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Bobby Stein (dev) comment on Raid


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I don't know where you get that certainty, seeing as we already know 5 devs were not enough for a 4-month schedule. We know that for w1, five devs worked full time for 5 months. We also know that they were not the only people that worked on w1 (it's just others were not working on it fulltime) and that 5 months was not the full time required for that wing (because there was also stuff those 5 devs were not doing, like QC, sound, dialogues, etc - we know from things they mentioned about w7 that this stuff could take as much as an additional month or two on top of all the previous work). So, they could keep the release schedule at around 6-7 months maybe. If they could still get supported with work of devs from the other teams. Teams that in that time ended up doing other stuff, and were too busy to keep lending them a hand.

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@"Astralporing.1957" said:I don't know where you get that certainty, seeing as we already know 5 devs were not enough for a 4-month schedule.

Actually we do know that 5-6 developers working full time released a Raid wing in 4 months.

For Salvation Pass they only had 5-6 people working on it full time for 4 months, and they mostly worked on 2 raid releases

You can check my post earlier in the thread with links on the subject, now where you get the "we already know" is anyone's guess because developers say the opposite.https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1288635/#Comment_1288635

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For example, with Salvation Pass, we had only about 5-6 people working on it full time for 4 months. A few others assisted with their time for a week here, or a month there, plus additional people helped when it came time for reviews. And many of those full time people work on 2 raid releases simultaneously (Bobby worked on the scripts at the same time for both releases).He did not say here that doing the raid took 4 months. He said that 5-6 devs worked on it full time for 4 months. He also said that it was being done by more people than those 5-6.

Notice that all this doesn't mean that 5-6 people are enough to make a wing, or that those 4 months was the whole of the time needed for it. In fact, from some things they mentioned elsewhere, we do know that after the raid team is done, there are still things that need to be dealt with before wing is ready for the delivery (the "reviews" - probably meaning final phases of QA, being one thing. Voicing the whole thing being another).

I mean, we know that the work on w1 started while HoT was still being worked on. It's obvious, seeing as it was released only 1 month after HoT launch. In this quote it is also mentioned that at least some of the work was being done on more than one wing at a time. So, at least some of the work on w2 should have been done before we saw Spirit Vale - or even before HoT launch. And yet Salvation Pass released full 4 months after w1. It should be rather obvious, then, that the actual, full work took longer than those 4 months mentioned in the dev quote.

But i have seen that quote misrepresented in so many different ways till now that i'm not even surprised by it happening again anymore.

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The one thing you need to come to terms with while playing this game is that they seem to entirely lack (or at least refuse to display) any long term strategies. Content and even entire modes are picked up and abandoned or put on a long hiatus time and time again. It has always been rather impossible to know where your beloved game will be two or three years from now.People start pointing fingers all over the place to blame their fellow players as soon as those players happen to enjoy content they do not enjoy themselves. I am pretty sure all of us veteran players have felt like ArenaNet pretty much abandoned us and our part of the community at some point in the past.

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@"Astralporing.1957" said:

For example, with Salvation Pass, we had only about 5-6 people working on it full time for 4 months. A few others assisted with their time for a week here, or a month there, plus additional people helped when it came time for reviews. And many of those full time people work on 2 raid releases simultaneously (Bobby worked on the scripts at the same time for both releases).He did not say here that doing the raid took 4 months. He said that 5-6 devs worked on it full time for 4 months. He also said that it was being done by
more
people than those 5-6.

Notice that all this doesn't mean that 5-6 people are enough to make a wing, or that those 4 months was the whole of the time needed for it. In fact, from some things they mentioned elsewhere, we do know that after the raid team is done, there are still things that need to be dealt with before wing is ready for the delivery (the "reviews" - probably meaning final phases of QA, being one thing. Voicing the whole thing being another).

I mean, we know that the work on w1 started while HoT was still being worked on. It's obvious, seeing as it was released only 1 month after HoT launch. In this quote it is also mentioned that at least some of the work was being done on more than one wing at a time. So, at least some of the work on w2 should have been done before we saw Spirit Vale - or even before HoT launch. And yet Salvation Pass released full 4 months after w1. It should be rather obvious, then, that the actual, full work took longer than those 4 months mentioned in the dev quote.

But i have seen that quote misrepresented in so many different ways till now that i'm not even surprised by it happening again anymore.

I'm not misinterpreting the quote. The time needed to create a Raid by the Raid team is given. Obviously the Raid team doesn't cover everything required to complete a Raid wing, they have no voice actors, no weapon and armor skin makers, no music composer, so they had to use resources from other departments to finish it. That said, I can already think of multiple ways to solve that problem, if those external factors cause the raid release to schedule to DOUBLE (from 4 months to 9 months) then they should've found ways to mitigate their effect.

