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


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@Blaeys.3102 said:

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.I agree with pretty much everything you said. Instead of being average in a much of different areas, they should aim to be very good in a few.This may create some short term pain (as the audience alienate moves away). But ideally, you make that up with new players who really want an excellent PvE or WvW experience. The problem right now, as what does GW2 offer that some other game doesn't do better? Maybe if someone is interested in all the different game modes, GW2 offers that where as other games don't, but I doubt there are many players who actually do all the game modes. And if one was really good, they'd probably still come back for that.Personally, PvE is what I play - I only go into WvW or PvP for a daily now and again (and one could argue that for WvW that is a bad thing, as I may be using a space on a busy map waiting for a veteran creature to show up).The other issue is that they need to offer something in the gemstore to those who are not into cosmetics. Others on this thread have mentioned they fall into that category, as do I. I've pretty much bought all the convenience items (extra bank space, unlimited gathering tools, a few extra character slots, unlimited salvaging, shared slots). At this point, there is nothing in the gemstore of any interest to me. Periodically (usually when on sale), I'll buy some BL keys and use a few each time a new chest shows up - mostly because I enjoy the game and I want to give Anet some money. But I'd probably spend more if there was something useful to spend it on.
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@Solvar.7953 said:

@"Blaeys.3102" said:

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.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. Instead of being average in a much of different areas, they should aim to be very good in a few.This may create some short term pain (as the audience alienate moves away). But ideally, you make that up with new players who really want an excellent PvE or WvW experience.

That will create a lot of friction from unhappy customers/players. For example: I too would be very unhappy if I would be (more) alienated by the game.

Amazon did this revently (with a game that will be released in a few months) and it created a lot of angry PvP-players of the public-beta, after the studio announced, that they change the openworld-PvP to be an "opt-in" feature and want to focus more on PvE. Its possible with a game that is not yet released, but doing this after release would create a much bigger shit-storm.

The easy way out (for the studio) would be, to make a new game that focusses only on a few things and let the old game mostly stay as it is (doing only so much that most players do not feel that the game is already in maintenance mode), so players stay until the new game is ready. And I believe this is what Anet probably already has tried (or is still trying, I don't know).

A dev that worked on GW1 and GW2, but left Anet last year to found a new game studio, wrote somewhere, that he learned the lesson, that it was not a good design choice to change the skill system from gw1 into that of gw2 and that it also was not a good idea, to make so many game modes in the game, because the company can not support all of them in the same way.

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@Zok.4956 said:

@"Blaeys.3102" said:

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.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. Instead of being average in a much of different areas, they should aim to be very good in a few.This may create some short term pain (as the audience alienate moves away). But ideally, you make that up with new players who really want an excellent PvE or WvW experience.

That will create a lot of friction from unhappy customers/players. For example: I too would be very unhappy if I would be (more) alienated by the game.

Amazon did this revently (with a game that will be released in a few months) and it created a lot of angry PvP-players of the public-beta, after the studio announced, that they change the openworld-PvP to be an "opt-in" feature and want to focus more on PvE. Its possible with a game that is not yet released, but doing this after release would create a much bigger kitten-storm.

The easy way out (for the studio) would be, to make a new game that focusses only on a few things and let the old game mostly stay as it is (doing only so much that most players do not feel that the game is already in maintenance mode), so players stay until the new game is ready. And I believe this is what Anet probably already has tried (or is still trying, I don't know).

A dev that worked on GW1 and GW2, but left Anet last year to found a new game studio, wrote somewhere, that he learned the lesson, that it was not a good design choice to change the skill system from gw1 into that of gw2 and that it also was not a good idea, to make so many game modes in the game, because the company can not support all of them in the same way.

I agree it would cause some friction and loss of a few players, but it still needs to happen for the long term health of the game. They tried to be all things to all players and didn't have the resources to sustain that kind of growth. When that happens, a company can either struggle forward refusing to learn from the mistake (and eventually fail), or they can regroup and focus their resources on those things that set them apart from the competition.

Anet/Guild Wars 2 created something unique in the industry. They created the best (imo) open world experiences (both PVE and WVW) in the industry - with a fun story system to support it. It wasn't until they started trying to bring in other kinds of players that things went south (they watered the game down).

A refocus on open world/wvw is what will keep people playing - and even bring in new players if they do it right and promote intelligently (another area they haven't been great at). Yes, they would lose a few players short term, but I believe it would be good for the long term health of the game. Get back to the basics and become the best in the world at those basics.

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@Blaeys.3102 said:When that happens, a company can either struggle forward refusing to learn from the mistake (and eventually fail), or they can regroup and focus their resources on those things that set them apart from the competition.

Anet/Guild Wars 2 created something unique in the industry. They created the best (imo) open world experiences (both PVE and WVW) in the industry - with a fun story system to support it. It wasn't until they started trying to bring in other kinds of players that things went south (they watered the game down).

Anet was always hits and misses. But I have not much hope anymore, that Anet as a company is able to learn from their mistakes and from their inconsistencies in the game. Instead of learning from mistakes and improving things they made wrong, they just abandon things and try to reinvent the wheel again and again. Its like they create the groundwork for something, use this one or two times and then abandon it and create the next groundwork for something completely different as a kind of overcompensation. It feels like they have no vision for the game anymore for quite some time now.

