion drops any of it ’ good’ items. Then it becomes ‘farmable’ but not easy. And for the overall longevity is does not do any bad (in fact it might increase it as many people get bored of grinding gold pretty fast) because there would be many items in the world. So one you do manage to get that one item there are still many other to go for. People who now grind gold usually also don;t stop after they have both (the first time) what wanted.

And because people are less likely to get it as an accidental drop (so while it’s not an item they are really looking for) the rarety is only higher, not lower. I do care about rarety thats also something the current system undermines. Many of those so-called rare exotics are not rare simply because so many people grind champs just for gold.

Celtic Lady.3729:

The real question is whether Anet feels new life is needed here. The obvious answer is no. They’re not adding content because they consider their gem store sales to be sufficient right now. Player opinion has nothing to do with it because players are already voting with their pocketbooks and the numbers are fine from Anet’s point of view.

I dont think thats true, I think they know very well that people need to play to pay hence they have to keep players happy. Its not true they’re not adding content either, they added plenty of things since release and if rumors are to believed season 2 will consist nearly entirely of permanent content and I would personally be shocked if we dont get new zones during S2 either.

Time will tell.

Although, if all their new zones are like Southsun Cove, they might as well save their time and effort. The map has been largely dead since it was launched. Karka Queen is the only thing keeping it from rolling over and imitating Orr.

MrRuin.9740:

Galen Grey.4709:

No there is no flaw in my argument

I think you covered it all right there.
You are complete 100% fact, allowing for whatever derogatory comments you care to sling and cannot be wrong.
No, not white-knighting at all…..
Its completely pointless to have any sort of debate or discussion with someone hellbent on themselves being the only point of view and completely rejecting any other opinion at all.
Glad you enjoy game that much.
I don’t.

dude you dont agree with me and thats fine but at least try to be objective and dont distort what is being said.

Devata said I had a flaw in my argument when I said new zones take time to build and were likely being build while S1 was being released as he felt it couldnt be since devs would have used the time to build S1 thus having no time to build new zones for season 2.

I replied there was no flaw to my argument because Anet said there were other teams beyond the LS teams working on other stuff.

I was talking about known stuff thats been said by Arenanet themselves on multiple occations, there was no opinion involved here.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Time will tell.

Although, if all their new zones are like Southsun Cove, they might as well save their time and effort. The map has been largely dead since it was launched. Karka Queen is the only thing keeping it from rolling over and imitating Orr.

well southsun was a 2 month job these are over a year and 1/2 year jobs so hopefully they’ll be much more polished provided they’re the big projects they’ve been talking about ,but yeah we’ll see.

Galen Grey.4709:

dude you dont agree with me and thats fine but at least try to be objective and dont distort what is being said.

That’s hysterical after reading what you’ve posted in this topic xD

mjhungness.8059:

I’ve played since headstart weekend pretty regularly, at least for a casual. I’ve capped 5 characters, done map completion on one, finished the Personal Story, done most of the achievements for the Living Story content … I could go on but I’ve done everything in this game that interests me and tried everything else the game has to offer. I’m not pinning my current disappointed state on losing the Champ Train. It’s just the continuous agressive removal of things to do by the devs … and for what?

I can’t farm too much because I hit Diminishing Returns. I can’t go crazy with doing Achievements because there’s a cap on how many. I can’t play Living Story content past the designated time that it’s live. I can only build so many pieces of ascended items a day. Loot scaling, I can’t this and I can’t that – the list goes on. Why has a game that showed so much promise and innovation at release done nothing but seek ways to penalize their players with one Control Freak thing after another? If botting is a problem, why does the active player base suffer the consequences by DR? Some people like to farm to make gold – that’s their play style. DR is the same as telling a map completion player he can only do 5 hearts a day, unlock 3 waypoints and do 2 vistas – then he’s done. DR is like telling a TP junkie he can only make 10 transactions a day. DR is like telling WvW players that they can only get 50 player kills a day. PvP players get 5 matches a day. Living Story players get 60 minutes in the instance, “starting … now! Go go go!” You can easily find ways to limit everyone’s chosen play style.

with a game that is the size that it is, area-wise, and with not much lasting new content since launch (as in, if I log in today versus headstart weekend, what new content is there, current Four Winds content aside – and I’m talking new, playable content, not LA’s destruction) why has the game taken to self-patrolling players who are eking out ways to have fun?

It’s fine to step up on the pulpit and shout down players like me who are dissatisfied with this constant active restriction of ways to play the game, to tell me that I should take my dark cloud and go elsewhere – very cavalier and it probably makes you feel better for saying it and defending the game’s honor. But that’s a dangerous attitude to take. Any product, that ceases to find ways to improve and instead continues to decrease its functionality on a regular basis will become obsolete, replaced with a product that is superior. Guild Wars 2 was superior when it released. Now it’s just another game with an obscene number of Dev inflicted restrictions.

Yeah, I’m going to move on now. And before the “Don’t let the door hit my fanny on the way out” calls come, take a moment to think about what you’re really defending – how would you feel if the ways you’ve played for 2 years is suddenly time gated or removed completely (again, I’m not talking Champ Train, I’m talking about ALL the restrictions imposed over the last 2 years)? Thanks for the run GW – I still love this game and will likely check in from time to time.

Yeah the force is strong in this game. I do feel the same but with other examples. Like rangers, in many mmo’s (yeah also WoW) there is a real dynamic way of getting mounts. In some cases that even means you can get a pet developers did not intent you on getting. But thats no problem, that is what makes the game more interesting.

Invisible walls over the place because omg he may not be able to stand on the other site of this little fence.

I do like a dynamic world where you can find out your own things. It’s like with Landmark, that is designed in a very dynamic way. Then players will and did find out new things and ways of doing things. Those developers embraced that, I do feel it that would have been GW2 it was patched out.

I don’t know why it is but they really want to control the way you do thinks.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

Jasper.9341:

Tho this is a buy to play game, so we are willing to accept it

Strange that you look at it that way. The way I look at it. Because this is a B2P game we should not get the F2P cash—shop focus but get an expansion every year we have to pay for if we want the content.

That is how I look at it. sadly it tunred into a cash-shop game that has the F2P negatives.

btw, I meant to ask this but never got around to it. Every single B2P game has a cash shop what makes you say B2P games should not have a cash shop? Now a days even P2P games have cash shops! But save for Gw1 at the beginning which technically isnt even an MMO every single B2P to ever come out had a cash shop!