If VA is an issue, have less VA in the Raid. If armor skins are the issue then put them with question marks, like the Legendary Armor collection items, and add them at a later time. Give the instance to guilds for testing, remember guilds used to test Raids, BEFORE VA and skin rewards are complete, their job is to test the gameplay and mechanics anyway. In the end the Raid team could've created multiple Raid wings and put them in the pipeline to be fleshed out with VA and skins at a later time, the team working on Wing 7, while Wing 6 VA is being completed and Wing 5 has some final skin adjustments before it's officially released. And of course solve the by far biggest management mistake of Raid releases: combining them with Episode releases. That was by far the dumbest decision of them all.

All ways to speed up the process considerably and cost very little in terms of resources, just better managed. But we didn't see anything happening and the reason is simple, once Forsaken Thicket was completed the "Raid team" didn't exist anymore as developers focused on Raids, they were moved to work on the Living World and the Expansion instead, then moved to work on Fractals as well, in other words they spread them all over the place like butter on a loaf of bread. The summary is that the team working properly could've created a LOT of Raid wings and then simply wait for them to be further fleshed out and released when completed. It's unreasonable to double the release cadence of something due to voice acting, and not do anything to solve that, it wasn't even hard.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:I'm not misinterpreting the quote. The time needed to create a Raid by the Raid team is given.No, nowhere in that quote it is said that it is all the time needed to create a Raid. You added that completely on your own.

It's all back again to people like you having more expectations about Raids than Anet was ever willing to fulfill. Apparently they didn't think raids were popular enough to warrant its own dedicated team - especially when they needed a team from fractals as well. You may keep dancing around that point, trying to make it somehow go away, but it remains - in Anet's eyes raids simply were never important/popular enough to warrant the kind of development raiders wanted for them. It's just that Raiders always kept overestimating their importance, and so were slow to notice that.

BTW, about you (again) claiming that combining raid releases with LS chapters somehow slowed their whole development cycle. It didn't. While it is true, that it might have delayed some individual wing, the overall speed of development didn't change because of it. At some point we even heard that clearly - that while a raid wing or fractal might have been waiting for the next LS chapter, that delay didn't affect the development schedule at all - all it meant that they were already working on the next instanced content before we even saw the current one.

But of course we've argued about that very point several times already.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:I'm not misinterpreting the quote. The time needed to create a Raid by the Raid team is given.No, nowhere in that quote it is said that it is all the time needed to create a Raid. You added that completely on your own.

It is said here:

For example, with Salvation Pass, we had only about 5-6 people working on it full time for 4 months.

5-6 developers working full time on it for 4 months was enough to finish it. Not to mention

And many of those full time people work on 2 raid releases simultaneously

which means they could've made it way faster if they weren't working on 2 releases simultaneously.\

And to repeat one more time: this is what was required by the Raid team, not any other teams that might be needed to complete a Raid, like VA, music, sound, weapons and armor design and so on. But as I said, if THOSE were the problem, they could find solutions to bypass them.

It's all back again to people like you having more expectations about Raids than Anet was ever willing to fulfill.

My expectations were of a steady release schedule of about 5-6 months for a Raid, depending on its size, a very reasonable time frame given the data they've given us about Raids so far. Anet wasn't going to fulfill something like that as long as their other 215+ developers needed the help of the 5 developers of the Raid team to keep the LW going. For what reason they were so badly needed is anyone's guess and speculation, but that was what killed the Raid release cadence

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@Astralporing.1957 said:BTW, about you (again) claiming that combining raid releases with LS chapters somehow slowed their whole development cycle. It didn't. While it is true, that it might have delayed some individual wing, the overall speed of development didn't change because of it. At some point we even heard that clearly - that while a raid wing or fractal might have been waiting for the next LS chapter, that delay didn't affect the development schedule at all - all it meant that they were already working on the next instanced content before we even saw the current one.

Combining raid releases with LS chapters did slow their development cycle as instead of releasing them when ready, they had to wait for an episode to be available to release it. All it meant was the Raid developers were busy working on non-Raid projects in the time between Raid releases, something that wouldn't happen if Raids didn't have to be released together with Episodes. Which brings us to the initial point of why they needed the help of the Raid team in the first place, what was so wrong with the rest of their developers, or so good about the Raid team developers?

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:I'm not misinterpreting the quote. The time needed to create a Raid by the Raid team is given.No, nowhere in that quote it is said that it is all the time needed to create a Raid. You added that completely on your own.

