The Fundamental Problem with GW2

[kharmin.7683]

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:

3. Posting on the board means you are an active player....How can you even say this? There are several posters in the last few months who specifically stated that they aren't playing because of what Anet has done with templates. But that's fine; keep making things up.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@kharmin.7683 said:

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:

3. Posting on the board means you are an active player....How can you even say this? There are several posters in the last few months who specifically stated that they aren't playing because of what Anet has done with templates. But that's fine; keep making things up.

"Active player" means you have almost certainly played in the last 1-2 years. I'm not sure what's so confusing or radical about this.

[KeoLegend.5132]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@KeoLegend.5132 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@KeoLegend.5132 said:Nah. I think is fine as it is and the customization it gives. Not too complex and not too insignificant.

Of course you do, which is why you play the game now. The vast majority of the game's players over the years have not stuck with it - my argument is this is a big part of the reason why.

Nah you are completely wrong.Your argument is senseless and your reasons are too personal to be accepted as a scientific evidence. You said 9 out of 10 friends of yours had dropped the game.Well, in my case, of 10 friends, 5 of them is playing GW2 because of me and love the system aswell. So your argument is a bit irrelevant on numbers.

Sure, the numbers dropped. Its part of a natural process and sometimes part of a bad decision of a game design. You are simply putting everyone that quit the game on the same bag of (i didn't like the trait system), and seeing that everyone else in here disagrees with you only show how "alone" you are in your statements.

Traits and specs are FINE as they are. We prefer balance over quantity. And im with the majority of the players here. If GW2 decides to do a 180ª and attend your demands , thats when the playerbase will really drop low.

Man there about a dozen different levels of hyperbole & bad logic here.

1. When did you and your friends start playing? I said 9 in 10. I didn't say literally 9 out of 10. I have a friends list of about 60 people, and am in 5 guilds going back to the beginning of the game. Fewer than 20% of the people in any of those buckets have logged in in the last several years. Refusing to believe there was a huge falloff after launch is akin to refusing to believe that we landed on the moon.

2. I'm not putting everyone in the same bag. I'm stating an opinion on something I feel plays a large responsibility, even if people are unaware of it, of that retention failure.

3. Posting on the board means you are an active player, which means you are part of the 1 and 10 that didn't lose interest in the game quickly, which means you are biased toward how the game works today, as are most of the other active posters on this board. Duh.

4. Balance and quantity are two different things. Experienced game designers know you don't hamstring development over balance concerns because balance is never "good enough" - it's always in movement and always iterative. Being too conservative with player options due to balance concerns is a terrible status quo that leads to player disengagement.

5. There was no demand here, only the start of a discussion.

1. Some 2 years ago, and the latest this year.
2. then state: "i feel like" rather than "thats the reason why"
3. Dude, not even 10% of the playerbase are active on forums...
4. of course they are different things. Point is: more quantity = more difficulty to balance. If you feel that being conservative is a bad game design then maybe you should seek another game. Im very very happy with how conservative GW2 is in terms of gear and specs.
5. EXTRA. Once again: If everyone that disagrees with the combat left the game already, Anet should focus on those who stayed (that presum. like the classes the way they currently are) and getting new blood that also thinks the same, instead of changing for ppl that as you said, ALREADY LEFT.

[Sir Vincent III.1286]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:No. Demanding "hard proof" For something that is intuitively true is a diversionary tactic used to undermine an opponent's position in the absence of stronger counter-arguments. GW2 having a fraction of the number of active players it had at launch isn't something I need to prove - it's something that's both obvious and universally known. What I need is for people to actually provide counter-arguments instead of trying to derail the thread.

I have never seen any official count of active players from launch until today.

Fine, here:

https://inanage.com/2018/02/05/estimating-gw2s-population/

Quote from that article: "Look, the numbers and the quotes

can be massaged to basically say whatever you want

. What is considerably

more objective is what ArenaNet does

."

It begs the question; Does $44M means 44M players spending $1 each OR 44 players spending $1M each?

