Why does anet keep abandoning systems and mechanics?

I think this is a common complaint among players. Guild halls, dungeons, fractals, raids, bounties, etc.I understand that if something isn't well received it makes some sense, but also have in mind that if you keep doing this people Will also stop playing most new things because they know it could be senseless and have it become never updated again.IMO we should be getting at least 1new guild hall with each expac and new lw season. And we should be getting around 3 new fractals per year.both are relatively small things to create, compared to a new zone. I won't talk about raids because I don't play them.I'm not too interested in trying strikes since they might as well become obsolete in a few months too.What do others think about it?

I think you should try strikes because for the most part, they are fun. I get your point though.

Yes, I would prefer to see Anet still manage to push out new guild stuff, fractals etc. I'm less worried about bounties since those have been more merged into normal champions like in post Bjora meta and have also morphed into strikes

As mentioned in other threads about guilds, I really don't understand why they are among the abandoned content. Seems to me like they are the easiest target for some content, just slap an NPC somewhere and make a guild mission out of it, though obviously that is just the smallest example that they could do.

Dungeons haven't been supported besides bugfixes and small updates since launch, honestly. Fractal system is much better, although I much prefer the story telling of a multi-layered dungeon compared to a fractal that only ever tells one story. Different paths made dungeons a little more interesting, I wish we had Fractals like that. I know we have some differences like different paths during some rotations, but they all still lead up to the same end basically.

As for bounties.. well, they are a PoF thing. I am not opposed to having more bounties in the future, but in terms of map design they wouldn't make much sense on our current maps. They are already very event dense for the most part and stuff like environmental damage from the snowstorm would probably be very annoying on top of the bounty mechanics. I would love a slightly different approach. Jahai Bluffs did this: Elite mobs roaming the map. I've had so much fun finding and fighting those, they were quite challenging in a 1v1, sometimes a 1vX because other hard hitting Branded might walk into range.

@coso.9173 said:dungeons, fractals, raids,The answer to these three is easy. The modern MMO market is made up largely of casuals who don't care about the "hard core" content MMOs have to offer such as, in Guild War 2's case, dungeons, fractals, and raids.

This is a common trend for many years among pretty much every MMO I can think of, where the devs simply just stop making this sort of content, and when the players ask why, the response is always "because in all the previous times we made them, it didn't matter how much time, or effort we put into them, like 80-90% of the playerbase never touched them. So, if we have the decision to put money into those systems, or pretty much anything else, the anything else wins out because more people will use it".

This really has nothing to do with Anet, or GW2 specifically, is just a development problem in the MMO market in general. The silent majority simply doesn't care, so it becomes a waste of money to develop them instead of anything else.

@coso.9173 said:bountiesThe bounty system existed because of the massive influx of magic, caused by the Elder Dragon's deaths, seeping into entities, and making them super strong. With Aurene's ascension into an Elder Dragon, this problem seems to be solved, hence why we also don't see volatile magic around anymore either(outside of places where Aurene has used her own kind of brand.)

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@coso.9173 said:dungeons, fractals, raids,The answer to these three is easy. The modern MMO market is made up largely of casuals who don't care about the "hard core" content MMOs have to offer such as, in Guild War 2's case, dungeons, fractals, and raids.

@coso.9173 said:bountiesThe bounty system existed because of the massive influx of magic, caused by the Elder Dragon's deaths, seeping into entities, and making them super strong. With Aurene's ascension into an Elder Dragon, this problem seems to be solved, hence why we also don't see volatile magic around anymore either(outside of places where Aurene has used her own kind of brand.)

I get your points, but I play other mmos where dungeons are released very often, so I don't think it's a common thing for them. Eso and ffxiv come to mind. Every new update has new dungeons mostly. Fractals are also casual friendly If you play lower levels too. Guild halls are also really casual friendly since it's mostly decorations.It Is probably true about raids though.The issue. More important that if it has a story justification like bounties, is that it lacks consistency. Now we have maps up to certain date with dungeons, the next ones don't, but some have bounties, then the next ones don't, but they have strikes, it is weird.

@coso.9173 said:I get your points, but I play other mmos where dungeons are released very often, so I don't think it's a common thing for them. Eso and ffxiv come to mind. Every new update has new dungeons mostly. Fractals are also casual friendly If you play lower levels too. Guild halls are also really casual friendly since it's mostly decorations.It Is probably true about raids though.The issue. More important that if it has a story justification like bounties, is that it lacks consistency. Now we have maps up to certain date with dungeons, the next ones don't, but some have bounties, then the next ones don't, but they have strikes, it is weird.And I've seen many complaints from both those games that most of the dungeons are pretty awful, and not worth playing.

