I haven’t seen the AB meta fail for time out of mind, unless people screw up and kill something too fast. That’s the one meta that’s done consistently every hour of the day and night due to the loot gain.
The TD meta would be a better example. The TD meta doesn’t require a full map, but it does require coordination. People don’t take hte time to coordinate and it fails.
Well AB is a good example for me because I’ve been there most nights around that time and more often than not it fails due to lack of numbers or it doesn’t even get done at all. Last night one guy was asking if he was the only one there for the meta…apparently he was, because there was zero reply and no activity on it at all. From my experience this happens more often than not.
You’re not wrong about TD but I don’t spend a lot of time in TD because it really is a very very tedious map from my point of view so I don’t really enjoy it as much as the two before.
AB fails due to lack of organization. You only need 10 people per side to beat AB. If it’s well organized and people explain stuff it never fails. I’ve done it a lot.
Edit: Out of curiosity do you look for it in LFG for the organized maps?
The income this quarter is down that’s true. But that doesn’t mean the expansion and free to play are the cause of it. I daresay the way Anet handled the launch of the expansion has far more to do with it. That’s my opinion.
I can’t prove it any more than you can prove your theory.
But you see… I have.
The game makes less post xpac than pre xpac FACT.
You aren’t required to agree and I’d be disappointed if you did, you’ve worked hard backing any direction Anet wanted to take this game.
Math is Proof.
Math doesn’t prove the expansion caused it. Math only proves it’s lower. Assuming the direction of the game instead of say the price of the expansion, or the bad publicity surrounding the decision not to include a character slot…that’s a guess.
Not a fact.
Edit: How come you ignore the fact that I’ve never been happy with ascended stuff or raids btw. You say I support every decision Anet makes. Can you show me where I support the introduction of raids?
(edited by Vayne.8563)
The biggest thing is normal traffic patterns. You can see it in WoW for years. The ycome out with an expansion, get a huge boost in population for 6 months or so, and then subscriptions plummet. It happens all the time.
In WoW it’s people not subscribing. Here, it’s people not playing and not buying stuff in the cash shop.
Heart of Thorns came out 9 months ago. During those 9 months we mostly have PvP and Raids as updates. Who would have not expected sales to drop?
There’s just no evidence HoT is the reason for the drop.
There is empirical data showing that the game is in the worst financial shape in it’s existence less than a year after HoT. This is fact, we like facts.
HoT and FREE TO PLAY! Did not in any way increase revenue for Anet or their parent company NCSoft. The game made less Q2 2016 than at any point since launch.
Had the game continued to run LS S1 style instead of a box would it have done better financially? There is no way to know for sure, but what is known, what can be proven is that the expansion has left the game less profitable than it was before.
Opinions are great and some of you have made it a life’s mission to attempt to counter me and people similar to my thoughts on the state of the game over the years. These numbers show quite clearly that the game is in trouble.
Or the content drought left the game less profitable than before. It’s a 4 year old game and before it wasn’t so old. That affects things too.
The expansion is at fault is the easy answer. That doesn’t make it the right answer.
And if the expansion is at fault, it might have nothing to do with the expansion itself, but the way Anet botched the delivery of it.
How many people left the game due to the dungeon nerf. Not really expansion content. An unrelated decision Anet had to partially reverse.
The price was bad. If this expansion had launched at $30 bucks would it have made more money?
The publicity was bad due to the character slot decision.
These are all things that don’t talk to the quality or direction of the expansion.
The expansion is the easy answer. I’ve learned a long time ago that Occam’s Razor doesn’t always apply.
The point of an expansion in an MMO is to increase revenue of an IP. Simple but true. You don’t invest money in a product with the hopes of breaking even. The expansion and it’s FREE TO PLAY promotion have actually done the opposite. The game made more money before both.
Yes it’s a 4 year old game but the expansion is one year old and changed everything about GW2.
If you love the xpac I’d suggest playing It like mad because I’d bet my account (which I’d gladly have refunded) that you’ll never see a “Challenging Group Content” xpac for GW2 again.
It failed to increase revenue and in fact it’s decreased it.
The income this quarter is down that’s true. But that doesn’t mean the expansion and free to play are the cause of it. I daresay the way Anet handled the launch of the expansion has far more to do with it. That’s my opinion.
I can’t prove it any more than you can prove your theory.
But the game itself is better. I just need more new stuff to do.
However, I like a lot of the new zones better than I like the original zones. There just aren’t enough of them.
That makes sense.
I think the HoT maps are better than the original ones though gliding also made them more fun as well. But then I always thought GW2 started with way too many zones to begin with. It would’ve been better to have fewer zones with more to do in them like HoT maps do.
Population is definitely an issue though. The Auric Basin meta for example regularly fails in the prime time slot after dinner because there are virtually no people there most of the evenings.
I suppose there are a lot of people who don’t care for the zones though as they are and I guess I could see a benefit in a compromise where you still have HoT style maps but a little less chaotic and confusing to get around in. It’s kinda pointless if people don’t enjoy the maps because they hate platforming. I don’t really get that complaint though because to me the jump puzzles are the platforming and not the HoT maps themselves. But oh well, if a lot of players avoid these maps, then it’s problematic for the game.
The point is not that there is not a lot to do in GW2 because there is, but a lot of it isn’t enjoyable to a lot of people.
We don’t care for raids and ascended gear, others don’t care for the exploration bits. I do like exploration but then I don’t like getting bogged doing constantly by boring/annoying mobs. I just don’t like this approach that pretty much every encounter with the normal map mobs is a tricky fight that could kill me quite easily if I don’t watch it. That doesn’t make me feel very heroic and it just takes up so much time that it interferes with the exploration I like to do. I am sure others would get upset though if the mobs were easier to kill and there were fewer of them.
So yeh, I understand it’s tough to cater to various groups of players, but you have to be careful because there’s a fine line in balancing the needs of the players and giving nobody what they want. The latter will get people burnt out on content much more quickly.
I haven’t seen the AB meta fail for time out of mind, unless people screw up and kill something too fast. That’s the one meta that’s done consistently every hour of the day and night due to the loot gain.