Bottom line; the "data" you've provided doesn't support your claim.

One fact is true, based solely in my observation; If the content is fun to play and very rewarding and it's not a complete waste of time (i.e. Dragonfall), players will stay and play that content. It really has nothing to do with the "fundamental problems" the main topic had specified. Despite the poor options in builds and the existence of Elite specs, players still play in Dragonfall, which means, those aren't "fundamental problems".

The context for that discussion was about trying to extrapolate the exact number of active players now based on current revenue, not trying to prove that there was a large falloff after launch, which there obviously and factually was. At any rate, just because some commenter said that doesn't mean it's true. Again, we can extrapolate reasonable conclusions from reasonable data points. Suggesting that a revenue dropoff that large is because of players continuing to play but spending that much less vs way fewer players playing and therefore not spending anything is an absurdist position.

You people really like grasping at straws.

You provided that source, not me. Now that I pointed that it doesn't support your claim, it suddenly became "doesn't mean it's true". You then just debunked your own argument by using a source that you claim to be not true.

[kharmin.7683]

I think that there is a fundamental problem with this thread. Since the goal posts keep moving, I see no reason to continue.

Good luck with your proposal.

[Sir Vincent III.1286]

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:

2. I'm not putting everyone in the same bag. I'm stating an opinion on something I feel plays a large responsibility, even if people are unaware of it, of that retention failure.

There it is. No facts, just an opinion about someone's feeling. Others' opinion is as good as yours.

Even if ArenaNet makes the changes you've suggested, there is no guarantee that players will suddenly flash mob playing GW2. What's guaranteed is, the current players who like the game as is will surely stop playing. Just look at the number of people who disagree with you here -- those players surely don't want to play the game you've envisioned. Might as well make a new game (GW3?) and leave GW2 alone.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:I wasn't just including elite specs in my observation/analysis. I think it was an issue with the original class design that was noticeable by level 10.

It wasn't, unless you're talking now about something else than you were talking in your first post. You were specifically talking about the "ongoing class development", and how you didn't like how they did it with elite specs. You can't however say that it was a problem "noticeable by level 10" when there was no class development yet in the game at this point. The class design up until HoT was very "sandboxy". In fact, it still is - elite specs instead of just adding new weapons and traitlines limited that original feel a little, but didn't actually change it.

I was just making the point that elite specs helped crystalize it as a long-term issue when it could (and should IMO) have gone in the other direction.Like you said, up until that point it could have gone in a different direction. Until that happened, you had no way of knowing which direction would it go. Thus saying that you could have any inkling about it, or that this ultimately chosen path could make people quit in the first half a year of the game, would make all those people genuine prophets. And i don't think there's enough genuine prophets in this world (much less playing GW2) to make any visible impact on this game's population.

[Zaklex.6308]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:GW2 having a fraction of the number of active players it had at launch isn't something I need to prove - it's something that's both obvious and universally known.

That claim is neither obvious nor universally known. That claim is so subjective that it can easily be debunked by another subjective observation. For instance, I can also make a claim that your claim is false because there were tons of players in Dragonfall participating in the event at the same time a large group of players doing the Maguuma HP runs. Without an official numbers from ArenaNet, we can only speculate.

.......................................................................no.

Apart from anecdotal evidence and common sense, there are also a ton of data points that can be referenced to piece together a reasonably accurate conclusion. That's how science works. It's called inference. Ugh I get so tired of this nonsense in these threads.

I mean, you said 9 of 10 people and a few others you've spoken to don't play anymore. I could say that this one guild I belong to that I know has existed since the 1st year and has over 350 members with half of those still playing says the opposite. Not everyone plays the same games all the time, and numbers aren't something we should be concerned with as long as the game is playable.