And that really isn't weird. In general, you WANT certain areas of the game to have aspects others don't. It makes playing through the game more diverse, instead of every map just having the same things repeated over and over. That just leads to the game being dull.

-HoT had verticality via gliders, and adventures-PoF had bounties, and mounts/mount races-Icebrood Sage has strikes, and, at least from the first three episodes, a greater focus on weather effects(something I hope continues)

@Randulf.7614 said:I think you should try strikes because for the most part, they are fun. I get your point though.

but how long before strikes are abandoned for the next thing?

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Randulf.7614 said:I think you should try strikes because for the most part, they are fun. I get your point though.

I have no idea. Whether they do or don't, I wouldn't say not to do them. Enjoy what there is now I say

strikes are the attempt to easier raids, they just don't get why raids are really not as interesting as they first thought.raids/strikes are more for ppl who love to organize a stable team, the majority clearly doesn't care about such things so they get forgotten/abandoned.even with end-game meta's, they push them in but i really don't see players really enjoying them.Anet wants players to play them, casuals want to stay out of them and i really don't know why Anet just can't get the hint.

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@"coso.9173" said:The modern MMO market is made up largely of casuals who don't care about the "hard core" content MMOs have to offer such as, in Guild War 2's case, dungeons, fractals, and raids.

The massive success of WoW Classic says otherwise

What in reality has been happening, is that MMO developers have been trying to gear their games toward the "casual cash shop" crowd for easy profit and largely been falling on their face in the process

It's done Anet no favors and WoW Regular has only lost subs overtime by trying to move away from classic MMO systems

FF14 is the powerhouse it is simply because it kept to the basic formula and ensured the rest of the game was up to snuff and people gladly pay $15 a month for the privliage

I don't know why Anet changes the way they do things so much, except that this game has always seemed to be at least 50% an experiment into new or different ways of making an MMO, so I suspect there's lots of ideas they try out to see what happens and then drop either because it doesn't work or because it does but doesn't have much potential beyond what they've already done.

But in spite of that I don't understand why you'd want to avoid the content we do get just because there might not be more of the same released in future. I can kind-of understand it if there's a lot of preperation to do before you can start, but that only really applies to raids and there's enough of them that if you want lots of the achievements or unique items and skins (or if you want legendary armour) the existing ones will more than justify the time required to get ascended equipment with the right stats. But for anything else? It's not going to change what's available so I don't see why it matters. For example the bounties available in PoF are the same now as they were at release or during Season 4 when more of them were being released. Why avoid them just because there haven't been any in Icebrood Saga?

@coso.9173 said:

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@coso.9173 said:dungeons, fractals, raids,The answer to these three is easy. The modern MMO market is made up largely of casuals who don't care about the "hard core" content MMOs have to offer such as, in Guild War 2's case, dungeons, fractals, and raids.

@coso.9173 said:bountiesThe bounty system existed because of the massive influx of magic, caused by the Elder Dragon's deaths, seeping into entities, and making them super strong. With Aurene's ascension into an Elder Dragon, this problem seems to be solved, hence why we also don't see volatile magic around anymore either(outside of places where Aurene has used her own kind of brand.)

I don't know much about FFXIV but ESO releases dungeons regularly because that's the vast majority of 'end game' content. It's pretty much the opposite of GW2 - they only release 2 open-world maps per year and those have very little repeatable content, but instead they release 4 dungeon paths and 1 trial (aka raid) per year and build them so you have to run each one multiple times to complete everything. Whereas GW2 focuses on open-world content, which is designed to be repeatable and serves much the same purpose as ESO's dungeons.

@"sorudo.9054" said:strikes are the attempt to easier raids, they just don't get why raids are really not as interesting as they first thought.raids/strikes are more for ppl who love to organize a stable team, the majority clearly doesn't care about such things so they get forgotten/abandoned.even with end-game meta's, they push them in but i really don't see players really enjoying them.Anet wants players to play them, casuals want to stay out of them and i really don't know why Anet just can't get the hint.

Because Anet refuses to put adequate cosmetic rewards into the game itself anymore

Even raids themselves paled in comparison to what each dungeon offered

Those came with a weapon set and an armor set each. With each also being required for legendary weapon crafting early on.