So I have to ask, whats the bases of your statement?

If you pay good attention I mainly (sometimes I talk about a cash-shop focus. I am fine with a cash-shop if it sells only out-of-game items / services. Like changing your name, a full make-over kit, race-changer that sort of stuff. I could even be ok with a vip-service if it only gave out-of game things (Like beta access).

It’s the focus that is the problem. And while you could say GW1 was not a true MMO because it had all instances you can say the same about GW2 with the difference that in GW1 only the city was ‘public’ and in GW2 it’s per map but also not a true open world. That however does not change much for the feasibility to use a true B2P model so without a cash-shop focus.

Now a days even P2P games have cash-shops indeed yeah. That does not mean it’s needed or good, it means companies will try anything to get as much money as they can (what I do understand) and especially MMO’s are seen as moneymakers and so sadly they also get more and more purely treated as that.

That does not mean the companies and there so called smart business people know what there doing. No this is not me telling I am smarter as them, this is me pointing out some facts. After WoW got released many companies tried to copy the income. All creating sub-based games. What did is result in so far? That over the last 10 years (all after WoW) they where forced to go F2P or even got closed down. So just because something is the standard or just because something is done a lot does not mean it works or it is the best. They do it because they think it’s the best way to get the highest income and even if that’s true then I personally are also looking at the game from a game and quality viewpoint.. you know being the customer and stuff.

only every single MMO thats b2p and you can include Gw1 if you want include far more then that, they all sell cosmetic stuff, mini pets, etc… Gw2 isnt the only b2p that runs this type of cash shop they all do!

As for if said content is effecting game play and thus making the game worst then it could be thats all speculation no one can say conclusively if thats the case or not. Every coin has 2 faces after all.

GW1 did at least in the beginning not have a cash-shop at all.
And why only look at MMO’s? Most non-mmo’s use a B2P model and while many people like to believe it’s so different because of having to maintain the servers is not big of a difference as they might think. Yes an MMO has higher running cost but would also be able to push out expansions more often while non-mmo’s soon have to go work on a sequel that will be released 3 years later.

If it hurts the game depends on your play-style / preferred game-play.
I can conclusively say that is does effect my preferred game-play in a negative way.

It is one of the reasons I did go for this B2P game in stead of the many F2P games out there.
AA is coming out soon and the game looks great but it’s F2P and purely for that I am not as happy with it as I could be because it likely means a lot of grind and items locked behind the cash-shop. Items I would like to earn (in a reasonable way) in game as doing that is what I like in an MMO.

Celtic Lady.3729:

The real question is whether Anet feels new life is needed here. The obvious answer is no. They’re not adding content because they consider their gem store sales to be sufficient right now. Player opinion has nothing to do with it because players are already voting with their pocketbooks and the numbers are fine from Anet’s point of view.

I did vote as well, just as many people with me. At release I did buy the CE and with me many other as it was completely sold out. Also was GW2 the best selling MMO so many many people voted for those box sales.

After release I did vote by not buying a single gems, some people did vote by buying gems but overall the money they got at release was much higher.

Then there was the time that we could vote ingame for the girl or the cash-shop guy. The girl won and then we where a year later and I liked to vote again by buying an expansion but I did never got that option while the cash-shop people did get a lot of votes.

It does not seem like a real fair voting and if anything the votes seem to be more pointing towards box-sales then cash-shop sales.

Don’t take this post to serious all I am saying is that the voting idea ‘you vote with your wallet’ is not as it seems. The only thing that might work is if the gem-buyers would suddenly start voting against the cash-shop. If not no other votes count. So only a part of the people have voting rights.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

I did say “Not to argue about the amount of content” so not sure why you then want to. It’s not the big issue for me. But to answer the question. I think that because expansions in general have more to offe (including those from GW1, and I don’t expect it in 6 months but about 1 year what should be realistic. Yes details have gone up and that does increase the work but tools have also become better decreasing the work. So the 1 year should work.) The LS does also cost a lot of time, it are all groups working on a little part of the story that then gets removed again. Lets see all the instances and mini dungeons we have had. If they where building an expansion then that would have been maybe 3 new big dungeons. But now it are different smaller groups that deliver all small chunks of content that gets removed afterward so it’s content does not have the same amount of overall value. You might do a dungeon multiple times but many of the mini instances we have had is something you would and could only do once so has a way lower content value.
snip..

Also there is a little flaw in your comment. You say that it would take longer so if they released now we would have the same amount of content but next season we will see the new maps. That makes no sense as those people have been building the LS. So that time is gone, maybe there is another team working on expansion-like content but then if the LS people would also have worked on a expansion then it might have been done in a year.

Tools have gotten better no doubt but its still a ton of a lot quicker to create a low poly model then a high poly model not mention having to create many more object to populate the same space which tools dont help you with.

If they did an expansion I would hope all the various content types would get the same attention, IE they’d still create new mini games, new jps etc..

Why would you say Voice acting that was shown only once is wasted? Most of the voice acting goes into story telling in all MMOs anyway and most of it you see it only a few times (depending on the number of alts you start) does it not count there either?

No there is no flaw in my argument because like they said a lot of times the teams working of the living story were just a fraction of the overall team size. They also have other teams some working on projects like EOTM that wasnt build by the living story team and they also reported there are 2 teams working on 2 big projects since at least january 2013. Of course its entirely my own speculation by personally I am pretty confident at least one of those teams was working on new zones that I imagine we’ll be seeing in Season 2 of the LS.

kept it short because of the not wish to argue part let me know if you want me to elaborate on anything

I am not sure what you mean with ‘more models’ but yeah copying a model and changing it a little is possible so tools can help. However I did say it would take longer and I did not ask for anything in 6 months but in a year.

If it would be for your personal story yes your right. I am more talking about NPC’s in the world, being it NPC’s that talk with each other or with the player for an event.

There did go a lot of time into the LS, if that would have mainly gone into an expansion it’s likely that should have been done sooner.

I’m very disappointed with the lack of permanent content. The problem for me with the Living Story (LS) is that, every time it pops up, instead of being excited about new content, I just feel pressured into doing it right now because I know its going to get deleted shortly. So I end up not even bothering logging in the game for the duration of the event. I like to consume content on my own schedule, not the developer’s.