Around a year ago (after the layoffs) they announced that their focus and all their ressources are now put into GW2. And last year october, they announced the Saga in a big event. What they delivered with the Saga until now does not feel like they have learned from their mistakes and it definitley does not feel like they have put all their ressources into the Saga, yet. It will be interesting, what exactely they announce at PAX.

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@"Gehenna.3625" said:And yes it was of course to pull new players in as well, but then with the hopes of them buying HoT.

Of course. What I'm saying is that it didn't work and the conversion rate for Guild Wars 2 was too low. I don't have it now but I remember even NCSoft mentioning that same fact, conversion rate for GW2 being lower than expected. But that's in the past, I mentioned the game going free to put the price of the game into the equation of why the revenue was lower during HOT, not the only reason of course, but I think it did play an important part in it.

I think the start of the game needs a big revamp to make it a better "expansion seller" and create more conversions. Why Anet never focused on that is anyone's guess, instead of squeezing their current players, get new ones. But that's probably a discussion for another thread.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Gehenna.3625" said:And yes it was of course to pull new players in as well, but then with the hopes of them buying HoT.

Of course. What I'm saying is that it didn't work and the conversion rate for Guild Wars 2 was too low. I don't have it now but I remember even NCSoft mentioning that same fact, conversion rate for GW2 being lower than expected. But that's in the past, I mentioned the game going free to put the price of the game into the equation of why the revenue was lower during HOT, not the only reason of course, but I think it did play an important part in it.I don't know and we can't tell from the numbers so I'll remain unconvinced but still open to evidence of course. The revenue continued to go down after HoT but the problem was the raise in difficulty which was an odd choice, like some others, for a game that is so casual oriented.I think the start of the game needs a big revamp to make it a better "expansion seller" and create more conversions. Why Anet never focused on that is anyone's guess, instead of squeezing their current players, get new ones. But that's probably a discussion for another thread.Well I get what you're saying but the core game has been abandonded as such because it's free and investing into it makes little sense. I think the game needs an overhaul in general, mostly the whole skill/trait/gear system. It's too much of a mess, particularly for casual players, and it's too complex for what this game is in the end. It's like making it harder than necessary cause you can. But my feeling is that the character building with weapon choices, specs, traits, etc. is something that a lot of people really don't get into because it forces them to use weapons they don't like (so they don't follow that) and because the trait and skill system is actually too complex. So people get lost and stop caring. That needs an overhaul.

And see when they released PoF it did work because the open world was more casual oriented and, well, everybody likes mounts, casual or not. Revenue went up to pre-HoT levels for 3 whole quarters after the PoF release spike and then it started going down again because LS chapters added too little and too much time was between them. We all know now that this was because they put most of their resources on other projects. Then NcSoft cut that short and cut their staff by over a third. But for me it's clear that they lost momentum by not announcing and starting on a new expansion.

Personally I feel that it's obvious that this game caters mostly to casual players and yet they make a lot of decisions that go against that. Adding raids I could understand initially cause people asked and they tried but they admitted themselves it attracts very few players. That's why PoF was more of a success and they could've built on that.

They didn't.

I guess what I'm saying is that PoF brought them momentum and they took it for granted. Now their revenue suffers for it. In the end it's hard to say what exactly will or won't work, but if revenue stays down, we know that what they are currently doing doesn't work...unless it's good enough for them and they accept the revenue cut and just keep the cost low at the same time. I kinda hope that's not the cause though.

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I sometimes get the feeling that Anet keeps pushing certain things (strike missions as introductions to raids, so hopefully more people will raid) because they don't really want to admit that the resources spent on raids never paid off. They don't seem to have a problem dropping some ideas, but others they really keep sticking with.Ideally, Anet should have numbers on how many players play want, and for how long. Even better, they should know how much those different segments spend on gems. I could imagine that there are certain segments which may have a decent population, but the gemstore (mostly cosmetics) does not appeal to them. It would not make financial sense to focus on those players.Based on past history, I would not expect them to remove any content. But it is probably reasonable for them to say 'no further development will happen in this area' - at least players know not to keep waiting for something, and they can keep playing it if they want. But that should let Anet focus on areas that will attract new players or existing players spending money.

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@"Solvar.7953" said:I sometimes get the feeling that Anet keeps pushing certain things (strike missions as introductions to raids, so hopefully more people will raid) because they don't really want to admit that the resources spent on raids never paid off. They don't seem to have a problem dropping some ideas, but others they really keep sticking with.

I Agree. It feels, like there are lots of different ideas and personal preferences (from different devs/teams), that sometimes are counterproductive and there is no general vision for the game and there is no leadership, that takes care that all devs are rowing in the same direction.

There was a guild chat, in which a dev presented the template-system and explained, how difficult it was, because there were so many internal constraints, variations and difficulties implementing it without losing gear during switching.

During the stream I was thinking "Why is no one talking about their thoughts why they implemented the UI like it is, so that users have the best UI-experience with this?"

