HoT Finished- Unbiased Review

HoT Finished- Unbiased Review

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

I have no freedom to adjust the difficulty or therefore scale the rewards accordingly.

Reroll necro for a much easier experience or you can bring a group into the story instances to trivialize it.

Making story chapters or instanced experiences unfairly hard means locking out casual gamers.

ArenaNet has never been for the casual majority like other MMOs. GW2 was meant to be casual, but only in the sense that they weren’t wasting your time. ArenaNet’s mistake was giving you false hope; a bait and switch. The difficulty of the core game was originally much higher, but it was heavily nerfed during beta because it was bad for business. Obviously the higher they go, the more they’ll lose, but it seems they’ve lost too much considering PoF is looking to be easier.

The people who are saying it’s diffcult or not soloable are speaking as if they’re in some kind of majority.

Considering that, in general, the majority plays MMOs like single player games and that most MMOs are balanced similar to Queensdale, the majority probably didn’t like HoT. It would be simple to tell if most people did, since expansions are supposed to bring people back and increase profits.

The real issue has always been that the core game never taught people how to play it.

The core game can be much more challenging than HoT. The problem is that you’re not actually forced forwards, as you would traditionally be required to level in appropriate areas.

The expansion did fine for well over a year, longer than WoW expansions hold their own The drop in profits only happened after a very long content draught in which the only PvE content coming out was raids. The indictment should be on the raid focus while ignoring the casual player.

The problem is, no one can say what the sales would have been like had Anet not had that content draught. I know I didn’t care so much when new raids come out, but I do enjoy the Living Story chapters. We didn’t have them.

Some evidence that Anet is thinking along the same lines is that Anet has said the new expansion will replace a living story chapter timewise and then the living story will continue much sooner.

Saying that the game didn’t do well when HoT launched isn’t really true, not at least according to the numbers. It did fine for a long long time after it launched.

HoT Finished- Unbiased Review

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419

IndigoSundown.5419

The expansion did fine for well over a year, longer than WoW expansions hold their own The drop in profits only happened after a very long content draught in which the only PvE content coming out was raids. The indictment should be on the raid focus while ignoring the casual player.

Your memory is poor and your prejudice is showing. HoT launched in Q4/15. The content drought extended from its launch until July of 16. The first quarter in which revenue dropped below 20,000 Mn KW was Q2/16 which began about 5 months after HoT launched and included 3 of the last 4 months of the drought. That’s a fair bit less than a year.

By March, 16, people were complaining that there was nothing to do in general PvE. If HoT had done fine for a year, its content would have held peoples’ attention longer than it did.

As to the so-called raid “focus,” that’s where your prejudice is showing. Raids coming in intervals of a few months per wing was known before HoT launched. Access to raids required HoT purchase. Keeping to a schedule does not mean that they abandoned or ignored the casual player.

Other things occupied a lot more dev time than a couple of raid wings to which a small number of devs were assigned. What other things? Shatterer revamp; HoT revamp (bet that took a bunch of person-hours) , at least one balance patch, one L. weapon, two festivals and gearing up to be able to start cranking out Living Story on a more regular basis.

Raids were the scapegoat. A lot of people need to blame something. Some of the non-raid community are prejudiced against raids. Some of the raid community make statements that reinforce the stereotype of raiders as seen by non-raiders. Blaming raids was picking the low-hanging fruit. I guess I’ve grown to expect more from you, and I’m sorry to be disappointed in this one case.

HoT Finished- Unbiased Review

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

The expansion did fine for well over a year, longer than WoW expansions hold their own The drop in profits only happened after a very long content draught in which the only PvE content coming out was raids. The indictment should be on the raid focus while ignoring the casual player.

Your memory is poor and your prejudice is showing. HoT launched in Q4/15. The content drought extended from its launch until July of 16. The first quarter in which revenue dropped below 20,000 Mn KW was Q2/16 which began about 5 months after HoT launched and included 3 of the last 4 months of the drought. That’s a fair bit less than a year.

By March, 16, people were complaining that there was nothing to do in general PvE. If HoT had done fine for a year, its content would have held peoples’ attention longer than it did.

As to the so-called raid “focus,” that’s where your prejudice is showing. Raids coming in intervals of a few months per wing was known before HoT launched. Access to raids required HoT purchase. Keeping to a schedule does not mean that they abandoned or ignored the casual player.

