Guild Wars 2

Feanor.2358:

Following the same logic, eles, engis, guards, thieves need their support capabilities buffed like crazy because they can’t qualify for a support spot for their life.

Following the same logic, they certainly could use some support buffs, yes. “Role slots” design is much better than “class slots”, it increases accessibility and replayability.

Feanor.2358:

Fast forward a few more arguments like that and we’d end up with every class being able to fill in every role. Which may sound like a good thing but in my opinion removes some of the identity of the classes. Why even have different classes when they can achieve the same results? To just have different animations playing?

Because this is a good thing generally. It opens up more playstyles, more raid compositions, more tactics. Adamant meta is not healthy for the game.

Feanor.2358:

NikeEU.7690:

Why would you nerf the warrior dps condi build? It has lower dps than all the other dps builds and if you want extra utility from it you have to lower the dps further. If anything the damage should be buffed so it’s a viable.alternative to other pure dps builds.

Riiight, because the warriors aren’t mandatory already. Please be realistic.

Because warrior damage is not high enough to bring him into dps slot instead of traditional dps, and his raid spot is given to him not because of his dps at all, and nerfing his dps will not change anything in raid composition. So, basically you are asking “this guy is too good at chess, so we need to reduce his ability to play football”.

zealex.9410:

The only way i would agree to ez mode raids would be if li didnt drop, if the unique raid skins also didnt drop and magetide shards. You can still get all the other loot, minis etc (minis are your only source of shards) and regular asc weapons and armor chest with the default skin. I would also argue that releasing the ez mode a few weeks later from the actual release is also a good idea.

Actually, allowing LI drop in lower difficulty mode along with adding a way to convert them into magnetite shards really could help to normalize at least some of the dumb requirements, like 50 LI escort runs.

Main healer struggle in GW2 is not healing output, but absolutely horrendous interface and healing delivery model. “I will run away from all your heals and there is nothing you can do about it” – this is a pretty funny joke for the most of MMOs, but harsh truth for GW2.

Fatalyz.7168:

I never said I was unable to prove my statement.

Again, you only asked me if I cared to. Me not caring to, does not equal inability.

In that case – why anybody should take your empty assumptions as something more than opinion?

Fatalyz.7168:

You didn’t ask if it was my opinion. You asked if I cared to. No, I didn’t care to, and still don’t.

You made a statement, and unable to prove that this statement is something more than your personal opinion. So, it is your personal opinion. Simple.

Fatalyz.7168:

Rednik.3809:

Fatalyz.7168:

Guild Wars 2 isn’t trying to be a hard-core raiding experience. It is trying to be an open world experience, that offers raids for those that want more challenging content in the game, and that is exactly what they are delivering on.

Care to give an official source on it?

Nope.

So, it’s just your personal opinion. Okay.

TexZero.7910:

Also again since when did developers take feelings of players into account for designing content, especially when that subset of players is so small as to be insignificant ? If you answer this with raids, you’re being disingenuous on a silly level.

That’s pretty true. More like, they took financial results instead.

Fatalyz.7168:

Guild Wars 2 isn’t trying to be a hard-core raiding experience. It is trying to be an open world experience, that offers raids for those that want more challenging content in the game, and that is exactly what they are delivering on.

Care to give an official source on it?

I was wondering if the devs ever thought of nerfing or changing the mechanic of healing button simply because for a single button its really op. Giving dmg restoration to you and sometimes even to your group makes mechanics and any real danger tha can occur in raids fractals and any pve scenario a non factor.

maddoctor.2738:

Fractals were “supported” without adding a single fractal in 3 years.

Fractals were promised to become their endgame PvE content after they dropped dungeons. And that was a lie.

Right, they “switched” their focus by going back to focus on Fractals and actually release some.

They switched it only after their HoT model with “lets throw some grind maps and rehashed fractal system to majority and concentrate on raid endgame” failed spectacularly. Only after that they started to make new fractals and LS3.

