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NC Soft Q4 earnings report. GW2 25% decline over Q3


Margol.3267

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Speaking as someone who has been gaming for pretty much ever since there have been home computers, the single biggest thing afflicting Anet is that practically nothing players suggest actually makes it into the game. Look at the suggestion threads. They're huge. Many requests are practical things, like a way to convert item skins filling our bank into transmute charges so we can have our bank tabs back. That should have happened YEARS ago. Or RP things like emotes or items we can hold, which would feed a segment of the community and help it grow. All the dead ends in the world that should have been opened up, like the mystery portal in Brisban. Instead, what do we get? A promise of some new game mode looking into Ryland's memories that NOBODY asked for. Combine that lack of listening with the fact that all the GW founders are gone, and it's little wonder that the game's development has gone the way it has.

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@Gehenna.3625 said:The other thing with expansions is that when an expansion doesn't work out well, people will give it another shot often with the next expansion. That's what PoF did and it worked a lot better. In fact PoF was a success and turned the trend around and after the two sales quarters of having a new expansion out, the revenue after was higher than before the release until Q4 of 2018. That's when it sunk back to the pre-PoF levels and has now gone down to the lowest quarter revenue in GW2 history.

Remember that the game went free to play when HOT was released, so the company lost a lot of revenue there. The game WAS selling before going free to play. Also remember that during the time of POF, HOT was also selling. In fact after POF was released Arenanet was earning money from TWO expansions at a time, inflating the POF numbers. In Q4 2019 HOT went free with the purchase of POF and we see the results. I wonder how the POF numbers would look like if HOT was free from the start.

People blame the direction, the saga, the templates, the balance or anything else for the drop in Q4 2019, but from a business standpoint, making an expansion that sells $20 a pop go free, WILL have a noticeable effect on revenue.

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Can't speak for every lost dollar, but I can speak for mine.

  1. This episode was ruined for me by bugs, brevity and failed communication (T3 weapons). By the time answers were given and changes made my give a kitten was busted. I still have not finished the episode, which is seriously out of character for me. My main main toon does not fall behind 100% completion of every story and every map.
  2. the uncertainty of such a massive rebalance of wvw has had me spending conservatively, actually not at all since the day prior to episode release. Quite frankly I am concerned my spending could be wasted if the rebalance strikes out like this episode release. Couple that with the layoffs and I'm just afraid to spend like i once did.
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@Asum.4960 said:

@"Shadowmoon.7986" said:This is my hot take. Anets gamble to cater to the vocal minority of toxic casuals on this board by giving access to everything and lowering the difficulty curve has backfired.Add to that they angered pvp, wvw, and hardcore pve players with build templates and specifically their monitization. These communities were already salty after the saga announcement and getting scraps.I can tell you after August 30 many of my raid friends left for ff14, and then build templates came, and rest of them followed suit. I am sure anets partially to blame for ff14 increased revenue.

I have a differnet interpretation. The hard core crowd, long disenfranchised has gone into so many threads on some many forums talking about how the game is dying or in maintainence mode without any context that people started to believe it, even though it's not true for everyone. Every one I know who posts on reddit has walked away except me, because of a small group of really hard core dedicated people who delight in saying the game is dying whenever they can. This is far more likely that the so-called toxic casuals. In fact, HoT didn't actually increase the playerbase, because if it had, PoF would have been more like HoT. Anet has the numbers, we don't. The odds are they are trying to find a balance, but they're not looking to sink they're own ship. If Anet is making content more casual, it's because there are more casual players. It's just simple logic.

Pof was not like hot because hot got alot of feedback, no map had a real meta and you saw that post hot the quickly course corrected that with meta events in lw.

That's a vast simplification of the differences between HoT and PoF, starting with soloable hero points and ending with bountis instead of metas as the main content. Less timed and more immediate. Content on demand. Also the zones were less perplexing. Also it was easier to get and finish leveling masteries. There were a whole host of changes between the expansions, involving a lot more than just metas. The expansions felt completely different. Took people forever to "grind" out HoT masteries, but you didn't really hear that complaint about PoF.