Compare that to your average raid rewards that are often a few weapons that are less flashy than BLC/gem shop gear and legendary armor which only matters to serious players or people who want the skin

Anet created a game where you do content for skins and then resolved to attach as few as possible to the content

It was inevitable that people would, over time, gravitate toward just doing mindless overworld gold farms instead of harder instanced content

You might get more ascended gear faster doing raids and t4 fractals, but you can't do them while watching netflix

As to why Anet doesn't "get it", I can't really say other than to assume that they just didn't care until NCsoft came knocking

@"Substance E.4852" said:~snip~

As to why Anet doesn't "get it", I can't really say other than to assume that they just didn't care until NCsoft came knocking

You do know they've been a part of NCSoft since before the original GW was released, when the company was first formed it was called TriForge, then they changed the name and during development of GW became part of NCSoft West...and NCSoft has pretty much had a hands off approach the entire time, anything ArenaNet did management wise was of their own choosing or how it was done was of their own choosing(whether instructed to by NCSoft or not).

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@"Substance E.4852" said:~snip~

As to why Anet doesn't "get it", I can't really say other than to assume that they just didn't care until NCsoft came knocking

The layoffs last year suggest that even if NCsoft were hands off durring Gw1, something changed. It's been a decade since gw1 started, for the most part the gaming experiment is over. Companies have statistics now, and they want to enforce them.

@Westenev.5289 said:

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@"Substance E.4852" said:~snip~

As to why Anet doesn't "get it", I can't really say other than to assume that they just didn't care until NCsoft came knocking

I'll tell you what changed, mobile, that's what changed...NCSoft started making mobile games and saw what a cash cow they were, they didn't like any of the projects ArenaNet was working on and decided to tell MO to cut staff...that's what changed, just like the rest of the corporate world, they can't see beyond the next quarters earnings, no more 5, 10 and 20 year plans, it's all about the return to investors now, almost no one cares about long term growth(except for smart investors).

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@Westenev.5289 said:

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@"Substance E.4852" said:~snip~

As to why Anet doesn't "get it", I can't really say other than to assume that they just didn't care until NCsoft came knocking

What changed was GW turning from a passion project into a 'cashcow'. It's pretty easy to see how disasters happen in hindsight though...

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@coso.9173 said:bountiesThe bounty system existed because of the massive influx of magic, caused by the Elder Dragon's deaths, seeping into entities, and making them super strong. With Aurene's ascension into an Elder Dragon, this problem seems to be solved, hence why we also don't see volatile magic around anymore either(outside of places where Aurene has used her own kind of brand.)

Well, nothing stopping us from going back to the OG bounties and stopping some criminals? Dangerous animals that just started roaming the fields? Stuff like that without all the magic lore. They could introduce new bounty mechanics that have less to do with leyline energy and keep them fresh that way too.

Those who have been around since the start have seen this happen time and time again. Content gets moved into the spotlight to then fall off harshly or be abandoned entirely. You hardly even have enough time to get used to their pace or to get excited about the game changing directions before it is changed again. Remember dungeons? Remember PvP Esports? Remember Fractal Leaderboards? Remember the refocus on Fractals not so long ago? Remember WvW events? Remember expansions? Raids lasted for quite a while all things considered.

What's sad is that guilds are abandoned content even though they hard carry pretty much everything that's not purely open-world solo. Especially the competitive game modes are dependant on guilds, but ArenaNet just goes "huh, what's guilds?".

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:This really has nothing to do with Anet, or GW2 specifically, is just a development problem in the MMO market in general. The silent majority simply doesn't care, so it becomes a waste of money to develop them instead of anything else.

Yet most other mmorpgs do have such content. Weird how that works

Re: Guild halls, dungeons, fractals, raids, bounties...Guild halls haven't been really abandoned, there's new decorations all the time. Unless you want them to start making new guildhalls , which people may be against because they would need to get another one for 100 gold + expedition event and remove decorations first to avoid buginess.

5 man dungeons have been stated to have lost the devs responsible or something akin to that (code related). There's also the idea that they shouldn't be farmed:"Over the last couple of years, dungeons have been a major part of the game’s economy; between unique armor and liquid rewards, they’re often farmed. In the expansion, we’ll move away from this paradigm. As the game progressed, we shifted focus from dungeons to fractals and raids, and we firmly believe that fractals and raids are the content that we want to continue to support. As a part of that process, we’ll shift some rewards away from dungeons and into other pieces of content. While dungeons will remain cool experiences that’ll reward players with unique items, their liquid rewards will be reduced and other content will become more rewarding. The shift in rewards is a direct representation of our focus on raids and fractals and our commitment to make them the best they can be." - https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-economy/

Fractals are still on the table, raids as well. The likelihood of fractals is higher at least until reaching the full 25 per tier. Raids have been stated to have a much lower audience.