Just to be clear: It was not the fault of that dev. Most software developers are not UX and usability experts, thats why both professions should work together in a team. But it seems a "department or team leader" or something like that, I do not not know the internal structure of Anet, has forgotten to also assign an UX and usability expert to the template-system-task. Or maybe there is no UX and usability expert left at Anet. Which would also be bad.

This is just one example.

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@"Bass de .1895" said:Anet needs and better PR department. Players would prbably be more willing to open up their wallet if they felt confident that the game wasn't being put into maintenance mode. With all the drama that happened in 2019 and their historical ability over hype and under deliver many players are on the fence with a "I'll believe it when I see it and then maybe I will spend money" attitude.

i also spend money on guildwars 2 before. for upgrades etc. but no more because, they are greedy. before you crafted an item and sold it for gold. but prices of those items decreased while gems from gold prices increased. so i am forced to spend real money. only the veterans and rich ppl can buy everything with gold. a game isn’t fun for me if i alwayshave to spend cash. skins are too expensive (because the gems from gold price) nice skins are put behind rng this is the greed i mentioned. they don’t accept 10 euro for a skin. they want gamble addicted ppl to spend hundreds cash for a skin. i sometimes read on forum someone spend 50+ euro on keys and only junk loot. also someone got 100 keys for christmas. only got 7 times bonus slot. = 93 keys wasted. price a key is 1,25 euro. this way you know you are only good for your cash. i am not greedy irl (nowhere) and so i hate when ppl are greedy. ingame everything is so hard to obtain gold etc and forced to spend cash. the times when i spender money on guildwars 2 where times that i got precursor every 4 months. i was lucky and lucky ppl are happy and good mood so spend cash because like the game. but now when i play i feel they want my cash because everything i do ingame i het junk loot. killing bosses for a infusion is wasting time. will never drop. i don’t play that often anymore because of the bad rng. i am a loot goblin and if my rng is bad i quit. i quit wow in 2015 because i didn’t get a mount drop for 6 months. but i paid for game time. no mount is no money.guildwars 2 no easy gold or nice items is no money. for bl chests i NEVER get a bonus slot. greed.i spend some money on call of duty modern warfare points. there i am sure what i get. nothing with gamble.

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@Solvar.7953 said:I sometimes get the feeling that Anet keeps pushing certain things (strike missions as introductions to raids, so hopefully more people will raid) because they don't really want to admit that the resources spent on raids never paid off. They don't seem to have a problem dropping some ideas, but others they really keep sticking with.Actually there's a sticky on this forum where Andrew Gray specifically states that raiding only attracts a small group of people. So they admitted it right there.

What I think though is that they're trying to fix it in a way that won't work. My feeling is that most people who play this game are casual oriented and the game does a few things wrong at the core for that sort of audience. As I mentioned in other threads I think the first things they need to resolve is to make the character build system a lot more transparent, straightforward and understandable and they have to do something about weapons being such an important part of your performance even though for many players it's also a visual aspect so they effectively put fashion wars at odds with performance of your character. Without doing something about things like that first, you simply won't get a lot more people to do structured group content in general unless it's easy.

The question is if they are willing/able to make fundamental chances to this because it's a big thing to do and it will affect combat in general and therefore also the combat encounters. If only they were doing another expansion where this could be done... ah well, a guy can dream right?

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@"Blaeys.3102" said: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.

They have been hard focussing on open world for a long time. Have you ever considered that open world and story content are free and bad ?

We get lane events cause maps cannot handle alot of players together, complicated maps are already a huge struggle on mid budget devices.

Gw2 is done for. Check the ffxiv update notes, now realise they get it multiple times a year. Mmo players are waiting for new world and currently playing FF14. Gw2 marketed itself against wow without ever realizing their own strengths. Here we are in 2020 where they still have not figured it out but in the mean time they killed fractals, dungeons, raid communities, server identities with the merges, wvw, boss and meta event communities, guild missions and pvp.

Guess what those people are disappointed and wont come back. Wanna attract new customers ? Gl with that since any content creator and community will tell you gw2 is a casual fiesta without any progression or competition.

Even worse no modern gamer will accept the horrible and predatory gemstore.

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Reworking Raids into Strike Missions, so that it's a whole HoT and PoF sub-plot story would be one of the best things they could do for Raids. Seriously.

Raids are very poorly implemented. Instead of creating a bridge between Open World and Raids - remake Raids into Strike Missions.Of course, it's too late for this now, and I don't believe that it could ever happen. But I think it's a pretty good idea someone posted here.

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@DutchRiders.2871 said:

@"Blaeys.3102" said: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.

They have been hard focussing on open world for a long time. Have you ever considered that open world and story content are free and bad ?

We get lane events cause maps cannot handle alot of players together, complicated maps are already a huge struggle on mid budget devices.

Gw2 is done for. Check the ffxiv update notes, now realise they get it multiple times a year. Mmo players are waiting for new world and currently playing FF14. Gw2 marketed itself against wow without ever realizing their own strengths. Here we are in 2020 where they still have not figured it out but in the mean time they killed fractals, dungeons, raid communities, server identities with the merges, wvw, boss and meta event communities, guild missions and pvp.

