My opinion on GW2. It has the foundation to be a solid 10. An amazing game. But to me right now with temp content, and 2-week minigames with bugs, gear grinding, dailies, farming, no incentive to PvP, bad ranking in WvW etc.
The devs are taking a piece of art and banging it on the wall repeatedly. It is so painful to watch. But I do have hope. I like what they did with Tequatl and I like the most recent perm dungeon patch.
I hope they keep up with this perma content and get rid of the temp mini-games. Then the game can become what it should.
You will absolutely see a way to create a precursor available in the future. As detailed in our plans for the second half of the year here:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/
As mentioned at the end of the blog, as always things are subject to change as test and prepare various systems. Most of the stuff covered in the blog you’ve already seen implemented, or steps towards being implemented, however the precursor building (and corresponding additional legendary items) is the one highest at risk to not make it this year.
It is still something we absolutely plan to do!
So we’re seeing “replace a dungeon path with a somewhat buggy one, Add lore-breaking stories to the game, E-SPORTZZ and create 2-minute Content™”
Instead of
“focus on what the playerbase actually wants and has been asking for”Angry forumposters =! playerbase
Agreed, usually the player base silently just quits. The angry ones on the forums are the one with hope.
Wrong. Its called integrity, and I have it. Thankfully, I am not alone in my choice to not play broken or cheese builds. Does it make the game harder? Of course it does, but we earn our kills.
That’s nice, but it doesn’t matter what you are. You don’t design games with the basis of all all players having “integrity”, that would be foolish. Players just take the path to least resistance, and developers have to develop for that.
No it is bad design. If there is an overpowered build players will use it. Designers know this better than anyone. So they should design the game without OP specs, easier said than done, I agree.
But players will chose the path of least resistance, your should design your game for that.
Ok I spent sometime and looked at NCSoft’s releases on sales. Please be aware, that generally the developer only gets 10% to 15% of the total revenue and NOT all of it.
Unit : Korean Won in Millions
3Q 12 = 45,841
4Q 12 = 119,013
1Q 13 = 36,382
2Q 13 = 28,899Without an expansion we will keep seeing drops. The only way to rejuvenate their revenue is a new expansion. They know this better than anyone else, which is why I am 100% sure there will be an expansion. It would be silly not to have one.
Not enough time there to get a trend on an MMO. The first 2 quarters are during the huge box sales, and we know they sold ~500,000 copies between the 1Q and 2Q. Eventually the game will not sell as many boxes, and we will be seeing sales that come from mainly the gem store. At the very least we need another 2 quarters to get a good idea if things are really falling, or just stabilizing.
I agree that is a good point. But the thing about sales like this is, if they didn’t do as well in the previous quarter it means the game didn’t gain a lot of new players. And we all know MMOs lose players as time goes on. If you are not replacing players that are quitting, any MMO will be in bad shape. Less players = less gem shop sales.
But would NCSoft/Arenanet be happy with GW2 being stable? Won’t they want the players that quit back in the game? Don’t they want a surge of new players? I am pretty sure they do.
Seems like an expansion would be the best solution to that problem.
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Nope. If you are coming up with way to make people feel they HAVE to play, that’s just a cheap replacement for compelling content. You should make people WANT to play, not HAVE to.
Again, that is pretty much what dailies and temp content are. It makes you want to play but you don’t have to. You don’t have to play with subscriptions either, but it makes you want to play.
You are losing something in both cases. You might put more value on the 50 cents for that day. Others might put more value on the content/rewards/achievement they get for that day.
And yet, if I don’t like those dailies that day (like today’s made me go “meh”) I feel absolutely no compulsion to do it. I’ve already got my money’s worth, and I like that feeling.
As a result, I will NOT play ANY game that has a subscription fee anymore. I don’t care how good you think it is.
But there should be compulsion. There should always be that urge. You should feel like you are missing out or wasting something if you don’t log in. GW2 learned the lesson early on that you can’t just tell players “leave it and come back whenever you like”.
I personally will play games with any model, I prefer subscription. But second best would be GW2’s system. However, if GW2 had a sub I would gladly pay it as long as they put better perma content in the game.
I find myself forcing myself to play to make that month’s investment worth it.
That is a good thing. MMOs should make you feel like you have to play them. Not randomly log on here and there. Which is exactly why GW2 has things like dailies and temp content. They want you to log on and have the urge to log on.