My point is if HoT was a hot expansion (pun intended) why make it different? Why change it up? Why make all those changes if HOT did well for the company? Every company I know sees something succesful and does more of the successful thing. My guess is HOT wasn't successful or PoF would have been more like HOT.

Because that's a huge problem in management that Anet has in general. They spend ages developing a foundation for a decent new system/style of content, release it, get some feedback about it's flaws that really need to be fixed for it to be actually great, and then they ignore most feedback, abandon the system/style of content and go on to develop something inferior instead, and on and on.They are constantly changing things up that worked well for inferior products, while rarely going back to fix up past errors to truly make those efforts shine.It's like they are eternally stuck in "building the foundation" for something, without ever fully realising a vision.

PoF would in no way have survived a content draught the like of which followed HoT and probably was financially entirely saved due to the hype and monetization of mount skins and content wise getting saved by a continuation of LW Season 4 just 2 months later, while HoT with it's slightly more hardcore direction kept players engaged and spending for almost an entire year until the next Living World season started.

And that's with HoT being marketed as system building expansion which future content would benefit from, while PoF was the "content" expansion.

As for the current dive in earnings, while that is ofc unfortunate, it's evenly expected and deserved in a way.The push for more casual only content with LW over proper expansions as well as lack of longterm repeatable endgame content like Fractal (CM's) and Raids and features like ESpecs to refresh the gameplay experience, followed by nails in the coffin for hardcore players like the pushing out of Arc to be replaced by a massively overmonitized inferior system which would have hardcore players see spending literally over a thousand euros/dollars to get half their builds and functionality back, combined with the layoffs, followed up by even the last company founders jumping ship, was just the roughest of ride the game ever had.

Most if not all players I know, including myself, went from hardcore players with at least occasional or even high spending to either just playing casually or quitting altogether (mainly due to lack of Raid and Fractal content as well as the template fiasco), with no spending anymore at all. That's probably true for a lot more players as well.

^ this, i was gonna write a few paragraphs essentially saying the same but luckily i read other posts first.

Anet is always laying the groundwork so they can later lay the new groundwork so the next bit of groundwork can be then laid smoothly.

The better expansion would've been if anet didnt go for a 360 on hot and instead settled on a 90.

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@Asum.4960 said:

@"Shadowmoon.7986" said:This is my hot take. Anets gamble to cater to the vocal minority of toxic casuals on this board by giving access to everything and lowering the difficulty curve has backfired.Add to that they angered pvp, wvw, and hardcore pve players with build templates and specifically their monitization. These communities were already salty after the saga announcement and getting scraps.I can tell you after August 30 many of my raid friends left for ff14, and then build templates came, and rest of them followed suit. I am sure anets partially to blame for ff14 increased revenue.

I have a differnet interpretation. The hard core crowd, long disenfranchised has gone into so many threads on some many forums talking about how the game is dying or in maintainence mode without any context that people started to believe it, even though it's not true for everyone. Every one I know who posts on reddit has walked away except me, because of a small group of really hard core dedicated people who delight in saying the game is dying whenever they can. This is far more likely that the so-called toxic casuals. In fact, HoT didn't actually increase the playerbase, because if it had, PoF would have been more like HoT. Anet has the numbers, we don't. The odds are they are trying to find a balance, but they're not looking to sink they're own ship. If Anet is making content more casual, it's because there are more casual players. It's just simple logic.

Pof was not like hot because hot got alot of feedback, no map had a real meta and you saw that post hot the quickly course corrected that with meta events in lw.

That's a vast simplification of the differences between HoT and PoF, starting with soloable hero points and ending with bountis instead of metas as the main content. Less timed and more immediate. Content on demand. Also the zones were less perplexing. Also it was easier to get and finish leveling masteries. There were a whole host of changes between the expansions, involving a lot more than just metas. The expansions felt completely different. Took people forever to "grind" out HoT masteries, but you didn't really hear that complaint about PoF.

My point is if HoT was a hot expansion (pun intended) why make it different? Why change it up? Why make all those changes if HOT did well for the company? Every company I know sees something succesful and does more of the successful thing. My guess is HOT wasn't successful or PoF would have been more like HOT.