On topic, I don't think changing the system now is worth the development time nor cost, but getting rid of meta builds would be. The simplest solution would be to just eliminate all boos/conditions and set all weapon damage at equal amounts, with all classes having the same power/survival numbers. Then it would be based on pure skill, but what's the fun in that(other than allowing everyone to play what ever they wanted to for all content). Of course that also eliminates the use of mechanics of any kind because you've dropped the game down to the lowest common denominator. There for, the logical conclusion is to leave as is and let's see what this massive overhaul of traits/skills does before suggesting a complete change in the system.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:So what does Anet really need to do here? My view is that it's time for a system refresh - can the notion of "elite specs" and go with a much broader mechanism to continue expanding classes. There are really all kinds of ways they could do this to expanding weapon types, expanding weapon skills within weapon types, having loadout packages that resemble elite specs but are more balanced with core abilities so they can be mixed-and-matched, and allowing players to level multiple classes on the same toon.

Hey Lanzer.

I suppose i'm one of the few here that strongly agrees with your stance on the issue. A while ago i created a thread on the WvW forums that turned into a huge discussion/debate about Build Diversity vs Balance. At the end, a conclusion i eventually reached is that build diversity is a completely different thing than balance, and that balance has numerous ways of being approached that don't involve either "buffing" and "nerfing" things. I'd like to provide you with a link to that thread. It's pretty crazy discussion to follow but i think you will enjoy the read because even though it gets heated, it's a very informative thread. We even touched upon all the issues you bring up about the Elite specializations being detrimental to build diversity and how it ended up effecting balance....

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/91924/the-importance-of-build-diversity-and-why-its-more-important-than-balance/p1

Anyway, the way i see it, is that the trait system does indeed need to be changed conceptually from the ground up. My view is that each Major trait choice that you can pick should DRASTICALLY alter the way you play the class...no 7% damage mod here or a "if you take signets... " kind of traits.

I'm talking about trait choices that have significant impact on how you play the class.

As an example, back in the day, it was possible to do what was called "Shroud Dancing" on necromancer, which was rapidly entering and exiting shroud to provide on shroud procing abilities. This is a massive change in play-style for the class, and it provided a number of viable builds that were interesting to play. This kind of play-style no longer exists due to many balance changes that phased it out of feasibility. I feel like every trait should be able to facilitate a drastic change in play-style to that capacity.

[kharmin.7683]

@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

I feel like every trait should be able to facilitate a drastic change in play-style to that capacity.

How would you propose balancing such a thing across all classes? If ever profession has a 'drastic" change in play-style, wouldn't that just lead to more power creep just to keep up?

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"kharmin.7683" said:How would you propose balancing such a thing across all classes? If ever profession has a 'drastic" change in play-style, wouldn't that just lead to more power creep just to keep up?

I suggest reading through the thread I linked, which delves pretty deep into what “balance” really is and how you can attain balance through means other than through buffs and nerfs.

Also your using the term “powercreep” incorrectly...which has a very specific definition that doesn’t apply here.

Here is an example I always like to use. Let’s imagine we took any class and gave it the following trait:

“Your healing utilities can now heal up to 5 allies around you.”

Such a basic sounding trait actually leads to a huge amount of possibilities, for any class you desire to put this trait on, no matter what the class is, and would change how the class plays. that’s just one trait. Imagine if all traits could have the ability to drastically alter your classes playstyle...then based on that, the thread I linked above implies that with more build diversity comes more build adaptability, which is in itself a form of balance.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:No. Demanding "hard proof" For something that is intuitively true is a diversionary tactic used to undermine an opponent's position in the absence of stronger counter-arguments. GW2 having a fraction of the number of active players it had at launch isn't something I need to prove - it's something that's both obvious and universally known. What I need is for people to actually provide counter-arguments instead of trying to derail the thread.

I have never seen any official count of active players from launch until today.

Fine, here:

https://inanage.com/2018/02/05/estimating-gw2s-population/

Quote from that article: "Look, the numbers and the quotes

can be massaged to basically say whatever you want

. What is considerably

more objective is what ArenaNet does

."

It begs the question; Does $44M means 44M players spending $1 each OR 44 players spending $1M each?

Bottom line; the "data" you've provided doesn't support your claim.

