Speculation on Future

TL:DR - I feel like the devs are preparing to switch their attention to another game due to the bad direction that the story has taken with time or the fact that implementing new content or fixing old content becomes way more complicated than it should be because of bad foundations.

Hey guys, while being disconnected from the game i've been thinking a bit and I think I cant keep it in my head anymore.

When I looked at GW2 for the first time I was amazed and even overwhelmed by the amount of activities and varieties this game has to offer for me and the entire communtiy aswell, GW2 was always in my sight ever since it has launched but it was never enough to make me buy it until PoF came out.

But when I finally laid my hands on the game, I immediately bought both of the expansions and swallowed the game whole in less time than I would've ever imagined(except raids), I was probably too late.

I feel that with every episode that passes by, or content that gets released the game gets slower, ideas are running out and people lose their interest more and more, When I first did the personal story and living world I was blown away by every episode, no matter if the battle was bad somehow or some details got overlooked. and now I just finished my second full play-through and I was totally disappointed and bored, it felt more like a chore than a story but all I wanted to do is finish the story on my newly opened ranger, mostly the unsolved bugs and the sometimes boring sometimes unfair bosses ruined it for me.

I just want to raise it up for no reason but when was the last time you've seen a developer play the game?

back to the topic.All I can think of now, after reading tons on tons of posts is that GW2 is close to ending, a new game is being developed , or at least these are my thoughts.

In every new content idea or fix, revamp I see the following: "this is too complicated according to the devs" or "is extremely low prioritized", most of the ideas I can remember are basic quality of life changes.

When I first heard of GW2 I thought to myself why can't all companies be like this, open and friendly, thinking like the player. But with time passing and after the recent JP incident, all the balance changes and generally the new content I feel the exact opposite.

Its ONLY IMO but I think that the reason the last dragon doesn't have a name yet is because we wont get to see him, at least in GW2.UW expac in GW2 might be the worst idea I can think of unless Bubbles can breath above water, but the same idea of fighting dragons seems so boring to even think of at this point.

I know people will immediately disagree because of all the progress they've made here and the fact that GW2 can grow even more but I feel like the devs are limited with making new content without it being "too complicated" and need a new foundation to build their "passion" on.

Of course i'm just assuming because the devs are so quiet we have no idea at all what are their goals for this game or motives for all the changes we see.

The "new" festival of the four winds for example, just for me at least is a reminder that the devs are struggling or have switched their attention to something else(not GW2 related).

tell me what you guys think in the comments about this.

LOL perish the thought....GW2 is far from ending. Gr8 content sometimes takes awhile to finish but when it does it was worth the wait. Same for those of us that have been around since 2005. Few years after GW1 launch, ME and MINE++ heard there was gonna be a 2 and we were psyched. And yup it was worth the wait and it's still going strong. Though ME and MINE++ may take breaks from it sometimes, it will always pull us back ;) They've had numerous requests for Fest of 4 winds to return yet again and they listened and complied. No struggling anywhere lol. (Edited for any sensitive to the general "we" in statements) :)

To;dr : Woe, doom and woe. I don't think so. Also try not to think about the game too much while disconnected. Posting here and there when you have a minute but otherwise you are over thinking it.

@"Tasida.4085" said:LOL perish the thought....GW2 is far from ending. Gr8 content sometimes takes awhile to finish but when it does it was worth the wait. Same for those of us that have been around since 2005. Few years after GW1 launch we heard there was gonna be a 2 and we all were psyched. And yup it was worth the wait and it's still going strong. Though we may take breaks from it sometimes it will always pull us back ;) They've had numerous requests for Fest of 4 winds to return yet again and they listened and complied. No struggling anywhere lol.

We were excited when we heard about it but not everybody felt it was worth the wait so try not to use "we" so casually. Particularly the vanilla game is terrible in my view, nice graphics aside.

Now the game did get better and Path of Fire by itself has a lot of cool stuff in it but the game does have a lot of repetition and farming and now going through Path of Fire and LS Season 4 I am getting so tired of all these slug fest and not feeling powerful at all even against normal mobs. I think the boss fights would be good enough if they had half their HP as they do now and exploring the maps just gets tiresome when around every corner there is yet another mob to aggro you and it becomes difficult to just stand still and orient yourself or just look around. For me those things do kinda make it hard for me to enjoy the rest of it.