They’re all pretty much the same. Make a free trial on each and see which you like more.
Pretty sure free trials ended on Sunday.
But while in a way it is a P2P model you do not have the timer above your head and P2P models have failed for over the last 9 years. No MMO was able to hold it up longer then 2 years so we must conclude that P2P does not work.
There are just as many F2P games that have failed including recent examples. Games don’t fail because of their business model. Games fail if they are bad games period. Players will play games regardless of payment models if they are good games. Not one person has told me they quit SWTOR because of subscription, they told me they quit because it was a bad game.
The market will not allow average games to charge subscriptions anymore. Your game has to be great if you want to charge subscription.
But to a developer it is probably better to have subscriptions than B2P/F2P. This way they dont’ have to worry about monetizing content every month.
Russ check out Tier 1 or Tier 2 servers here:
https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/na/wvw
But remember that these servers might have queues during Primetime.
Elder Scrolls Online will do this, but they have to, since their game doesn’t have servers. The matches are longer and players are put into a campaign. Each campaign is balanced for player population in the 3-factions.
Then again ESO has the genius behind DAoC, which is Matt Firor. So you can expect better design choices from them.
I personally think servers should be separated from WvW, it will make a better experience. But that is just me.
I have played on HoD, ET, GoM, TC and BG. In all of those cases, the population in PvE has matched WvW. In HoD, ET and GoM it is rare to see more than 20 people in Lion’s Arch during primetime and that is also the case in WvW. We couldn’t get 50-60 players for Tequatl during the first week at most times.
In BG and TC there are players everywhere including dozens upon dozens in Lion’s Arch.
I don’t buy the whole WvW population doesn’t match server population. In most cases it does. There are a few exceptions where a smaller server has a dedicated guild that carries the server in WvW. (I believe Yak’s Bend is a good example of this) But those are the exceptions not the rule.
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For this to do what they want…they’re looking at the wrong population. For Darkhaven, you’ll see at most times we’re very high however our WvW population would speak the contrary.
Our server, or any server with a low WvW yet a very high PvE population, will not benefit from this at all. Unfortunately, there’s no way Anet would allow us to see that.
Darkhaven has a low PvE population also. Again, there is a correlation. Not perfect but it is there.
I would love to see my own portrait. I would also love to move elements of the UI around.
Or people on the 4-5 best spots and nobody anywhere else, creating an empty game. Lots of MMORGPs are like this, when the expansion is out everyone is playing at the new areas (which also offer higher character level) while the rest of the game slowly but surely becomes a barren wasteland.
Most, if not all, servers in GW2 are like this already. So it isn’t like the expansion would create a problem that doesn’t exist.
What do you recommend they do to upstart their sales? You might be asking why I case about their sales. I do because less sales = worst game. Period. It has gone down drastically in the last 2 quarters.
It won’t “create” a new problem but it will make a current problem that you admit exists even worse.
I don’t see how it would make it worse. Right now there are 4-5 places that most players are in the game. With an expansion there will be 4-5 places that most players are in the game.
Ok I spent sometime and looked at NCSoft’s releases on sales. Please be aware, that generally the developer only gets 10% to 15% of the total revenue and NOT all of it.
Unit : Korean Won in Millions
3Q 12 = 45,841
4Q 12 = 119,013
1Q 13 = 36,382
2Q 13 = 28,899
Without an expansion we will keep seeing drops. The only way to rejuvenate their revenue is a new expansion. They know this better than anyone else, which is why I am 100% sure there will be an expansion. It would be silly not to have one.
Or people on the 4-5 best spots and nobody anywhere else, creating an empty game. Lots of MMORGPs are like this, when the expansion is out everyone is playing at the new areas (which also offer higher character level) while the rest of the game slowly but surely becomes a barren wasteland.
Most, if not all, servers in GW2 are like this already. So it isn’t like the expansion would create a problem that doesn’t exist.
What do you recommend they do to upstart their sales? You might be asking why I case about their sales. I do because less sales = worst game. Period. It has gone down drastically in the last 2 quarters.
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It never ceases to amaze me how people can read something and still only see the thing they wanted to see.
The OP specifically asked if it is happening by the end of the year. No one is reading anything into it.
Here’s the thing. At the time GW Nightfall was released, the other two games were still on the market at full price.
So if you wanted to play guild wars and be competitive in price, you needed to have all 3 expansions. Key skills were expansion exlusive. This meant that if you were a new player, starting the game was a $120 proposition. That’s too much to ask for new players of an old game.