One fact is true, based solely in my observation; If the content is fun to play and very rewarding and it's not a complete waste of time (i.e. Dragonfall), players will stay and play that content. It really has nothing to do with the "fundamental problems" the main topic had specified. Despite the poor options in builds and the existence of Elite specs, players still play in Dragonfall, which means, those aren't "fundamental problems".

The context for that discussion was about trying to extrapolate the exact number of active players now based on current revenue, not trying to prove that there was a large falloff after launch, which there obviously and factually was. At any rate, just because some commenter said that doesn't mean it's true. Again, we can extrapolate reasonable conclusions from reasonable data points. Suggesting that a revenue dropoff that large is because of players continuing to play but spending that much less vs way fewer players playing and therefore not spending anything is an absurdist position.

You people really like grasping at straws.

You provided that source, not me. Now that I pointed that it doesn't support your claim, it suddenly became "doesn't mean it's true". You then just debunked your own argument by using a source that you claim to be not true.

It does support my claim, and I never suggested otherwise. But I don't really need any support for my claim anyway because this isn't a court case. It's not my problem if you can't see that something that is obviously true is true.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:I wasn't just including elite specs in my observation/analysis. I think it was an issue with the original class design that was noticeable by level 10.

It wasn't, unless you're talking now about something else than you were talking in your first post. You were specifically talking about the "ongoing class development", and how you didn't like how they did it with elite specs. You can't however say that it was a problem "noticeable by level 10" when there was no class development yet in the game at this point. The class design up until HoT

was

very "sandboxy". In fact, it still is - elite specs instead of just adding new weapons and traitlines limited that original feel a little, but didn't actually

change

it.

I was just making the point that elite specs helped crystalize it as a long-term issue when it could (and should IMO) have gone in the other direction.Like you said, up until that point it could have gone in a different direction. Until that happened, you had no way of knowing which direction would it go. Thus saying that you could have any inkling about it, or that this ultimately chosen path could make people quit in the first half a year of the game, would make all those people genuine prophets. And i don't think there's enough genuine prophets in this world (much less playing GW2) to make any visible impact on this game's population.

Incorrect, because players knew what the class system looked like at that time, and how it looked at the time was much like how it looks now with elite specs. You're trying way too hard to puncture microscopic holes in this part of my comment for... what reason, exactly?

[Astralporing.1957]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:I wasn't just including elite specs in my observation/analysis. I think it was an issue with the original class design that was noticeable by level 10.

It wasn't, unless you're talking now about something else than you were talking in your first post. You were specifically talking about the "ongoing class development", and how you didn't like how they did it with elite specs. You can't however say that it was a problem "noticeable by level 10" when there was no class development yet in the game at this point. The class design up until HoT

was

very "sandboxy". In fact, it still is - elite specs instead of just adding new weapons and traitlines limited that original feel a little, but didn't actually

change

it.

I was just making the point that elite specs helped crystalize it as a long-term issue when it could (and should IMO) have gone in the other direction.Like you said, up until that point it could have gone in a different direction. Until that happened, you had no way of knowing which direction would it go. Thus saying that you could have any inkling about it, or that this ultimately chosen path could make people quit in the first half a year of the game, would make all those people genuine prophets. And i don't think there's enough genuine prophets in this world (much less playing GW2) to make any visible impact on this game's population.

Incorrect, because players knew what the class system looked like at that time, and how it looked at the time was much like how it looks now with elite specs. You're trying way too hard to puncture microscopic holes in this part of my comment for... what reason, exactly?Because i disagree with you completely about how the class system looked before HoT. And with how it looks now. Even now, with the changes brought by HoT, it is still very much a sandbox design, and it definitely was a sandbox one before first expac came. If people actually left due to class design, it would have been because they didn't like exactly that

sandbox

feel, not the other way around.Thus, i feel that the whole premise of your argument is completely incorrect - and that's hardly a "microscopic" hole.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"kharmin.7683" said:I have never seen any official count of active players from launch until today.