At this point, I would gladly pay 20€ for one expansion every year, like we did with Guild Wars, if that meant more actual content.

And shame on the guy that counted hair styles and UI fixes as content. Pathetic.

Iki.4062:

I’m very disappointed with the lack of permanent content. The problem for me with the Living Story (LS) is that, every time it pops up, instead of being excited about new content, I just feel pressured into doing it right now because I know its going to get deleted shortly. So I end up not even bothering logging in the game for the duration of the event. I like to consume content on my own schedule, not the developer’s.

At this point, I would gladly pay 20€ for one expansion every year, like we did with Guild Wars, if that meant more actual content.

And shame on the guy that counted hair styles and UI fixes as content. Pathetic.

100% agree. It’s also my main problem with the LS.
I however would also be fine with paying 50 or 60 Euro and if Anet would start doing things ‘better’ from my perspective more for an CE would also be fine.

What are you referring to with hair styles UI fixes or content? In this thread you mean?

I do not consider it content as it is. However I would consider a barber in the game where you can cut your hair for a few silver as content or at least an improvement of the game.

Flytrap.8075:

I love how it’s always the same people who are so quick to defend ANet.

Interesting.

I support ArenaNet’s decision to remove any form of champ farming in starter zones. They have my thanks for that long overdue move.

However I’m still against the Megaserver Feature Pack as a whole.

MrRuin.9740:

Galen Grey.4709:

dude you dont agree with me and thats fine but at least try to be objective and dont distort what is being said.

That’s hysterical after reading what you’ve posted in this topic xD

care to be specific?

Devata.6589:

GW1 did at least in the beginning not have a cash-shop at all.
And why only look at MMO’s? Most non-mmo’s use a B2P model and while many people like to believe it’s so different because of having to maintain the servers is not big of a difference as they might think. Yes an MMO has higher running cost but would also be able to push out expansions more often while non-mmo’s soon have to go work on a sequel that will be released 3 years later.

If it hurts the game depends on your play-style / preferred game-play.
I can conclusively say that is does effect my preferred game-play in a negative way.

It is one of the reasons I did go for this B2P game in stead of the many F2P games out there.
AA is coming out soon and the game looks great but it’s F2P and purely for that I am not as happy with it as I could be because it likely means a lot of grind and items locked behind the cash-shop. Items I would like to earn (in a reasonable way) in game as doing that is what I like in an MMO.

Because like you said single player games dont have the same costs as MMOs. MMOs are able to launch new content before single player games not because developing for MMOs is somehow faster but because they employ more resources since they dont have the same luxury of waiting 3+ years between releases. Just to compare GW2 has a team of about 350 people, skyrim has a team of 100 and fallout 3 of 70 people. I am sure salaries are part of the biggest expense a game has. Then there is also support. Dont know for sure but I imagine an MMO gets a ton more work in that area since you need to deal with hacking, cash shop issues, people’s behavior towards one another and such that a single player game does not. While the server costs are probably not so big and I do agree with you there, its still an added cost even if a small one.

But perhaps more then all of this is the risks involved with running an MMO. I dont think you’ll disagree with me that MMOs are risky business. Their success doesnt depend solely on you and its not easy keeping players engage for years on the same game, But when you’re falling on hard times you might actually have to bite the bullet run at a loss just not to alienate your player base. SOE for example ran states they’ve been running vanguard at a loss for years just to keep the player base happy. Now keep in mind all these games most of the time depend on external investors. I dont imagine many studios start out with the ability of sustaining the wage of 100s of people for 5 or so years without any income to launch their first MMO. But why would investors invest in a business thats generally considered much riskier then a single player game. plenty of opportunities for investors to invest there that’s for sure. So why do it? well its for the change MMOs give of higher returns. If MMOs simply went B2P they’d have higher costs, bigger risk and thus lower returns than single player games that are more likely to succeed. I would imagine that would make getting funding a whole lot harder!

Trouble.3859:

Jaken.6801:

i recently made a list of content that has stayed.
It is quite a lot.
Most of it is of course polishing and QOL stuff, but hey. they changed the feeling of the game significantly in my opinion.
(Starting from the queens jubilee, till now)
(Excuse the weird formating, i just copy and pasted it from my document)

General Changes
- Magic find changes (accountbound stat now) and its new mechanics
- Critical damage change into ferocity
- New combat visuals, like damage markers and AoE signs for worldbosses
- Introduction of ascended armors and weapons
- Upgrade to the ascended and legendary rarities, like acountbound and stat switching
- New crafting levels with new recipes
- Complete revamp of sigils and runes
- looking for group tool
- Lot`s of UI changes, like in PvP, WvW etc…
- Trait and Tooltips now show exact numbers
- The Megaserver system
- Repair and retrait costs removed
- There is now a wardrobe in game

PvE
- Tequattle is now a Hardcore Boss
o He drops unique items and themed ascended weapons and armor
- New Hardcore Worldboss “Tripple Trouble”
o A three headed Worm, which needs around 150 coordinated player
o Has its own unique mechanics and rewards (hardest boss in game right now)
- Worldbosses got a reward overhaul as well as a timer to make them more challenging
- There is a new path in the Twilight Arbor Dungeon, themed around the living story season 1 for lvl 80 characters
o Twilight Arbor got unique skin drops
- Fractals got an upgrade
o Three new Fractals
Molten Alliance
Aetherblades
Thaumanova Reactor
o Two new Boss Fractals
Molten Berserker
Mai Trin
o Bosses appear after every run
o Fractallvl is now accountwide
o Starting at lvl 31 you get punished with an handicap called Mistlock
o Rework of Agony
o Reward reworked
- The Living Story Season 1 has concluded, leaving in its wake:
o The destruction of Lions Arch
All LA unique facilities have been moved to vigil keep
o Kessex Hills got redesigned after they introduced the tower of nightmares, which was a giant construction in the lake
o There are new events in the world, based on remnants of the living story
o New items were introduced
Watchwork sprockets
Poison pollen

