Jump to content
  • Sign Up

Do raids need easy/normal/hard difficulty mode? [merged]


Lonami.2987

Recommended Posts

@Obtena.7952 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

Let's give an exaggerated example say you have a game with a split in player base of 60-40. If you just focus on that 60 you will lose 40 percent.Now you can say, well we won't lose 40 their are less then that in those niches and you might be right, but all the small loses accumulate.

You then also get an amount of diminishing returns , their won't be much difference in retention between having 10 storypatches and 9 storypatches in a year. But their will be a big difference in retention between 0 and 1 pvp patch for example.

That ontop of the things maddoctor said.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Linken.6345 said:

@yann.1946 said:Now do you believe that the game over focused on hardcore content? Because as i see it after HOT the focus was not on hardcore content.It actually did both. It focused on hardcore content enough to have impact on all the rest of the content (yes, i know that a lot of raiders simply do not see it, but for me that impact was very clear, and
it still continues
, even after raids were mostly abandoned). Impact, that for a lot of players was very negative. At the same time it didn't focus on hardcore content enough to satisfy hardcore players. It was a lose/lose situation from the beginning - all it caused was an overall less happy community.

Well to me it appeared more on a perceived focus (the adding of special action key etc.) but to me it always appeared more of a perceived notion do to a part of the population have insta negative emotions attached to the word raids. Now i agree that sometimes perception is more important then truth in these contexts.

Not giving any attention to the hardcore community would have been a bigger loss in my opinion. You need to spend some focus on all your parts of the player base. And an mmo specifically needs a diverse content pool.

Some of the timed world bosses wont get done if all the hardcore people leave unless they nerf their health pools. (The new one, Drakkar being the first obvious one.)

While this is true, they could just say that these bosses have to be nerfed then for example. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@yann.1946 said:You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

For a game focused on expansions that's probably true. For a game that is focused on a cash shop though, the majority of the players (in numbers) doesn't necessarily mean the majority in spending. Invested players tend to pay more.

Further, the majority of the players (in numbers) doesn't necessarily mean the majority in activity either. For example, you can have 10000 players that play 1 hour every month and they'd be a majority by numbers but the game will appear mostly dead on a day-to-day basis. On the other hand, having 100 players that play 2-3 hours every day will make the game active, despite those players not being any kind of majority in numbers.

Thinking only about what the majority of the players do in a game is an unhealthy way to go about making a game. Case in point, the majority of accounts of this game have less than 500 AP, meaning they aren't really playing the game much, so what this majority does or doesn't do while in-game is hardly relevant, or important.

Also, we've seen last quarter what happened when they focused on a single part of the playerbase.

You csn ignore sporadic playing players when classifying as the majority/minority for the sake of argument, same principle apply, although they are still players who buy expansions, spend money on things they like etc etc so ignoring them would be foolhardy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@yann.1946 said:You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

For a game focused on expansions that's probably true. For a game that is focused on a cash shop though, the majority of the players (in numbers) doesn't necessarily mean the majority in spending. Invested players tend to pay more.

Further, the majority of the players (in numbers) doesn't necessarily mean the majority in activity either. For example, you can have 10000 players that play 1 hour every month and they'd be a majority by numbers but the game will appear mostly dead on a day-to-day basis. On the other hand, having 100 players that play 2-3 hours every day will make the game active, despite those players not being any kind of majority in numbers.

Thinking only about what the majority of the players do in a game is an unhealthy way to go about making a game. Case in point, the majority of accounts of this game have less than 500 AP, meaning they aren't really playing the game much, so what this majority does or doesn't do while in-game is hardly relevant, or important.

Also, we've seen last quarter what happened when they focused on a single part of the playerbase.

You csn ignore sporadic playing players when classifying as the majority/minority for the sake of argument, same principle apply, although they are still players who buy expansions, spend money on things they like etc etc so ignoring them would be foolhardy.

I have to ask vesica, do you read the things you respond to? Because this whole thing is about not ignoring parts of the playerbase.Why would you conclude from the call to not ignore parts of the playerbase that we want parts of the playerbase ignored?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@yann.1946 said:

@yann.1946 said:You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

For a game focused on expansions that's probably true. For a game that is focused on a cash shop though, the majority of the players (in numbers) doesn't necessarily mean the majority in spending. Invested players tend to pay more.

Further, the majority of the players (in numbers) doesn't necessarily mean the majority in activity either. For example, you can have 10000 players that play 1 hour every month and they'd be a majority by numbers but the game will appear mostly dead on a day-to-day basis. On the other hand, having 100 players that play 2-3 hours every day will make the game active, despite those players not being any kind of majority in numbers.

Thinking only about what the majority of the players do in a game is an unhealthy way to go about making a game. Case in point, the majority of accounts of this game have less than 500 AP, meaning they aren't really playing the game much, so what this majority does or doesn't do while in-game is hardly relevant, or important.

Also, we've seen last quarter what happened when they focused on a single part of the playerbase.

You csn ignore sporadic playing players when classifying as the majority/minority for the sake of argument, same principle apply, although they are still players who buy expansions, spend money on things they like etc etc so ignoring them would be foolhardy.

I have to ask vesica, do you read the things you respond to? Because this whole thing is about not ignoring parts of the playerbase.Why would you conclude from the call to not ignore parts of the playerbase that we want parts of the playerbase ignored?