Guess what those people are disappointed and wont come back. Wanna attract new customers ? Gl with that since any content creator and community will tell you gw2 is a casual fiesta without any progression or competition.

Even worse no modern gamer will accept the horrible and predatory gemstore.

The game definitely isn't dead yet. I saw 20+ people last night for guild missions, even though we have done them every week since they came out - and I consistently see 20-40 people for our wvw nights. Even our guild open world PVE night brings in a decent sized crowd. Im not saying the content has us enthralled - even though we usually manage to find something we enjoy doing together. The community/other guildees keep up logging on - but that does keep us playing, and I see no sign of that slowing down.

We just need to see Anet start supporting those communities again. Forget instanced raids/spvp/etc and focus on the things that bring a community together in large groups and guild-focused activity. That set GW2 apart at launch. They made a huge mistake when they started watering that down - they basically lost their competitive identity.

The important things to realize is that there still isn't another MMO that gets the open world model right - so GW2 still has the chance to regain that title. They just need to refocus and enhance those areas - which, given their current resource situation, means they will have to make some pretty drastic cuts in other areas of the game (those areas where their competition DOES outshine them).

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@arkinia.6952 said:Offer a subscription as an option.

We already have that. It's called Gem's.You can buy monthly if you desire so.

If we try to be honest, it's sure to say there are not many people left who are willing to spend money on GW2.Having subscription won't change that.

Player all around the world asked for content. A-Net delivered excuses of contend and also live the illusion that archivement is content.The players don't see it that way. They want quality like new maps with new content and skills. What they get is always the same map, painted a different color.Meta event in the middle and repeatable hearts.

If someone asks me, we need a map and skill bundle per season and everything released at the start not by 20 minutes bits.Those mapbundles would include a starter map to get used to the climate or theme of the bundle or just have fun.People don't like to have all maps full out warzones like they voiced to A-Net after PoF.

As long as A-Net ignores what people want we better get used to quarters like that.

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@Stormscar.5489 said:What a lot of people seem to miss is that it wasn't just a bad quarter, it was a BAD YEAR. There was also a 25% decrease in revenue in 2019 compared to both 2017 and 2018.

2019 was normal and earned slightly more than the year leading up to PoF. It just looks bad because it was the first year since 2015 that wasn't influenced by an expansion. 2020 is what's going to be bad at the current rate.

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@Blaeys.3102 said:

@Blaeys.3102 said: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.

They have been hard focussing on open world for a long time. Have you ever considered that open world and story content are free and bad ?

We get lane events cause maps cannot handle alot of players together, complicated maps are already a huge struggle on mid budget devices.

Gw2 is done for. Check the ffxiv update notes, now realise they get it multiple times a year. Mmo players are waiting for new world and currently playing FF14. Gw2 marketed itself against wow without ever realizing their own strengths. Here we are in 2020 where they still have not figured it out but in the mean time they killed fractals, dungeons, raid communities, server identities with the merges, wvw, boss and meta event communities, guild missions and pvp.

Guess what those people are disappointed and wont come back. Wanna attract new customers ? Gl with that since any content creator and community will tell you gw2 is a casual fiesta without any progression or competition.

Even worse no modern gamer will accept the horrible and predatory gemstore.

The game definitely isn't dead yet. I saw 20+ people last night for guild missions, even though we have done them every week since they came out - and I consistently see 20-40 people for our wvw nights. Even our guild open world PVE night brings in a decent sized crowd. Im not saying the content has us enthralled - even though we usually manage to find something we enjoy doing together. The community/other guildees keep up logging on - but that does keep us playing, and I see no sign of that slowing down.

We just need to see Anet start supporting those communities again. Forget instanced raids/spvp/etc and focus on the things that bring a community together in large groups and guild-focused activity. That set GW2 apart at launch. They made a huge mistake when they started watering that down - they basically lost their competitive identity.

The important things to realize is that there still isn't another MMO that gets the open world model right - so GW2 still has the chance to regain that title. They just need to refocus and enhance those areas - which, given their current resource situation, means they will have to make some pretty drastic cuts in other areas of the game (those areas where their competition DOES outshine them).

They have been focussing on open world all the time, if you think they focussed on raids/pvp/etc you are dead wrong. The game is struggling with players as it is and here you are advocating killing off every community that is not yours. Cause an open world / story update every 2 months aint enuff to satisfy your needs.

How about we turn those tables around for a year? See what happens.

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@DutchRiders.2871 said:

@Blaeys.3102 said: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.

They have been hard focussing on open world for a long time. Have you ever considered that open world and story content are free and bad ?

We get lane events cause maps cannot handle alot of players together, complicated maps are already a huge struggle on mid budget devices.

Gw2 is done for. Check the ffxiv update notes, now realise they get it multiple times a year. Mmo players are waiting for new world and currently playing FF14. Gw2 marketed itself against wow without ever realizing their own strengths. Here we are in 2020 where they still have not figured it out but in the mean time they killed fractals, dungeons, raid communities, server identities with the merges, wvw, boss and meta event communities, guild missions and pvp.

Guess what those people are disappointed and wont come back. Wanna attract new customers ? Gl with that since any content creator and community will tell you gw2 is a casual fiesta without any progression or competition.