The TD meta would be a better example. The TD meta doesn’t require a full map, but it does require coordination. People don’t take hte time to coordinate and it fails.
I’ve failed the TD meta a couple of times this week. I haven’t failed the AB meta in a long time, and keep in mind I’m in Australia. I play all sorts of crazy hours.
You do need to find a map though that’s doing it with LFG in all cases.
I agree with the too many zones comment.
P.S. I should add, one of the big reasons I’m not enjoying the game as much has to do with arthritis in my shoulder which makes it harder to play as well and do the more difficult content.
I don´t know the numbers of WOW to be honest, but WOW is a phenomemum in itself and I am not sure if you can count it as reference.
Lineage for example is going on superstrong for years now without a major dip.
It surely also is the case that WOW drops big time from time to time lately(it did not when it was new).Can we agree on the starting point that Anet has lost people compared to last year at this time, and HoT at least did not do much to stabilize income?
I got used to the maps over time, but in general I think that it is a horrible concept for a new player when he is thrown into HoT and is walled up everywhere. Putting hurdles to just play is plain and simple a bad idea.This brings me once again to the idea that raids were not that good of an idea for a game like GW2.
Lineage is known as the WoW of Korea, the same logic holds. But it’s logical anyway. So many people get tired of games after expansions are played out and leave. That’s what happens. Years of being in the industry show that, no matter what game you play.
Every game has a hard core playerbase that stays no matter what, and a drifting playerbase that comes back for new content.
And Lineage is a sandbox game. The content is not really made by the developers by the player. WoW is a better comparison.
Edit: Lineage closed up completely in the west.
The biggest thing is normal traffic patterns. You can see it in WoW for years. The ycome out with an expansion, get a huge boost in population for 6 months or so, and then subscriptions plummet. It happens all the time.
In WoW it’s people not subscribing. Here, it’s people not playing and not buying stuff in the cash shop.
Heart of Thorns came out 9 months ago. During those 9 months we mostly have PvP and Raids as updates. Who would have not expected sales to drop?
There’s just no evidence HoT is the reason for the drop.
There is empirical data showing that the game is in the worst financial shape in it’s existence less than a year after HoT. This is fact, we like facts.
HoT and FREE TO PLAY! Did not in any way increase revenue for Anet or their parent company NCSoft. The game made less Q2 2016 than at any point since launch.
Had the game continued to run LS S1 style instead of a box would it have done better financially? There is no way to know for sure, but what is known, what can be proven is that the expansion has left the game less profitable than it was before.
Opinions are great and some of you have made it a life’s mission to attempt to counter me and people similar to my thoughts on the state of the game over the years. These numbers show quite clearly that the game is in trouble.
Or the content drought left the game less profitable than before. It’s a 4 year old game and before it wasn’t so old. That affects things too.
The expansion is at fault is the easy answer. That doesn’t make it the right answer.
And if the expansion is at fault, it might have nothing to do with the expansion itself, but the way Anet botched the delivery of it.
How many people left the game due to the dungeon nerf. Not really expansion content. An unrelated decision Anet had to partially reverse.
The price was bad. If this expansion had launched at $30 bucks would it have made more money?
The publicity was bad due to the character slot decision.
These are all things that don’t talk to the quality or direction of the expansion.
The expansion is the easy answer. I’ve learned a long time ago that Occam’s Razor doesn’t always apply.
See, I get gold, but I don’t grind gold. I enjoy making legendaries, so I do that. I make a legendary. I plan to keep one and sell one, to fund my habit. It’s not really that hard to do, it just takes a long time. But I’m okay with that.
If you want everything, you’re always going to have to farm gold. If you don’t want everything, or you’re happy taking your time, you don’t.
Gold farming is a choice.
I don’t farm gold. I get gold from doing fractals, when my friends run them. I get gold from doing Silverwastes, if I feel like it. I get gold from doing AB if I happen to be in the zone and it’s starting.
But most of the time I’m working on collections, banging around the world and just stopping to do stuff that’s happening around me.
I don’t make gold in the most efficient way possible. But I’m not burned out either.
Sounds like too much work…to me.
But, happy farming (grinding) to you. =)
But if you’re in a guild with helpful people, you can farm their home instance and do none of the work. I offer to take people into my home instance every single day, for example. I’m only missing the three new black lion nodes, iron, hardwood and flax.
It is true that other factors probably played into the failing income too.
Maybe we should take a look at some of these things:
Someone mentioned Overwatch. It´s a really different game compared to GW2 and probably does not fish so much in the same waters. I can´t remember a blockbuster coming out in Q2 from the top of my head which has seriously challenged Gw2, but I could be wrong here. Pokemon go wasn´t available then. Legion could mean another fall for Anet in the near future.
Q2 is spring Season, a good time to go out. Bu be honest, how many people do change thier behavior in spring season who are playing GW2?^^Things that probably drop out as reasons:
It is the number of sales, so internal costs like money for employees falls out. The same with external costs like revenue given out to investors.Things that happened in the game:
-HoT, not receiving that warm welcome from the get go, wore off its novelty.
-Content drought. This could indeed be a major factor, maybe many people were just sick and tired of waiting for something for them instead of raids and the next glider outfit.
-The return of alpine borderland with Anet bending over and saying through the flowers that the desert BL basically sucks and they know it.
-Raids invited dedicated people to GW2. I think it is safe to assume that a dedicated gamer spends less money than a casual one because a dedicated gamer can buy more stuff with in game gold. Exceptions may apply of course.^^Looking at last years number, the game dropped from 22 to 15, and recently it dropped from 31 to 15. That is a a very harsh drop in both cases and suggests to me that a larger number of people are so disenchanted with the current game that they stopped playing or recomending the game, with the two big patches being unable to bring people back in.
The biggest thing is normal traffic patterns. You can see it in WoW for years. The ycome out with an expansion, get a huge boost in population for 6 months or so, and then subscriptions plummet. It happens all the time.
In WoW it’s people not subscribing. Here, it’s people not playing and not buying stuff in the cash shop.
Heart of Thorns came out 9 months ago. During those 9 months we mostly have PvP and Raids as updates. Who would have not expected sales to drop?
There’s just no evidence HoT is the reason for the drop.