Because that's a huge problem in management that Anet has in general. They spend ages developing a foundation for a decent new system/style of content, release it, get some feedback about it's flaws that really need to be fixed for it to be actually great, and then they ignore most feedback, abandon the system/style of content and go on to develop something inferior instead, and on and on.They are constantly changing things up that worked well for inferior products, while rarely going back to fix up past errors to truly make those efforts shine.It's like they are eternally stuck in "building the foundation" for something, without ever fully realising a vision.

PoF would in no way have survived a content draught the like of which followed HoT and probably was financially entirely saved due to the hype and monetization of mount skins and content wise getting saved by a continuation of LW Season 4 just 2 months later, while HoT with it's slightly more hardcore direction kept players engaged and spending for almost an entire year until the next Living World season started.

And that's with HoT being marketed as system building expansion which future content would benefit from, while PoF was the "content" expansion.

As for the current dive in earnings, while that is ofc unfortunate, it's evenly expected and deserved in a way.The push for more casual only content with LW over proper expansions as well as lack of longterm repeatable endgame content like Fractal (CM's) and Raids and features like ESpecs to refresh the gameplay experience, followed by nails in the coffin for hardcore players like the pushing out of Arc to be replaced by a massively overmonitized inferior system which would have hardcore players see spending literally over a thousand euros/dollars to get half their builds and functionality back, combined with the layoffs, followed up by even the last company founders jumping ship, was just the roughest of ride the game ever had.

Most if not all players I know, including myself, went from hardcore players with at least occasional or even high spending to either just playing casually or quitting altogether (mainly due to lack of Raid and Fractal content as well as the template fiasco), with no spending anymore at all. That's probably true for a lot more players as well.

Imagine if some people whined about the HoT 60 dollar payprice , and tried to create kittenstorm on the forums, saying that the company had lied to them and didnt offer an extra coy of Vanilia GW2 (so they can have 2 accounts for the daily logins) :P

If you want more hardcore raids , you can gather 1000 raiders and start a kickstarterWith 8 dollars per month (not used not ingame) , the company can assign a old employer that knows the engine code and hire 2 fresh low payed colleges students .The majority of the casuals are not ''forced'' to pay in content they dont likw (Raids-Fractals)They have the data , casuals didnt like that stuff . Some1 else must pay for them .You dont want to spent moeny ingame , where you dont know where the money will be used ... then gather 1000 raiders and kickstart them on a reddit siteWho knows ...there might be a survey in the future , where each time you buy gems with money , you will be asked to wich percentage will be used in each erea of the game . And the parton (if they wished) can be shown in each time a Raid will be released on this site .And if you ''kick'' a parton ''accidentaly''(didnt do enought dps + die twice) .....offff ...lets wait if he funds the next raid :PIf the 8000 dollars per months goal is not reached , the people that spent the money will be offered another survey ,where they will choose a) Raid will be delayed for next month (if will be used to ''fill'' next month goal) , b) reloacate them to somewhere else

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didnt read half the shit, but coming from lineage 2, years ago.its quite easy to explain why lineage 2 and BnS (maybe lineage also) and mobile games are out performing gw2..

if u dont buy half the shit they put in store (for limited time) ur basically fucked for the next X weeks/months untill they put the new even stronger overpowered item in store. on top of that its not like ur gonna buy 1 like in gw2(even tho gw2 has no pay2win) no u need to buy atleast 2 and then put them together and wait for the RNG to kick in so they make stage 2 (for example) and then u need 2 new items to make another stage 2 (again with RNG) to make stage 3 (takes 2 stage 2 items) which has again RNG

so ye these games are just milking to living shit out of you and if u wanna stay on top PvP wise ur gonna have to follow it.

so comparing a game like guildwars 2 to the other ncsoft games isnt really showing anything cus like it or not GW2 is a holy grail among MMO's where p2w isnt a thing YET.