Even worse no modern gamer will accept the horrible and predatory gemstore.

The game definitely isn't dead yet. I saw 20+ people last night for guild missions, even though we have done them every week since they came out - and I consistently see 20-40 people for our wvw nights. Even our guild open world PVE night brings in a decent sized crowd. Im not saying the content has us enthralled - even though we usually manage to find something we enjoy doing together. The community/other guildees keep up logging on - but that does keep us playing, and I see no sign of that slowing down.

We just need to see Anet start supporting those communities again. Forget instanced raids/spvp/etc and focus on the things that bring a community together in large groups and guild-focused activity. That set GW2 apart at launch. They made a huge mistake when they started watering that down - they basically lost their competitive identity.

The important things to realize is that there still isn't another MMO that gets the open world model right - so GW2 still has the chance to regain that title. They just need to refocus and enhance those areas - which, given their current resource situation, means they will have to make some pretty drastic cuts in other areas of the game (those areas where their competition DOES outshine them).

They have been focussing on open world all the time, if you think they focussed on raids/pvp/etc you are dead wrong. The game is struggling with players as it is and here you are advocating killing off every community that is not yours. Cause an open world / story update every 2 months aint enuff to satisfy your needs.

How about we turn those tables around for a year? See what happens.

If they only made content for Openworld/PVP/WVW, instead of Open World/WVW/Raids/Strikes/Fractals/PVP they could focus more people on those three areas of gameplay instead of being spread out so much. If they focused on Raids and other hardcore modes fully im not sure the game would survive. Would ANET lose players by only focusing on the three things they had at launch? Yes, but maybe thats not a bad thing, perhaps it is, but i dunno im not anet.

He is right though, anet shifted from keeping the playerbase they had to trying to get -ALL- the kinds of playerbases and it spread them out far far to much.

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@Blaeys.3102 said:

@Zok.4956 said:

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.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. Instead of being average in a much of different areas, they should aim to be very good in a few.This may create some short term pain (as the audience alienate moves away). But ideally, you make that up with new players who really want an excellent PvE or WvW experience.

That will create a lot of friction from unhappy customers/players. For example: I too would be very unhappy if I would be (more) alienated by the game.

Amazon did this revently (with a game that will be released in a few months) and it created a lot of angry PvP-players of the public-beta, after the studio announced, that they change the openworld-PvP to be an "opt-in" feature and want to focus more on PvE. Its possible with a game that is not yet released, but doing this after release would create a much bigger kitten-storm.

The easy way out (for the studio) would be, to make a new game that focusses only on a few things and let the old game mostly stay as it is (doing only so much that most players do not feel that the game is already in maintenance mode), so players stay until the new game is ready. And I believe this is what Anet probably already has tried (or is still trying, I don't know).

A dev that worked on GW1 and GW2, but left Anet last year to found a new game studio, wrote somewhere, that he learned the lesson, that it was not a good design choice to change the skill system from gw1 into that of gw2 and that it also was not a good idea, to make so many game modes in the game, because the company can not support all of them in the same way.

I agree it would cause some friction and loss of a few players, but it still needs to happen for the long term health of the game. They tried to be all things to all players and didn't have the resources to sustain that kind of growth. When that happens, a company can either struggle forward refusing to learn from the mistake (and eventually fail), or they can regroup and focus their resources on those things that set them apart from the competition.

Anet/Guild Wars 2 created something unique in the industry. They created the best (imo) open world experiences (both PVE and WVW) in the industry - with a fun story system to support it. It wasn't until they started trying to bring in other kinds of players that things went south (they watered the game down).

A refocus on open world/wvw is what will keep people playing - and even bring in new players if they do it right and promote intelligently (another area they haven't been great at). Yes, they would lose a few players short term, but I believe it would be good for the long term health of the game. Get back to the basics and become the best in the world at those basics.

Havent anet been focusing exclusively on ow for the last couple episodes? The isntanced pve content that not connected to ow and lw in some way has been nonexistent and pvp and wvw are fairly weak in terms of attention (which is only just now seeing some much deserved love imo).

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@Dante.1763 said:

@Blaeys.3102 said: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.

They have been hard focussing on open world for a long time. Have you ever considered that open world and story content are free and bad ?

We get lane events cause maps cannot handle alot of players together, complicated maps are already a huge struggle on mid budget devices.

Gw2 is done for. Check the ffxiv update notes, now realise they get it multiple times a year. Mmo players are waiting for new world and currently playing FF14. Gw2 marketed itself against wow without ever realizing their own strengths. Here we are in 2020 where they still have not figured it out but in the mean time they killed fractals, dungeons, raid communities, server identities with the merges, wvw, boss and meta event communities, guild missions and pvp.

Guess what those people are disappointed and wont come back. Wanna attract new customers ? Gl with that since any content creator and community will tell you gw2 is a casual fiesta without any progression or competition.

Even worse no modern gamer will accept the horrible and predatory gemstore.

The game definitely isn't dead yet. I saw 20+ people last night for guild missions, even though we have done them every week since they came out - and I consistently see 20-40 people for our wvw nights. Even our guild open world PVE night brings in a decent sized crowd. Im not saying the content has us enthralled - even though we usually manage to find something we enjoy doing together. The community/other guildees keep up logging on - but that does keep us playing, and I see no sign of that slowing down.