Assets were re-used from LS1, just like most of Fractals is based on historical events in Tyrian history. Re-using those old LS1 assets that were removed from the game was an excellent move for content that is all about that.

That’s just a poor excuse and you know it.

maddoctor.2738:

So you ignore the simple facts that Fractal release pace is faster than it has ever been in the past for the game called Guild Wars 2, that’s a proven fact and you can’t deny it calling it “mockery”. If the current pace is bad for you then why haven’t you quit the game in the last 3 years we got no fractal release at all? Where were you then? Oh right there were no Raids back then to be your one and only focus.

I’m not ignoring simple facts that Anet lied to us when they dropped dungeon support and said that fractals will be their new PvE endgame focus, and then switched their focus to raids without saying a word.

maddoctor.2738:

You also ignore the simple proof that we got 6 fractals over 1 raid wing, since fractal releases started. That’s huge. And what do re-used assets have to do with anything? The bosses and the re-worked encounters use completely new mechanics not found anywhere else in the game. That’s what counts, not the shiny textures and models.

Assets are sign of attention. When developer decides that content is not important enough to ask designers for at least some new models, then it’s a pretty clear indicator of their priorities. That means that content was made either in haste because making new models takes time (2016Q2 financial results, eh?), or they are not considering it important enough, so designers are making new content for something else (geeee, I wonder what exactly).

maddoctor.2738:

And about fractal loot, fractals won’t get new loot, because of how their reward system is designed. Since you probably ignore, adding a new fractal is much more complicated process than adding a new Raid. This includes adding new rewards for them, since they need to be balanced for all current fractals.

Their reward system is designed to not have freshly modeled weapons/armor? That’s something new.

Btw, I’m not against raids. I’m against their horrible implementation. I’m against lies when “ultimate PvE endgame” suddenly becomes mere “stepping stone to raids”. I’m against developers who refuse to open their eyes and stop copying long dead vanilla WoW raid ideology. I’m against toxicity that surrounds raid community, where 100 LI Escort demands are already considered normal and all criticism is met with “make your own group”. I’m against turning game into the ugly vanilla WoW parody.

Ayrilana.1396:

Do you have a source for the bolded or did you make it up?

You want me to link you NCSoft revenue page?

maddoctor.2738:

The last Fractal update before Heart of Thorns was added on November 2013
Chaos Isles was added on July 2016, that’s 3 years of 0 Fractals. For an actual Fractal player the pace of Fractal releases now is amazing compared to what it used to be. You don’t compare fractals with raids, which is something completely different, but with fractals. And the pace of new fractal releases is absolutely great.

They added 2 completely new Fractals, Chaos and Nightmare. They added a new version for Nightmare fractal (CM). They completely reworked Swampland and Thaumanova Fractals (they are like different Fractals now), they changed Snowblind drastically.

Don’t say that the Fractals team hasn’t been doing a good job because they are doing an amazing job. Also, you need to recall that Fractal releases started in July 2016, Raid releases started in November 2015, that’s a huge head start for the Raids. Since Fractals started releases we had 2+1 new and 3 greatly reworked Fractals versus 1 single Raid Wing. Again, you are devaluing the very important and great work the new Fractals team is doing.

For an actual Fractal player the pace of Fractal releases is mockery. They started to do something only after they realized how hard their shiny new raid-centered strategy backfired right into their core audience. Only then they made 2 fractals (out of already existing assets) and started to release LS3 chapters. And we still don’t have even a single brand new one fractal map (by “new” I mean made from zero, not reused old parts/models). Or fractal boss. Or even piece of fractal loot, outside of legendary backpack.

OniGiri.9461:

I am a software developer. We have different teams for different parts of the application. If one team delievers faster then another team it is (almost) NEVER due to not enough people working on it.