There are just a lot of things that just take longer than it should. The game has a lot of content already so I don't see the need but I don't really get how people play this game for more than a few months at a time. I've played this game 4 times since it launched and never more than 3 months. It's fun enough to pick it up every year or two but I just get annoyed and bored mostly because of what I described above.

As for the game going strong, that remains to be seen. I think population wise it seems to be doing alright, but financially the general revenue trend has been downward, aside from the spikes from expansions sales. But between the initial high of the game and the two expansions the trend is downward. I'll be interested to see the next financial report because then we will see what happened after PoF. Hopefully the trend is up or stabilized but I dunno if that's the case. We'll know next month. So far between 2013 and 2017 the quarterly revenue has gone down over 50%. It'd be nice to see that go up again now the PoF spike is over.

The thing is, population is one thing but revenue is what keeps the wheels turning. Now I have no idea what the bottom line is for Anet with regards to GW2, so I have no clue if 50% of what it used to be is still fine for them or not. So I have no opinion on whether this game is in trouble or not. But I do know that if the trend keeps going down that it's not a good thing. So fingers crossed for some better news. I might not like the game nearly as much as you do, but I wish it well just the same.

"I just want to raise it up for no reason but when was the last time you've seen a developer play the game?"

You can watch the Devs 'play the game' almost every Thursday on Twitch (and sometimes on Fridays).https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-arenanet-streaming-schedule-for-the-week-of-july-9/

You can also always find the Devs playing on a Release Tuesday.

Good luck.

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:"I just want to raise it up for no reason but when was the last time you've seen a developer play the game?"

You can watch the Devs 'play the game' almost every Thursday on Twitch (and sometimes on Fridays).https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-arenanet-streaming-schedule-for-the-week-of-july-9/

You can also always find the Devs playing on a Release Tuesday.

Good luck.

Haha, well, I do hope they're better than the guys over at BioWare. When they play SWTOR it's always embarrassing to watch hehe.

They are players, just like us. Some are great at certain modes; some are not. I'm sure being an artist at a game studio doesn't magically give you gaming skills; same for Community, backend engineers, writers, etc., etc.

I always laugh when i see people complaining about new skins and such on the BLTP but...artists dont work on coding events, if they are done doing the artwork for say a map, what else are they gonna get paid to do? sit around? you might as well have them do something for the company and game.

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:They are players, just like us. Some are great at certain modes; some are not. I'm sure being an artist at a game studio doesn't magically give you gaming skills; same for Community, backend engineers, writers, etc., etc.

You should be a good player if you're a part of it's development imo, thats kind of ironic actually

I think it's highly unlikely they're developing a new game. MMO studios aren't like companies who make single-player games - who make a game and then immediately start making their next one (if they weren't already working on it) while maybe a small team makes some expansions or extra content to keep players busy. MMOs typically get constant development even after release, so it takes up a lot of time and resources.

Arenanet have been around for 18 years now and they've only ever made 2 games - Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2. They don't have anything else to focus on and launching a new game would require a lot of planning, including careful handling of the PR. If they just came out and said "Hey so we're forgetting about GW2 and making this instead" they'd get a lot of angry and confused people overshadowing any positivity.

@Dreadshow.9320 said:To;dr : Woe, doom and woe. I don't think so. Also try not to think about the game too much while disconnected. Posting here and there when you have a minute but otherwise you are over thinking it.

It's not woe and doom, more like the game is going really slow , and after 6 years there is probably a reason, I personally don't think there is much to achieve by creating new content on a 12 yo engine that doesnt work well with today's technology

Long live Guild Wars 2!

While I can see where you are coming from I disagree. The trends with this company over the years doesn't really line up with your suggestion. I imagine GW2 has a lot of gas still in the tank.

WvW is the only reason to keep playing, lets hope they stop leaving their lifeline on the backburner

@Klipso.8653 said:WvW is the only reason to keep playing, lets hope they stop leaving their lifeline on the backburner

That, is an opinion. One i do not share. WvW could not exist in this game(same with PVP) and id still be playing with only very little effect to my personal gameplay.

@Gehenna.3625 said:I am getting so tired of all these slug fest and not feeling powerful at all even against normal mobs. I think the boss fights would be good enough if they had half their HP as they do now and exploring the maps just gets tiresome when around every corner there is yet another mob to aggro you and it becomes difficult to just stand still and orient yourself or just look around. For me those things do kinda make it hard for me to enjoy the rest of it.