We just need to see Anet start supporting those communities again. Forget instanced raids/spvp/etc and focus on the things that bring a community together in large groups and guild-focused activity. That set GW2 apart at launch. They made a huge mistake when they started watering that down - they basically lost their competitive identity.

The important things to realize is that there still isn't another MMO that gets the open world model right - so GW2 still has the chance to regain that title. They just need to refocus and enhance those areas - which, given their current resource situation, means they will have to make some pretty drastic cuts in other areas of the game (those areas where their competition DOES outshine them).

They have been focussing on open world all the time, if you think they focussed on raids/pvp/etc you are dead wrong. The game is struggling with players as it is and here you are advocating killing off every community that is not yours. Cause an open world / story update every 2 months aint enuff to satisfy your needs.

How about we turn those tables around for a year? See what happens.

If they only made content for Openworld/PVP/WVW, instead of Open World/WVW/Raids/Strikes/Fractals/PVP they could focus more people on those three areas of gameplay instead of being spread out so much. If they focused on Raids and other hardcore modes fully im not sure the game would survive. Would ANET lose players by only focusing on the three things they had at launch? Yes, but maybe thats not a bad thing, perhaps it is, but i dunno im not anet.

He is right though, anet shifted from keeping the playerbase they had to trying to get -ALL- the kinds of playerbases and it spread them out far far to much.

I know people love finding scapegoats to justify the loss in revenue but this is getting ridiculous.

Last Raid was released June 2019, 8 months agoLast Fractal was released January 2019, 13 months agoLast time we got something (how matter small) for PVP/WVW was November 2018, 15 months ago

It's been a very long time that the game is almost exclusively focusing on open world PVE. So the reason for spreading so much and causing the revenue is because of the 5 Strikes they've released, out of which 2 of them were slight rehashes of story instance bosses. Meaning in almost 8 months the only non-open world content we got in the game was 3 platforms with a boss on top. Yes that can cause a massive split of resources and spread Arenanet too thin.

As for losing players, they are already losing players in troves because they only focus on the open world, we already see it in their revenue.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Blaeys.3102 said: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.

They have been hard focussing on open world for a long time. Have you ever considered that open world and story content are free and bad ?

We get lane events cause maps cannot handle alot of players together, complicated maps are already a huge struggle on mid budget devices.

Gw2 is done for. Check the ffxiv update notes, now realise they get it multiple times a year. Mmo players are waiting for new world and currently playing FF14. Gw2 marketed itself against wow without ever realizing their own strengths. Here we are in 2020 where they still have not figured it out but in the mean time they killed fractals, dungeons, raid communities, server identities with the merges, wvw, boss and meta event communities, guild missions and pvp.

Guess what those people are disappointed and wont come back. Wanna attract new customers ? Gl with that since any content creator and community will tell you gw2 is a casual fiesta without any progression or competition.

Even worse no modern gamer will accept the horrible and predatory gemstore.

The game definitely isn't dead yet. I saw 20+ people last night for guild missions, even though we have done them every week since they came out - and I consistently see 20-40 people for our wvw nights. Even our guild open world PVE night brings in a decent sized crowd. Im not saying the content has us enthralled - even though we usually manage to find something we enjoy doing together. The community/other guildees keep up logging on - but that does keep us playing, and I see no sign of that slowing down.

We just need to see Anet start supporting those communities again. Forget instanced raids/spvp/etc and focus on the things that bring a community together in large groups and guild-focused activity. That set GW2 apart at launch. They made a huge mistake when they started watering that down - they basically lost their competitive identity.

The important things to realize is that there still isn't another MMO that gets the open world model right - so GW2 still has the chance to regain that title. They just need to refocus and enhance those areas - which, given their current resource situation, means they will have to make some pretty drastic cuts in other areas of the game (those areas where their competition DOES outshine them).

They have been focussing on open world all the time, if you think they focussed on raids/pvp/etc you are dead wrong. The game is struggling with players as it is and here you are advocating killing off every community that is not yours. Cause an open world / story update every 2 months aint enuff to satisfy your needs.

How about we turn those tables around for a year? See what happens.

If they only made content for Openworld/PVP/WVW, instead of Open World/WVW/Raids/Strikes/Fractals/PVP they could focus more people on those three areas of gameplay instead of being spread out so much. If they focused on Raids and other hardcore modes fully im not sure the game would survive. Would ANET lose players by only focusing on the three things they had at launch? Yes, but maybe thats not a bad thing, perhaps it is, but i dunno im not anet.

He is right though, anet shifted from keeping the playerbase they had to trying to get -ALL- the kinds of playerbases and it spread them out far far to much.

I know people love finding scapegoats to justify the loss in revenue but this is getting ridiculous.

Last Raid was released June 2019, 8 months agoLast Fractal was released January 2019, 13 months agoLast time we got something (how matter small) for PVP/WVW was November 2018, 15 months ago

It's been a very long time that the game is almost exclusively focusing on open world PVE. So the reason for spreading so much and causing the revenue is because of the 5 Strikes they've released, out of which 2 of them were slight rehashes of story instance bosses. Meaning in almost 8 months the only non-open world content we got in the game was 3 platforms with a boss on top. Yes that can cause a massive split of resources and spread Arenanet too thin.