If Anet makes it a legendary people complain about grind. If Anet makes it too easy to get people complain it’s common. If Anet puts it in the cash shop people complain they have to either spend cash or farm gold.
There’s no solution that’s good for everyone.
I don’t really care if someone says game is bad…at all.
Not everyone learned to use arguments, nor they should…I mean why? It’s not like anyone here is right at all anyway. Everything is opinion no matter how many arguments you bring to the table and nothing is true.Vayne, you can bring 1000s arguments here and they are all pointless, cuz they are all just opinions. With some I agree, with others I can choose not to agree.
When someone says HoT is bad that doesn’t means everything is bad, they just express their feelings. You don’t have to take everything as generalisation even if people do it.
I know you like arguments, but you should learn already that your average person will not use them when they express their feelings, so I don’t really see why you should put your fingers in every thread there is…it’s like you are not playing game at all xD
Just let others express themself, thread will probably die anyway if it has no real meat for discussion, but you do like put oil on a fire and keep threads alive.
When someone says the numbers are down, because HOT is bad, which is the conversation of this thread, I’m perfectly within my right to say that’s one possibility but it’s by no means proven.
This thread isn’t about whether hot is goodor HoT is bad. It’s about a downturn in sales. And people using that information, after a very long content drought, to try to prove something conclusively are very definitely wrong…not in what they’re saying but in making that their only assumption. It’s one of many possibilities.
I’d agree with you if this thread was about whether HoT was good or bad. From an objective point of view, we don’t know whether or not it’s HoT’s quality or the decisions made with HOT that drove this drop in revenue.
Again, it’s moot. The number aren’t lying and no amount of spin from any doctor is going to change that. Discuss it ’til the cows come home, but a drop in nearly half from the first quarter to the second quarter this year is never a good sign.
The numbers aren’t lying but anyone who plays with numbers will tell you that they do that all the time because if you don’t ask the right questions, numbers can indeed mislead.
In my business, we had months and quarters with serious fall off. After 9/11 for example, we lost of a lot of income because many businesses we serviced were in the area where the World Trade Centers were.
The numbers didn’t lie. Our numbers were down. But anyone saying they were down because people didn’t like our business was wrong.
If the numbers are down because people don’t like HoT that’s one thing. But the numbers could be done for other reasons, like, oh I don’t know, maybe 9 months without any new content besides raids and PvE tournaments.
Saying the numbers are down doesn’t lie is true. The numbers aren’t down. Drawing any specific conclusion from the numbers being down is where the misleading stuff can begin.
I’d say wait until there’s regular content again before you draw those conclusions, because I don’t think the numbers will be as down as they are now. And then other conclusions can be drawn.
But you also speak as if this is widely accepted by all people
This is patently false. When almost every sentence he posted specifically refers to, “me,” or, “I,” he is clearly not speaking for others.
I think you should probably stop defending people. This is a direct quote from him:
“Dude, help us fix the terrible game, the numbers are starting to roll in, and as expected it is looking bad, real bad.”
He’s saying this is a terrible game, and it needs to be fixed. Not that he doesn’t like it. He’s had many posts and his language leaves little to the imagination. He’s not saying they made changes that other people like that he doesn’t. He’s saying that the game is bad.. Big difference.
That is nowhere in the post you quoted inspiring my response to you.
Regardless, there’s still no reason to defend someone that says the game is terrible full stop, not as an opinion but as a fact. That it needs to be fixed. You’ve now seen it with your own eyes, so I assume this conversation has run its course.
The sales being at an all time low might be indicative of the game being worse, or it might be indicative of a content drought, or even more people playing new games that came out that aren’t MMOs.
It’s likely a combination of many factors. But Lizardly thinks it’s all just because the game isn’t good, and I highly doubt that’s the case.
That’s a paying customer Vayne. You chime in when you like and defend Anet like it’s your job, which you’re entitled to do because you paid for the game.
You like the game the way it is? Good for you, bad for NCSoft.
He was saying, specifically that the person he was quoting was expressing everything as an opinion. In that he was wrong. Whether or not he’s defending him, he’s defending him for something untrue. He was only expressing his opinion in one quoted piece.
Everyone is entitled to express their opinion. However, saying the game is terrible and broken is not only an opinion that has nothing to back it up (no specifics, so it’s not helpful), it’s also an opinion stated as a fact, which is all I was saying.
If people want to offer constructive feedback by all means, offer constructive feedback. If people want to badmouth the game without constructive feedback I’m always going to question that.
I don’t like this game as much as I did early on too.
I think the game is better now than it was then.
What am I misunderstanding here?
I don’t like this game as much as I did early on is a statement of my enjoyment of the game. That’s because I’ve played this game for four years straight and I’ve done all the stuff I really want to do multiple times. Obviously in the past, when a lot of this stuff was new, I enjoyed it more.
But the game, to me, IS better than it’s ever been.
At launch I had 25 zones that I didn’t like as much as 3 of the 4 HoT zones. But you know, it’s still only 3 of the 4 HoT zones.
I have said, in many places, I don’t like ascended gear, and never have. I’ve also said, I don’t really ever intend to participate in raids. I don’t like some of the harder stuff as far as story achievements. And I’ve always said I preferred the Living World Season 1 to later living stories, but that doesn’t mean the game was better when half the people couldn’t join in the action and could never have that experience. My enjoyment of the game is quite apart from whether the game is better or not. It’s like listening to the same song on the radio. You’re not going to love it as much when it’s played for the hundredth time, but that doesn’t mean the song is worse.
My biggest issues with Guild Wars 2 right now are:
1. I can’t WvW with my guild because many people in the guild are on different servers.
2. I’m not interested in raiding or SPvP but that’s what’s basically been given to me for the last 9 months.
Those are the biggest two issues I have. Of course after a 9 month content drought I’m not having as much fun.
But the game itself is better. I just need more new stuff to do.
However, I like a lot of the new zones better than I like the original zones. There just aren’t enough of them.
Come on Vayne, you know I never said to DELETE HoT maps…..
Look the game had a bad quarter after a 9 month content drought. You can say all you want about the downturn due to people not liking the new stuff, but until we have more new stuff, there’s no real way to know that’s the case. Your assumptions are premature, at the very least. And that’s all they are…assumptions.