WvW
- The Borderlands got a complete overhaul and a new “Bloodlust” mechanic
o There is now less water on the map, but some nice ruins and objectives to capture
- The rewards got updated to reflect changes in the game
- The WvW UI got a drastic overhaul, offering real time data
- The obsidian sanctum is now a separate zone you can log into.
o It got expanded to cater to the Guild vs Guild people
o You have the ability to party up with other servers people to finish the puzzle
- A new Map was introduced called “Edge of the Mists”
o It is always available, even if all other WvW maps are full
o It resets every two hours
o Has unique objectives
o Teammembers are based on the color they represent in WvW right now and not on server
o WvW rank is now acountbound

PvP
- Glory and armor rewards have been removed in favour of a new system
- Costs for Ranks have been adjusted
- A Complete new rewardsystem which allows for gold and items of PvE
- New Arenatype: Duell

Classes
- A lot of balancing
- A new Healskill for every class
- The Traitsystem got a complete overhaul
o Every class got 5 new grandmaster traits
o Some traits get only unlocked after you explored the world in PvE
- Critical Damage has been removed and got exchanged for a new stat: “Ferocity”

Gemstore
- A few UI Improvements
- New Hairtypes in the stylingkit
- You can now buy unlimited finisher to punish your enemies
- New Booster
- New Armors in the shop

Nope, nothing permanently changed to the game… just these minor things…

Is that even content ? That is nothing… it’s been 2 years, not 6 months… 2 years and this is all they could do ? Looking at other games you can see that in 2 years they’ve released one or even two expansions, not bug fixes, not UI and map improvements but real expansions that keep people interested…. You know an mmo needs people to actually “work”, people need to be interested in the game in order to stay, content keeps players interested… so no real content = less interest = less money for the game company. You really think that by supporting this stupid (in my opinion) policy that Anet has adopted you’re really helping the game ? If no one complains then nothing changes. I’m not saying that GW2 is a bad game, but I am saying that it needs real, permanent content to stay alive…

This guy’s trouble. I don’t think he’ll be satisfied unless Anet introduces Pandas.

Celtic Lady.3729:

The real question is whether Anet feels new life is needed here. The obvious answer is no. They’re not adding content because they consider their gem store sales to be sufficient right now. Player opinion has nothing to do with it because players are already voting with their pocketbooks and the numbers are fine from Anet’s point of view.

Exactly.
Why introduce 5-star French gourmet meals when McDonalds burgers are selling like hotcakes.
#low-standards

Copy pasting a previous post of mine from a different thread for relevance:

Dark Jackson.3417:

Dark Jackson.3417:

- It’s all about : What majority wants..

And this is what I cannot fully fathom – how can so many players enjoy games that sell them ‘content’ that is not only cheap (read: superficial&recycled) and relies on terrible game mechanics (zerging, mass events), but often enough require additional rl payments for something that is only temporary – what does that tell about those players?

Please, don’t give me the ‘casual’ argument. Being a casual player doesn’t and shouldn’t translate to ‘we welcome any rotten tomatos and potatoes thrown at us with open arms’. How can people be SO lacking in the sound judgement department – so easily tricked – that they will reluctantly stick to what devolved into little more than a P2P in sheep’s clothing is seriously beyond me.
Why do people dish out money for mediocre content in a mediocre game, which is ridden with spam, superficial story, temporary features, lag, recycled content, and has a minigame called pvp, and a mish&mash of pve&pvp that is wvw?

I remain absolutely b.a.f.f.l.e.d. and eagerly await the many fanboys in this thread to perhaps try shedding some light on their thought process on this phenomenom (yea, not happening). I think it’d make most interesting a subject to study.

& one of the replies

Dafomen.7892:

Its called Behavioral Conditioning

Its not a conspiracy, its the result after decades of ‘western’ mass media, commercial and government education.

Basically they are fullfilling their designated role as consumers, while being very limited in their critical thinking abilities and take over and retell agruments from that company, suggesting its them critically thinking but in fact they are just repeating what that company and media branded into their minds.

Just look at the “hype” phaenomena. There, BC is renamed to PR, but the goal remains the same and the results speak for themselves.

Superficial and willing to spend money, thats how most companies want and like their cough ….. “customers”.

Of course, Anet is the exception here ….

On a side note, it’d be extremely unusual to see anything other than Anet whiteknighting from a user who names himself after Gaile Grey.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

~

Because like you said single player games dont have the same costs as MMOs. MMOs are able to launch new content before single player games not because developing for MMOs is somehow faster but because they employ more resources since they dont have the same luxury of waiting 3+ years between releases. Just to compare GW2 has a team of about 350 people, skyrim has a team of 100 and fallout 3 of 70 people. I am sure salaries are part of the biggest expense a game has. Then there is also support. Dont know for sure but I imagine an MMO gets a ton more work in that area since you need to deal with hacking, cash shop issues, people’s behavior towards one another and such that a single player game does not. While the server costs are probably not so big and I do agree with you there, its still an added cost even if a small one.

But perhaps more then all of this is the risks involved with running an MMO. I dont think you’ll disagree with me that MMOs are risky business. Their success doesnt depend solely on you and its not easy keeping players engage for years on the same game, But when you’re falling on hard times you might actually have to bite the bullet run at a loss just not to alienate your player base. SOE for example ran states they’ve been running vanguard at a loss for years just to keep the player base happy. Now keep in mind all these games most of the time depend on external investors. I dont imagine many studios start out with the ability of sustaining the wage of 100s of people for 5 or so years without any income to launch their first MMO. But why would investors invest in a business thats generally considered much riskier then a single player game. plenty of opportunities for investors to invest there that’s for sure. So why do it? well its for the change MMOs give of higher returns. If MMOs simply went B2P they’d have higher costs, bigger risk and thus lower returns than single player games that are more likely to succeed. I would imagine that would make getting funding a whole lot harder!

That employees also have to do with the size of the game. I also don’t know how exact those numbers are. Are those 70 only the in-house people are also those that worked on it externally? And how is that for those 300?

I know for example that GTA (yeah that is a huge name so not completely fair comparison) has 360 in-house employees working on it and in total over 1000 people worked on the game.

Besides I did say non-mmo I did not say single-player and on most multiplayers you have to check for cheaters. Of course that’s more an issue in an mmo and I do agree it’s running cost are higher but I don’t think that would be the reason why it would not be possible. Numbers show that expansion sales make more money then a cash-shop so from a money perspective it should be just fine. So if those cost would not allow to be supported by a cash-shop they would also not be supported by expansions and while indeed most mmo’s do also have a cash-shop there are many mmo’s that in fact only have a cash-shop. That would mean those games could not exist or be making any money and they do.