The raid team does work seperatly from the other game modes. One wing or boss has no effect on another. Even without being involved in their development process i can see that fractal development is much more complex (due to the reasons i already mentioned in the previous post).

First, Anet already mentioned that they do have shared resources. “Raid team” is team that works exclusively on raids (also they not said that this team was small during HoT development, where majority of work for first 3 wings was made), they are not making everything. So development resources are being moved here and there.
Second, existing two fractals were made on existing assets from previous fractals and LS1. They don’t even have a single new boss model. Only new thing was what, fractal backpack? While raids got their own line of unique White Mantle weapons, plus unique boss drops, pls THREE new legendary armor sets. And ofc unique bosses, unique maps, unique mechanics and so on.
We have raw development output. Everyone can see it. And that output is showing something quite different than “small side content, nothing to worry about”.

OniGiri.9461:

Bringing up dungeons is just a joke since they stated that their won’t ever be any new dungeons.

So, they switched dungeon development resources to fractals, that’s why now we have much more new fractals than raid… oh wait, raids got more EVERYTHING than fractals.

You do realize that one fractal has about 5 different levels. You have to adjust 5 different difficulty settings, instability composition, mobs, bosses, agony calculation, etc.

So, basically sit there and change a few numbers in a script. Sounds like a lot of work, really.
And ofc Anet doesn’t bother with allowing players to betatest fractals, only raids are entitled for that.

Crinn.7864:

Raids aren’t receiving more development time than anything.

Then how we got 0 dungeons, 2 fractals and 4 raid wings?

You don’t understand why other rpgs use “modes.” The entire concept of variable difficulty encounters was created for vertical progression mmos in order to keep a raid relevant after it’s original difficulty got power creeped out of relevance. Since GW2 does not use vertical progression there is no need for variable difficulty encounters.

Emm, what? Difficulty modes serves for widening raid audience and keeping mid and high-end raiding community saturated with fresh blood. Otherwise old model with different difficulty of encounters during a single raid would be enough.

Crinn.7864:

Rhetoric. Quality of rewards has nothing to do with whether a activity is a “side” activity or not. Quality of rewards is almost always related to how big a accomplishment getting the reward is.

In that case, calling something like that “side activity” will be a lie. Side activities are not receiving attention and development time more than all other instanced PvE content put together for 3 previous years.

No the fights themselves are different difficulties. Xera and Matthias are extremely difficult. Escort however is about as difficult as a dungeon.

Where is different difficulty modes for Xera and Matthias? Where is hardmode Escort? “Easy and difficult encounters” raid model is outdated, dead and dropped for years already in any decent raiding MMO.

OniGiri.9461:

Did Anet state that the gameplay is now raid-centric?

If not, then claim on “deserves best rewards” is wrong. Side activity cannot have best rewards in game and still be called such.

- There already are different difficulties in raids

Normal and hard, and on very few encounters.

- There are many sites to check for good raid tactics and
- there are some good dps meter tools out there that let you analize the encounter afterwards (anet gave the green light on those that have no gear checking)

And none of them are officially supported.

OniGiri.9461:

Thats not correct. The choice to put a high tier reward into raids is totally logical.
Raiding is currently the hardest kind of content in guild wars 2.
The fitting reward for beating the hardest kind of content in the game should be the best kind of reward.
If i beat any kind of hard mode in another game i expect to get the shinniest of the shinniest. But not in this game? Why?

Because other games have this content as center and endgame for their PvE part, so its pretty logical that they have best rewards.
Are we following that path? Fine, in that case stop telling us about “raids are just side activity” and give us everything that should be in game with a raid-centric gameplay – different difficulties, proper learning curve, ingame raid tactic manuals, proper raid tools and UI and so on.

Djinn.9245:

I don’t really understand what you are saying, but traditionally in MMOs Raiders get the best rewards because Raiding requires the most dedication / time investment in the game.