The micro transaction model is better for new players than the buy to play expansions model. Otherwise, you price your new customers out of the market.
You can always do something like a packaged deal for both. $60 dollars gets you both the base game and the expansion.
Honestly I don’t think there is an option, an expansion is needed. Why? GW2’s revenue keeps doing down quarterly which should be expected especially for a game dependent on box sales. They only way to boost the revenue is an expansion, that is it.
You won’t get a lot of new players in today’s highly saturated and competitive market, without something big. The new player has 5-6 solid MMOs that are completely F2P and have no box price.
Without further clarification (which we won’t get, because they can’t be that clear with us for aforementioned reasons) neither of us is right, neither of us is wrong. It simply is what it is, and all we can do is what and see….
Off course we don’t know for sure. But “highest risk for not making it this year” is a nice way to say no. So don’t expect it, or you will be disappointed.
If he said something like “our plan is to release it this year but we don’t know for sure as it needs testing” that is a maybe.
so that means no precursor making this year?
Not necessarily. He simply said its the greatest risk for not making the year end deadline, not that they wouldn’t. Honestly, I feel that they should simply take the time they need to get it right, rather then just rushing something out the door to make people happy. If they miss the deadline, so what. He’s stated that it is something they are doing, I’m sure a few extra months wouldn’t kill us if they needed more time to fine tune.
What he basically said is that it is not going to happen. Colin never answers any question directly. So don’t expect it this year.
Why is strafing in ‘other games’ so fast? Have you ever tried running in real life? Furthermore, it does theoretically help make combat more balanced, whether intended or not.
Stop with the real life comparisons. I play a Charr that makes clones of himself. While shooting pink projectiles at enemies.
Why would it make it more “balanced”?
Won’t go wrong with a Warrior, good overall class in PvP, WvW and PvE.
The thing is players like progression and players want progression. Leveling is a form of progression. A lot of times what players say they want is not what they actually want.
I do agree with almost everything the original video said. I don’t mind temporary content but it should be accompanied with big patches every 3-5 months. In an ideal world we get frequent temp content and after 3-5 months we get big patches like you see in other MMOs.
I do think 2-week temporary content was a bandaid GW2 put on a problem it had. It had a problem with retention and felt that this cycle would help with retention. However, what they don’t realize is even if it helps with retention it won’t help with bringing in new players to the game.
Where do people learn all this inside information about the relationship between ArenaNet and NCSoft, and what influence the development of WildStar has on ArenaNet?
I can’t comment one way or the other on it, but I see it mentioned often enough that I wonder if there are any interviews, investor reports, or anything else that people are referring to, or if it’s just speculation.
So…sources?
It is all speculation. This whole thread is speculation. But why would NCSoft want two competing products going against each other next year?
The problem with adding a new race, means re-designing every armour to fit
Which amounts to too much work.
They don’t bother with the Charr, so I don’t see a new race anytime soon.
No I am pretty sure there is a little discussion happening between Arenanet and NCSoft. NCSoft doesn’t want GW2 to have an expansion, especially next year when their baby WildStar will be released. It can be a cash cow with subscriptions and stuff.
NCSoft is probably more concerned with funding WildStar with all the buzz it is getting than funding GW2. So they stuck with WildStar and put GW2 on the backburner.
I don’t trust NCSoft.
It is especially bad if you got a Charr or a Norm the strafing is terrible and feels like it is slow motion.
ps, Specifically did not mention what Server I’m on now, Its NOT AR as I left AR ;-( when it blew up. Sad day that was. Still would ask any Dev to join and play with a server (they know who is constantly outmanned) for 3 or 4 hours. See if they think its fun!
Yeah I was confused because AR has a even match up right now.
Your “valid” criticism is what again?
No I said stop adding additional tiers to the game like you promised. Colin said he misjudged the community which is why they added ascended. He admitted it was a mistake on ANet’s part. They never “planned” to have ascended in the game. So they went back on their word and their original plan.
Now all I hope for is that they don’t add more tiers. As Colin promised again.
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Well, I DO think it’s a valid question.
If a person loathes something so much… why keep doing something you know you’ll hate? Why keep going somewhere that you know is only going to anger you?
There comes a point where the fight really isn’t worth it. When it comes to video games, that point should come very, very quickly.