“But why would investors invest in a business thats generally considered much riskier then a single player game.” Because it’s possible reward is much higher. But risk is indeed the main reason why I think we see the cash-shop focus. Using a cash-shop to squeeze out more money is less risky then using expansions because if a game fails within a year with a have cash-shop focus you could still have squeezed out some nice money while with an expansion you by that time would have already also invested in the next expansion and that would then not sell very well meaning you would likely lose money. On the other hand if it’s a success it might result in even more money return especially in the more longer run. (so I disagree with you that it would result is less money)

B2P can easily result in a better quality game because your don;t have to compromise the game for cash-shop sales. That can result in better sales and a longer live-spawn and also more merchandise sales.

It’s also a matter of being afraid to use a fairly untested system in the genre or (incorrectly) thinking the other option generates more money. It wasn’t so long ago that those investors weren’t going to invest in F2P games because they believed it was to risky our it would not make enough money.

All that to side I personally look at it with two eyes. Yes I do understand it’s a company that needs to make money and do take that into consideration. On the other hand as a consumer I also want a high quality product and is this product not a money-machine for me.

KarlaGrey.5903:

On a side note, it’d be extremely unusual to see anything other than Anet whiteknighting from a user who names himself after Gaile Grey.

You know one of my main arguments is that people like to see patterns that confirm what they want to believe and ignore any other possibilities.

Example: Anet nerf a farm and people state thats in order to boost gem sales they dont even consider other possiblities such as to control inflation and such.

This is one such pattern because my name being quite close to Gaile Grey is purely coincidental. I’ve been using it from before I even knew Gaile Grey existed so. In fact it actually predates the original guild wars by years. I am named after the character Galen the technomage from the 1999 series babylon 5 and its spinoff Crusade.

You nick is pretty close to Gaile Grey too are you named after her yourself?

Devata.6589:

That employees also have to do with the size of the game. I also don’t know how exact those numbers are. Are those 70 only the in-house people are also those that worked on it externally? And how is that for those 300?

I know for example that GTA (yeah that is a huge name so not completely fair comparison) has 360 in-house employees working on it and in total over 1000 people worked on the game.

I was quoting number of fulltime employees working on the specific game. In case of GTA from what I can see the 360 is the total employee count for all of rockstar north that develop more games then just GTA so while I cant find an exact figure its most likely a fraction of that.

Devata.6589:

Besides I did say non-mmo I did not say single-player and on most multiplayers you have to check for cheaters. Of course that’s more an issue in an mmo and I do agree it’s running cost are higher but I don’t think that would be the reason why it would not be possible. Numbers show that expansion sales make more money then a cash-shop so from a money perspective it should be just fine. So if those cost would not allow to be supported by a cash-shop they would also not be supported by expansions and while indeed most mmo’s do also have a cash-shop there are many mmo’s that in fact only have a cash-shop. That would mean those games could not exist or be making any money and they do.

I dont know about expansions generating more money. Its probably pretty close. I mean lets assume it takes 1.5 years to create an expansion and you sell that for a full $60. Lets assume Gw2 had a 70% retention rate (pretty generous probably less then this but lets be optimistic) not factoring china in for obvious reason that would mean
$147m. Now going with the last quarter income reported by anet of $25m (which is one of the lowest and by now probably doesnt have many box sales in it) in 1.5 years there’s 6 quarters so thats $150m. So they do indeed seem very close. I would imagine for ncsoft cash shop is preferable to expansions because they got control over cash shop they dont over expansions. If they have a bad quarter or need more cash they can run promotions and improve that figure in the short term. Example 2 quarters ago they did it and they did manage to boost income to $38m from the average of $25m it was before. With expansions its a shot in the dark. If you do a miss step you cannot correct it before another 1.5 years and by then you lost a lot of your retention rate. Of course having both might actually double the income, if I were them I would do both but they might have their reasons why they dont do both, who knows!

Devata.6589:

B2P can easily result in a better quality game because your don;t have to compromise the game for cash-shop sales. That can result in better sales and a longer live-spawn and also more merchandise sales.

It’s also a matter of being afraid to use a fairly untested system in the genre or (incorrectly) thinking the other option generates more money. It wasn’t so long ago that those investors weren’t going to invest in F2P games because they believed it was to risky our it would not make enough money.

All that to side I personally look at it with two eyes. Yes I do understand it’s a company that needs to make money and do take that into consideration. On the other hand as a consumer I also want a high quality product and is this product not a money-machine for me.

We dont know for sure some design decissions are done purely for cash shop reasons. A coin has two sides. Like say temporary content. Its possible they do it because like you said before it goes well with temporary themed skins in cash shop and thus stimulate gem sales. But there are also other reasons for it such as to boost the retention rate. By being temporary you might feel less completed to take a break and try other games that in turn might result in you loosing interest for example.

Both scenarios are entirely possible or a mix of both after all. What I am saying is even without a cashshop there is no guarantee they wouldnt make the same design choices!

Grind is just for legendary skins, so it’s not obligatory.

Iki.4062:

I’m very disappointed with the lack of permanent content. The problem for me with the Living Story (LS) is that, every time it pops up, instead of being excited about new content, I just feel pressured into doing it right now because I know its going to get deleted shortly. So I end up not even bothering logging in the game for the duration of the event. I like to consume content on my own schedule, not the developer’s.

At this point, I would gladly pay 20€ for one expansion every year, like we did with Guild Wars, if that meant more actual content.

And shame on the guy that counted hair styles and UI fixes as content. Pathetic.

True. I hate how they handle the living story. The temporal content is an horrible policy.
Is like chasing the carrot, like other MMORPG, but pressured with the time limitation.
“Play NOW. FAST. FASTER!! MORE!! Or you gonna miss this FOREVER!!”

That made me left the game for a while. I come back recently and obviously I didn’t understand what the hell was happening and who were all those people in the story.

Galen Grey.4709:

What Id forget to mention in the last post is that in fact development is ‘easier’ in a way because you simply add content to the game. Most of the foundation is already there. That is a big difference from working from scratch.
Rockstar North has only one other game they work on (Agent) and I think it’s fair to assume GTA is there main game other games get set on hold for (what explains why Agent is already in development for like 7 years). So those 360 working on it is a fair estimation I think.