Traditionally games where raiding is getting best rewards have their raids made available for a wide range of players. Also, these games are usually raid-centric, or at least their PvE endgame is.

Djinn.9245:

Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion, but this is how gaming works. Raid loot is always much better than anything else and it should be. People dedicate a lot of time and effort to raiding and they should be rewarded for that.

So, at first people were asking for challenging content and rewards to show off. Now there is “I’m entitled not for just exclusive, but for the best rewards because I’m doing content I asked for”. And then some people are wondering why raid community have such reputation.

TexZero.7910:

and raids are the ultimate 10 man end game content….

And water is wet and sun gives light. Point is – PvE endgame was changed harshly, along with rewards, development focus, balance focus and so on. And that change left a lot of people behind due to new format and amazingly badly made learning curve, which created one of the worst entry bottlenecks in GW2 history.
And old f50 was not that hard at all btw. Only Trin and Archdiviner was kinda dangerous due to damage output on inexperienced players.

NikeEU.7690:

Not sure why raiding changed anything for you since if you choose not to raid your experience remains exactly the same.

As very minimum – he is already denied from content that could be made instead of raids. Like, you know, fractals were promised as “ultimate endgame instanced content”, but now changed to mere “gateway to raids”.

Ayrilana.1396:

You can always pick your own way. It’s called creating your own group. It’s a bit hypocritical to complain about not having choices and want to impose a lack of choice in other players. It’s pretty much the same thing we all saw with those threads upset that a lot of dungeon groups preferred berserkers and some players then wanting the stat removed instead of just creating their own group.

Creating your own group will not work for inexperienced people. That’s why modern MMOs have multiple difficulty settings.

Ayrilana.1396:

Getting less attention? They added two two fractals and are currently working on a new one. They’re thinking of redoing jade maw. Fractals have had so much attention since they were released. Just because some of the attention that fractals got is being diverted to raids doesn’t mean that fractals is any less important to Anet.

Sorry, it’s not me who is responsible for creating game population and their interests. People are usually not happy when you are giving less attention to more popular instanced content and divert your resources to not so popular one.

Ayrilana.1396:

Balance changes are made based on all game modes. Some changes were made because there was an issue in one game mode that necessarily wasn’t as apparent in others. Anet has enough problems balancing for just the game itself. Do you really want them to balance for each game mode? Conjured weapons, I’m assuming from an Ele, was because of dungeons and fractals. Are you going to complain about those two game modes affecting players in open world PvE?

I’m just pointing out that Anet is playing favorites, again. You can find million excuses for this, but still this is a fact.

Ayrilana.1396:

Face it. Raids were developed to be challenging content. There’s nothing challenging about giving it an easy mode so players can coast through it with less effort. The easier you make it, the easier it is for players to coast through it while avoid mechanics. Kind of the opposite effect of throwing more players at something to avoid the mechanics when you see in open world PvE.

No one is trying to take challenging content from raiders, but they are still minority that getting a lot of content in content-starved game, and others want to either some decent way to join them via different difficulty levels (not for same loot, but for proper learning curve), or at least level of attention proportional to population.

Ayrilana.1396:

They are side content. Just because they’re pinnacle of challenging endgame content does not mean they’re side content. You do not have to participate in raids to enjoy other areas of the game.

And this is one of most obvious examples how game is changed, from “everything is available to everyone, play how you want” to “meta or gtfo, you are not allowed to pick your way anymore, go away and play something else”. This gone so far that now we even have dps meters in game, and some people are already trying to push them further into non-raids too.

Ayrilana.1396:

Just because fractals can be seen as stepping stones to raids, this doesn’t diminish what fractals offer to players. There are many things in games that are stepping stones to other things within the games. It’s a sense of progression.

And yet these things are clearly getting less Anet attention despite being more popular and having wider audience.

Ayrilana.1396:

Yes, raids got 4 wings. We also got four living story episodes that each contained a map. So what’s your point? Raids are still a very small part of the game meant for those that wanted a challenge. Yes, raids have unique rewards but what areas of the game don’t?