Who loathes it? I have said this on the forums, if they add another tier after ascended I am gone. I am still not happy with what they did with ascended but I will give them this last chance.
I don’t think GW2 is perfect, they have been making tons of mistakes after the end of last year. The game launched with potential that I see squandered with every opportunity.
Regardless, it is not the job of randoms to tell players what they should and should not do.
In other mmos you do the same content over and over again to have the chance of that BIS gear (heroic 25man raid once a week for a 3% chance to get it). In GW2 you can do a variety of content. If you’re the open world player you can do Jumping Puzzles, Champions, can go and look for chests,… Then you can do dungeons or WvW, World Bosses and Guild Missions.
I don’t know, if you don’t like any of that, you basically don’t like the game. If that’s the case, what are you doing here?
First of all it is not your place to ask people what they are doing here. You don’t own these forums or the game. Second, grinding doesn’t necessarily mean doing the same thing over and over again. And there is no way you can say that Mike O’Brien didn’t do a 180 on his words. Because he did. If you say otherwise, your words are meaningless to me.
I have seen posters that try to silence valid criticisms on the forums. It happened to all games including games like Rift and SWTOR. And those are the most detrimental posters in the game. They aren’t helping the game but trying to silence people.
Stop comparing it to WoW heroic raiding, it is a laughable comparison at the very best.
Sure. They missed the chance to do so in beta. They apparently wanted to give their manifesto a shot in the wide open world.
But that doesn’t change anything really. Should they have stuck with what wasn’t working since it was post-release?
Ok so Colin said this was going to be the last tier. Do you believe him? If that system didn’t work in the past, why did Colin say this new ascended was the last tier?
They made a decision that apparently was something the majority wanted. They seem to think they made the right decision.
Rift at one point was going to make their PvP based solely on horizontal progression. So instead of enacting that because they thought it would be a good idea. They did testing, and guess what happened during testing? People preferred vertical progression in PvP and Rift didn’t put that system in the game.
FireFall another game, the realized that only 4% of their population was playing PvP with horizontal progression. Know what they did? They totally scarped PvP and are redoing it.
Basically this type of thing should have been done in beta. Yes they missed it, but it is too late to blame them for that now.
They definitely need an expansion. It will help with their declining revenue and also help bring new players to the game and also old players back into the game. B2P games depend on box sales and they need a boost in box sales.
My issue with this is, when can they release an expansion? NCSoft won’t let them compete with WildStar next year. So if we get an expansion it will be end of 2014 or somewhere around 2015. That seems to late in my opinion.
The problem is that you really aren’t exactly grinding for Ascended gear. Your just doing content that gives you mats to get them.
Huh? That is what you do in other grindy MMOs to get better gear. You are doing the content to get them. I can’t take anyone seriously that says they actually met that goal Mike O’Brien stated. Off course they didn’t, they changed their mind completely.
But there are players that bought the game based on statements like that.
They are approaching the issue wrong, instead of doing a complete 180 they need to take smaller steps. This way they don’t anger the fans that bought the game for reasons they advertise.
Who said the core fans are more important? No one did.
again, I can’t see the 180. My arguments still stay without your comments on it. What exactly is the 180 you are talking about?
From comments like this:
“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs. – Mike O’Brien, President of Arenanet
I am not going to get into this whole argument again. But obviously things like this are not true.
you can’t react that fast. No company can. New content/rewards need a lot of time to be designed and be just right for release. Fractals took time to develop and was the reaction to players leaving when 80 and no challenging dungeon content could be found anymore short after release. Including fractals right after Beta is not possible at any number of working developers.
So you are saying they just lied from the start?
So… they should just go down with the ship, then? Commit to that initial vision as they are hemorrhaging players? I think you would find roughly 0 companies that would take that angle, at least none that actually want to stay in business.
“Core fans” REALLY need to get in their heads that they AREN’T more important than anyone else.
They are approaching the issue wrong, instead of doing a complete 180 they need to take smaller steps. This way they don’t anger the fans that bought the game for reasons they advertise.
Who said the core fans are more important? No one did.
Well, now ask yourself… why would Arena.net make that 180?
The answer (in my opinion), because the feedback they got (not just from the official forum) said this was the way they needed to go to retain their players. I’m sorry you don’t like that. I’m sorry that they felt the game to your desires wasn’t sustainable
Oh I agree with this 100%. Their whole mantra wasn’t working and people were leaving and leaving fast. So they did a 180. But here is my problem. A developer should make changes like that during beta. Not after live, when many people bought the game based on their original mantra.