In a way Rockstar North is a good example here. They develop for multiple years and then release it to then go work on the next project while maintaining the old one. GTA 4 released in 2008 Then they started to work on GTA 5 (with only Agent and making converting GTA 4 to the PC as side projects). Then they released GTA 5 5 year later. That is about the same period as it took Anet to develop GW2. Now Rockstar will start working on GTA 6 what they will then likely release also 5 years later.
GW2 should really be able to push out an expansion every year. So if people say focusing purely on expansions can’t work because Anet can’t have a period of a year without income, to me seems like the same as saying as that Rockstar North with there GTA series is a failed concept, or really saying they can’t exist.

About if it makes more money. With the numbers we have we can do some calculating showing that after a year using the current model (selling the game then heavy focus on cash-shop) they would have earned a little more then if they had sold an expansion, after the second expansion they would have made more money going only up from there. Numbers: https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/151443/1q14_NCSoft.jpg Calculation: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/NcSoft-earnings-1Q-14/page/3#post4029793
Personally I always did think it would take at least 3 years for it to become more profitable so those numbers where even more positive for the expansion-based model then I thought.

The difference with your calculation is that you think it takes them at least 1,5 year for an expansion (what I can agree on for the first year but really after that imho a year should be feasible). Another factor you don’t calculate in and I personally do (not in those calculations above) is that you simply get a higher quality product so likely more players and a longer live-spawn also resulting more profit over it’s total live-spawn and better merchandise income.

You say they manage to increase sale with a fix or some marketing and I think they can but at the same time those things also scare people away. The smaller spike you see (I think that’s what you are taking about) is an expected spike you see in every Q4 results because of Christmas and so on.

Having both (with a heavy cash-shop focus as GW2 has now) would imho also not double the income because you alienate to many people. But I do agree that an expansion-based model does involve higher risks.

“We dont know for sure some design decissions are done purely for cash shop reason” No but some common sense can come in handy here. Beside I said it does compromise the game and that’s fact (depending on your play-style). I can take the mini examples that would be way more fun to collect in the world. By putting most in the cash-shop they effectively removed that element (collecting mini’s in the world) from the game. Most of the better looking skins are cash-shop related and don’t drop in the world automatically turning that into a gold-grind. No barber in the game where you can cut your hair for 15 silver because they want to make money on hair-cuts.
But yeah you can’t guarantee they would not make the same decisions, they could not put mini’s in the game (or only sold by npc’s), no barber, most skins only sold by npc’s but I do think that simply because there is no need to try and get those cash-shop sales they can and so will develop a better game.

Umut.5471:

Grind is just for legendary skins, so it’s not obligatory.

And for mini’s, and for skins, and for crafting, and for dyes and for.. well everything you can almost only(or much faster) get with gold / gems.

But you are correct it’s all not obligated. In fact it’s a game so nothing is obligated.

Galen Grey.4709:

You nick is pretty close to Gaile Grey too are you named after her yourself?

Nah, but I thank you for the highly informative explanation behind your name. ‘Twas most interesting a story~
I’d say you were simply predestined to become the numero uno of of anet apologists, but hey!
Perhaps, some time by 2020, they will name an npc after you to honour the tireless dedication and loyalty of what can easily be perceived as the ideal customer.

p.s. I do like how you conveniently skipped the main part of my post and limited your reply to one of the most obvious of strawmen I posted in a while. That alone says more than any walls of text you might conjure up , so I’m fine leaving it at that.

at Devata, +1

frans.8092:

A Massive Headache.1879:

as i’m sure was stated before. there is no grind for anything necessary. Leveling curve is absolutely fine, and exotic gear drops enough. As for fractals and ascended gear, that’s a bit of a grind but it’s not too bad, especially if you enjoy eotm

That is just not true. First of all, exotic gear does not drop enough. Second, best in slot is ascended and ascended is a grind to get. First to get the materials (and gold) to level up the required crafting disciplines, then again to get the material and gold to craft the actual gear.

Yes ascended is best in slot, but the difference between a full set of exotic and a full set of ascended is often less than a single socket jewel. You don’t need it to play 95% of the content in the game. The caveat that everyone conveniently misses is the part where you don’t need to grind to play any of the content (excluding high level fractals). Is there grind in the game? Yes. Do you need to do it to access any content? No (unless the only content you care about is fractal 10+ in which case I posit that you are the kind of person who doesn’t mind, because high level fractals is for hardcore players).

Xenon.4537:

frans.8092:

A Massive Headache.1879:

as i’m sure was stated before. there is no grind for anything necessary. Leveling curve is absolutely fine, and exotic gear drops enough. As for fractals and ascended gear, that’s a bit of a grind but it’s not too bad, especially if you enjoy eotm

That is just not true. First of all, exotic gear does not drop enough. Second, best in slot is ascended and ascended is a grind to get. First to get the materials (and gold) to level up the required crafting disciplines, then again to get the material and gold to craft the actual gear.

Yes ascended is best in slot, but the difference between a full set of exotic and a full set of ascended is often less than a single socket jewel. You don’t need it to play 95% of the content in the game. The caveat that everyone conveniently misses is the part where you don’t need to grind to play any of the content (excluding high level fractals). Is there grind in the game? Yes. Do you need to do it to access any content? No (unless the only content you care about is fractal 10+ in which case I posit that you are the kind of person who doesn’t mind, because high level fractals is for hardcore players).

What people who use your argument conveniently seem to miss is that not everybody cares about the fractals (replace that with highest lvl raid and so on) or kills but some care for things like skins, looks mini’s… In fact it’s what this game builds up on. So for people who like those thinks the grind is just as bad as for somebody else who wants to do some content that is lock behind a tier-grind.

Grind is grind. It’s a game so you NEVER need to do anything but if it effects your preferred game-play it’s just as bad for you as it is for somebody else if it effects his different preferred game-play.

Devata.6589:

What Id forget to mention in the last post is that in fact development is ‘easier’ in a way because you simply add content to the game. Most of the foundation is already there. That is a big difference from working from scratch….

That we know off, they might also be working on max payne 4 (I would say there is a good chance) in the background and the ports for GTA V and red Dead Redemption. even gta v as is required 2 small seperate teams to work on the different console versions and just simply not announced them yet which happens quite often. But again all assumption not saying thats the case.