Other things occupied a lot more dev time than a couple of raid wings to which a small number of devs were assigned. What other things? Shatterer revamp; HoT revamp (bet that took a bunch of person-hours) , at least one balance patch, one L. weapon, two festivals and gearing up to be able to start cranking out Living Story on a more regular basis.

Raids were the scapegoat. A lot of people need to blame something. Some of the non-raid community are prejudiced against raids. Some of the raid community make statements that reinforce the stereotype of raiders as seen by non-raiders. Blaming raids was picking the low-hanging fruit. I guess I’ve grown to expect more from you, and I’m sorry to be disappointed in this one case.

Five months of a content draught is a long time, particularly for an expansion that wasn’t huge to begin with. If you look, at every other MMO they follow the same pattern. WoW subs start falling off after 3 months and by six they’re pretty low.

Raids aren’t a scapegoat. Raids are a very visible target that wouldn’t have been a target if something besides raids were coming out for the PvE crowd

You can’t take a casual PvE game with no raids, add raids and then ignore the rest of PvE for 9 months without actually experiencing some raid hate. Not necessarily because raids deserve it, but because they become a symptom of what’s wrong.

After five months, sales fell about back to were they were and it took more than a year before they dropped to their currert low state.

Most companies would consider that a successful expansion

HoT Finished- Unbiased Review

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419

IndigoSundown.5419

Five months of a content draught is a long time, particularly for an expansion that wasn’t huge to begin with. If you look, at every other MMO they follow the same pattern. WoW subs start falling off after 3 months and by six they’re pretty low.

Raids aren’t a scapegoat. Raids are a very visible target that wouldn’t have been a target if something besides raids were coming out for the PvE crowd.

You can’t take a casual PvE game with no raids, add raids and then ignore the rest of PvE for 9 months without actually experiencing some raid hate. Not necessarily because raids deserve it, but because they become a symptom of what’s wrong.

Yeah, that’s the perception, but it isn’t the reality. The reality is that most of the live team was working on things other than raids, it’s just that they felt they needed to address issues with HoT and lay the groundwork for regular periodic living story episodes going forward. They no more ignored general PvE in the drought than they did in the ~9 month drought that preceded HoT release.

After five months, sales fell about back to were they were and it took more than a year before they dropped to their currert low state.

As stated before, Q2/16 was the biggest drop in revenue from (primarily) gem sales that the game had seen. They went from a median in the months preceding HoT of ~21,000 Mn KW to ~14,000 Mn KW. They may have dropped further since (I lost interest in following the numbers tbh) , but you cannot say that gem sales remained stable for a year after HoT launched and be accurate. In fact, of those discussing the Q2/16 numbers, a lot pointed at the significant drop and blamed the drought, which of course led to blaming raids.

So, I’m going to ask. Did people blame the Shatterer revamp, or the revisions to HoT, or the balance team, the L. Weapons team? No, they blamed raids, because of prejudice. Just as there were a lot of factors that led to HOT sales being substantially lower than there were active accounts before it hit, there are a lot of factors which led to the PvE content drought. Most of those get ignored. That makes raids a scapegoat.

(edited by IndigoSundown.5419)

HoT Finished- Unbiased Review

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

Five months of a content draught is a long time, particularly for an expansion that wasn’t huge to begin with. If you look, at every other MMO they follow the same pattern. WoW subs start falling off after 3 months and by six they’re pretty low.

Raids aren’t a scapegoat. Raids are a very visible target that wouldn’t have been a target if something besides raids were coming out for the PvE crowd.

You can’t take a casual PvE game with no raids, add raids and then ignore the rest of PvE for 9 months without actually experiencing some raid hate. Not necessarily because raids deserve it, but because they become a symptom of what’s wrong.

Yeah, that’s the perception, but it isn’t the reality. The reality is that most of the live team was working on things other than raids, it’s just that they felt they needed to address issues with HoT and lay the groundwork for regular periodic living story episodes going forward. They no more ignored general PvE in the drought than they did in the ~9 month drought that preceded HoT release.

After five months, sales fell about back to were they were and it took more than a year before they dropped to their currert low state.