I’m guessing that there are some people that really don’t like the new zones. I’m also guessing there are some people who came back because of those new zones.
But you know, 9 months passes and if you don’t raid or PvP, you’re going to take a break again. And if you’re taking a break, you’re probably not spending much money in the gem store.
Before I get all doom and gloomy I’m going to wait to see what transpires. This is the only reasonable course of action I can see.
So instead of fixing the inherent problems, we should just take a break and wait the game out and expect good things to happen by themselves, why not just work with us some?
Depends. Which specifically inherent problems are you talking about. Because I’ve seen some of the stuff you’ve complained about in other threads, and by my standards, they’re be neither inherent, nor problems.
Why do you have an issue with the fact that some people like the game as it is? You think all the problems you see are problems, but I’m not so sure that they are.
And I definitely don’t believe they’re the main reason for the sales downturn. I believe the content drought is the main reason.
Come on Vayne, you know I never said to DELETE HoT maps…..
Look the game had a bad quarter after a 9 month content drought. You can say all you want about the downturn due to people not liking the new stuff, but until we have more new stuff, there’s no real way to know that’s the case. Your assumptions are premature, at the very least. And that’s all they are…assumptions.
I’m guessing that there are some people that really don’t like the new zones. I’m also guessing there are some people who came back because of those new zones.
But you know, 9 months passes and if you don’t raid or PvP, you’re going to take a break again. And if you’re taking a break, you’re probably not spending much money in the gem store.
Before I get all doom and gloomy I’m going to wait to see what transpires. This is the only reasonable course of action I can see.
But you also speak as if this is widely accepted by all people
This is patently false. When almost every sentence he posted specifically refers to, “me,” or, “I,” he is clearly not speaking for others.
I think you should probably stop defending people. This is a direct quote from him:
“Dude, help us fix the terrible game, the numbers are starting to roll in, and as expected it is looking bad, real bad.”
He’s saying this is a terrible game, and it needs to be fixed. Not that he doesn’t like it. He’s had many posts and his language leaves little to the imagination. He’s not saying they made changes that other people like that he doesn’t. He’s saying that the game is bad.. Big difference.
That is nowhere in the post you quoted inspiring my response to you.
Regardless, there’s still no reason to defend someone that says the game is terrible full stop, not as an opinion but as a fact. That it needs to be fixed. You’ve now seen it with your own eyes, so I assume this conversation has run its course.
The sales being at an all time low might be indicative of the game being worse, or it might be indicative of a content drought, or even more people playing new games that came out that aren’t MMOs.
It’s likely a combination of many factors. But Lizardly thinks it’s all just because the game isn’t good, and I highly doubt that’s the case.
Dude, help us fix the terrible game, the numbers are starting to roll in, and as expected it is looking bad, real bad.
I’ll wait for a trend thanks. Because if they fix this game and make it the game you want, I’ll likely leave anyway.
Dude, it will be fun, trust me, and if you need any help with the new improved version of the game, I will do all I can to make it work for you.
The problem is, I think the game is better now than it was then. Not that it doesn’t have any flaws, and I’d like to see those flaws fixed, but stuff you don’t like I love.
The new zones are absolutely my favorite in the game, particularly TD and VB, though I enjoy Dragon Stand as well. You’re saying they’re no good. You take them out of the game and I’d be massively unhappy.
But you also speak as if this is widely accepted by all people
This is patently false. When almost every sentence he posted specifically refers to, “me,” or, “I,” he is clearly not speaking for others.
I think you should probably stop defending people. This is a direct quote from him:
“Dude, help us fix the terrible game, the numbers are starting to roll in, and as expected it is looking bad, real bad.”
He’s saying this is a terrible game, and it needs to be fixed. Not that he doesn’t like it. He’s had many posts and his language leaves little to the imagination. He’s not saying they made changes that other people like that he doesn’t. He’s saying that the game is bad.. Big difference.
A drop in revenue being expected doesnt necessarily mean that it isnt bad for the business. A drop in revenue can be completely foreseeable, expected, predicted, known to be coming far in advance, and still be catastrophic for a business.
That said, a one quarter drop in sales is insufficient grounds for alarm IMO. An indicator, one of many in any business, to pay attention to…yes, of course, but not an indication of doom or death.
A drop in revenue for one quarter is almost always meaningless. It’s unlikely to be a catastrophe. You know the drop is coming, you expect the drop, you change stuff so it goes back up and you eat the drop. That’s mostly how it works.
I’m pretty sure knowing the drop was coming is what was behind the half price sale. Bring in more players, means more gem store sales, etc.
I’m with you on waiting to see anyway. I think it’ll be higher next quarter.
Dude, help us fix the terrible game, the numbers are starting to roll in, and as expected it is looking bad, real bad.
I’ll wait for a trend thanks. Because if they fix this game and make it the game you want, I’ll likely leave anyway.
Why is everyone so worried about GW2 being at only 15 Billion Won? I think its great and I am sure that Nc Soft would agree with me. One dollar is equal to a little over 1000 Won. In one quarter of a year GW2 raked in profits alone over 13 million dollars (American) That is not small chump change that’s A lot of money for only a quarter year.
With all due respect, that’s not how the business world works. Investors want to see profits grow, not stagnate or decline. And given that everyone was expecting a big uptick in the expansion’s wake, this report is anything but good for ArenaNet. I’m not saying ArenaNet’s sky is falling, but trust me, they aren’t thrilled about 15 billion Won.
Nor is this how the business world works. A company makes many products and people want to see an overall increase. Different products may go up or down at any time. No one invests in Guild Wars 2. People invest in NCsoft, which owns many properties, of which Guild Wars 2 is just one.
Investors aren’t looking at just the performance of Guild Wars 2. Older games are expected to make less anyway.
I’m guessing that Guild Wars 2 has made less than expected, but that they also expected the drop. Mostly because they’ve seen people playing less due to the content drought, having less to do with HoT itself.
People don’t get new content, people stop playing. They knew there was no new content and thus they expected the drop.