Andrew Gray commented that raids attract only a small amount of people. Therefore it makes no sense to create new raids as the resource cost is greater than the usage.Fractals he mentioned as well and they are working on a new Fractal and some sort of challenge mode.The last time we got something (no matter how small) for PvP/WVW was at worst last year in March with the introduction of the Warclaw Mount.

You are right though that the focus of the game has been open world PvE and that's for very good reasons. I reckon it's the most used content by the player base and I think people should realise that things like PvP/WvW/Raids/Fractals are closer to niche content than general content. It's also the content you can do with sucky builds and that's important.

You see as much as I appreciate that they want to do something about that, I think that releasing Strike Missions isn't the answer. The truth behind it all is that the player base is mostly casual oriented. Which is cool, in this game I'm casual as well... but the first bridge they need to cross is the character build system. It's my firm belief that most people underperform with their character builds because it either interferes with their fashion wars (weapon choice) or because the systems are too convoluted/complex for people to want to take an interest or care about it.

They made the choice to cater in that area to the niche content and in everything else to the casual content. But if you want to get more of the regular crowd into the more niche content, it's not just the content that needs adapting but also the character building which are a starting point for any structured group content because people need at least decent builds to participate and then you have to make that side of it easier and clearer. I mean the fact that skill durations are calculated to tenths or hundredths of seconds like 1 1/4 seconds or in other words 1.25 seconds is astonishing to me in a casual game. There is too much stacking and synergizing going on for more casual oriented people to really get into and enjoy. And I'll tell you, if people have to make weapon choices they don't like visually for the sake of a better build, a lot of people are not interested in that, but that's what's required.

So unless content is dumbed down to easy mode, you won't get a lot of people on board because the character building is the real or at least the first barrier. And as long as they don't do something about that, people are not going to really go for things like Strike Missions as far as I can tell.

As for losing players, they are already losing players in troves because they only focus on the open world, we already see it in their revenue.That is a false conclusion. Lost revenue shows less spending, not the reasons why. People could still be playing but not spending as much anymore in the gemstore which is their main source of income. That could have a variety of reasons so you can't just conclude that people are leaving in droves just from revenue figures. And you can't conclude from revenue that it's the open world focus either that's causing it. You seem to mistake correlation with causation.

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@Gehenna.3625 said:You are right though that the focus of the game has been open world PvE and that's for very good reasons. I reckon it's the most used content by the player base and I think people should realise that things like PvP/WvW/Raids/Fractals are closer to niche content than general content. It's also the content you can do with sucky builds and that's important.

Exactly my point, they've been focusing on the Open World PVE ALREADY, there are claims in this thread that they are not and that they should start focusing on it, which makes no sense. And that the game is suffering because it's spread too thin. It's NOT spread too thin, it's exclusively focusing on Open World content for at least the last 8 months, so any kind of population drop (or revenue drop) can only attributed to that Open World focus. When it comes to content type of course, other factors, like the lack of expansions, build templates, gem store and so on are regardless of content type released.

That is a false conclusion. Lost revenue shows less spending, not the reasons why. People could still be playing but not spending as much anymore in the gemstore which is their main source of income. That could have a variety of reasons so you can't just conclude that people are leaving in droves just from revenue figures. And you can't conclude from revenue that it's the open world focus either that's causing it. You seem to mistake correlation with causation.

Not sure if this is a joke. But I want to redirect you to some posters above, and some posts in other threads, claiming how horrible HOT was in terms of revenue because it had Raids. How horrible the entire game is -still- doing because it has Raids. So when the game released some Raids, or when the game released a more challenging expansion, they were the cause for a revenue drop. Meanwhile when the focuses exclusively on the Open World, there is a variety of reasons for the revenue drop. It's always amusing to read how posters justify their arguments in one way when it suits them and then make a 180 when it doesn't. Not saying that you specifically are one of those blaming HOT or Raids for the troubles of the game, but I'll save this paragraph for the next time someone brings up HOT or Raids as the source of the game's financial troubles. Like some posters in this PAGE claim, posters that curiously you didn't respond with this.

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@Dante.1763 said:

@Blaeys.3102 said: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.

They have been hard focussing on open world for a long time. Have you ever considered that open world and story content are free and bad ?

We get lane events cause maps cannot handle alot of players together, complicated maps are already a huge struggle on mid budget devices.

Gw2 is done for. Check the ffxiv update notes, now realise they get it multiple times a year. Mmo players are waiting for new world and currently playing FF14. Gw2 marketed itself against wow without ever realizing their own strengths. Here we are in 2020 where they still have not figured it out but in the mean time they killed fractals, dungeons, raid communities, server identities with the merges, wvw, boss and meta event communities, guild missions and pvp.

Guess what those people are disappointed and wont come back. Wanna attract new customers ? Gl with that since any content creator and community will tell you gw2 is a casual fiesta without any progression or competition.

Even worse no modern gamer will accept the horrible and predatory gemstore.

