Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

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Other complaints about HoT were fixed in the patch last April, and even more recently when they applied fixes to the last story instance.

Most people seem to think that it was “their” issues with HOT that prevented people from buying HoT. Instead what HoT had from almost day one was very bad publicity. Not sure how anyone can assume that wasn’t the largest contributing factor.

Erm no. Sorry I don’t think that people refrained from buying HoT because of the same reasons I disliked it.
Just as you said I think people had many different reasons to not buy.

I did buy HoT on my primary account. The April “wonderpatch” did not solve any of my issues so I never bought HoT on this account. There was NO bad publicity involved – Only my own experience of: “This is no longer a game for me.”

Bad publicity can OFC be something spawned by an aggressive competitor, I get that, but it is extremely hard to pull off if the targeted product proves the attackers wrong.
Sorry – Not enough tinfoil for creative hat making to subscribe to that point of view!

A sub-par product getting bad PR? Yeah – Of course that happens. It happened to ESO and FFXIV. They changed their products radically and seems to be (slowly) recovering.
HoT? None of my concerns have changed (April patch included) so of course I’ll keep responding, when asked, that I no longer play GW2 because of x, y and z.

Short version: Products that (some) people find overpriced/under-delivering tend to get bad PR even when (some) other people consider it sliced bread v. 2.0.

Vayne.8563:

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The problem is so many people listen to what’s said on the forums, fairly or unfairly and don’t buy HoT because of it. I met another player in game today who put off buying hot for ages, because everyone told him it wasn’t soloable, except she’s finding it easy enough to solo.

That’s the problem with generalizations in general. They affect how people feel about a product, even if what they’re saying isn’t true for everyone. It’s definitely affected HoT sales.

That was a surprising statement from you Vayne: “The problem is so many people…” – Really? I would consider that a marginal reason why HoT underperformed. Especially since much of the negative feedback came 2-3 months after realease when most copies were sold.

The state/quality of the expansion, the amount of content vs. price and the new “direction” was IMO “the problem” – Anet is responsible and could have fixed that. No amount of Apple-logic applied by fans (it’s the clients doing it wrong) can!

And yes, your statement as well as mine is a generalization

I really don’t understand Anet. With their new direction they painted themselves into a corner. In their next expansion they can choose to please the people who loves HoT, or try to bring back some of us who felt that the new “direction” destroyed the game we liked. Doing the latter would probably alienate quite a few of the HoT fans. Option 3 would be yet another change in direction to attract a completely new crop of players.

So far they have tried:

• Casual content and storytelling
• 3 “faction” PvP/RvR
• Their version of E-sport
• 5-person instanced content
• Largescale PvE events
• Gliding/“flying”
• Raids
• Increased open world difficulty
• Rep. grind as horizontal progression

If they continue their strange “fuzzy logic” way of determining development direction, it seems only a few options haven’t been explored:

• Traditional gear progression
• Mounts
• Corpse running
• Full/partial loot open world PvP.

I will be interesting to see which way the next expansion will push this game

vesica tempestas.1563:

casual players can play 100% of the content excluding perhaps raids which represents a tiny proportion of the game

This statement is just you preaching to the choir. I CAN crawl to Paris on all four – That doesn’t mean I would wan’t to.
Being able to play HoT does not solve the problem that I find the content tedious, annoying and grindy as kitten.

Post HoT I’ve not recommended GW2 to any friends/family members. Before HoT I had no problem recommending GW2. I guess word of mouth from the players who stopped playing may contribute to HoT being hard to sell.

Most of the advertising I saw around GW was: Fun, adventure & journey.
With HoT it changed to: Challenging, raids and E-sport. All of that is available (often) for free, in a better form, in other games.

A mistake judging what a large part of the existing playerbase actually wanted/expected didn’t help either.

Bought it for my other account. Was really disappointed with Anet’s new “direction” and HoT in general. Started playing a different game that suits my casual desires for story and exploration better so felt my money were better spent there.

Whenever I log in to GW2 I usually prefer this account over my HoT one. Have no interest in glider skins or endless amounts of different map currencies so am not going to buy HoT on this account, not at €50, not at €5!

OniGiri.9461:

So you are not going to let off with that “numbers are down” argument even though i already thoroughly debunked that in the previous comments.

Pls stop stating your opinons as fact – it goes against the rules for commenting on this forum.

Wait – What? You debunked the fact that NC Soft earnings show declining GW2 earnings?
Please link the post where you provide indisputable proof that GW2 earnings are actually growing.
Are NC Soft really fabricating numbers in their reports (THAT would be news) or are you basically stating YOUR opinion without facts here?

Eagerly awaiting debunk of this (Check p5/6)

maddoctor.2738:

Now they added some actual end-game. Winning back some of the millions that left might be worth it, even if it means alienating a couple hundred of the current players. It’s obviously a gamble, is it working or not? We’ll see the results soon enough.

Well the “result” in the earnings report does not really align with your “millions vs. hundreds” theories.
GW2 is not gaining momentum – It is, albeit slowly, losing it. :-(

Vayne.8563:

But you’re making the assumption and it’s a bold assumption that the reason they’re leaving is HOT difficulty.

This is wrong!
I specifically said that some players “find HoT unfun, grindy, unfriendly towards new players and simply not worth their time”. I even went on to say that “those players might be a small minority”.
I stopped playing for several reasons. Difficulty was not one, so why would I assume that to be the main reason?

I actually doubt that even Anet knows why people stop playing and I’m surprised they don’t seem to ask players whose activitylevel suddenly drop from >50 hours to ~1 hour a month.

Bottom line is: HoT underperformed and f2p conversion is lower than expected!
The mantra: “You just need to keep doing something you dislike until you like it” clearly does not work in a highly competetive field.