As stated before, Q2/16 was the biggest drop in revenue from (primarily) gem sales that the game had seen. They went from a median in the months preceding HoT of ~21,000 Mn KW to ~14,000 Mn KW. They may have dropped further since (I lost interest in following the numbers tbh) , but you cannot say that gem sales remained stable for a year after HoT launched and be accurate. In fact, of those discussing the Q2/16 numbers, a lot pointed at the significant drop and blamed the drought, which of course led to blaming raids.

So, I’m going to ask. Did people blame the Shatterer revamp, or the revisions to HoT, or the balance team, the L. Weapons team? No, they blamed raids, because of prejudice. Just as there were a lot of factors that led to HOT sales being substantially lower than there were active accounts before it hit, there are a lot of factors which led to the PvE content drought. Most of those get ignored. That makes raids a scapegoat.

The lack of gem store sales goes to two things. Anet said it themselves. Not enough free to play players picking up HoT. Their words, not my words.

Every game has attrition. This is particularly true of a 3.5 year old game. There were a lot of people who bought HoT, finished it in 3 months and left again. That’s called normal in MMO space. You don’t have to blame HoT for normal. You’re only looking to blame HoT because you don’t personally enjoy it, so you want to read those numbers as not normal.

Most MMOs 3 months after expansion drops lose people. WoW does. No one blames the expansion because it’s expected.

What Anet expected was more free to play players to pick up HoT, because of that happened there probably would have been more gemstore sales

But there was a very loud negative publicity surrounding HoT and launch and anyone in the industry will tell you that’s the worst time for bad publicity because it’s the time when 90% of your sales are being made

Personally the community did more to damage the game than the game itself. In the beginning Anet did make some pretty bad blunders, and those blunders got major coverage. People on the fence don’t buy when that happens.

Less people in the game means less game sales, but then, a content draught for the main player base also means less players which means less gem sales.

You can blame it on HoT all you want. It’s fueled by our dislike for HoT. Normal falloff is normal.

Edit: As an example, dungeon rewards were completely nerfed and a reasonable percentage of the dungeon running community, which did exist, stopped playing. They didn’t stop playing because the jungle was too hard or the maps were too complex> They stopped playing because their content of choice was not worth running. That has very little to do with how many people who played HoT liked HoT.

Edit 2: Here’s a thread from reddit, which is community controlled, instead of just anyone posting anything. People who post stuff that doesn’t get community support tend to get downvoted until they’re posts are no longer visible.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6y0ock/i_finally_upgraded_from_core_to_hot_this_weekend/

Naturally reddit is comprised of people who probably know the game better, but at least there, this is what the community thinks.

(edited by Vayne.8563)

HoT Finished- Unbiased Review

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419

IndigoSundown.5419

The lack of gem store sales goes to two things. Anet said it themselves. Not enough free to play players picking up HoT. Their words, not my words.

Every game has attrition. This is particularly true of a 3.5 year old game. There were a lot of people who bought HoT, finished it in 3 months and left again. That’s called normal in MMO space. You don’t have to blame HoT for normal. You’re only looking to blame HoT because you don’t personally enjoy it, so you want to read those numbers as not normal.

Most MMOs 3 months after expansion drops lose people. WoW does. No one blames the expansion because it’s expected.

What Anet expected was more free to play players to pick up HoT, because of that happened there probably would have been more gemstore sales

But there was a very loud negative publicity surrounding HoT and launch and anyone in the industry will tell you that’s the worst time for bad publicity because it’s the time when 90% of your sales are being made

Personally the community did more to damage the game than the game itself. In the beginning Anet did make some pretty bad blunders, and those blunders got major coverage. People on the fence don’t buy when that happens.

Less people in the game means less game sales, but then, a content draught for the main player base also means less players which means less gem sales.

You can blame it on HoT all you want. It’s fueled by our dislike for HoT. Normal falloff is normal.

Edit: As an example, dungeon rewards were completely nerfed and a reasonable percentage of the dungeon running community, which did exist, stopped playing. They didn’t stop playing because the jungle was too hard or the maps were too complex> They stopped playing because their content of choice was not worth running. That has very little to do with how many people who played HoT liked HoT.

Edit 2: Here’s a thread from reddit, which is community controlled, instead of just anyone posting anything. People who post stuff that doesn’t get community support tend to get downvoted until they’re posts are no longer visible.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6y0ock/i_finally_upgraded_from_core_to_hot_this_weekend/

Naturally reddit is comprised of people who probably know the game better, but at least there, this is what the community thinks.