Devata.6589:

Galen Grey.4709:

In a way Rockstar North is a good example here. They develop for multiple years and then release it to then go work on the next project while maintaining the old one. GTA 4 released in 2008 Then they started to work on GTA 5 (with only Agent and ..

Rockstar is a bit of a complicated case because technically speaking while working on GTA 5 they were also working on 8 other games but they werent entirely done by rockstar north, they had other sub studios involved as well its hard to say where one starts and the other ends. Porting also requires fraction of the team so hard to say how many people involved there. There is really not enough info to say how big the team working on GTA 5 was. Okey I searched a bit and found a couple of sources that state the team size on GTA 5 was 250 people. So you were more right or well closer then I was to the actual figure.

Devata.6589:

GW2 should really be able to push out an expansion every year. So if people say focusing purely on expansions can’t work because Anet can’t have a period of a year without income

Ohh no I would definitely disagree with Anet cant afford to have a year without income. They sure can, they have a publisher for that anyway not to mention they did quite a lot of money from the initial sales too. I dont think its about them, its about us. 1.5 years without content is a long time to go. Many modern MMOs are moving away from that to smaller but more frequent updates. Some update each month more or less others every 3 months. Even EvE online which used to update every 6 months or so that wasnt bad is now going to move to a 5 week cycle. I dont think they’re doing that cause of the money but only because having no content for a long period of time is damaging to your game. I mean even with all the negativity towards the LS with a 1/2 month hiatus people were uneasy after all Imagine 1.5 years!

Devata.6589:

About if it makes more money. With the numbers we have we can do some calculating showing that after a year using the current model (selling the game then heavy focus on cash-shop) they would have earned a little more then if they had sold an expansion, after the second expansion they would have made more money going only up from there. Numbers: snip…

I dont know how long it would take but 1.5 seems reasonable based on other MMOs that are spread between 1 – 2 years

as for a higher level product I dont know, I am happy to stick with Gw2 after getting to max level no so much with many other MMOs that launch expansions. But of course different games different stories. Doesnt necessarily mean anything. But that 1 – 2 year gap plays a big part. If no content is added at all obviously thats boring. If some content is added every 3 months or so, its generally small ,repetitive and lacking story which also isnt for me. LS on the other hand fixed most of that. Some was repetitive as well but that wasnt a big deal spending 1 week leveling an alt waiting for the next part wasnt as painful as waiting 2 1/2 months for something new which would still be repetitive and doing that for 4 – 8 times is just way too much!

Devata.6589:

The smaller spike you see (I think that’s what you are taking about) is an expected spike you see in every Q4 results because of Christmas and so on.

Obviously people have more purchasing power which is why they target promotions around that time. But it is far from a given. infact L2, Aion as well as B&S had actually less income rather then a positive spike. Gw2 had a 40% increase while lineage had 20% increase. So that promotion likely helped a bit.

Devata.6589:

..
But yeah you can’t guarantee they would not make the same decisions, they could not put mini’s in the game (or only sold by npc’s), no barber, most skins only sold by npc’s but I do think that simply because there is no need to try and get those cash-shop sales they can and so will develop a better game.

I agree with you there, some things like minis, barber , and skins would like make it in game and thus make for a better game without a cashshop. No contest there.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

~

~

Good change Rockstar North would work on Max Payne? They never worked on that series. Thats from Rockstar Toronto.

“Rockstar is a bit of a complicated case because technically speaking while working on GTA 5 they were also working on 8 other games”
Now I see what you are doing wrong. You mix up Rockstar North (or any of it’s sisters) to the overall Rockstar. They have different sister companies (all part off the over Rockstar) working on separate projects. I checked and they have 8 of those studio’s (some smaller some bigger) and in total over 900 employees.

Now imagine is many of that ‘game-play’ (going into the world collecting those things) is your preferred play-style / is your preferred game-play then you might understand where I (and with me people with similar complains) are coming from. Also don’t forget that GW2 is trying to attract those people. From a marketing point it might then seem logical to monetize exactly that part but from a game-play point it isn’t.

And I am not exaggerating by saying it’s ‘the way I play’ and it’s the biggest part of my game-play. I did play multiple other Mmo’s (not a huge list btw), next to GW2 I did play L2 for a while but couldn’t stand the click to move, I did play The Chronicles of Spellborn and I did play WoW. I also visited some other mmo’s but really playing it for a longer period I am talking about. All those game has this type of game-play I like in a different way in them, but let me take WoW as example simply because most people here then know the examples I am talking about.

So how did I play that game. I never went to a dungeon to do the dungeon, I never leveled to level and I never did explore just to get map-completion or anything like that.

No my game-play existed of smaller goals and while doing that my character did grow and I got to visit those dungeons and so on.

For example my favorite profession was engineer. So I was always looking for the next item to build (always some fun thing, a ‘toy’ or a mini or something like that). Farming the maps was never a problem however sometimes you needed an item that you could only get from one or two places so I checked where to get that and went on my way. On the way there I did see a little house in the distance so went by there to check it out and thats how I explored. Once I got that item and crafted the toy there was a next item on the list but I needed a recipe for that however that only dropped in a dungeon so I went into the dungeon. Half of the time solo not even playing the dungeon but simply try to sneak by some mobs to only get to the mob that did drop or sell the recipe I needed. The sneaking part itself in fact also had it;s own game-play because I used an orb of invisibility for that want only dropped in one place so I first went there to get that. In fact I did also collect that sort of fun items in the game. One of my favorites a unconscious rat. Extremely rare and all it did was spawn a critter rat but I did stay very nice in my bank.
While leveling my craft that way my personal level did grow by itself and I did get to see most of the world by itself.

With the hunter I also liked to go try and get rare pets. Those where available all over the game and the next one was always close enough (required level) that while getting the previous one you would level up of the next one.

Going into the world to collect mini’s was a thing I loves to do. Much the same story as I said about the crafting recipe. Same for mounts.

Now thats my preferred game-play. Now you should understand why I feel the way I do about the cash-shop focus. This could all have been in GW2 but it isn’t and much of it because of the cash-shop.