I’m talking about repeatable instanced content, which is something that keeping people interested and giving them stuff to do. Living story maps gives you only some gear farm after you finished initial story. Its not like people are happy when they see either lack of new content to do in 5ppl format, or brick wall surrounding raids. One of these things should be addressed, though it better be both of them.

Ayrilana.1396:

No, PvE balances are not all based on raids. Some things will be more prone to need to be changed because of how they are in raids but are not a large issue in the rest of the game. It’s really no different than how some things were changed because of their impact in fractals but weren’t a large issue in open world PvE.

Except its not. Even old infamous conjured weapons nerfs were made only after someone used them in sPvP tourney.

Ayrilana.1396:

Raid threads are not really all that more numerous. I’ve actually seen more mounts threads but that doesn’t mean the game needs mounts. There are those that want to experience the story which you can for the most part in cleared instances. Cleared instance isn’t enough because they consider fighting the bosses as part of the experience but they want it brought down to their level. This would also be a waste of resources as players would likely only play the story mode once like for dungeons. Then there are those that want an easy mode because they want the loots but without having to put in the effort to earn them.

Multiple difficulty modes for group content is universal approach for modern game developing, and it works, and that’s why it being requested. “But you should just work harder”, “but you just want rewards for free”, “but its pointless and nobody going to play them” – these arguments are proven wrong in many games already, on tremendous auditory, including all top PvE games. Why Anet is ignoring that experience and pushing 10 years old and outdated raid model is beyond me.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I don’t follow that line of reasoning at all.

The value of adding raids to the game comes from offering a type of challenge that can’t be achieved in the rest of the game. The rest of the game needs to appeal to a wide cross-section of players; raids only need to appeal to one subset.

Fractals are already the content that can be done with whatever builds people want to bring. Raids are designed to require more attention (at least, initially). That’s fundamental to the brand.

It’s a tiny fraction of the game, a tiny fraction of the dev resources. I simply don’t see that there’s an issue that requires ANet to create an easier version.

That could be true if raids were introduced as some kind of side content. Problem is, they are introduced and promoted as an ultimate PvE endgame.
Dungeons are abandoned. Fractals are no more “GW2-style ultimate PvE endgame” as Anet promised when they abandoned dungeons, but instead “stepping stones to raid” now. Lore? Anet sees no problem with introducing lore story lines in raids now. Content? Raids got 4 wings, fractals got 2 fractals, and dungeons got… well, you know. Rewards? Yay, they added a second set of fractal skins, which is retextured first one, and one legendary backpack, against 3 full sets of legendary armor, White Mantle weaponry and other unique skins.
Even almost all PvE balance changes are being made based on raid feedback now.
A lot of people have a feeling that Anet is promoting raids as their new and only PvE endgame now. That’s why raid threads are so numerous, and so many people are concerned. It doesn’t looks like side activity.

Ayrilana.1396:

Also in long sustained fights. But let’s go ahead and assume that the build was only useful in raids. How was nerfing it affecting players outside of raids? If they never used it then how did it impact them?

Build had high damage in raids, not “was only useful in raids”.

Ayrilana.1396:

This isn’t about PvP and WvW.

The amount of damage that burn warrior could do was very large. It was no surprise that it would get nerfed. That same build could be used in other areas of PvE outside of raids. In fact, burnzerker was created before raids released.

The optimal builds for raids were quite often the optimal builds in other areas of the game. It’s easy to forget that and mistake them fixing an issue that was present in multiple areas and assume it was because of only one area.

Except it was not. It was only overpowered for large hitboxes, which was only meaningful in? Right.

Ayrilana.1396:

All of those impacted other areas of the game too. The optimal builds for raids were quite often the optimal builds in other areas of the game. It’s easy to forget that and mistake them fixing an issue that was present in multiple areas and assume it was because of only one area.