Bounties existed in living story season 4 maps such as Istan, Sandswept Isles , Kourna, Jahai Bluffs. The problem is unless you're farming elegy mosaics there's not much repeatability. Heart of Thorns method to gaining 2nd legendaries is more popular because of the map currency issue and lack of extra time gating (even if you have elegy mosaics you're limited by funerary incense for legendaries). You could call the Koda Trials in Bjora as "sort of bounties" and also the champion mobs in Grothmar that spawn after metas.

Raids are just doomed to fail in this state. there is no reason to do cms twice so its almost impossible to find groups for older ones.0 reason to do raids more than once a week means very active lfg on monday and dying lfg wednesday to sunday since you can do all in a day.Also the part i dont understand, why are raids only like half g/h of dragonstand AND have a weekly lockout. at least make the simple gold rewards repeatable

the main reason why guild mission stuff gets abandoned is probably legacy spaghetti code nobody understands. or because you cant sell those in the gemstore.and the biggest crime is the throw away mentality with story missions. why were they never used for fractals or dungeons like in destiny?

I think the problem is most players just do maps + metas or stories GW 2( from my near 500 guildis this is what I see doing them) has no real reason to do what most would call endcontent. (fractals, raids , wvwv, pvp)There are lot of people who have no interest for running fractals but somehow have good memories of the dungeon time. On the other hand there is some interest to do raids because of various rewards there but the lack of skills is too big.

So far I read the comment from one of the developers here dungeons should have the same difficulty like T2 fractals. I haven't run much raids but I think they are roughly around the difficulty of fractal cms. So you see the huge gap when you know dungeons/t2 work with people who have no clue about their class rota on the other side depending on the numbers of low skill players raids and high level fractals can become impossible.

Dungeons have really a lot of stuff what other content don't have = skins armour + weapon, runes , sigils , recipes. Fractals have a lot of stuff for getting ascended rings and alternative recipes for armour but the only really interesting stuff are in the cms (weapons skins + infusions). Raids are similar and in the strike mission the only things which are interesting are super rare.

In other MMOs which have item spiral you are forced to get better gear so you have to run Dungeons yeah that non- causal but you don't really have that problem too much because a far greater percentage doing dungeons/'endcontent'.

So there is a lack of insensitive to start with the 'endcontent' because besides gold it takes forever to get the 'good' rewards or it is too difficult at the beginning .Basically I missing runes, recipes and skins for strike missions , raids and fractals which are non exclusive for cms but purchasable for coins/marks whatever.

This is just the insensitive side of things but there are also mechanic side ,balancing, and what kind of players we have ( spoiler the average gw2 players is 30+ )

I don't understand why they didn't make difficulty levels instead of strikes in the first place; it's a win-win. You have a casual mode like LFR and a harder mode for dedicated groups and you serve both play stiles. But no, now they just add strikes and raids are on hold. Make the strikes a raid with hard mode and the raid strikes with easy mode. It's mindblowing how Anet deconstructs themselves with doing everything wrong while wasting huge talent.

@"Randulf.7614" said:I think you should try strikes because for the most part, they are fun. I get your point though.

Problem with strikes is that there are insufficient reasons to do them. "fun" can be found in a lot of places in this game, and why would I spend my time doing strikes when I could do something else equally fun? Once the achievements are done, or if you don't care about APs, the rewards aren't worth the effort or time, assuming it's a one-shot kill (nevermind if you wipe and have to retry)

HoT/PoF metas have legendary crafting mats + substantial T5/T6 mats, ecto, recipes, while bounties drop contracts + elegies. What do you get from Strikes? A very low RNG chance at a rare drop, Eternal Ice + Ingots or in the case of Groth, more chilies?

I have a toon parked in Amnoon who does the Blitz/Casino at least once per day, sometimes more, despite having all the rewards you can get with Casino coins. But now that I'm finishing off my last piece of leggy armor, I intend to start on a Gen 2.5 Leg weapon, and I have thousands of contracts and elegies in storage, and more than enough amal gemstones.

Killing the Pinata is just as 'fun' as killing Whisper, except that the former is actually worth the time.

When ANET decides to have Legendary Insights drop from Gold chests in Strike Missions, then maybe they will be worth it, but ofc only a static group would be able to clear those anyways, so the majority of GW2 players will still have no reason to bother.