Not all btw, it’s also why I would love to see bigger maps (seamless zones preferably) and no map-completion with poi and vista’s and so on. It for me takes the fun out of exploring and no way that you see a house in the distance that in fact not many people visit because if it’s interesting it has a poi and people had to run by it skipping it of there list for world-completion. But that completely to the side. It might help you (and hopefully developers) to understand why I (and i’m not alone) am against or in favor of the things I am so against or in favor of.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Galen Grey.4709:

You nick is pretty close to Gaile Grey too are you named after her yourself?

Nah, but I thank you for the highly informative explanation behind your name. ‘Twas most interesting a story~
I’d say you were simply predestined to become the numero uno of of anet apologists, but hey!
Perhaps, some time by 2020, they will name an npc after you to honour the tireless dedication and loyalty of what can easily be perceived as the ideal customer.

p.s. I do like how you conveniently skipped the main part of my post and limited your reply to one of the most obvious of strawmen I posted in a while. That alone says more than any walls of text you might conjure up , so I’m fine leaving it at that.

at Devata, +1

Doubt they’ll name an NPC after me because well its too late. There is already a Galen in Seraph’s landing and no he wasnt named after me (well that I know of ) but considering he was their since launch Arenanet had no way of knowing how much I would enjoy what they did.

As for skiping the mean of your post, Sorry I didnt realise that was addressed at me as well. You were replying to someone else. But you want my opinion and I will give it.

so first part:
I dont agree with any of it I am afraid. 1 I never dished out money for any content. Sure I did buy about 50 euros worth of gems in 2 years but none of it went for content. If I had decided not to spend a single cent I would still have had the same content I did with spending those 50 euros. But anyhow thats actually a tangent. The main problem with what you posted for me personally is you’re assuming no one likes the content they gave us which isnt true. I cant speak for others but I dont defend Arenanet so one day I can get my very own NPC named after me, I defend them because I genuinely love what they did. Different people like different types of content. I am less of a dungeon / raid guy more of a story and immersion guy and thats what they offered me (cant speak for others) with the Living World. The little thinks that for others might be pointless make all the difference to me. Take the refugees for example. they started out at the very start of the living story but didnt just disappear when they didnt serve the story anymore Arenanet kept them alive and kept updating them a little with new dialog options now and again. Even when braham moved to kessex hill during the tower of nightmares Anet took the time to remove him from cragstead for the time. They didnt really have to do that, how many people even went to cragstead once flame and frost was over. very few yet they took the time to do it. For you it might have been mediocre for me it was excellence. A level of detail never seen in an MMO before. (Gw1 came close to be fair).

As for your behaviour conditioning argument

well sure it is certain possible that people who are positive about the game do so because they’re conditioned to do so by marketing and media.

right on the other corner we have the concept of mob mentality .

Now tell me what good would come out of if the opinion of those who like the game gets dismissed because well they’re conditioned to accept everything and have no real critical thinking.

And on the other hand those who like the game dismiss any criticism because its just mob mentality, people thinking its cool to be the rebel etc..

Personally I think its all just insulting and best avoided entirely. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and no one opinion is more important than any other be it in-favor or against.

Devata.6589:

I agree with you there, some things like minis, barber , and skins would like make it in game and thus make for a better game without a cashshop. No contest there.

Good change Rockstar North would work on Max Payne? They never worked on that series. Thats from Rockstar Toronto.

“Rockstar is a bit of a complicated case because technically speaking while working on GTA 5 they were also working on 8 other games”
Now I see what you are doing wrong. You mix up Rockstar North (or any of it’s sisters) to the overall Rockstar. They have different sister companies (all part off the over Rockstar) working on separate projects. I checked and they have 8 of those studio’s (some smaller some bigger) and in total over 900 employees.

The rest folows later.[/quote]

well according to wikipedia they’re rockstar north together with studio X

anyhow 900 employees over 8 games would still be close to 120 per game!

I’m beginning to think that a certain someone is a shill.

its not lack of content
problem is the lack of PROGRESS in this game

everything feels more and more pointless in this game

most people do livingstory stuff only for the archievement points and when meta done noone care for this anymore

Galen Grey.4709:

well according to wikipedia they’re rockstar north together with studio X

anyhow 900 employees over 8 games would still be close to 120 per game!

I see what you mean. I did get my information from another site (other language). According to the page your refer to they indeed did work on multiple games however other studies also helped with there project. So I don’t know what is and what isn’t correct.

Anyway, I made the previous post complete so if you are interested have a read:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-happened-I-just-don-t-find-any-real-reason-to-play/page/4#post4048557

Guys, would you guys actually prefer better gameplay and lore? I think the developers made the right choice by adding in lesbian npc relationships and countless skimpy outfits for females! I can’t imagine the pain-staking hours put into designing the right amount of cleavage/etc. versus decent-looking weapons or something-something dragons, which are supposed to be enemies, right?

lordkrall.7241:

Devata.6589:

Strange that you look at it that way. The way I look at it. Because this is a B2P game we should not get the F2P cash—shop focus but get an expansion every year we have to pay for if we want the content.

That is how I look at it. sadly it tunred into a cash-shop game that has the F2P negatives.

And you look at it like that because you are completely unable to understand how much work and money an expansion would take and thus it would not be possible to survive on expansions alone.

Stop spreading FUD. GW1 did it, so why can’t GW2. Plus they could keep the store just not have to focus every second of development time on it.

I am less of a dungeon / raid guy more of a story and immersion guy and thats what they offered me (cant speak for others) with the Living World.

AT GalenGrey, the depth and quality of GW2’s story/content are abismally low (a snore fest which, due to content recycling and continuous repetition, soon turns your game experience into one of annoyance, unless you’re some sort of a masochist), but I guess that sits well with quite a lot of people. Kinda hard to get more superficial than it is, and given the critics I’ve read about the scarlet LS and a few others, there is little hope of improval.
It is very much a twisted version of ’don’t fix what ain’t broken’ – if something sells well regardless of its quality, why would there be incentive to improve it.

GW, on the other hand, has a good plot, engaging encounters (the escape with prince rurik is one instance of what I’d consider truly immersive content), and solid stories, which are overall anything but superficial. But most important, the game succeeded at making players feel like actual heroes (instanced gameplay also plays a role there) without tryharding (like that joke of a personal story), while all GW2 does is make you realize your character matters kitten as soon as you leave the sanctuary of your personal story because a large share of the content relies on zerging and mass events.