I’ve been in and run business where I’ve expected a downturn for a quarter and it was no big deal. I’ve also bit hit with unexpected downturns and those were a big deal.
Only NcSoft really knows if this is terrible or not. I suspect they expected a downturn, but I don’t know how much of a downturn they expected.
It’ll be more interested to see the next quarter, since they put the game on sale for half price. That might have a positive affect on sales, particularly with the LS 3 coming out.
Everyone has favorites among the maps.
Except Tangled Depths. Am I right! A yuck!
Tangled Depths is my favorite map. lol
The bottom line is this: the ‘expansion’ was little more than downloaded content that was rushed and not properly tested, and the almost year-long content drought that followed didn’t help either.
If you sell a product, and then don’t deliver, it has ramifications.
That’s all there is to it.
All expansions are just downloaded content. No matter what MMO I’ve played, I’ve bought and expansion and I’ve downloaded content. That’s what expansions for MMOs are.
It may or may not have been rush, it certainly had bugs. Probably not more bugs than Guild Wars 1 had on release though. Hell even the TP didn’t work for the first week. Guesting hadn’t been implemented yet.
Expansions are scheduled to come out when they do for reasons that have nothing to do with the game being to X point or not. That’s the reality of business. It’s why so many expansions are buggy when they come out and they get fixed. My guess is Anet released HoT in a window without major competition by design. As they did with the base game, they fixed it on the fly, and for the most part, they did fix it.
What MMOs sell is a service. As far as I can see the only thing that remains undelivered at this point is legendary armor and the rest of the legendary weapons. But they also delivered things we didn’t expect, even adding gliding to core Tyria, which they originally said they couldn’t do. That to me is worth more legendaries.
I probably won’t be getting legendary armor because of the raid component anyway.
At the end of the day, they delivered on just about all of it.
Let me guess, you are one of the people who expected GW2 to be just like GW but bigger. Same degree of complexity around traits and professions. Same new expansion every year that was as big as the original game. No cash shop except of things like character slots. And because it’s not you have been rallying against GW2 since launch.
Am I close?
I thought that vanilla GW2 was great and did not play GW1.
What I want is some sort of response from the community in regards to what Anet did.While I no longer play this game, it would be soul crushing to know that completely changing your direction mid an MMO, not delivering on the promises and abandoning parts of the game would be met with a revenue increase.
For the sake of all of you guys playing, I do not want the game to die, even though it no longer will have me as a customer, however I want Anet to realize that going back on their promises is wrong and that they should choose a stable direction for a game that is now all over the place (no matter it is casual or hardcore).
I think that that is what a lot of ex players are seeking here with venting their frustrations out. They want the company to learn and be better at maintaining the game and delivering more content. They do not like the fact that Anet’s response to a fall in revenue is to release the next expansion faster, because that might mean that they will put even less work into it.
They didn’t completely change it, you didn’t keep up. Rather they’ve been changing it a bit at a time, gradually all along. It’s been going in this direction since ascended gear was introduced a few months after launch.
Ascended gear was the first step down that slippery slope, and it’s been a steady downhill slide ever since. Well, I know you’ve enjoyed it all, even dancing for the cows and all that inexplicable nonsense, but as for so many of the rest of us, no, not so much. I, too, think the game was by far better at launch than it is now.
I recently bought HoT at half price. Deleted an existing level 80 so I could try a revenant. Meh. STO gave me free character slots with their recent (also free) expansions. BDO has given me free slots with the release of the last two classes. Why must anet be so stingy? It’s almost as if they don’t want people trying their new stuff.
Still, it’s been interesting, finally seeing the new zones. Everything looks good, of course, when you get a moment to take it all in. Gliding is cool, sure. Otherwise the new is wearing off, and fast, because it’s the same events over and over and over just like Silverwastes and Dry Top. To be fair, they did say up front that the new zones were going to be much like those two. Beyond that, having to stop smack dab in the middle of the story until I ground out the required mastery (to get back to the fun stuff, ahem) was unwelcome, jarring, and just plain bad. Pathetic, even. And they did it again in the first episode of LS3!
Also didn’t like it when I was following an event chain, getting close the the end, the bar thing was close to being full… and then suddenly, hey, day shift is over! Night shift is underway! And everything I’d been working toward went poof. Unwelcome, jarring, and just plain bad.
So, here’s my opinion (mine, I tell you, it’s my own!) re HoT and the future of the game if it maintains the present course: I would not like it on a boat, I would not like it with a goat, I do not like grind wars and (aoe/knockdown/poison) spam.
Are you really bringing BDO into this. Have you looked at their forums lately. And the cow thing? That’s not even relevant to this conversation.
BDO right now is so loathed by it’s fan base, they had to make a post to their forums about not making chargebacks because they will take action. BDO is in much worse nick with their fan base than Guild Wars 2 right now.
You don’t like the game changes and that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t like them. It doesn’t mean you’re in some sort of majority. And it doesn’t mean there wasn’t plenty of complaining before.
We used to see the game is too easy, now we see the game is too hard. But it really has been getting harder and if you’ve been ignoring that content, you will be left behind.
Games need to progress. If they offer the same level of difficulty forever, then they’re not advancing. The games that are made easier and easier as time goes on, were the games that started too hard and guess what? They lose players too.
There’s simply no way you can prove that if the changes you support were in the game, that the game would be doing better than it is now. It’s your opinion. Obviously you’re entitled to your opinion.
But that’s all it is is your opinion. Other opinions vary.
Raids represent a tiny, tiny portion of this game, and even represent a tiny tiny portion of the expansion. There is exactly one raid, delivered in three wings, over nine months. This is not exactly something to write home about. The raid as it exists is still smaller than full raids in many other game.s. The raids didn’t take over the game.
One raid doesn’t make this a raid game. I don’t even like the raid, but that’s nothing to do with the game changing or not changing. This game started changing the moment Anet introduced ascended gear.
they actively said that they’re turning away from making dungeons and turning towards making raids and more fractals. Whether the raid is something to write home about or not, it has replaced dungeons and it is part of Guild Wars 2 present and possibly is the new direction for the future. How is that not a direction change?