They did post 1 million sales and 400k concurrent users during the 3-day head start, but no official figure since then. However, a declining player base isn't news, declining activity on reddit, declining activity on the forums, declining activity on gw2efficiency, declining revenue are some of the metrics you can use to verify it and all the above show a decline. You can spin this in any way you want like "there is a million casuals joining the game that don't post on reddit/forums, don't have a gw2efficiency account and don't buy anything to provide revenue, so the game population is healthy and going up!" but the data show that there is a decline, unless you have some hard evidence to support otherwise. For obvious reasons nobody at Arenanet will verify this, but they will try to prevent it, with action, and they do. Personal observation is another, guild activity, friend list activity and so on, but the more actual data is more important than personal observations.

In fact about 50% of the player base (checking the official leaderboards) has 200 achievement points and lower. Do you know what you need to do to reach 200 AP as a brand new player? The answer is very very little. You will get it in a week tops, if you play a few hours you can reach it in a single day, the game is very generous with AP at the beginning. At about 1217 AP is the break point to join the top 20% AP earners in the game, meaning the top 20% have just above 1200 AP and the rest 80% has under that number. Check your guild, friendlist and people in any squad you join, to find out just how many players you play with are under and above 1200, and you will find out a lot about the game's population. What was the percentage of players under 1200 that you found? 38 players in the 2 guilds I'm in are under 1200 out of a total of 379 players, or about 10%. 10% of the players are in the 80% of the global playerbase and 90% of my guilds is in the top 20% of the global playerbase.

@Einlanzer.1627 is right about the declining population, their reason for it is what is flawed. And even more so the idea that if Arenanet fundamentally changes their systems, it would bring a lot of players back. The Isnooze Saga so far has been a massive 180 compared to the past, in terms of difficulty, we'll see how successful such a drastic change will be in bringing in more players and slowing or stopping the player drain (imo it won't be, just like the OP's suggestion)

Edit: did another check and out of the 379 players in my 2 guilds, only 83 are under the 90% range (the breakpoint for 90% is ~2880 AP) so about 78% of my guild members is in the top 10% of the game's population.

[tatte.5389]

@maddoctor.2738 said:(checking the official leaderboards)

Link?

[maddoctor.2738]

@tatte.5389 said:

@"maddoctor.2738" said:(checking the

official

leaderboards)

Link?

There you go (EU Version):https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/euYou can filter by your guilds and friend lists. If they are large enough you can get some very good data

Edit: Once you click on Achievements, use the Filter By option to filter the list using your Guild(s), then in the column called Rank you can find just how high they are in AP compared to the global total. A player with Rank 90% is above 90% of the population, so in the top 10% of the game. Then you can find the break points, see where 80% changes to 90% and record the lowest 90% and the highest 80%, if you are lucky you will get an exact number, based on guild size, else you will get a small range of numbers. In my data lowest 90% is at 2886 AP, highest 80% is at 2878 AP, meaning the break point between 80% and 90% is ~2880 AP

You can do the same for all other break points between tiers and deduce the population (and activity) of the game.

Edit 2: The game has about 11 million accounts, it's probably higher but Arenanet never released increased numbers, so maybe not worth mentioning yet. Using that and the percentage break points from the achievement leaderboards you can find out a lot about where the playerbase stands. In my earlier post this means almost 5.5 million accounts (!!!) didn't actually play the game (those with 200 AP) or played for a couple of hours then quit.

[Burnfall.9573]

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:This isn't a complaint about something new - it's something that's been an issue from day one and, IMO, is likely a major reason why the game struggles to retain players despite its many positives.

This is it in a nutshell: Class design more closely mirrors an on-rails RPG experience while overall game design more closely mirrors a sandbox RPG experience.

I've long felt they over-compensated for "too much imbalance" in GW1 by over-engineering classes in GW2 when the game isn't really designed with that in mind - utilizing an end-game of horizontal growth and fashion wars. While everyone seems to love elite specs (probably just because they've been to date the only significant offering for class expansions), my opinion is this was conceptually the wrong way to tackle ongoing class development - it maintained and even reinforced the on-rails approach while the game was simultaneously moving in even more of a "do whatever you want!" direction. This is a bad dichotomy. A sandbox RPG experience that focuses on horizontal growth needs to unshackle these kinds of constraints and allow players to experiment in all kinds of ways. This is a big part of the reason why, in my view, Path of Exile ended up spiking in popularity after Diablo 3 was sort of a letdown.