I agree and not providing easy mode raids to the majority (regular player or not). Is ignoring the player base. As an example, Imagine a pug raider player joined gw2 from eso or wow, then got to end game and then discovered there was no content for them. Now apply same for new casual players and old casual player and infrequent players and players that can't dedicate the time blocks required to learn gw2 raids, or players that don't like vc, or players that do '5k' dps and would rather plan than learn to do 15k dps. Et. Et. Etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"vesica tempestas.1563" said:You csn ignore sporadic playing players when classifying as the majority/minority for the sake of argument, same principle apply, although they are still players who buy expansions, spend money on things they like etc etc so ignoring them would be foolhardy.

Well if you remove sporadic players how do you know what the actual active players are doing in the game? Let's find some information on what the active players are doing in this game. As a matter of fact, using official Arenanet data and gw2efficiency data, between 1/3 and 1/2 of the global playtime is recorded by gw2efficiency users, meaning they are by far the most active players in the game, especially if we call them a "tiny minority" of the total playerbase. If a tiny minority has 1/3rd the playtime of the game (at worst), then this "majority" isn't very active by comparison.

Yes the sporadic players are important when considering expansions, and sub fees. But they aren't as important when considering a game that base its revenue on a cash shop. These games need activity most of all, as there is a direct correlation between activity/investment and spending in these games.

We've seen what ignoring the players can do in the last quarter. Let's hope they don't ignore most of their active players again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@yann.1946 said:You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

For a game focused on expansions that's probably true. For a game that is focused on a cash shop though, the majority of the players (in numbers) doesn't necessarily mean the majority in spending. Invested players tend to pay more.

Further, the majority of the players (in numbers) doesn't necessarily mean the majority in activity either. For example, you can have 10000 players that play 1 hour every month and they'd be a majority by numbers but the game will appear mostly dead on a day-to-day basis. On the other hand, having 100 players that play 2-3 hours every day will make the game active, despite those players not being any kind of majority in numbers.

Thinking only about what the majority of the players do in a game is an unhealthy way to go about making a game. Case in point, the majority of accounts of this game have less than 500 AP, meaning they aren't really playing the game much, so what this majority does or doesn't do while in-game is hardly relevant, or important.

Also, we've seen last quarter what happened when they focused on a single part of the playerbase.

Absolutely. they have to follow the money. even if it's not the majority ... the money keeps the lights on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@yann.1946 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

Let's give an exaggerated example say you have a game with a split in player base of 60-40. If you just focus on that 60 you will lose 40 percent.Now you can say, well we won't lose 40 their are less then that in those niches and you might be right, but all the small loses accumulate.

You then also get an amount of diminishing returns , their won't be much difference in retention between having 10 storypatches and 9 storypatches in a year. But their will be a big difference in retention between 0 and 1 pvp patch for example.

That ontop of the things maddoctor said.

If the 60 is where all the money comes from ... then I wouldn't care about those 40% that leave. Anet has to follow the money ... this isn't a charity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Obtena.7952 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

Let's give an exaggerated example say you have a game with a split in player base of 60-40. If you just focus on that 60 you will lose 40 percent.Now you can say, well we won't lose 40 their are less then that in those niches and you might be right, but all the small loses accumulate.

You then also get an amount of diminishing returns , their won't be much difference in retention between having 10 storypatches and 9 storypatches in a year. But their will be a big difference in retention between 0 and 1 pvp patch for example.

That ontop of the things maddoctor said.

If the 60 is where all the money comes from ... then I wouldn't care about those 40% that leave. Anet has to follow the money ... this isn't a charity.

Well yes and no,

In my simplified example that might be the case but:

If the leaving of those 40 causes to game to feel way more dead then this could lead to quite a few of the 60 leaving. Thats why even though the majority of revenue of almost all freemium games come from some very small percentage, the non paying costumers still don't get ignored (atleast as long as it plans to be a longterm product).

Also if these 40 are youtubers etc for example then a loss of these could be problematic (look how much dulfy did for the community)

On top of that their is at this moment no way to verify who causes the most revenue. and the world is not such a simple place that we can divide that easily.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@yann.1946 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

Let's give an exaggerated example say you have a game with a split in player base of 60-40. If you just focus on that 60 you will lose 40 percent.Now you can say, well we won't lose 40 their are less then that in those niches and you might be right, but all the small loses accumulate.

You then also get an amount of diminishing returns , their won't be much difference in retention between having 10 storypatches and 9 storypatches in a year. But their will be a big difference in retention between 0 and 1 pvp patch for example.

That ontop of the things maddoctor said.

If the 60 is where all the money comes from ... then I wouldn't care about those 40% that leave. Anet has to follow the money ... this isn't a charity.

Well yes and no,

In my simplified example that might be the case but:

If the leaving of those 40 causes to game to feel way more dead then this could lead to quite a few of the 60 leaving. '

Maybe ... but they would have to actually feel that difference and have that impact their game. How would that happen? Sure, the population has to be above some critical value so servers aren't empty ... that's just a game maintenance issue. Server merges are a common approach to deal with this.

IF those 40 are youtubers? So what? Do you think those 60 people are paying money to GW2 because youtubers? I think the most critical impact to losing players is knowledge sharing but in our extreme example is just that ... I think in reality, there will still be enough knowledge sharing to allow players to get things done. Frankly, the youtube thing is a insignificant impact on where the money is for Anet ... that's a player-revenue stream and it's poor excuse for advertising and promotion of the game.

And yes, there is absolutely a way for Anet to figure out where the money comes from ... how do you think money transactions happen in this game? They charge someone's CC ... they know where that money is and what that player is doing. They can break down by the MINUTE what a player is doing in the game if they wanted to and link that to how much they spend. That can be done for every player.