Do you know why I didn’t find HoT to hard? Because I did all the achievements in Living World Season 2, and before that in Living World Season 1. This is just more of the same.
How many people do you think bothered to do all of the achievements? Still doesn’t change the fact that people entering HoT from vanilla zones found it a much harder place. You know how you do slow ramp up? You buff some vanilla zones (we had the opposite, Orr had a mob nerf right after launch pretty much and Southsun Cove received the same), you add transition zones that people are expected to navigate alone (Silverwastes and Dry Top could have fit that requirement, but they are pure farm zones with farm trains, meaning people are unlikely to explore alone and encounter enemies alone), then you add HoT zones. And the ramp up wouldn’t feel 1 to 10 anymore. As a sudden ramp up was felt, it would indicate that it wasn’t a slow change for your average player. Meaning the game did turn towards being harder.
I’ve seen you argue over multiple threads about how it is a good thing. And it may be a fine direction. However you can’t just make a jump like Anet did, because it does send a very mixed message who is your game for and what it is about.
Actually, they’ve buffed events a number of times too. Krait were made harder. Toxic spore events exist in many zones and still exist to this day. Dry Top and Silverwastes have harder mobs than other zones.
Anet can’t force people to do the content that’s there. But the content has been slowly ramping up. That is a fact.
Let me guess, you are one of the people who expected GW2 to be just like GW but bigger. Same degree of complexity around traits and professions. Same new expansion every year that was as big as the original game. No cash shop except of things like character slots. And because it’s not you have been rallying against GW2 since launch.
Am I close?
I thought that vanilla GW2 was great and did not play GW1.
What I want is some sort of response from the community in regards to what Anet did.While I no longer play this game, it would be soul crushing to know that completely changing your direction mid an MMO, not delivering on the promises and abandoning parts of the game would be met with a revenue increase.
For the sake of all of you guys playing, I do not want the game to die, even though it no longer will have me as a customer, however I want Anet to realize that going back on their promises is wrong and that they should choose a stable direction for a game that is now all over the place (no matter it is casual or hardcore).
I think that that is what a lot of ex players are seeking here with venting their frustrations out. They want the company to learn and be better at maintaining the game and delivering more content. They do not like the fact that Anet’s response to a fall in revenue is to release the next expansion faster, because that might mean that they will put even less work into it.
They didn’t completely change it, you didn’t keep up. Rather they’ve been changing it a bit at a time, gradually all along. It’s been going in this direction since ascended gear was introduced a few months after launch.
I actually agree with this, the seeds for what the game has become were first sown in that change, however I think those changes were and are a bad thing.
I agree that I don’t like ascended gear and never have. Nor do I really love the way the game has changed, but I see WHY it has changed. And I think it probably did have to change, though how that change could have been handled better is a matter for speculation.
I don’t like this game as much as I did early on too. But before ascended gear was introduced, I saw a lot of people level to 80 get their max gear, have nothing to do and leave. No matter how much content they could produce, without the grind, they couldn’t produce it fast enough to keep people playing.
So six of us would have kept playing, eight of us would have left. It was a decision that had to be made. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.
It also doesn’t mean I don’t find a lot enjoyable in the game, even if the game is less for me than it used to be. I’m not the only player. And I don’t believe my play style is the majority play style.
That’s probably the difference between me and some other more casual players who think they’re they have some sort of majority.
They didn’t completely change it, you didn’t keep up. Rather they’ve been changing it a bit at a time, gradually all along. It’s been going in this direction since ascended gear was introduced a few months after launch.
oh that explains it why dungeon path still received a rework and people were encouraged to do them and we had no 10 man raids up until HoT!
It also explains why everyone that entered HoT territories found them on a whole another difficulty level that anything else in game (you can argue it was a good thing or a bad thing, but I don’t think that the argument should be about is it a thing at all), because the game was, of course, sloooowly ramping up to it!
Though one thing you did get right – this is not the first time heads of Guild Wars 2 felt free to promise something and then discard the promise as if they never made it. I should have known better sooner about that part.
Really if the next expansion will be more raids, more hard zones, more content for the hardcores, more power to them! Still I think that currently the game is disjointed and they should pick a clear direction.
Raids represent a tiny, tiny portion of this game, and even represent a tiny tiny portion of the expansion. There is exactly one raid, delivered in three wings, over nine months. This is not exactly something to write home about. The raid as it exists is still smaller than full raids in many other game.s. The raids didn’t take over the game.
However, the complaints about grinding for stuff like ascended gear, and the harder content that has been coming into the game, with harder achievements has been here since the beginning.
Living Story Season 1 was arguably the worst grind because it was time limited. People had a month to get what they wanted and then it was gone forever. How is that friendly to casual players?
Living Story Season 2 had hard bosses and hard acheivements with an armor set locked behind it that you could only get if you banged away at it.
Mawdrey was a long adventure/grind type thing very similar to precursor crafting and some of the other collections.
This game has been moving in a direction like this for a long long time. You complained about some stuff, took a break, and came back to the same game. It seems more sudden to you because you left and came back. I’ve watched it happen gradually.
Do you know why I didn’t find HoT to hard? Because I did all the achievements in Living World Season 2, and before that in Living World Season 1. This is just more of the same.
One raid doesn’t make this a raid game. I don’t even like the raid, but that’s nothing to do with the game changing or not changing. This game started changing the moment Anet introduced ascended gear.
Let me guess, you are one of the people who expected GW2 to be just like GW but bigger. Same degree of complexity around traits and professions. Same new expansion every year that was as big as the original game. No cash shop except of things like character slots. And because it’s not you have been rallying against GW2 since launch.
Am I close?
I thought that vanilla GW2 was great and did not play GW1.
What I want is some sort of response from the community in regards to what Anet did.While I no longer play this game, it would be soul crushing to know that completely changing your direction mid an MMO, not delivering on the promises and abandoning parts of the game would be met with a revenue increase.
For the sake of all of you guys playing, I do not want the game to die, even though it no longer will have me as a customer, however I want Anet to realize that going back on their promises is wrong and that they should choose a stable direction for a game that is now all over the place (no matter it is casual or hardcore).