I’m not blaming HoT for anything. I am debunking your previous assertion that gem sales were stable through HoT launch and for a year thereafter. They weren’t. The only possible explanation I offered as to why was, “Content drought.” not HoT.

The statement about “not enough free players bought HoT” was in the NCSoft report. While ANet may have provided data and analysis, NCSoft made the statement. Lower gem sales being due to free players failing to buy HoT? May have been a thing, but to my knowledge ANet never stated that as a reason. The statement in the report was about revenue from HoT sales being below expectation. In the same report, gem store sales were cited as “stable for Q4/15.”

I also challenged your assertion that raids were at fault for the content drought. While that’s a perception shared by a bunch of people, it’s a flawed one. I’ve already said why. Maybe if you reread without going on a mental tangent that I’m somehow blaming HoT for something, you’ll get what I’m saying.

The rest of your post is addressing things I did not say, or mean to say. I’ve criticized HoT in the past. I leveled no criticisms at the XPac this time.

HoT Finished- Unbiased Review

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

The lack of gem store sales goes to two things. Anet said it themselves. Not enough free to play players picking up HoT. Their words, not my words.

Every game has attrition. This is particularly true of a 3.5 year old game. There were a lot of people who bought HoT, finished it in 3 months and left again. That’s called normal in MMO space. You don’t have to blame HoT for normal. You’re only looking to blame HoT because you don’t personally enjoy it, so you want to read those numbers as not normal.

Most MMOs 3 months after expansion drops lose people. WoW does. No one blames the expansion because it’s expected.

What Anet expected was more free to play players to pick up HoT, because of that happened there probably would have been more gemstore sales

But there was a very loud negative publicity surrounding HoT and launch and anyone in the industry will tell you that’s the worst time for bad publicity because it’s the time when 90% of your sales are being made

Personally the community did more to damage the game than the game itself. In the beginning Anet did make some pretty bad blunders, and those blunders got major coverage. People on the fence don’t buy when that happens.

Less people in the game means less game sales, but then, a content draught for the main player base also means less players which means less gem sales.

You can blame it on HoT all you want. It’s fueled by our dislike for HoT. Normal falloff is normal.

Edit: As an example, dungeon rewards were completely nerfed and a reasonable percentage of the dungeon running community, which did exist, stopped playing. They didn’t stop playing because the jungle was too hard or the maps were too complex> They stopped playing because their content of choice was not worth running. That has very little to do with how many people who played HoT liked HoT.

Edit 2: Here’s a thread from reddit, which is community controlled, instead of just anyone posting anything. People who post stuff that doesn’t get community support tend to get downvoted until they’re posts are no longer visible.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6y0ock/i_finally_upgraded_from_core_to_hot_this_weekend/

Naturally reddit is comprised of people who probably know the game better, but at least there, this is what the community thinks.

I’m not blaming HoT for anything. I am debunking your previous assertion that gem sales were stable through HoT launch and for a year thereafter. They weren’t. The only possible explanation I offered as to why was, “Content drought.” not HoT.

The statement about “not enough free players bought HoT” was in the NCSoft report. While ANet may have provided data and analysis, NCSoft made the statement. Lower gem sales being due to free players failing to buy HoT? May have been a thing, but to my knowledge ANet never stated that as a reason. The statement in the report was about revenue from HoT sales being below expectation. In the same report, gem store sales were cited as “stable for Q4/15.”

I also challenged your assertion that raids were at fault for the content drought. While that’s a perception shared by a bunch of people, it’s a flawed one. I’ve already said why. Maybe if you reread without going on a mental tangent that I’m somehow blaming HoT for something, you’ll get what I’m saying.

The rest of your post is addressing things I did not say, or mean to say. I’ve criticized HoT in the past. I leveled no criticisms at the XPac this time.

You mistook ,my meaning, which is fine, since it wasn’t very clear. I’m talking about stable from where it ended up before hot and after hot. Guild Wars 2 was basically making 8 million a month before HoT launched and again when HOT died down is was making about the same. That’s what I meant

It doesn’t mean that the number didn’t go up for launch and drop after three months, because that’s expected. I’m looking at what the game had been doing and what the game started doing again after the initial rush. Where it settled. And yes, it was about what it had been before.

Now it’s less, but that’s a lot later.