Anyways ... the point is that players that pay money are WAY more valuable to Anet than those that don't, regardless of what percentage of total players those people are. If Anet doesn't follow that money, they can't pay the bills with Players Youtube channel subscribes or their feelings of 'not dead' game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Obtena.7952 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

Let's give an exaggerated example say you have a game with a split in player base of 60-40. If you just focus on that 60 you will lose 40 percent.Now you can say, well we won't lose 40 their are less then that in those niches and you might be right, but all the small loses accumulate.

You then also get an amount of diminishing returns , their won't be much difference in retention between having 10 storypatches and 9 storypatches in a year. But their will be a big difference in retention between 0 and 1 pvp patch for example.

That ontop of the things maddoctor said.

If the 60 is where all the money comes from ... then I wouldn't care about those 40% that leave. Anet has to follow the money ... this isn't a charity.

Well yes and no,

In my simplified example that might be the case but:

If the leaving of those 40 causes to game to feel way more dead then this could lead to quite a few of the 60 leaving. '

Maybe ... but they would have to actually feel that difference and have that impact their game. How would that happen? Sure, the population has to be above some critical value so servers aren't empty ... that's just a game maintenance issue. Server merges are a common approach to deal with this.

Look at what maddoctor said for this. Losing 40 percent of your players will make a difference to how the game feels, ofcourse their are ways to mitigate that problem.But that doesn't matter in the long run. Imagine being in a guild which slowly empties out, going from 100 people to 60 people will feel different. especially if those where active player before.

IF those 40 are youtubers? So what? Do you think those 60 people are paying money to GW2 because youtubers? I think the most critical impact to losing players is knowledge sharing but in our extreme example is just that ... I think in reality, there will still be enough knowledge sharing to allow players to get things done. Frankly, the youtube thing is a insignificant impact on where the money is for Anet ... that's a player-revenue stream and it's poor excuse for advertising and promotion of the game.

Well minecraft owns its succes largely to youtube, thats almost undeniable at the moment. But the point was not specifically about youtube, its about losing players who contribute as a general information sources. Having the people doing the wiki disspear would do a lot more harm then some random paying players leaving because the wiki getting way worse would result in quite a few paying players leaving.

And yes, there is absolutely a way for Anet to figure out where the money comes from ... how do you think money transactions happen in this game? They charge someone's CC ... they know where that money is and what that player is doing. They can break down by the MINUTE what a player is doing in the game if they wanted to and link that to how much they spend. That can be done for every player.

i'm sorry , i meant their is no way for us to know. Sorry for the confusion. :)

Anyways ... the point is that players that pay money are WAY more valuable to Anet than those that don't, regardless of what percentage of total players those people are. If Anet doesn't follow that money, they can't pay the bills with Players Youtube channel subscribes or their feelings of 'not dead' game.

Remember when bless online failed badly and some youtuber (i forgot his name) recommended Guild wars 2. That person generated more revenue for ANet then most whales could.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@yann.1946 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

Let's give an exaggerated example say you have a game with a split in player base of 60-40. If you just focus on that 60 you will lose 40 percent.Now you can say, well we won't lose 40 their are less then that in those niches and you might be right, but all the small loses accumulate.

You then also get an amount of diminishing returns , their won't be much difference in retention between having 10 storypatches and 9 storypatches in a year. But their will be a big difference in retention between 0 and 1 pvp patch for example.

That ontop of the things maddoctor said.

If the 60 is where all the money comes from ... then I wouldn't care about those 40% that leave. Anet has to follow the money ... this isn't a charity.

Well yes and no,

In my simplified example that might be the case but:

If the leaving of those 40 causes to game to feel way more dead then this could lead to quite a few of the 60 leaving. '

Maybe ... but they would have to actually feel that difference and have that impact their game. How would that happen? Sure, the population has to be above some critical value so servers aren't empty ... that's just a game maintenance issue. Server merges are a common approach to deal with this.

Look at what maddoctor said for this. Losing 40 percent of your players will make a difference to how the game feels, ofcourse their are ways to mitigate that problem.But that doesn't matter in the long run. Imagine being in a guild which slowly empties out, going from 100 people to 60 people will feel different. especially if those where active player before.

IF those 40 are youtubers? So what? Do you think those 60 people are paying money to GW2 because youtubers? I think the most critical impact to losing players is knowledge sharing but in our extreme example is just that ... I think in reality, there will still be enough knowledge sharing to allow players to get things done. Frankly, the youtube thing is a insignificant impact on where the money is for Anet ... that's a player-revenue stream and it's poor excuse for advertising and promotion of the game.

Well minecraft owns its succes largely to youtube, thats almost undeniable at the moment. But the point was not specifically about youtube, its about losing players who contribute as a general information sources. Having the people doing the wiki disspear would do a lot more harm then some random paying players leaving because the wiki getting way worse would result in quite a few paying players leaving.

And yes, there is absolutely a way for Anet to figure out where the money comes from ... how do you think money transactions happen in this game? They charge someone's CC ... they know where that money is and what that player is doing. They can break down by the MINUTE what a player is doing in the game if they wanted to and link that to how much they spend. That can be done for every player.

i'm sorry , i meant their is no way for us to know. Sorry for the confusion. :)

Anyways ... the point is that players that pay money are WAY more valuable to Anet than those that don't, regardless of what percentage of total players those people are. If Anet doesn't follow that money, they can't pay the bills with Players Youtube channel subscribes or their feelings of 'not dead' game.