Every build is impacting the game as long as it being played. This is not an excuse. Or maybe you are going to tell me that zerk ele was dominating spvp or wvw? Or 5 burn warriors conquered fractal meta charts?

Ayrilana.1396:

What makes you think it’s because of raid balance? Regardless, this has nothing to do with restricting the builds that players can use outside of raids as nothing there requires specific builds.

Want examples? Burn warrior, zerk ele (multiple times), butchered rev natural resonance and mesmer alacrity. But no one outside of raids needs them anyway, I get it.

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s not a weak argument because nowhere else in PvE requires specific builds.

So, everyone else must be okay with their class being nerfed, or changed, or ignored, purely because of the raid balance? When same thing happened due to sPvP or WvW balance adjustments, a lot of people was upset, and rightfully so. But somehow, in case of raids it must be ok because “you don’t need your builds anyway!”? Lolwhat?

maddoctor.2738:

Where is this focus on Raids?
They released more Fractals since LS3 started than during any other time in the history of the game (aside from their release), they also heavily tweaked one fractal so it doesn’t even play like the old one, and tweaked other fractals to make them more fun and engaging.

They introduced more maps with LS3 than at any other point in the game’s history.

They released 2 pvp maps and changed another one, we’ve had 2 pvp seasons (one is underway).

They released multiple new legendary weapons, way more than the zero amount of legendary weapons we got between release and heart of thorns.

Overall in the time frame of LS3 they released more permanent content in the game than at any other point in its history, on nearly all game modes (WvW got a redesign of the Desert Borderlands and that’s it)

So I ask again, where is this “focus on Raids”?

4 wings > 2 fractals. Also raids are WAAAAAY more stuffed with rewards than anything anet did before and after.

maddoctor.2738:

By calling Fractals a stepping stone for raids it means players that want to Raid should get some experience in instanced content before entering Raids. A fresh level 80 with rare gear has no place in Raids, while they can do wvw, spvp and fractals without any problems, which is why there is no “stepping stone” needed for those game modes. The alternative would’ve been to hard lock Raids, like what happens with AR in Fractals, but that wouldn’t end well.

Can you tell me why they must use resources of fractal team to make “stepping stones to raids”, effectively denying fractal players from new content that could be made with these resources, and not using the raid team instead?

maxwelgm.4315:

The rest of the game doesn’t do much for teaching anything, actually, because it can all by bypassed by overhealing, hit and running, etc. It can also be argued that the kind of individual skills you get like managing your dodge bar, keep up rotations, etc. are actually more important than anything else during raids.

Matthias for example is not considered one of the hardest bosses in the game because he takes a lot of teamwork (even if he does, mostly for breakbars) but because any one player can make or break the whole thing. You died with a poison well? gg. You dropped a well of the profane on the middle of the temple right before water phase? gg. You messed up reflect twice during Abomination phase and a ghost just ran through you? gg. What you do as a player contributes to failure or sucess more than what the rest of the team is doing, because most mechanics are targetted at one player at a time. And this is also true of fractals, therefore they are much more alike than it first appears. What you claim as the difference between challenging 5 man content and 10 man content is merely a number difference: it is more likely to have more players failing their individual mechanics during raids, simply because there are more players there to fail!

All your examples summed up can be replaces with one phrase – ’raids teaching you to perform your role decently and maybe sometimes deal with rng/raidwide mechanics". Fractals cannot do the same thing simply because there is only 5 man cap, and you cannot learn to perform typical raid roles in there without being artificially funneled into raid builds by devs. Which is not great idea really.

IndigoSundown.5419:

The failure of a significant percentage of active accounts to adopt HoT due to a myriad of reasons seems much more likely to be the cause than raids.

Probably. That also means that HoT failed to please GW2 core auditory, due to various reasons , as you said. That means, that HoT did a lot of its job very wrong and lots of GW2 veterans are not interested in HoT content. That means that next addon must do a lot of job to appeal to old vanilla GW2 crowd, if Anet wants to return their revenue.