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And in another part of the industry, WoW Classic doubled the game's subscription revenue, the highest quarterly jump on record. It's very likely that some of those players were from GW2, and they spent some months in WoW. One quarter of results is not enough to attribute anything without specifics. What we know from the report is that the two other non-Lineage games also experienced a sudden drop in Q4. GW2's own problems cannot explain that, but an external competitor could affect these 3 NC games in the same way. At least, it seems to be a better fit for the data that we have. I'll reserve judgment until after Q1.

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@kharmin.7683 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:In fact PoF was a success and turned the trend around and after the two sales quarters of having a new expansion out, the revenue after was higher than before the release until Q4 of 2018.Might be more of a success due to the introduction of mounts than any other content released in PoF. A new expansion won't offer such a radical, game-changing feature and would not share the same level of success, IMO.The introduction of mounts was a big part of PoF and part of PoF. Acting like it was it's own separate little thing is just silly. It's exactly the type of thing that gave the game a new paradigm and it came with an expansion. Without that, the revenue stream is not likely to ever go up again. It might keep going down to a point however where it's not sustainable anymore. Is that what you want?

Also there were some more changes to how they approached things and the desert theme was definitely something different again. So that was a big visual addition. The mounts and the masteries associated with them also were easier to accomplish than in HoT so that more players could get on board. That also helped a lot and I'm sure that I'm not the only one that afterwards felt encouraged to give the HoT ones another try and I did.

And I find it strange that you would assume they can't do anything else with a new expansion. I would suggest not mirroring your lack of imagination on the developers. You sound like you're throwing in the towel and accepting defeat. There are things that can be done that would change the way the game feels to play. Now I will say that it doesn't have to be an expansion that delivers such things but expansions did bring such things. Regardless of the success financially it did also add to the longevity. Just imagine if this game didn't have mounts, gliding, masteries and not the maps that came with HoT and PoF that are indeed quite different in their own ways. Do you think that the game would have sustained itself with just these chapters? You really think people wouldn't have gotten bored a lot more and faster without those expansions?

I mean really, how do you think that the decline in revenue can be turned around or do you think it will magically take care of itself?

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:The other thing with expansions is that when an expansion doesn't work out well, people will give it another shot often with the next expansion. That's what PoF did and it worked a lot better. In fact PoF was a success and turned the trend around and after the two sales quarters of having a new expansion out, the revenue after was higher than before the release until Q4 of 2018. That's when it sunk back to the pre-PoF levels and has now gone down to the lowest quarter revenue in GW2 history.

Remember that the game went free to play when HOT was released, so the company lost a lot of revenue there. The game WAS selling before going free to play. Also remember that during the time of POF, HOT was also selling. In fact after POF was released Arenanet was earning money from TWO expansions at a time, inflating the POF numbers. In Q4 2019 HOT went free with the purchase of POF and we see the results. I wonder how the POF numbers would look like if HOT was free from the start.The base game became free to play but that was replaced by HoT sales in essence. The original production costs of the base game would've been paid off already in the first months of the game. The point of an expansion is to add enough content for players to come back and spend some more money. The older a game gets, the fewer new players you will get as it is. The key is not in the price of items but rather getting people to spend more or again.People blame the direction, the saga, the templates, the balance or anything else for the drop in Q4 2019, but from a business standpoint, making an expansion that sells $20 a pop go free, WILL have a noticeable effect on revenue.That depends on how well it sells. Haven't they done sales where you get HoT free with PoF? Again, the point is that at some point the cost of making it has been earned back already and then you need to give people reasons to spend more cash. That's mostly gem store sales. But for sales to work there, people need to be playing. That's what sales opportunities are. There are no sales opportunities when the player doesn't play anymore and doesn't see the gem store sales.

At some point HoT sales went down and then it settles at a low point somewhere for people who came back from way back when or are new to the game. But those numbers will be small by comparison. At some point they drop to a threshold where it becomes more profitable to give it free with another purchase, like getting it free with PoF. Let's say that in a give period they sold 500 copies of HoT and 1000 copies of PoF. That's 1500 total. Then they put them together for one price as a sale and they sell 2000 copies. That's 500 more without having any extra cost. So they didn't lose anything but they did gain. And of course these are fictional numbers but it could be that they would know that a permanent change in price nets them less so they do it with limited time sales because those also push people to buy something.