Remember when bless online failed badly and some youtuber (i forgot his name) recommended Guild wars 2. That person generated more revenue for ANet then most whales could.

LIke I said ... for the average person who doesn't encounter ALL the players in the game, that difference can be made transparent to them with server maintenance. It's academic anyways because it's a polarized example.

And No I don't remember that youtube whatever and we have no idea how much these things impacted the game. Again, that's deflection ... like I said, the example is a fictituous, polarized one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@yann.1946 said:Remember when bless online failed badly and some youtuber (i forgot his name) recommended Guild wars 2. That person generated more revenue for ANet then most whales could.Did he? How many of those players from Bless actually bought this game? How many remained till today? How the income from that group compares to what Anet can get from the top few whales? Do you know that? Because i sure don't.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Obtena.7952 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

Let's give an exaggerated example say you have a game with a split in player base of 60-40. If you just focus on that 60 you will lose 40 percent.Now you can say, well we won't lose 40 their are less then that in those niches and you might be right, but all the small loses accumulate.

You then also get an amount of diminishing returns , their won't be much difference in retention between having 10 storypatches and 9 storypatches in a year. But their will be a big difference in retention between 0 and 1 pvp patch for example.

That ontop of the things maddoctor said.

If the 60 is where all the money comes from ... then I wouldn't care about those 40% that leave. Anet has to follow the money ... this isn't a charity.

Well yes and no,

In my simplified example that might be the case but:

If the leaving of those 40 causes to game to feel way more dead then this could lead to quite a few of the 60 leaving. '

Maybe ... but they would have to actually feel that difference and have that impact their game. How would that happen? Sure, the population has to be above some critical value so servers aren't empty ... that's just a game maintenance issue. Server merges are a common approach to deal with this.

Look at what maddoctor said for this. Losing 40 percent of your players will make a difference to how the game feels, ofcourse their are ways to mitigate that problem.But that doesn't matter in the long run. Imagine being in a guild which slowly empties out, going from 100 people to 60 people will feel different. especially if those where active player before.

IF those 40 are youtubers? So what? Do you think those 60 people are paying money to GW2 because youtubers? I think the most critical impact to losing players is knowledge sharing but in our extreme example is just that ... I think in reality, there will still be enough knowledge sharing to allow players to get things done. Frankly, the youtube thing is a insignificant impact on where the money is for Anet ... that's a player-revenue stream and it's poor excuse for advertising and promotion of the game.

Well minecraft owns its succes largely to youtube, thats almost undeniable at the moment. But the point was not specifically about youtube, its about losing players who contribute as a general information sources. Having the people doing the wiki disspear would do a lot more harm then some random paying players leaving because the wiki getting way worse would result in quite a few paying players leaving.

And yes, there is absolutely a way for Anet to figure out where the money comes from ... how do you think money transactions happen in this game? They charge someone's CC ... they know where that money is and what that player is doing. They can break down by the MINUTE what a player is doing in the game if they wanted to and link that to how much they spend. That can be done for every player.

i'm sorry , i meant their is no way for us to know. Sorry for the confusion. :)

Anyways ... the point is that players that pay money are WAY more valuable to Anet than those that don't, regardless of what percentage of total players those people are. If Anet doesn't follow that money, they can't pay the bills with Players Youtube channel subscribes or their feelings of 'not dead' game.

Remember when bless online failed badly and some youtuber (i forgot his name) recommended Guild wars 2. That person generated more revenue for ANet then most whales could.

LIke I said ... for the average person who doesn't encounter ALL the players in the game, that difference can be made transparent to them with server maintenance. It's academic anyways because it's a polarized example.

And No I don't remember that youtube whatever and we have no idea how much these things impacted the game. Again, that's deflection ... like I said, the example is a fictituous, polarized one.

We'll i agree that its polarizing. In a practical setting i think the assumption that the most invested pay the most is not unreasonable. (Note: im not saying hardcore here, im saying invested). And that group will always be small.

the example was just to show that their are more factors to consider then who pays directly. It was not really deflection though, it was merely pointing out that that the impact someone has on the games revenue is not only what they pay. For example i think that the forum user vayne has generated income by keeping people interested in the game for example. While some cheater/botter might have a negative impact even if they buy items on the gemstore from time to time because people leave because of cheaters.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@yann.1946 said:Remember when bless online failed badly and some youtuber (i forgot his name) recommended Guild wars 2. That person generated more revenue for ANet then most whales could.Did he? How many of those players from Bless actually bought this game? How many remained till today? How the income from that group compares to what Anet can get from the top few whales? Do you know that? Because i sure don't.

Well i'm basing the fact that people joined on a few redditposts of people joining after the bless fiasco and the statement ANET made around that time welcoming new players and asking players to show new players around. If Lazypeon (i looked it up) introduced just 2 whales to the game his impact on the fiances of the game would be way more then most people ever pay directly to the game. And i don't consider that unreasonable. Now i don't know how much an impact he had in the long run but the example was only to show thatA) how much someone pays to the gemstore is not the only financial impact that person has.B) It is either shortsighted or purposely dishonest to not at least mention the contributions to the game, especially when talking about invested population groups.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@yann.1946 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

Let's give an exaggerated example say you have a game with a split in player base of 60-40. If you just focus on that 60 you will lose 40 percent.Now you can say, well we won't lose 40 their are less then that in those niches and you might be right, but all the small loses accumulate.

You then also get an amount of diminishing returns , their won't be much difference in retention between having 10 storypatches and 9 storypatches in a year. But their will be a big difference in retention between 0 and 1 pvp patch for example.