Now what they have is a whole lot of their core fanbase angry at them. And I am sorry they have to deal with it, but it is the bed they made.
All of this assumes 35% of the profit went somewhere else (development, etc.) These number could be, and most likely is probably close to double my calculations. These numbers are straight up profit, development and other things are already taken into consideration in the 35% figure.
link to average profit margins graph 1
link to another profit margins graph 2
We can assume they take home about 30% of the value of the game.
3.5mm units x $60 = $210,000,000.00
Below assumes they just take 30%, and the retailer still takes their 20%
$210,000,000 × 30% = $63 million dollars
Below assumes 50% of the retailer sales is given to publisher because of downloads eliminating their “middle man”
$210,000,000 × 40% = $84 million dollars
Tell me again why it takes forever to fix simple things in this game?
I have read your glassdoor reviews, and the pay is paltry at best, so it isn’t your operating budget. Maybe you are just squandering our resources away?
How much did the game take to develop? About 100-150 million dollars?
How many employees do they have? About 300? How much do they cost a year? Not to mention all the operating costs and such.
I don’t think ANet has many resources as we think they do. For all we know they could still be in the red.
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What utter nonsense. I have played plenty of MMOs before, and 2-3 weeks is a long time to get an item in any MMO.
It is amusing to me that people actually think they fulfilled the “Is it Fun” and the “Manifesto”, they did nothing of that sort, they did a total 180. I have to facepalm everytime someone tries to explain why they actually fulfilled their promises.
They are not building their game around “fun” anymore, they are building their game around what they said “subscription” games do. And that is grinds, time sinks, gated content and all of that type of content they criticized.
I’m not talking about any item, I talk about best in slot items and explained with an example how these are quite difficult to obtain. Ignoring this won’t get you anywhere. You can complete a raid in WoW only once a week, 2% chance per week means that you’d grind your time out of that raid for weeks/months to get the best in slot item. And then you’d have to do this for most slots.
People still clinging on the Manifesto because they want to prove that the game is bad just annoy me. The game is out for over a year and players have tons of feedback and behave in a certain way so that Anet has to react to that. The game is evolving according to that spoken/unspoken feedback in the best interest of the game, and ONLY Anet has the right to judge what this is. The only thing we can do to change this: give advice or behave differently ingame. When 90% of the players buy Black Lion chests once a month, then Anet gets a clear sign from us.
Just facepalm.
When you are comparing GW2 to WoW Heroic raiding, that itself should be a sign about how far this game has done a 180.
No one is using the Manifesto to say the game is bad. People use the Manifesto and articles like “Is it Fun” to show how far from their original design the team has come. They completely abandoned their original goals and went with the same old MMO formula. The point was for GW2 to be different in terms of core game design, not minor differences here and there which all MMOs have.
When GW2 tried to be like every other MMO, it also started competing with every other MMO. It is not good for the game or its future.
Companies do have the right to judge where they take their game, but companies can also be very wrong when they do.
To be honest, that is the least of our problems. First, the priority should be to incentivize players to play sPvP. If players are not playing sPvP nothing of this sort matters. You won’t make money on all these great ideas if people aren’t playing the game.
You need to build the foundation before building everything else. The foundation is not build yet. We need more players in sPvP, a lot more.
then list some ideas that will encourage more players to play or lower the barrier of entry in a constructive format. weather its game modes or new features what would you like to see?
Been there done that. Point was monetizing sPvP should be the last thing on their mind right now.
They should disable WvW for free trials, simple.
To be honest, that is the least of our problems. First, the priority should be to incentivize players to play sPvP. If players are not playing sPvP nothing of this sort matters. You won’t make money on all these great ideas if people aren’t playing the game.
You need to build the foundation before building everything else. The foundation is not build yet. We need more players in sPvP, a lot more.
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Who kittening cares id rather kittening wait 10 hours than lose because kittenking stuppid bittches kittenking not knowing how to play
If people had to wait 10 hours or even 10 minutes they would complain. As I said in another thread, ANet needs to bring in more players in sPvP. If they do a lot of the problems would fix itself.
There aren’t enough players queuing. If you want the system to force only equal ranks on both teams, they queue times would be outrageous.
ANet first needs to make people play sPvP, then so much problems would fix itself.