IndigoSundown.5419:

As to a shift in endgame philosophy, ANet has continued to put out story/open world and FotM endgame content at greater frequency than they did in the year prior to HoT.

Your confirmation bias is showing.

You know, it’s not me wearing a red dev badge and saying that they now see fractals as stepping stones to raids. So much for old “fractals are endgame too” philosophy.

maddoctor.2738:

It is confirmed that gem sales are stable so I’m not sure how you get that many people are leaving (without many others joining)

It’s confirmed that revenue before HoT was at least 33% higher, and there was no fresh HoT boxes to push it up. So, how exactly revenue from HoT sales + gem sales while being so significantly weaker than previous revenue without HoT sales, somehow can be on par?

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

I have a bachelor’s degree in accounting. If you had any idea what you were talking about you would realize that Anet’s quarterly reports have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not raids have an easy mode.

So when LOTS of people are disappointed and leaving, it have nothing to do with a major switch in endgame philosophy and direction. Allright.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Do you have like, any idea what you’re talking about? Do you have any idea what businesses operate like or anything? Have you ever taken any sort of business classes? My guess is no.

Yes, I do. Do you?

Nokaru.7831:

Maybe you think if you keep saying this enough it will become true. It won’t.

It will, if they are planning to expand raids any further from now, and don’t want to be fired by NCSoft management after another year of atrocious revenue rates.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

So you want to see the raid story, but you don’t want to put any time or effort into actually learning the encounters to do so?

Actual boss mechanics has a very weak relation to lore or story.

maddoctor.2738:

Back from Q4 2015

Something that many who post about the quarter reports fail to understand is that with Heart of Thorns the game became free to play which means it lost the game sales. If we believe the NCSoft report which is rather clear, the gem sales are stable, the difference between the revenue now and what it was before is the loss of box SALES.

It has nothing to do with Raids, or how difficult Heart of Thorns is, or how slow the release of new content is. It’s all about failing to convert free players and old players into paying customers, which means the problem is at the EARLY game.

Thing is – right now their revenue is lower than one before HoT, so that means that old gem sales was larger than current ones, because now they have gems+paid expansion, and still showing lower results. That means that their customers who were used to buy gems are leaving, and new ones are not compensating it. They are losing their old playerbase, and that means that they did something very wrong and people are disappointed.

ButterPeanut.9746:

Like other said. What about masteries? What about the new WvW map? What about elite specializations? What about changes to fractal scaling to 100? What about the new legendary weapons (or lack there of)? What about a short HoT story? These are all new things that came with HoT.

I dislike story, WvW, and legendary weapon grinds but don’t spew false accusations that a single one of them is the sole reason for the revenue loss in the game. Your dislike for raiding is a personal vendetta and nothing more. There is no fact behind any of it.

Nobody will ever know for sure, but I’m VERY confident in saying that the exact same HoT game except no raids would result in far worse earning reports than we currently have.

Sure, and you are probably right. But what about “exact same HoT” with better implemented and more popular raids? Or “exact same HoT” with a lots of new dungeons instead of them? Or fractals? Or both?
It’s not about finding a scapegoat, it’s about finding what can be done to compensate it. That constant uproar on these forums and on reddit, it’s not came from nowhere. People are disappointed and people are asking for improvements, so they could find something to enjoy. But for now, there literally “haha too bad for you, git gud” from the raid team, and “we are working hard on fractals, they are our priority” from other Anet representatives, and then… raids are getting more content while fractals are getting crafting tokens.
And they are probably thinking that this will somehow improve situation. Some miracle maybe, I don’t know.

ButterPeanut.9746:

No…it means that the entire game of gw2 has made less revenue than it did previously.