In short, there's a lot more to it than you suggest and making certain things free can actually gain them revenue rather than being a loss.

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Can we just stop the general us vs them attitudes. I think everyone agrees the raids only post hot releases hurt the game. It is pretty obvious the lack of difficult content this past 6 months has done similar damage. And like many posters have pointed out anet has the metrics, so you can infer what they say by their current actions.This release had noticable increase in difficulty, whispers is about as difficult as easy raid boss. They also improved the difficulty of drakkar. Then we have Andrews post, which is mostly about difficult content being developed in the future. Clearly they recognize that reckless ignoring this community had consequences.2020 hopefully will be a mending year for anet, they already are making commitments to fix spvp with the massive balance change NOT targeted at casuals. Casuals have always been the scape goat for not doing skills splits, because they get confused that their skills do different things in pvp than pve. Wvw is getting changes to the mount that was added into the mode against their wishes.Ultimately hopefully anet builds all communities, because putting everything in one basket has proven not to work.

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If anyone wants to be bothered, here's the average exchange rate between USD and the Korean Won for the corresponding quarters: Q4 2018 it was approximately 1,130 and for Q4 2019 it was approximately 1,180. Convert then do the comparison, it'll show a truer picture of revenue quarter to quarter.

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@Substance E.4852 said:

@Thenme.6491 said:it's just one quarter I would be concerned only if it keeps going in the same direction next quarter. I mean look at the lineage history their decline is way bigger and a quarter later they had huge revenue

Yes but Anet needs to actually do something to trigger that uptick

Shelving
all instanced content other than Strikes, delivering dull metas like Drakkar, and dragging their feet with WvW/PvP
expacs
doesn't bring people back nor give prospective new players a reason to invest their time in a game that only seems to be downsizing itself.FTFY

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@"Gehenna.3625" said:The base game became free to play but that was replaced by HoT sales in essence.

Did it? Keep in mind that after the game went free to play, someone didn't have to pay to try it. And if the game captivate a player then they wouldn't buy the expansion. In essence by going free to play the game lost the ability of "pay first, see if you like it after". The "core audience" should've bought the expansion, which is reflected by the very good release sales. But what about new players?

In short, there's a lot more to it than you suggest and making certain things free can actually gain them revenue rather than being a loss.

This is true, but it depends on what's going free to grab the player's attention, so they become a paid customer and then buy the paid part. I believe in both cases (core going free and hot going free) it didn't help.

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I have not really played since August 2019, just before the over hyped presentation. I log in time to time to unlock episodes and my only AP since August was 1 point from getting a mail about Lunar New Year and clicking the attached item which was a portal and awarded 1 AP for doing so. I never cared for the story and skipped as much of it as I could to play the parts I wanted to. But the problem I see is Anet keeps trying to reinvent things instead of improving on the "groundwork" they already developed.

Dungeons, left behind when I think a lot of players would play them more if they were tweaked a bit and added a chance at a really rare reward. Guilds and guild missions, again left behind. Bounties, again seems to be left behind. Most of the masteries players gained from HoT have little to no value in the game post HoT. Now the next big thing is strike missions that I'm willing to bet will be abandoned before the year is over. It seems like a lot of "groundwork" often gets abandoned after a while and I can't blame people for being skeptical.

Overall I think Anet needs to stop trying to reinvent the MMO wheel and focus on making fun, rewarding, replayable content based on what they have already developed. Instead it seems they keep reaching and trying to convince players that their next "innovation" is going to be the next best thing in MMOs. Improve on the systems in place and give a reason for players to replay it instead of constantly trying to invent new "groundwork" that seems more often than not abandoned at some point.

I don't think it is bad that Anet tries to work outside the typical MMO box with GW2. I just think at times they seem to be throwing darts and hoping things stick long enough for the next "hyped" feature that will come and go..