That ontop of the things maddoctor said.

If the 60 is where all the money comes from ... then I wouldn't care about those 40% that leave. Anet has to follow the money ... this isn't a charity.

Well yes and no,

In my simplified example that might be the case but:

If the leaving of those 40 causes to game to feel way more dead then this could lead to quite a few of the 60 leaving. '

Maybe ... but they would have to actually feel that difference and have that impact their game. How would that happen? Sure, the population has to be above some critical value so servers aren't empty ... that's just a game maintenance issue. Server merges are a common approach to deal with this.

Look at what maddoctor said for this. Losing 40 percent of your players will make a difference to how the game feels, ofcourse their are ways to mitigate that problem.But that doesn't matter in the long run. Imagine being in a guild which slowly empties out, going from 100 people to 60 people will feel different. especially if those where active player before.

IF those 40 are youtubers? So what? Do you think those 60 people are paying money to GW2 because youtubers? I think the most critical impact to losing players is knowledge sharing but in our extreme example is just that ... I think in reality, there will still be enough knowledge sharing to allow players to get things done. Frankly, the youtube thing is a insignificant impact on where the money is for Anet ... that's a player-revenue stream and it's poor excuse for advertising and promotion of the game.

Well minecraft owns its succes largely to youtube, thats almost undeniable at the moment. But the point was not specifically about youtube, its about losing players who contribute as a general information sources. Having the people doing the wiki disspear would do a lot more harm then some random paying players leaving because the wiki getting way worse would result in quite a few paying players leaving.

And yes, there is absolutely a way for Anet to figure out where the money comes from ... how do you think money transactions happen in this game? They charge someone's CC ... they know where that money is and what that player is doing. They can break down by the MINUTE what a player is doing in the game if they wanted to and link that to how much they spend. That can be done for every player.

i'm sorry , i meant their is no way for us to know. Sorry for the confusion. :)

Anyways ... the point is that players that pay money are WAY more valuable to Anet than those that don't, regardless of what percentage of total players those people are. If Anet doesn't follow that money, they can't pay the bills with Players Youtube channel subscribes or their feelings of 'not dead' game.

Remember when bless online failed badly and some youtuber (i forgot his name) recommended Guild wars 2. That person generated more revenue for ANet then most whales could.

LIke I said ... for the average person who doesn't encounter ALL the players in the game, that difference can be made transparent to them with server maintenance. It's academic anyways because it's a polarized example.

And No I don't remember that youtube whatever and we have no idea how much these things impacted the game. Again, that's deflection ... like I said, the example is a fictituous, polarized one.

We'll i agree that its polarizing. In a practical setting i think the assumption that the most invested pay the most is not unreasonable. (Note: im not saying hardcore here, im saying invested). And that group will always be small.

the example was just to show that their are more factors to consider then who pays directly. It was not really deflection though, it was merely pointing out that that the impact someone has on the games revenue is not only what they pay. For example i think that the forum user vayne has generated income by keeping people interested in the game for example. While some cheater/botter might have a negative impact even if they buy items on the gemstore from time to time because people leave because of cheaters.

Right, I believe that's a completely reasonable assumption as well because it falls inline with the law of averages. To be clear, I'm not saying that Anet should target the folks that pay the most. I'm saying they need to target the areas of the game that generate the most revenue, which of course is some portion of the overall population doing those things. That's not only a combination of how much those people spend, but how many people there are. But be assured, this is definitely something Anet can measure. In fact, if I was a business analyst at Anet, it would be one of the least things I would be doing; relating time spent per game element to revenue generated by the players that do those game elements. That would result in a revenue per unit time for the various activities being done and be part of the decision making process to do things like ... maybe make an easy mode for raids ... or can raid development altogether.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Obtena.7952 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

Let's give an exaggerated example say you have a game with a split in player base of 60-40. If you just focus on that 60 you will lose 40 percent.Now you can say, well we won't lose 40 their are less then that in those niches and you might be right, but all the small loses accumulate.

You then also get an amount of diminishing returns , their won't be much difference in retention between having 10 storypatches and 9 storypatches in a year. But their will be a big difference in retention between 0 and 1 pvp patch for example.

That ontop of the things maddoctor said.

If the 60 is where all the money comes from ... then I wouldn't care about those 40% that leave. Anet has to follow the money ... this isn't a charity.

Well yes and no,

In my simplified example that might be the case but:

If the leaving of those 40 causes to game to feel way more dead then this could lead to quite a few of the 60 leaving. '

Maybe ... but they would have to actually feel that difference and have that impact their game. How would that happen? Sure, the population has to be above some critical value so servers aren't empty ... that's just a game maintenance issue. Server merges are a common approach to deal with this.

Look at what maddoctor said for this. Losing 40 percent of your players will make a difference to how the game feels, ofcourse their are ways to mitigate that problem.But that doesn't matter in the long run. Imagine being in a guild which slowly empties out, going from 100 people to 60 people will feel different. especially if those where active player before.

IF those 40 are youtubers? So what? Do you think those 60 people are paying money to GW2 because youtubers? I think the most critical impact to losing players is knowledge sharing but in our extreme example is just that ... I think in reality, there will still be enough knowledge sharing to allow players to get things done. Frankly, the youtube thing is a insignificant impact on where the money is for Anet ... that's a player-revenue stream and it's poor excuse for advertising and promotion of the game.

Well minecraft owns its succes largely to youtube, thats almost undeniable at the moment. But the point was not specifically about youtube, its about losing players who contribute as a general information sources. Having the people doing the wiki disspear would do a lot more harm then some random paying players leaving because the wiki getting way worse would result in quite a few paying players leaving.