There is absolutely no evidence that any one particular aspect of the game was directly related to this revenue loss. It is equally as likely (and could even be more?) that the revenue loss is from poor WvW support, HoT maps too hard at launch, 4 seasons of bad PvP structure, poor class balance at HoT launch, etc.

Only in the raiding subforum to people explicity blame raids for this…even though there is no evidence to support it.

Please stop with this. The game made less money. The…Entire…Game. Not one specific part of it.

The entire game without that specific part was making more money before. The entire game with with specific part being pushed as only valuable endgame (recent nerfs to fractal ascended drops says hello, lack of updates in comparison with raids says konichiwa) for a wast majority (because PvE players are wast majority) is making less money than previous game version during its worst days. So… something is clearly wrong, right?

Seera.5916:

I recall posts on the forum requesting raids prior to HoT’s announcement.

Prior to, when pretty much everything was dropped by Anet already. When game was released and dungeons was alive, all raid posts were usually met with “go back to WoW”.

Seera.5916:

And correlation doesn’t mean causation. Just because revenue is down post HoT lwunh, doesn’t mean it’s because HoT added raids.

It does mean that raids in their current implementation does not help to retain revenues.

NikeEU.7690:

What you miss is that when someone on r/mmo asks “does guild wars 2 have a good end game” is the answer is “no, they don’t have raids and the dungeons haven’t been updated since launch” that murders sales.

GW2 had zero raids since launch, and despite that was very successful MMO. And no one ever asked dev team for raids, simply because everyone knows that raids = WoW. No game ever can compete with WoW raids. But they made raids and… revenue crushed trough floor. So much for “endgame desired by paying customers”, eh?
And even raids was made horribly, utilizing long-dead model from vanilla WoW. No successful MMO on market is using it anymore, but hey, Anet decided that they know better. Again. You know the results.

Aesa.4819:

Do you think wow was the only game with hard content? Hard content in GW1 was a big part of the game. The raid team in GW2 isn’t even that large, yet they do a fantastic job making the best quality content in the game IMO.

Isn’t “hard content in GW1” was almost completely soloable with the right AI party?

I’d say it’s fairly certain the Raids are played by a higher percent of players than the percent of total developer resources spent on them, therefore they should clearly increase the development resources creating Raids.

And I’d say it’s fairly certain that fractals got 2 “new” fractals over 3 years, while raids already got 4 wings, stuffed with new unique drops, titles and even their own unique legendary item class. You can see estimated percentages of players in gw2eff database, their data slice is quite big already. So, no, percentages of new content to the players playing it are not even slightly proportional.

maddoctor.2738:

Why?

Because I cannot find “World of Warcraft” title when I’m launching this game. Maybe you can?

cranos.5913:

By this logic we should scrap raids, fractals, WvW, PvP, “harder” meta events and reinstate the queensdale champtrain.

By this logic, amount of content and development time must be proportional to amount of players intended to play this content. And if such numbers are disproportional, then corrections must be made, either by changing amount of said content, or by changing size of the target population.

TexZero.7910:

You missed the satire.

They were saying clearly T1 has room for improvement, even by your own metric. If 90% do it, that leaves 10% that don’t for whatever reason they make up. It’s not on Anet to cater to every possible % of player type. It’s on the players to play what they feel like playing. If you truly feel like raiding, you’ll do it. Otherwise you’ll join a very loud vocal minority that constantly complains about difficulty even though the lead dev has come out and said raids were not designed with scaling difficulty in mind.

Originally I just said that with current raid promotion model harder modes are pointless waste of development resources. This can be changed, ofc, if Anet will decide to promote them as their major goal for PvE endgame, but in that case this is also means that raid playerbase should be widened as well.

NikeEU.7690:

T1 fractals are too hard. Anet could hit a wider audience if they made an easier tier of fractals.

I have no idea what you are trying to say, but percentage of people who participated in T1 fractals is ~90%. Raids couldn’t even dream about such popularity.