So what does Anet really need to do here? My view is that it's time for a system refresh - can the notion of "elite specs" and go with a much broader mechanism to continue expanding classes. There are really all kinds of ways they could do this to expanding weapon types, expanding weapon skills within weapon types, having loadout packages that resemble elite specs but are more balanced with core abilities so they can be mixed-and-matched, and allowing players to level multiple classes on the same toon.

+1interesting read

[tatte.5389]

@"maddoctor.2738" said:https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/eu

Thanks, neat list. This is intriguing (and a little scary, discussing such numbers). I'm guessing the typical amount of AP at the time of reaching 80 is around 1K, which is somewhere in the middle of 70%, that suggests roughly three million players who have actually played to lvl 80. Rapid rise from there could suggest that most of them also keep playing. I'm content with that. Early levels clearly need an overhaul (cough, or just a hint to bind Action Camera, my favourite hidden feature).

I wouldn't care so much about the amount of trial accounts, they're after all free to create. I don't think anyone has ever believed that the game has 11 million active players, it's just typical marketing. STO once advertised the amount of characters created... everyone uses whatever floats their boat. Only meaningful metric is having enough players to play the content, and that's so murky I'm not dipping my crystal ball in it.

(I don't know what the actual topic here is, numbers and mention of the leaderboards just caught my eye. Sweet, sweet numbers.)

[maddoctor.2738]

@"tatte.5389" said:(I don't know what the actual topic here is, numbers and mention of the leaderboards just caught my eye. Sweet, sweet numbers.)

I love numbers too! They always bring some sense to arguments!

The topic is to bring more choice/variety in the game by removing the concept of elite specs and instead focus on adding new weapons, new weapon skills and class abilities and allowing players to mix and match. What the OP fails to understand is that the more choice you give to players, the less variety you get in return. Case in point: Guild Wars 1, a game with a gigantic number of possible builds with only a tiny fraction being viable, and an even smaller one being actually good. And second, before the specialization update, you could spec in more varied ways, like taking a few traits on all lines. This led to the famous 30/10/10/10/0 Elementalist build for example, capitalizing on the 3 +10% damage modifiers on the different element lines. Other specs had similar problems. More choice equals less variety.

If the developers wanted to do something about their class design they should do the exact opposite of what the OP proposed. Make every specialization line an "elite spec" with different profession ability, access to some different skills and so on. So instead of a Mesmer you'd have a Duelist and a Dominator, instead of Elementalist, a Fire Mage, instead of Ranger a Beast master or Marksman and so on. Limit bad player choices, add more focused choices.

The OP proposed making the game closer to Path of Exile system, I propose making it closer to Warframe, it will also fit the current game better.

[thepenmonster.3621]

So... the fix is turning GW2 into GW1?

[Diak Atoli.2085]

@tatte.5389 said:

@"maddoctor.2738" said:

https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/eu

Thanks, neat list. This is intriguing (and a little scary, discussing such numbers). I'm guessing the typical amount of AP at the time of reaching 80 is around 1K, which is somewhere in the middle of 70%, that suggests roughly three million players who have actually played to lvl 80. Rapid rise from there could suggest that most of them also keep playing. I'm content with that. Early levels clearly need an overhaul (cough, or just a hint to bind Action Camera, my favourite hidden feature).

I wouldn't care so much about the amount of trial accounts, they're after all free to create. I don't think anyone has ever believed that the game has 11 million active players, it's just typical marketing. STO once advertised the amount of characters created... everyone uses whatever floats their boat. Only meaningful metric is having enough players to play the content, and that's so murky I'm not dipping my crystal ball in it.

(I don't know what the actual topic here is, numbers and mention of the leaderboards just caught my eye. Sweet, sweet numbers.)