Vayne.8563:

Of course before HOT many people were complaining the game was too easy. And yes, HoT is not friendly to new players…because it’s not meant to be new player content. It’s meant to be end game content.

You may be 100% correct, yet the “problem” persists!

Some customers (however few) leave – Even fewer joins: This is a VERY real problem for any entity outside the non-profit realm!

edit: Heck, even non-profit org’s offer less with fewer followers ;-)

Vegeta.2563:

Solo’d all of HoT Story, and everything from Living World Season 3.. so far.. what’s the problem?

Well good for you!
One problem is that some players (unlike you) find HoT unfun, grindy, unfriendly towards new players and simply not worth their time when other games simply are more welcoming to their needs and expectations.
While those players might be a small minority it adds to THE problem: This game loses more players than it attracts.

Fewer players = Less money to develop what you like = Problem! Got it?

Healix.5819:

The core game was nerfed during beta basically because of WoW players standing still and getting destroyed because of it (enemies had dodge or die attacks). They nerfed it with the intention to ramp up the difficulty over time to allow for people to get accustomed to mobile combat.

Can you back up your extrapolations somehow? My beta experience was definately different: Most people I saw/chatted with ingame were mostly seasoned Guild Wars veterans.
While anecdotal I doubt that other timezones was so different that a massive influx of static still-standing WoW players managed to change Anet’s idea’s of fun/inclusion and everything in GW2.
And: Your extrapolation on Anet’s intent to retroactively ramping up difficulty later… WHEN did they ever make that intent public? (Back when… Before HoT – You know, before they ever talked about an expansion…)

Sorry OP – You will be (and have already been) told that:
1. HoT was what most (well, out of the remaining) players wanted in difficulty.
2. Two weeks in this game is not even remotely enough to actually enjoy it or have fun.
3. While you may have enjoyed the core levelling experience: Sorry, so much is wrong with that and you should just accept that you need to:
a) Study and look up everything in various online guides.
b) Watch youtube videos on the subjects you researched.
c) Invest ungodly hours into grinding enough gold to buy a viable metabuild/gearset

GW2 was both casual, open and VERY different on release. Pre-release (beta) was as difficult/punishing and (regarded by some, if not most) as unfun as HoT and Anet did a lot of adjusting (nerfing) to be able to release a game most would find enjoyable.

Bottom line… You already said it: “I always wondered why more people dont play this game. Now i know.”

Things/direction changed. It is probably close to perfect for players that loyally stick around (at least they will tell you it is).
GW2 was never anything like Guild Wars, HoT is very different from the values that initially brought a lot of new players to GW2.
Today Anet have painted themselves into a corner with their new “direction”. People like me judge them on action beyond everything else and… They have been clear about very few things.
Evaluating what they DO churn out, the immediate future looks like:
- (yet more) Challenging groupbased content. :-s
- A lot of PR focus on PvP without actually making it enjoyable to watch.
- No REAL love for WvWvW. (I don’t play it, never enjoyed it, but a lot of people do/did: At least show them the same amount of content as… sigh… “raiders”/challenging group content.)
- Direction? Where is this game headed?

Storytelling seems like something they consider a nescessary evil and, since they don’t enjoy spending ressources on it: They make it punishing/unfun. Maybe the lesson they try to teach is a new level of loyally accepting anything – Great, just a single storymission in the next expansion: Thanks Anet, I really hated those!!!

As for “Direction”: I no longer play GW2 (since it has none).
I log in once in a while and I look for some kind of hope/real direction/dev pipeline on the forums, but I am at the point where I only log in once or twice a month for 5 mins. and prefer to (once a week or so) spend 5-10 mins. on the forums looking for that single straw that might bring me back to this game that I still hope will do well for years to come.

Alas… It’s been 12+ months without a straw! Ask here: Everything is GREAT, L2P, GG etc… Now look at financials: Would you bet your pension on the direction of this game?

beatthedown.2651:

Sorry to ruin the mood, but I want to say something about the dailies. Logging in and doing the same thing over and over nearly ruined the game for me. If you play gw2 for the dailies only, play mobile game instead. I just can’t stand this mentality to force yourself login and doing the same thing over and over, especially if you don’t have a certain goal in mind. The game will get boring quickly. I was at this point and I stopped playing for 1,5 years.

Yeah? Well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

Casual dude here – Who knows, I may log in a year or 2 down the road and see if this game has something new (outside of forced groupgettogetherasallothermmo) content.
If not? No biggie – I’ll just move along, still hoping this game will live for years.

cranos.5913:

I don’t really understand the issue tbh. Fractals is made casual friendly and 90% of the content is still relaxed open world. The only thing that isn’t casual atm is a single raid instance. A SINGLE instance, is it really worth crying about so much? 0_o

If you think this is about a single feature (raid) you will probably never understand the issues at all.
As for crying: Come on please – This is a game/entertainment… It may raise a brow/cause a smile here and there but tears? Most (grownups) reserve those kind of feelings for actual RL issues.

Harper.4173:

The real problem here is people have to decide for themselves what they want to do – play at their own pace or set up and do it effectively – either way don’t expect the experience or rewards to be the same.

The only problem/question here is: Will this changed/forced direction make more or less money for Anet.

We used to be able to progress (slowly) towards any goal in whichever fashion we chose. This is no longer the case (with HoT expansion goals in mind). It’s really that simple!
I know a lot of people are fans of this new direction. That’s fine but please accept that your personal preference will not magically change mine.

Sure it would be easy to throw those €45 at HoT and (in my case) be bitter and disappointed about it, but why would I? My measly €’s will be better spent on indie dev’s that cater to my inefficient casual clowning about.

GW2 should be just fine as I am sure Anet will get massive income from this new crop of masterclass players.