As for people that mention an optional sub... My question is what does that optional sub give? If it is only gems a month, well you can already buy that every month if you want to. So an optional sub would have to offer something more but what? It can't be for access to the stories/sagas or people will get really mad at this point since Anet has already set a standard for that. Unlimited material storage like ESO Plus has? Or what? What could an optional sub offer that isn't already available via the gem store to convince players to subscribe instead of just buying on demand? My point is if Anet offered an optional subscription they would have to in some way handicap those that do no subscribe to make it worth it for subscribers. At this point the way GW2 has been marketed and developed it would not go over well.

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@Zaklex.6308 said:If anyone wants to be bothered, here's the average exchange rate between USD and the Korean Won for the corresponding quarters: Q4 2018 it was approximately 1,130 and for Q4 2019 it was approximately 1,180. Convert then do the comparison, it'll show a truer picture of revenue quarter to quarter.

This is a difference of 0.96%

Not sure what you try to say here. The income for NC-Soft is always in Wong compared to Wong. USD has nothing to do with it.

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@Kurrilino.2706 said:

@Zaklex.6308 said:If anyone wants to be bothered, here's the average exchange rate between USD and the Korean Won for the corresponding quarters: Q4 2018 it was approximately 1,130 and for Q4 2019 it was approximately 1,180. Convert then do the comparison, it'll show a truer picture of revenue quarter to quarter.

This is a difference of 0.96%

Not sure what you try to say here. The income for NC-Soft is always in Wong compared to Wong. USD has nothing to do with it.

The revenue generate in the US gets converted into Wong for those charts (same as any other foreign currency). It might not be a huge difference when the exchange rate is stable, but it absolutely is of consequence for business working internationally, especially if a company does not hold permanent foreign currency reserves.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Zaklex.6308 said:If anyone wants to be bothered, here's the average exchange rate between USD and the Korean Won for the corresponding quarters: Q4 2018 it was approximately 1,130 and for Q4 2019 it was approximately 1,180. Convert then do the comparison, it'll show a truer picture of revenue quarter to quarter.

This is a difference of 0.96%

Not sure what you try to say here. The income for NC-Soft is always in Wong compared to Wong. USD has nothing to do with it.

The revenue generate in the US gets converted into Wong for those charts (same as any other foreign currency). It might not be a huge difference when the exchange rate is stable, but it absolutely is of consequence for business working internationally, especially if a company does not hold permanent foreign currency reserves.

I understand that very well. But all this has nothing to do with the quarter numbers dropped 25% or whatever the exact number is.

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@Kurrilino.2706 said:

@Zaklex.6308 said:If anyone wants to be bothered, here's the average exchange rate between USD and the Korean Won for the corresponding quarters: Q4 2018 it was approximately 1,130 and for Q4 2019 it was approximately 1,180. Convert then do the comparison, it'll show a truer picture of revenue quarter to quarter.

This is a difference of 0.96%

Not sure what you try to say here. The income for NC-Soft is always in Wong compared to Wong. USD has nothing to do with it.

The revenue generate in the US gets converted into Wong for those charts (same as any other foreign currency). It might not be a huge difference when the exchange rate is stable, but it absolutely is of consequence for business working internationally, especially if a company does not hold permanent foreign currency reserves.

I understand that very well. But all this has nothing to do with the quarter numbers dropped 25% or whatever the exact number is.

No, but that was not said. What was said was that there might be some deviation due to exchange rate differences, not that this would account for the entire 25% drop.

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Now that I think about it, I think I completely stopped spending any money on the game when the templates were implemented. Not even gold to gem since then.They are so ridiculously expensive and inconvenient that it somehow made me lose interest in the entire gem store.

What a shame. This is a great game and I want it to perform well.

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I would be interested in seeing the number of concurrent players, similar to how Steam measures for games on that platform.

I still enjoy GW2 a lot - and try to buy gems on a semi regular basis, but it is very easy to see (imo) why the game is suffering.

  • Lack of direction. This is the single biggest one - and probably feeds into the other points here. Marketing 101 teaches that, even if you cant be the top company overall, you define your niche and OWN it - a category that is all your own and that you can take a leadership role in. For GW2, that is large scale open world content (both PVE with living world and pvp with WVW) and story. While dungeons and sPvP were a thing at launch, it was obvious that the core of the game was about large scale populations (100+) coming together to enjoy a fantasy world. Across the years, they have watered that approach down to the point where nothing they do really stands out from the competition.