And yes, there is absolutely a way for Anet to figure out where the money comes from ... how do you think money transactions happen in this game? They charge someone's CC ... they know where that money is and what that player is doing. They can break down by the MINUTE what a player is doing in the game if they wanted to and link that to how much they spend. That can be done for every player.

i'm sorry , i meant their is no way for us to know. Sorry for the confusion. :)

Anyways ... the point is that players that pay money are WAY more valuable to Anet than those that don't, regardless of what percentage of total players those people are. If Anet doesn't follow that money, they can't pay the bills with Players Youtube channel subscribes or their feelings of 'not dead' game.

Remember when bless online failed badly and some youtuber (i forgot his name) recommended Guild wars 2. That person generated more revenue for ANet then most whales could.

LIke I said ... for the average person who doesn't encounter ALL the players in the game, that difference can be made transparent to them with server maintenance. It's academic anyways because it's a polarized example.

And No I don't remember that youtube whatever and we have no idea how much these things impacted the game. Again, that's deflection ... like I said, the example is a fictituous, polarized one.

We'll i agree that its polarizing. In a practical setting i think the assumption that the most invested pay the most is not unreasonable. (Note: im not saying hardcore here, im saying invested). And that group will always be small.

the example was just to show that their are more factors to consider then who pays directly. It was not really deflection though, it was merely pointing out that that the impact someone has on the games revenue is not only what they pay. For example i think that the forum user vayne has generated income by keeping people interested in the game for example. While some cheater/botter might have a negative impact even if they buy items on the gemstore from time to time because people leave because of cheaters.

Right, I believe that's a completely reasonable assumption as well because it falls inline with the law of averages. To be clear, I'm not saying that Anet should target the folks that pay the most. I'm saying they need to target the areas of the game that generate the most revenue, which of course is some portion of the overall population doing those things. That's not only a combination of how much those people spend, but how many people there are. But be assured, this is definitely something Anet can measure. In fact, if I was a business analyst at Anet, it would be one of the least things I would be doing; relating time spent per game element to revenue generated by the players that do those game elements.

The thing is how do you revenue generated by someone like dulfy or Vane for example. These are almost impossible to measure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@yann.1946 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

Let's give an exaggerated example say you have a game with a split in player base of 60-40. If you just focus on that 60 you will lose 40 percent.Now you can say, well we won't lose 40 their are less then that in those niches and you might be right, but all the small loses accumulate.

You then also get an amount of diminishing returns , their won't be much difference in retention between having 10 storypatches and 9 storypatches in a year. But their will be a big difference in retention between 0 and 1 pvp patch for example.

That ontop of the things maddoctor said.

If the 60 is where all the money comes from ... then I wouldn't care about those 40% that leave. Anet has to follow the money ... this isn't a charity.

Well yes and no,

In my simplified example that might be the case but:

If the leaving of those 40 causes to game to feel way more dead then this could lead to quite a few of the 60 leaving. '

Maybe ... but they would have to actually feel that difference and have that impact their game. How would that happen? Sure, the population has to be above some critical value so servers aren't empty ... that's just a game maintenance issue. Server merges are a common approach to deal with this.

Look at what maddoctor said for this. Losing 40 percent of your players will make a difference to how the game feels, ofcourse their are ways to mitigate that problem.But that doesn't matter in the long run. Imagine being in a guild which slowly empties out, going from 100 people to 60 people will feel different. especially if those where active player before.

IF those 40 are youtubers? So what? Do you think those 60 people are paying money to GW2 because youtubers? I think the most critical impact to losing players is knowledge sharing but in our extreme example is just that ... I think in reality, there will still be enough knowledge sharing to allow players to get things done. Frankly, the youtube thing is a insignificant impact on where the money is for Anet ... that's a player-revenue stream and it's poor excuse for advertising and promotion of the game.

Well minecraft owns its succes largely to youtube, thats almost undeniable at the moment. But the point was not specifically about youtube, its about losing players who contribute as a general information sources. Having the people doing the wiki disspear would do a lot more harm then some random paying players leaving because the wiki getting way worse would result in quite a few paying players leaving.

And yes, there is absolutely a way for Anet to figure out where the money comes from ... how do you think money transactions happen in this game? They charge someone's CC ... they know where that money is and what that player is doing. They can break down by the MINUTE what a player is doing in the game if they wanted to and link that to how much they spend. That can be done for every player.

i'm sorry , i meant their is no way for us to know. Sorry for the confusion. :)

Anyways ... the point is that players that pay money are WAY more valuable to Anet than those that don't, regardless of what percentage of total players those people are. If Anet doesn't follow that money, they can't pay the bills with Players Youtube channel subscribes or their feelings of 'not dead' game.

Remember when bless online failed badly and some youtuber (i forgot his name) recommended Guild wars 2. That person generated more revenue for ANet then most whales could.

LIke I said ... for the average person who doesn't encounter ALL the players in the game, that difference can be made transparent to them with server maintenance. It's academic anyways because it's a polarized example.

And No I don't remember that youtube whatever and we have no idea how much these things impacted the game. Again, that's deflection ... like I said, the example is a fictituous, polarized one.

We'll i agree that its polarizing. In a practical setting i think the assumption that the most invested pay the most is not unreasonable. (Note: im not saying hardcore here, im saying invested). And that group will always be small.

the example was just to show that their are more factors to consider then who pays directly. It was not really deflection though, it was merely pointing out that that the impact someone has on the games revenue is not only what they pay. For example i think that the forum user vayne has generated income by keeping people interested in the game for example. While some cheater/botter might have a negative impact even if they buy items on the gemstore from time to time because people leave because of cheaters.