Here's a question: What's the minimum amount of AP an account can earn to unlock daily login rewards?

I ask because a lot of accounts may just be farming accounts for the rewards.

[tatte.5389]

@Diak Atoli.2085 said:

Here's a question: What's the minimum amount of AP an account can earn to unlock daily login rewards?

I ask because a lot of accounts may just be farming accounts for the rewards.

Pretty sure it's 0, just has to be a paid account. On the other hand the leaderboard doesn't seem to rank accounts with 0 AP. Your point is nonetheless really interesting (the slope to run at least the easiest daily achievements becomes ridiculously slippery, so majority of the farming accounts likely still end up on the board).

[Sir Vincent III.1286]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:No. Demanding "hard proof" For something that is intuitively true is a diversionary tactic used to undermine an opponent's position in the absence of stronger counter-arguments. GW2 having a fraction of the number of active players it had at launch isn't something I need to prove - it's something that's both obvious and universally known. What I need is for people to actually provide counter-arguments instead of trying to derail the thread.

I have never seen any official count of active players from launch until today.

Fine, here:

https://inanage.com/2018/02/05/estimating-gw2s-population/

Quote from that article: "Look, the numbers and the quotes

can be massaged to basically say whatever you want

. What is considerably

more objective is what ArenaNet does

."

It begs the question; Does $44M means 44M players spending $1 each OR 44 players spending $1M each?

Bottom line; the "data" you've provided doesn't support your claim.

One fact is true, based solely in my observation; If the content is fun to play and very rewarding and it's not a complete waste of time (i.e. Dragonfall), players will stay and play that content. It really has nothing to do with the "fundamental problems" the main topic had specified. Despite the poor options in builds and the existence of Elite specs, players still play in Dragonfall, which means, those aren't "fundamental problems".

The context for that discussion was about trying to extrapolate the exact number of active players now based on current revenue, not trying to prove that there was a large falloff after launch, which there obviously and factually was. At any rate, just because some commenter said that doesn't mean it's true. Again, we can extrapolate reasonable conclusions from reasonable data points. Suggesting that a revenue dropoff that large is because of players continuing to play but spending that much less vs way fewer players playing and therefore not spending anything is an absurdist position.

You people really like grasping at straws.

You provided that source, not me. Now that I pointed that it doesn't support your claim, it suddenly became "doesn't mean it's true". You then just debunked your own argument by using a source that you claim to be not true.

It does support my claim, and I never suggested otherwise. But I don't really need any support for my claim anyway because this isn't a court case. It's not my problem if you can't see that something that is obviously true is true.

What's not true is your reason for the falloff and the thinking that players will suddenly return if ArenaNet made the changes you proposed. I used to be part of a big guild and they all left the game prior to the HoT expansion, which means, they left for other reasons other than what you're saying.

The most common reason I've got when trying to bring them back is that, ArenaNet nerfed their character. The nerf bat just hit this game too soon, meaning not enough time to adapt, and way too often, meaning they swing the nerf bat as soon as you adapt to the change. It's not about balance, it's about nonsensical changes.

The next reason I've got is the way ArenaNet monetizes the Living Story episodes. If they miss it when it's live, they pay. That aspect of the game is a deal breaker to them. This has nothing to do with game balance.

Remember the Living Story Season 1's two-week fiasco? Many players I know left the game because of that and refused to return because there is no way to experience it anymore. Season 1 is very important since it is the season that introduced the players to the members of Dragon's Watch.

So your proposed changes will not bring back theses players because you based it on a bad interpretation of data. You can have the best balance in game and the best combat experience, but balance and combat are not the fundamental problem of GW2, it is the poor replayability and their predatory monetization practices, just to name a few.

[Hashberry.4510]

Predatory monetization holy kitten. This is game is the best deal I have ever seen. Why bother retaining players who won't bring any revenue. The mechanism is to entice you to log in on the chance you will look at the gem store, and maybe buy something. Its not even an issue if you don't spend a dime. Sheesh.