The game definitely isn't dead yet. I saw 20+ people last night for guild missions, even though we have done them every week since they came out - and I consistently see 20-40 people for our wvw nights. Even our guild open world PVE night brings in a decent sized crowd. Im not saying the content has us enthralled - even though we usually manage to find something we enjoy doing together. The community/other guildees keep up logging on - but that does keep us playing, and I see no sign of that slowing down.

We just need to see Anet start supporting those communities again. Forget instanced raids/spvp/etc and focus on the things that bring a community together in large groups and guild-focused activity. That set GW2 apart at launch. They made a huge mistake when they started watering that down - they basically lost their competitive identity.

The important things to realize is that there still isn't another MMO that gets the open world model right - so GW2 still has the chance to regain that title. They just need to refocus and enhance those areas - which, given their current resource situation, means they will have to make some pretty drastic cuts in other areas of the game (those areas where their competition DOES outshine them).

They have been focussing on open world all the time, if you think they focussed on raids/pvp/etc you are dead wrong. The game is struggling with players as it is and here you are advocating killing off every community that is not yours. Cause an open world / story update every 2 months aint enuff to satisfy your needs.

How about we turn those tables around for a year? See what happens.

If they only made content for Openworld/PVP/WVW, instead of Open World/WVW/Raids/Strikes/Fractals/PVP they could focus more people on those three areas of gameplay instead of being spread out so much. If they focused on Raids and other hardcore modes fully im not sure the game would survive. Would ANET lose players by only focusing on the three things they had at launch? Yes, but maybe thats not a bad thing, perhaps it is, but i dunno im not anet.

He is right though, anet shifted from keeping the playerbase they had to trying to get -ALL- the kinds of playerbases and it spread them out far far to much.

The game at launch was never meant to be brain dead easy. Hence we have a complicated build system and a strong combat system. Alot of the old developers were pvp focused, I kid you not. The hyper focus on cookie cutter press F open world content is why many are quitting.

I play FF14, it's a terrible game compared to gw2 but they have good content and an interesting story. FF14 is the king of casual mmos. It's almost criminal that gw2 doesn't utilise any of its strong points.

We would do perfectly fine with less focus on open world and an audience that's actually interested in the game.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:You are right though that the focus of the game has been open world PvE and that's for very good reasons. I reckon it's the most used content by the player base and I think people should realise that things like PvP/WvW/Raids/Fractals are closer to niche content than general content. It's also the content you can do with sucky builds and that's important.

so any kind of population drop (or revenue drop) can only attributed to that Open World focus.No it cannot only be attributed to that. That's my point. You are too narrow in your views to allow for other possibilities but I'll tell you this as a starting point: I am entirely focused on open world content, that's the part I enjoy in this game the most and I've stopped playing again.

So no, it's not the focus on open world pve that is the sole possibility here.Also, since revenue is dropped and revenue consists of two things: box sales and gemstore sales. So box sales means the amount of expansion sales and relates more to an influx of new players, or lack thereof, and gemstore sales going down could be for various reasons. One reason could be fewer people but others could relate to people still playing but no longer interested in buying stuff from the gemstore. And one thing could be that the people who spend at the gemstore are players that've been around for a while and that market is getting saturated. So a new skin could be cool but hey you've got 20 already and well you don't need more bank tabs cause you already bought 10 etc.

It would be a much more plausible reason for the drop in revenue to say that this game has a problem attracting new players and this could be attributed in part to the fact that the most recent expansion to the game was almost 2 and half years ago. New players are not going to be attracted by a game that's 8 years old and has had only two expansions, the last of which was that long ago because people tend to look for new releases more. Expansions put MMOs back on the new releases list for people. Sagas and LS patches do not.

So you see, there's much more in play here that could cause the revenue drops that are not about the Open world PvE focus. And for me personally the open world focus isn't working because it's clearly more of the same and the new maps become old and abandoned too quickly. We're only getting snacks and not good size meals and the game moves on from that constantly. So if there is an issue with open world PvE it's that it's just more of the same and ever more fleeting.

One of the great ironies of GW2 is that when they started on it, one reason that was given was that they felt people were too spread out over the continents in GW1 and they wanted to do something about that. So they made a game with even more zones and all they do is add more and more zones of the same type of stuff. And the issue is not the type of content but it just being more of the same. I mean I love the new map visually, so I'm glad to have it but what happens when the next zone comes out? It'll be a ghost town. They even took the dailies of the season 3 maps away and put them on a rotation apparently. That means they need to put people together in the same map everyday because they are too spread out. So that really is a thing.

Now, it could be that there's a drop in people because there's only open world content coming out but it's far from the only possibility, especially since this is a casual oriented game mostly and open world is the casual's playground. I think the problem there is that the open world playground is too big and the new content is generally more of the same and a lot of the rewards are not that appealing. That's a content quality issue, not a content type issue.

So no, you cannot conclude from those revenue numbers that it can only be caused by a focus on open world content. The point that it coincides with the time period that other content is not coming out is called correllation and that is not the same as causation. That's the logic error you are making with your conclusion. It doesn't mean that it cannot be the cause, but it does mean that it doesn't prove that it's the actual cause and other causes are quite possible.

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