I wanted to repost something that I saw earlier. NO credit goes to me.
Original Article.
Arenanet and NCSoft collect data about everything you do while in game. It’s called analytics. It’s the same thing that Google does, the NSA, and social media as well.
Their data gives them objective information about what players are doing, what they are not doing, and what they will likely do. This gives management a pool of data to make decisions with.
Do you want to know why SAB is not coming back? Not enough people were interested in it to justify developer resources in that area.
Do you want to know why Precursors are not a priority for them? They listen to economists and nod their heads when the pseudoscientific idea of scarcity justifies people having to deal with RNG to get their legendaries.
Do you want to know why they have waited 2 years to actually make steps to support PvP, despite their GW1 history? They wanted to pay back the initial costs of launching GW2, which was considerable, before reinvesting into the company.
Why Living World/Story and no expansions? The management wanted to cut costs and improve revenue. Living World was likely a pain in the kitten to do, but is a lot cheaper than a traditional expansion overall. They didn’t have to make more than a few new zones. They didn’t have to make new classes. They didn’t have to make new item tiers or new dungeons. You know the expensive, time consuming stuff.
Why don’t they care about our rants? They have data to show what people choose to do, and take what they rant about and talk about with a grain of salt. They have taken the route of ignoring the subjective and embracing the objective alone, which is going to generate profit but will certainly create contempt as well.
Is GW2 going to “figure it out” at some point? No more than you’re going to figure out what a good company that is worth spending money on is. They are going to ignore the vocal minority, ignore the fringe groups, and ignore anything that is too expensive and not popular enough.
Why are they making us buy individual colors for commander tags? It creates scarcity and value for commander tags and being able to organize a server into multiple commander units. It ultimately saves money for the altoholics, and is one of those mathy “DUURRRR WHY DOES IT COST SO MUCHHHHH” l2kitteningcount situations.
Why are they making 1%er PvP skin rewards instead of _________ (insert hobosacks or some other stupid QQ)? PvP is about Darwinism and rising to the top of the pile of scrubs. You cannot satisfy the competitor without giving him/her the satisfaction of winning and being able to exhibit their superiority. This is why Gold (colored) medals are provided at the Olympics, Super Bowl rings, and such an emphasis is placed in the media on winners of sport. It’s as old as the ability to run in a straight line in a race is.
What about Cantha and Elona? Living Story/World has proven that Anet does not have to make a traditional expansion to satisfy the GW2 playerbase. They are too spineless and easy to please for that kind of work. So it is possible that they will inch bit by bit into those regions, but only in the kind of way you see with Dry Top and the way they’re breaking up the Seasons with Feature Packs.
Isn’t the backbone of the game population PvE? Why are they doing these 50k tournaments now? PvE funded their initial costs and produced those numbers, but because it took such a smaller cost to please the horde of drooling PvE idiots than expected, not much more effort is going to be required moving forward than making a steady episodic narrative. The money can then be spent in PvP, where the MMO market has been hemorraghing due to Dota2/LoL/Smite, and stand out as the esports MMO. Yes WoW has a dedicated community, but a polished GW2 PvP system will be THE most attractive MMO in the world to play PvP in. Crowdfunding and 3rd party sponsors could create massive royalties for NCSoft. It’s a business Golden Egg scenario, especially driven by the Chinese competitive spirit that is dominating Dota2 and will definitely seek to dominate GW2.
Ultimately, the B2P model and NCSoft are financially successful and a growing powerhouse in the MMO genre. They aren’t doing it by listening to the fringe – they’re letting the mob of lowest common denominator tell them what they want and delivering.
It’s tacky, gross, cheap, and insulting to people who want something better, but at the end of the day…
What does that tell you about the average consumer?
Grow a spine. Do research. Don’t spend money on people you aren’t getting the experience you want from.
and for all the years i played gw1 i never stacked at all not once.