  • Lost connection with players. Around the time HOT came out, we saw a shift away from current players and toward prospective players. The expansion itself, raids, the inclusion of more focused trinity (tank, heal, dps) roles - these took center stage, while - at the same time - more community focused content (such as guild missions) were left to the wayside. It didn't matter that they didn't have the resources to keep the new audiences happy (the case with raids) - all that mattered was that they get them into the game. The result today is a population with needs/expectations all over the spectrum - and a company that will never be able to appeal to them all.

  • Lack of follow through. Historically, Anet has been an ideas company. The problem has always been they never seem to want to follow up on those innovations. Guild missions is the single biggest example of this - a great idea that they just let die on the side of the road as they reached for the next "innovation" - only to likely abandon it months later as well. World changing dynamic events, guild missions, mini-games (that one barely made it out the beta weekends), even the story about the asura and pet moa on the website - all of these things (which fit well with their original model) died somewhere after inception.

The earning numbers are discouraging - and I wouldn't be surprised in the least to see another - smaller - round of layoffs as a result.

That said, I think they can still right the ship and put it back on the right course, but it's going to require some pretty painful amputations.

They need to focus on their core differentiators - open world, story and WvW. Anything that doesn't feed into those game modes needs to be put on hold indefinitely - including sPvP, raids, strike missions, etc. Focus all of those resources in the same area and make it as good as it can possibly be. Stop trying to compete for raiders from WoW or pvpers from LoL and make the parts of the game that offer something unique better and more fun.

Keep in mind that I am not talking about those areas as they are now - but more in line with the vision they had when they launched. That means better integration of difficulty content into those areas.

  • Use guild event triggers/missions to inject eye-bleeding (optional) difficulty into open world. Imagine a Shadow Behemoth with actual difficult mechanics led by guilds offering at least a baseline of coordination (encouraged by guild mission rewards).
  • Replace raids and strike missions with hard (very hard single, 5 man and 10 man) mode versions of the story chapters from living world (and make these more difficult versions repeatable).
  • Add new obstacles and even maps (there is no reason we have to be limited to 3 BLs+EBG) to WvW based on actual strategic examples from history. Maybe a map dedicated to naval combat - or a map where all mounts and gliding everywhere is enabled (with map features designed around them) - or, maybe, airship combat. Map scenarios that involve escorting strategic resources, etc. With more dedicated resources, the sky would be the limit (possibly literally) - and more map variety would make the game mode much more fun for everyone.

The game isn't dead, but it is definitely struggling. It is time to get back to the basics - focus on what makes the game unique in the market.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Gehenna.3625" said:The base game became free to play but that was replaced by HoT sales in essence.

Did it? Keep in mind that after the game went free to play, someone didn't have to pay to try it. And if the game captivate a player then they wouldn't buy the expansion. In essence by going free to play the game lost the ability of "pay first, see if you like it after". The "core audience" should've bought the expansion, which is reflected by the very good release sales. But what about new players?The core game became free with HoT if you remember. Here's what Mike O'Brien said about that
I think you'll find that it supports my idea. And yes it was of course to pull new players in as well, but then with the hopes of them buying HoT. There is a point when a game is a few years old where having to buy the game at full price becomes a barrier. ArenaNet saw this too. Also they wanted to sell their new expansion but then new people would have to buy both. A lot of people wouldn't go for that. So yes, the idea was that expansion sales were replacing normal box sales. And this would only be done if that was more beneficial than keeping the core game at a cost for players.

In short, there's a lot more to it than you suggest and making certain things free can actually gain them revenue rather than being a loss.

This is true, but it depends on what's going free to grab the player's attention, so they become a paid customer and then buy the paid part. I believe in both cases (core going free and hot going free) it didn't help.Sure, but the core game is a pre-requisite for the expansions. So it made sense they did that, also because the core game was old and already was paid for. The expansions are new investments that have to be earned back.

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