But aggroing everything on the map and fighting for your life is the best part! It's why the Silverwastes is my favorite map in the game -- until it goes on cooldown.

@Nopesarenotforme.5190 said:

@Dreadshow.9320 said:To;dr : Woe, doom and woe. I don't think so. Also try not to think about the game too much while disconnected. Posting here and there when you have a minute but otherwise you are over thinking it.

You don't? I know games that are older, still being developed and work as well or worse than GW2 ... not sure your view of the MMO space is very objective here.

@Nopesarenotforme.5190 said:

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:They are players, just like us. Some are great at certain modes; some are not. I'm sure being an artist at a game studio doesn't magically give you gaming skills; same for Community, backend engineers, writers, etc., etc.

Why? Why should an accountant be good at gaming? They can certainly enjoy gaming, but no reason that having accounting skills equals gaming skills.

I once worked in an auto repair shop doing billing; didn't mean I was very good at repairing cars.

My perspective is quite different. I think the game is in a better place than it's ever been. People complained that there weren't enough new maps and now there are plenty of new maps and some of us like them. The story-telling from my point of view has gotten better, not worse...in many cases far better. The last episode of the story (not the zone, but the story itself) was one of my favorite so far. The zone needs to have some of the rewards reworked, particularly the fact that enemies don't give volatile magic, when they do in other LS 4 zones. Also many enemies from events don't drop loot for some weird reason, even though they are limited spawns.

But the game itself, at least the PvE game is much better. I mean mounts came into the game fairly recently and they were fantastically received. Racing and bounties were added to the game them, and they're a form of content. Palawadan remains popular and that's only a couple of episodes old. And the festival people have been waiting to come back for for years is coming back on tuesday. I don't know about you, but people in my guild are excited.

I always seem to have stuff to do. Maybe I just like different stuff from you.

Devs play this game all the time. I've seen at least a couple of in the last month. Helps that I'm in an active guild and people tend to call them out when they see them in guild chat.

@Nopesarenotforme.5190 said:back to the topic.All I can think of now, after reading tons on tons of posts is that GW2 is close to ending, a new game is being developed , or at least these are my thoughts.

This community doesn't handle well criticism to the game. People who stick around this forum are those most devoted to GW2, and so trying to complain about anything is usually shot down.

That being said, it's very unlikely that ArenaNet is working on anything other than Guild Wars 2 right now. They have never been quick or even particularly efficient in making new content; even with the full team the Living World releases are often delayed, if they had been working on anything else content would have slowed to a crawl.

For better or for worse, ArenaNet is Guild Wars 2, and probably always will be.

@Nopesarenotforme.5190 said:I feel that with every episode that passes by, or content that gets released the game gets slower, ideas are running out and people lose their interest more and more

Path of Fire revitalized the game. If the next expansion is as successful, it could bring a lot of people back and catch a lot of new players too.

I don't understand what some people expect. In terms of story telling the latest releases were pretty good. Other aspects were some let downs, but as a whole I think it's always going up, not down

Well as funky monkey as the release of Long Live the Lich was, the story was great. I mean look at the crazy storm at WoW right now with their pre-patch and that is from large studio. I think GW2 is in s great place right now.

Considering when the game launched there were concerns over how dated the engine was and as time goes on old content has been left in stasis as it's too difficult to fix the old code. I really don't see this game continuing on forever. Anet needs a game with a more modern engine, better performance, better netcode. I don't see GW2 remaining the focus into the 2020's and beyond, as a result, I am eager to see what new things they can turn out.

@Nopesarenotforme.5190 said:

@"Dreadshow.9320" said:To;dr : Woe, doom and woe. I don't think so. Also try not to think about the game too much while disconnected. Posting here and there when you have a minute but otherwise you are over thinking it.

I believe they already have another 6 years of content on the master timeline they're using for the game...the "white board" outline they started the game with.

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:Why? Why should an accountant be good at gaming? They can certainly enjoy gaming, but no reason that having accounting skills equals gaming skills.

I once worked in an auto repair shop doing billing; didn't mean I was very good at repairing cars.

What I meant is that if you have a part in repairing those cars, you should know that very good. A team that needs to balance an entire system of traits and specs should be familiar with every single detail within it, they have no excuse to keep things a secret and need to give a roadmap for each class, something that Anet apparently stopped doing a long while ago if I heard correctly.