It is said here:

For example, with Salvation Pass, we had only about 5-6 people working on it full time for 4 months.

5-6 developers working full time on it for 4 months was enough to finish it.No, it was
required
to finish it. But it was not
enough
, which is even mentioned in the whole quote further on, where it is brought up that there were more people contributing. You don't know how much work those other people did, how important that was for said wing development, and how much time it added, because it wasn't mentioned. You just chose to assume all of it had zero impact (which is almost certainly
not
a case) because it fit your preconceptions better.

Not to mention

And many of those full time people work on 2 raid releases simultaneously

which means they could've made it way faster if they weren't working on 2 releases simultaneously.\Not necessarily. Not every dev work can be scaled linearly. Yes, perhaps a specific dev might have made his/her work much faster, but if there was even one project in pipeline that couldn't be accelerated such, the overall development time would end up being unaffected. Basically, the whole speed still depends on what is the
slowest
(or requires most effort) to make. Yes, that might mean that some devs might end up with free time, but unless they can directly help with that slowest work (which often
isn't
the case - someone doing scripts for the encounters is not necessarily able to help out with work on graphics assets, for example) it's not going to help much at all. Sure, they can work on the second project in the line already, but that one will
also
be held down with the same thing that was limiting the schedule of the first one.

And to repeat one more time: this is what was required by the Raid team, not any other teams that might be needed to complete a Raid, like VA, music, sound, weapons and armor design and so on. But as I said, if THOSE were the problem, they could find solutions to bypass them.Maybe they couldn't. Or they really needed the devs elsewhere and never planned on them working on raids fulltime on a permanent basis.

Remember, that at the time raid development started, Anet was still running in a highly inefficient mode where they weren't really able to split their work too much (they weren't able to work on an expansion and LS at the same time, for example). The changes to internal structure happened around the HoTfix patch in April 2016, where they moved a lot of devs to a separate expansion team, created a dedicated LS team, and moved some key devs whose work and expertise was needed in many projecs to core team (and i'm quite sure at least some of the devs that worked on raids before ended up in that core team). Stronghold of the Faithful was released in June 2016, so it might have been only slightly affected by those changes, but any future releases were affected by it fulltime.

It's all back again to people like you having more expectations about Raids than Anet was
ever
willing to fulfill.

My expectations were of a steady release schedule of about 5-6 months for a Raid, depending on its size, a very reasonable time frame given the data they've given us about Raids so far. Anet wasn't going to fulfill something like that as long as their other 215+ developers needed the help of the 5 developers of the Raid team to keep the LW going. For what reason they were so badly needed is anyone's guess and speculation, but that was what killed the Raid release cadenceFirst, it wasn't "other 215 devs" because 70 of them were working on PoF, not LS. And of those 145 devs remaining not everyone worked on LS either. Second, it, again, wasn;t just 5 raid devs, because raids still needed a lot of work from people from the core team. Which might have been required in other projects as well. Third, while hiring a full additional team might have solved that problem, apparetly Anet decided that Raids didn't warrant that kind of extra investment (5-10 devs with some key and desirable kind of specialization and experience doesn't really come cheap, you know).

(and, of course, there's the negative impact on everything coming from those other, secret and unnamed projects draining resources off of everything GW2 except for gemshop)

Remember, that in the end it still was treated a lot better than, say, WvW or SPvP, so raiders really have no ground to complain. It's just that for a while they thought they were an apple of Anet's eye. And then didn't want to accept the reality when it turned out it wasn't really so.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:BTW, about you (again) claiming that combining raid releases with LS chapters somehow slowed their whole development cycle. It didn't. While it is true, that it might have delayed some individual wing, the overall speed of development didn't change because of it. At some point we even heard that clearly - that while a raid wing or fractal might have been waiting for the next LS chapter, that delay didn't affect the development schedule at all - all it meant that they were already working on the next instanced content before we even saw the current one.

Combining raid releases with LS chapters did slow their development cycle as instead of releasing them when ready, they had to wait for an episode to be available to release it. All it meant was the Raid developers were busy working on non-Raid projects in the time between Raid releases, something that wouldn't happen if Raids didn't have to be released together with Episodes.They already mentioned at some point that waiting for LS did not mean they were sitting on their behind and doing nothing, but were just working on the next project in the line already. If they were working on raid-unrelated projects, that, by itself, was because those other projects needed that. Not due to the LS release cadence. So, again, while attaching release schedule to LS cadence might have delayed some individual wings, there's absolutely no sign that it slowed the development cycle at all. And at least some signs that it
didn't
.