Right, I believe that's a completely reasonable assumption as well because it falls inline with the law of averages. To be clear, I'm not saying that Anet should target the folks that pay the most. I'm saying they need to target the areas of the game that generate the most revenue, which of course is some portion of the overall population doing those things. That's not only a combination of how much those people spend, but how many people there are. But be assured, this is definitely something Anet can measure. In fact, if I was a business analyst at Anet, it would be one of the least things I would be doing; relating time spent per game element to revenue generated by the players that do those game elements.

The thing is how do you revenue generated by someone like dulfy or Vane for example. These are almost impossible to measure.

I would assume worst case in my business model, which would make it zero. No smart business is going to make their case based on that stream of revenue generation. It's not in their sphere of control and barely in their sphere of influence.

I mean, how do you differentiate customer spend based on those that watched those videos/websites and those that didn't? You can't unless you poll customers or something. Even if you get a number ... you can't differentiate the amount of extra spend because they watch those internet sources. You have to basically guess if you really want to account for it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Obtena.7952 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

Let's give an exaggerated example say you have a game with a split in player base of 60-40. If you just focus on that 60 you will lose 40 percent.Now you can say, well we won't lose 40 their are less then that in those niches and you might be right, but all the small loses accumulate.

You then also get an amount of diminishing returns , their won't be much difference in retention between having 10 storypatches and 9 storypatches in a year. But their will be a big difference in retention between 0 and 1 pvp patch for example.

That ontop of the things maddoctor said.

If the 60 is where all the money comes from ... then I wouldn't care about those 40% that leave. Anet has to follow the money ... this isn't a charity.

Well yes and no,

In my simplified example that might be the case but:

If the leaving of those 40 causes to game to feel way more dead then this could lead to quite a few of the 60 leaving. '

Maybe ... but they would have to actually feel that difference and have that impact their game. How would that happen? Sure, the population has to be above some critical value so servers aren't empty ... that's just a game maintenance issue. Server merges are a common approach to deal with this.

Look at what maddoctor said for this. Losing 40 percent of your players will make a difference to how the game feels, ofcourse their are ways to mitigate that problem.But that doesn't matter in the long run. Imagine being in a guild which slowly empties out, going from 100 people to 60 people will feel different. especially if those where active player before.

IF those 40 are youtubers? So what? Do you think those 60 people are paying money to GW2 because youtubers? I think the most critical impact to losing players is knowledge sharing but in our extreme example is just that ... I think in reality, there will still be enough knowledge sharing to allow players to get things done. Frankly, the youtube thing is a insignificant impact on where the money is for Anet ... that's a player-revenue stream and it's poor excuse for advertising and promotion of the game.

Well minecraft owns its succes largely to youtube, thats almost undeniable at the moment. But the point was not specifically about youtube, its about losing players who contribute as a general information sources. Having the people doing the wiki disspear would do a lot more harm then some random paying players leaving because the wiki getting way worse would result in quite a few paying players leaving.

And yes, there is absolutely a way for Anet to figure out where the money comes from ... how do you think money transactions happen in this game? They charge someone's CC ... they know where that money is and what that player is doing. They can break down by the MINUTE what a player is doing in the game if they wanted to and link that to how much they spend. That can be done for every player.

i'm sorry , i meant their is no way for us to know. Sorry for the confusion. :)

Anyways ... the point is that players that pay money are WAY more valuable to Anet than those that don't, regardless of what percentage of total players those people are. If Anet doesn't follow that money, they can't pay the bills with Players Youtube channel subscribes or their feelings of 'not dead' game.

Remember when bless online failed badly and some youtuber (i forgot his name) recommended Guild wars 2. That person generated more revenue for ANet then most whales could.

LIke I said ... for the average person who doesn't encounter ALL the players in the game, that difference can be made transparent to them with server maintenance. It's academic anyways because it's a polarized example.

And No I don't remember that youtube whatever and we have no idea how much these things impacted the game. Again, that's deflection ... like I said, the example is a fictituous, polarized one.

We'll i agree that its polarizing. In a practical setting i think the assumption that the most invested pay the most is not unreasonable. (Note: im not saying hardcore here, im saying invested). And that group will always be small.

the example was just to show that their are more factors to consider then who pays directly. It was not really deflection though, it was merely pointing out that that the impact someone has on the games revenue is not only what they pay. For example i think that the forum user vayne has generated income by keeping people interested in the game for example. While some cheater/botter might have a negative impact even if they buy items on the gemstore from time to time because people leave because of cheaters.

Right, I believe that's a completely reasonable assumption as well because it falls inline with the law of averages. To be clear, I'm not saying that Anet should target the folks that pay the most. I'm saying they need to target the areas of the game that generate the most revenue, which of course is some portion of the overall population doing those things. That's not only a combination of how much those people spend, but how many people there are. But be assured, this is definitely something Anet can measure. In fact, if I was a business analyst at Anet, it would be one of the least things I would be doing; relating time spent per game element to revenue generated by the players that do those game elements.

The thing is how do you revenue generated by someone like dulfy or Vane for example. These are almost impossible to measure.

I would assume worst case in my business model, which would make it zero. No smart business is going to make their case based on that stream of revenue generation. It's not in their sphere of control and barely in their sphere of influence.