I think that that is what a lot of ex players are seeking here with venting their frustrations out. They want the company to learn and be better at maintaining the game and delivering more content. They do not like the fact that Anet’s response to a fall in revenue is to release the next expansion faster, because that might mean that they will put even less work into it.
They didn’t completely change it, you didn’t keep up. Rather they’ve been changing it a bit at a time, gradually all along. It’s been going in this direction since ascended gear was introduced a few months after launch.
I don’t really get the whole mount hate thing. I never did. I thought mounts were some of the best things in other games I played, not for the utility but as another way to customize my character.
I miss mounts. I don’t see them ever coming to Guild Wars 2, but I still miss them.
Found? -3.663
I do have a legendary because I once found a permanent hair contract which I traded for a Dawn with like 80-90% of the mats to forge it into a Leg
Arguably, permanent hair style contracts are as rare as precursors. Probably rarer. You used your luck up on that. lol
The raid are not hardcore, they are what dungeons are supposed to be difficultyy wise imho. If you consider these raids hardcores already you barely played other games
And yet the game is losing revenue. The game shifted away from casual to “challenging group content” in every aspect with HoT. Raids are not dungeons.
No these raids aren’t as hardcore as the other MMOs I raided in but I left all of those to play Guild Wars.
Look at the results of pandering to hardcores.
There is zero evidence that the game is suffering lower revenue because of raids. The game does not pander to hardcore players.
ANet made a mistake in how they structured the HoT maps, as we can partially see with Bloodstone Fen. It’s more challenging than core, but nothing as crazy to navigate or play as HoT is for those who don’t worry about min-maxing their DPS.
ANet made mistakes in allocating resources to the expac, at the expense of the rest of the game. The were too ambitious in the Legendary collections and couldn’t keep up with QA for the events required to complete them. They didn’t take into account people’s reaction to a dearth of new PvE content. They didn’t change direction fast enough, based on the criticism that HoT was too much new infrastructure and not enough stuff to do. They goofed on the popularity of adventures (and how many people would repeat them).
tl;dr sales went down and to the extent we have any evidence about how or why, raids probably contributed to more income, not less.
They made 99 problems, but challenging group content was not one of them — that was perhaps the only thing they got completely correct. Raiding is incredibly popular among its target audience and some people have tried it and become hooked.
They pandered to a more “hardcore” gamer and they make less money than they did pandering to casuals, this is fact.
The complete and total focus of the xpac was on challenging group content. They are bleeding money because of it. I said that raids aren’t dungeons that is a fact. “Some people have tried it and become hooked” is accurate I’m sure but the game’s losing income and that’s fact as well.
Nope, not a fact at all. You’re assuming 2 things.
1. The expansion panders to hard core gamers. That’s just opinion. It’s not fact. Raids pander to hard core players, not the entire expansion.
2. The reason they did less had more to do with pandering to hard core players than it did with a broad spectrum content drought, something I think you’d have trouble proving.
It is entirely possible that you’re correct, but it’s not a fact. It’s not provable, it’s based on opinion in the first place.
I really wish people would stop using the word fact when they mean they feel strongly about something.
Playing since open beta, got two.
The hunter at the karka event and the lovers from a PvP level up reward.
Well, I got a group together and tried the final chapter again. After an hour of fighting, Mordremoth glitched in the last phase and became invulnerable. I have now uninstalled GW2.
You need to use CC on the breakbar.
We did; it didn’t work. After dealing with Eir instantly resurrecting Garm, I thought I had encountered my one obligatory bug and would make it through.
Okay I’ll remove you from my friend’s list then. But I’ve run this mission with guildies at least 5 times in the last two weeks and never had an issue.
1. You don’t need to buy the expansion to play. You just won’t be able to play the new profession, the new zones or the new living story.
2. Necromancer is fine. It’s much better than it was when you left in fact.
3. Population is fine. Lots of people playing.
4. You have the game. Try it and see for yourself. No one can tell you if you’ll like it or not.
So what you’re saying is something you want isn’t affordable with gold because you’re not willing to liquidate your assets.
GW2’s entire economy is built around the buying and selling of crafting materials. Raw gold income exists specifically to facilitate that trade. However, the bulk of every players income in GW2 comes in the form of crafting materials, and the entire game is designed in such a way that there’s a reliable buy and sell market for them.
This is why salvaging is a thing, because the component parts of most of the loot you pick up is where it derives its value.
You’re basically saying you can’t afford something because you don’t want to spend the money that is in your bank account.
Using the ‘casual player’ card here means literally nothing. You income is not low because you play casually. It is low because you are actively choosing not to leverage your assets in a manner that helps you achieve your desired goal.
First, I am only assuming you are responding to me – but this isn’t clear since you don’t respond with quotes.
However, assuming that you are responding to me, I didn’t say that LS2 isn’t affordable. I am stating my experience as the kind of player I am. I don’t play every day and don’t play for many hours in a day. I made several alts and mainly alternated playing between them. I wanted to actually play my characters so I didn’t use XP items to get to 80 quicker. I wasn’t getting high-level gear or mats for a long time. I didn’t sell much because I like to craft.
I’m not offering this information as a criticism, but as information. I’m sure I’m not the only person who likes to play this way.
So you choose to save mats instead of sell mats. That’s a choice. You could always sell them until you had enough for the LS and then go back to saving them. It’s still an option. Posting that it’s not an option because you play a specific way and won’t play another is a bit misleading in my opinion.
Mats are easy to get. They sell well. And they’d allow people to afford to buy the story. Obviously people who hoard mats or use them are inevitably going to have less money than people who sell them.
[…]And yet you can get all your masteries trained without getting any mastery points at all from the hardest adventures. Just don’t to those and do the ones that are easier.
“Don’t do the broken ones” is not a solution.
If something is broken, it should get fixed, not ignored or avoided. Difficulty, not bugs, should be the only thing preventing players from getting things done in the content they paid for.
You can get better eventually, but you can’t fix what doesn’t work as it should. Only developers can do that. All we can do is raising the issues so they can look at it and fix them eventually.
I didn’t say they were broken. I said they were harder. Don’t do the hard ones is not the same as don’t do the broken ones.
There are hard jumping puzzles and there are easy ones. Some people can do some of them but not others. I can do them all. I love the hard ones. I’d hate for them to take the hard ones out of the game because some people can’t do it.
My suggestion is, if you need rewards from jumping puzzles, do the ones you can do. The hard ones don’t need to be made easier, as long as there are enough easy ones to get me what I need (which their are).
The mastery system isn’t extremely grindy, certainly not to get the masteries you need, and the new zones aren’t as hard as some people make them out to be, not even to solo. What you’re experiencing is culture shock.
When you played this game before, you knew the game before. You learned it, you played it and now things have changed but you haven’t really taken the time to relearn the game.
Of course the game’s difficulty is going to progress. The people that have the hardest time of getting used to the new stuff are generally returning players, because they have to learn everything at once, and they don’t have their “eye in” as the baseball saying goes.
The new zones require a bit more thought to navigate. They require knowing your profession and your enemies. But that’s all they require for most of it anyway.
It’s doable, if you have been playing all along, and did the content as the game progressed. Coming back it’s going to feel a lot like culture shock.
Sadly you can’t progress in the HoT story without grinding meta events to get some, not all, of the mastery skills as without them you can’t start some story missions off. This story is short, good pacing in the first half of it but the last half is very rushed.
No dungeons but the Raid does have story that ties into LS 3 and the direction the story is going in for the foreseeable future.
Hope this helps you make a more informed decision xD
I disagree with this. To do the story you need very few masteries and mastery points, and they’re faster to get now than they were at launch. I’ve taken several new guildies into HoT and I don’t think we had to repeat a single event chain to level the masteries we needed. We certainly didn’t farm metas.
No one can tell you how many years a game has, because no one has a crystal ball. But the population seems quite healthy in every game mode.
There was a bit of a content drought recently, but with the July patch, a lot of people have started playing to experience the new content. This is normal for the game.
People take breaks, they come back as new content is released.
However, even at it’s lowest ebb, there were plenty of people playing.
PvE is still fun, PvP/WvW is a total disaster because of HoT (don’t bother unless you’ve grinded to the elite specs, and even then pvp is all about faceroll certain builds now, no variety, no strategy)
I don’t know, it doesn’t really take that long to get the elite specs in WvW without ever entering the new zone at all. And WvW seems to be more on the upswing than the down swing, after the new zone was replaced. Seems packed when I go in there.
And there are PvP daily rooms where you can easily cooperatively get at least one but almost always 2 dailies a day in one “match”
Just saying now, I told you so, to all the people who kept screaming for an expansion for years, and the white knights claiming HoT would be a huge boon for profits and the number of active players.
Expansions, unless in widely-popular subscription games, do not make money. Microtransactions for cosmetics do, and focusing on important things like gameplay make any content droughts much more enjoyable. Games like League, which has an astrononical budget know this; almost all profit comes from skins and their tight gameplay mechanics and good balance, with a very occasional new champion/content release.
ANet has failed repeatedly to provide us with a quality, detail-driven gameplay experience as a whole for well over a year, now. Most aspects of the game which were once great selling points have been stymied, while an excess of attention has been put in all the wrong places in hopes to expand their bleeding playerbase via niche markets. Unfortunately, the real, hard truth is that the existing greatness of the game is being continuously tarnished through negligence, and in many respects, blatant ineptitude of maintaining such a great experience.
It isn’t over till it’s over. HoT had a lot of issues that had nothing to do with HoT that absolutely affected HoT sales. You can say I told you so all you want but I bet the next expansion is going to be a different story, because that’s how Anet tends to roll. They learn from the first one and the next one gets better.
Well I have everything but migraine, which I’ve yet to attempt, but this is extremely cool that you’re doing this.
We need more people like you.
Sounds like a plan. I bet when I show you how to do the HOT zones, you’ll have a very different experience. Just give a chance. No amount of answers in this thread are going to help you see in more clearly.
HoT offers a different type of experience than the core zones. That different experience was actually needed for people who like it. It’s not the entire game, it’s still a small percentage of the game.
It’s an additional experience, not a replacement experience.
I’ve shown a lot of people around HoT, and I’d be happy to do the same for you. HoT is generally more timer based than other zones, but even off peak, it’s doable.
The big thing is to get to the zones before the meta events start. They’re basically staggered, so only one meta event is going on in the first three zones at any one time.
Sounds to me like you’ve been unlucky.
15 million a quarter is not good news for a staff of 300, when Pokemon Go makes 10 million a day
It’s a cell phone game, not a computer game. And it struck a chord with the public. That said there are literally thousands of cell phone games that come out and don’t don’t that well at all. Taking the single most popular game in recent memory, and comparing it to a game from a different genre that’s four years old is pointless. I mean completely pointless.
It’s like saying that McDonalds makes more money than Peter Luger’s Steak House, so somehow Peter Lugers isn’t doing very well. It’s a pointless comparison.
You mean 9 month content droughts and failing to deliver 50% of an expansion people paid for aren’t good for a game? huh… who would have thought…
Really? 50%? By what counting?
They failed to deliver on some of the legendary weapons and the legendary armor so far. The rest of the stuff they did deliver on, even if they changed how that delivery works, as in the case of WvW.
What else haven’t they delivered on besides legendary weapons (and they did give us four of those) and legendary armor?
Anet is having a difficult time producing content and making substantial improvements to every part of the game with the amount of staff it has currently, so what do you think it will look like if staff “restructuring”, aka layoffs, start to happen?
They started ’’outsourcing’’ (not official hiring) to small studios to do their tasks , when the game launched .
GW2 just like WoW , had 350 employers 1-2 years ago , but curently both they have 270 and with not a single offcial layoff , but let their contract to expireI wonder what happend in Everquest Next ?
Because their core members where 25-30 pll and their aimed for low cost to maintained vs big revenue (like Minecraft)
+ you couldnt build ingame houses-items (you had to use the pre launch mod) , they had to cancell it ?Or let the MMO scene to stagnart iteself , and w8 3-4 years to ‘’take it by suprize’’ as the next big hit ?
I’d love to see a source on those numbers. Because I haven’t found anything like that. Not about Guild Wars 2 anyway. Haven’t tried looking into WoW.