I mean, how do you differentiate customer spend based on those that watched those videos/websites and those that didn't? You can't unless you poll customers or something. Even if you get a number ... you can't differentiate the amount of extra spend because they watch those internet sources. You have to basically guess if you really want to account for it.

This is in my opinion the wrong way to solve the problem, because they will have a substential impact.

Personally I would use something like what runescape just started doing withe their ninja team by having some ambassador of the players who assembles a team to discuss problems. So you have some qualitative and quantitative data.

That on top of some surveys to the general population.

Ofcourse that doesn't answer how to get people who are not invested invested which is also important.

And data is inherently flawed anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Obtena.7952 said:Absolutely. they have to follow the money. even if it's not the majority ... the money keeps the lights on.

Well the latest road map is more inclusive than the previous months and they rehired their lead fractal developer so there is hope that they will let go of pleasing only the majority, after seeing the disaster it brought along. We'll see what the future holds for the game

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Obtena.7952 said:

@yann.1946 said:You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

For a game focused on expansions that's probably true. For a game that is focused on a cash shop though, the majority of the players (in numbers) doesn't necessarily mean the majority in spending. Invested players tend to pay more.

Further, the majority of the players (in numbers) doesn't necessarily mean the majority in activity either. For example, you can have 10000 players that play 1 hour every month and they'd be a majority by numbers but the game will appear mostly dead on a day-to-day basis. On the other hand, having 100 players that play 2-3 hours every day will make the game active, despite those players not being any kind of majority in numbers.

Thinking only about what the majority of the players do in a game is an unhealthy way to go about making a game. Case in point, the majority of accounts of this game have less than 500 AP, meaning they aren't really playing the game much, so what this majority does or doesn't do while in-game is hardly relevant, or important.

Also, we've seen last quarter what happened when they focused on a single part of the playerbase.

Absolutely. they have to follow the money. even if it's not the majority ... the money keeps the lights on.

I really hope they do.Build templates didn't really bring it much money, if we look at Q4 2019. They probably planned them to be top sellers for that quarter. It seems not enough people bought it / actually need build templates for their gameplay.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Raknar.4735 said:I really hope they do.Build templates didn't really bring it much money, if we look at Q4 2019. They probably planned them to be top sellers for that quarter. It seems not enough people bought it / actually need build templates for their gameplay.

That's largely due to the price and how badly they were designed and implemented.All they had to do was use the system from GW1, instead they chose to re-invent the wheel and forgot that wheels are round.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Captain Kuro.8937" said:Strike Missions from the scale of 1-10 (10 being the hardest) , how hard are they ?5 ?

Icebrood Construct has a very low difficulty, easier than fighting story bosses like Balthazar or Mordremoth, easier than all dungeons and all fractals, including story paths and T1 fractals. Basically can be done solo, the only reason to fail soloing it is the timer, it's very strict for a solo player. But with 2 or 3 people it's doable.

Fraenir of Jormag is also very easy as it lacks any party based mechanics, it's of comparable difficulty to easier dungeon/fractal bosses and some story bosses. 10 players is overkill for this one, can be done in a smaller group, like with 5 without problems.

Claw and Voice, is the first "proper" squad content Strike Mission. Unlike the previous ones that can be done with very low number of players this one is easier done with an actual squad. Low tier Fractals (up to T2 maybe T3) and some dungeons is the appropriate difficulty for this one

Boneskinner depends on the version... did they fix it? I haven't done it in a while, but it started stupidly easy, then it get really hard, then I lost count of the patches.

Whisper of Jormag is essentially a lower tier Raid boss. It has proper phases to teach you its mechanics little by little, and at the last 20% it gets really tough to survive.

So I guess Icebrood Construct is 1/2, Fraenir is 2/3, Claw and Voice is 4/5, Boneskinner is ? and Whisper of Jormag is a 8/9Since they have such well defined difficulty progression I'd suggest you start from the easier one (Icebrood Construct) and progress slowly. You can start with a duo and see how it goes.

I'd say Whisper of Jormag is the perfect "easy mode" raid boss. The other strikes are either too easy or just a spamfest of bad mechanics.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.True, it was not the only reason for its death. Still, It was one of the
greatest
reasons for it. In fact, many of the secondary reasons were also a byproduct of that initial tunnelvision and overfocusing on hardcore players.

It was the main reason, hands down. The neglected the rest of the game just to push the hardcore agenda, and obviously, people who weren't hardcore got bored since there was nothing to do. Having a subscription didn't help either, specially among casuals who just had better casual-friendly games out there.

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

And even the semi-hardcore players left when they realized the amount of work needed to unlock the first raid wing.

@TexZero.7910 said:

@Raknar.4735 said:I really hope they do.Build templates didn't really bring it much money, if we look at Q4 2019. They probably planned them to be top sellers for that quarter. It seems not enough people bought it / actually need build templates for their gameplay.

That's largely due to the price and how badly they were designed and implemented.All they had to do was use the system from GW1, instead they chose to re-invent the wheel and forgot that wheels are round.

But why follow the easiest and most efficient solution, when you can waste your time and make people angry? /s

Link to comment
Share on other sites

With out raids, I and most of my guild would only login every three months to progress the story. Raids are the motivation to buy character slots, build tabs, and equipment slots. Alot of assumptions are made on the op and I'm not sure if spend per user can be correlated to new or more casual players as opposed to veteran players. If anything isn't it easier to convince veteran players to spend on a game they have tons of investment in? Yeh I like the gw2 story ,but the raids are something special on their own. Raids are not the place to learn a class. Raids are the place to master team work and coordination.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...