(hint: LS release cadence was actually much faster than they were able to release raid wings, if you haven't noticed. They were even unable to keep up with their planned "one wing/one fractal per other LS chapter" schedule, because raid development took too long to be able to release them every other chapter)

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@"Astralporing.1957" said:No, it was required to finish it. But it was not enough, which is even mentioned in the whole quote further on, where it is brought up that there were more people contributing. You don't know how much work those other people did, how important that was for said wing development, and how much time it added, because it wasn't mentioned. You just chose to assume all of it had zero impact (which is almost certainly not a case) because it fit your preconceptions better.

I already addressed the other people required. Where do they say that the others developers had a huge impact on the development of the Raid? There is a difference between other developers adding time and DOUBLING that time. The quote was very clear, 4 months for 5-6 people to finish it, you misinterpreting it and using it as something entirely different is doing nobody a favor.

Not necessarily. Not every dev work can be scaled linearly. Yes, perhaps a specific dev might have made his/her work much faster, but if there was even one project in pipeline that couldn't be accelerated such, the overall development time would end up being unaffected. Basically, the whole speed still depends on what is the slowest (or requires most effort) to make. Yes, that might mean that some devs might end up with free time, but unless they can directly help with that slowest work (which often isn't the case - someone doing scripts for the encounters is not necessarily able to help out with work on graphics assets, for example) it's not going to help much at all. Sure, they can work on the second project in the line already, but that one will also be held down with the same thing that was limiting the schedule of the first one.

Working on projects simultaneously means they were working on both projects at the same time, giving developer time on both at the same time. On the other hand, it also meant some of the developers had time extra to work on a different project, meaning what I proposed, to have Raid wings ready mechanic wise, and then flesh them out with VA, music and rewards later down the line would certainly work very well. Give Raid wings to guilds to test them while they aren't 100% complete.

Maybe they couldn't. Or they really needed the devs elsewhere and never planned on them working on raids fulltime on a permanent basis.

You don't create a team and advertise said team publicly, to then destroy that team and move its developers to other projects, just a few months later. It was the plan to have a team working full time on Raids, but plans change.

First, it wasn't "other 215 devs" because 70 of them were working on PoF, not LS. And of those 145 devs remaining not everyone worked on LS either. Second, it, again, wasn;t just 5 raid devs, because raids still needed a lot of work from people from the core team. Which might have been required in other projects as well. Third, while hiring a full additional team might have solved that problem, apparetly Anet decided that Raids didn't warrant that kind of extra investment.

First, that still leaves us with a lot of developers. But perhaps the problem was the amount of non-developers in the team, like artists that create gem store items. Maybe that small number of Raid developers was a significant proportion of actual developers in the company. But that's also a management mistake.Second, the developers from other teams required are irrelevant as there are many many ways to mitigate their required work. It was a conscious decision to use the other developers as much as they did, and it could've been avoided. And still, creating a Raid and keeping it to be fleshed out later on, was another option that could be used.Third, no Anet apparently decided that the rest of their developers weren't enough for the release cadence of the LW they had planned. I wonder how much faster LW releases benefit the game, because from what I see, they don't, slower releases tend to be better received. So it was a plan that didn't succeed in the end.

Remember, that in the end it still was treated a lot better than, say, WvW or SPvP, so raiders really have no ground to complain. It's just that for a while they thought they were an apple of Anet's eye.

sPVP got a lot of attention during HOT, they even had sponsored tournaments (with real cash prizes). They added a new game mode, they created all the infrastructure for monthly and weekly tournaments. WVW yes it was mostly neglected during HOT.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:BTW, about you (again) claiming that combining raid releases with LS chapters somehow slowed their whole development cycle. It didn't. While it is true, that it might have delayed some individual wing, the overall speed of development didn't change because of it. At some point we even heard that clearly - that while a raid wing or fractal might have been waiting for the next LS chapter, that delay didn't affect the development schedule at all - all it meant that they were already working on the next instanced content before we even saw the current one.

Combining raid releases with LS chapters did slow their development cycle as instead of releasing them when ready, they had to wait for an episode to be available to release it. All it meant was the Raid developers were busy working on non-Raid projects in the time between Raid releases, something that wouldn't happen if Raids didn't have to be released together with Episodes.They already mentioned at some point that waiting for LS did not mean they were sitting on their behind and doing nothing, but were just working on the next project in the line already. If they were working on raid-unrelated projects, that, by itself, was because those other projects needed that. Not due to the LS release cadence. So, again, while attaching release schedule to LS cadence might have delayed some individual wings, there's absolutely no sign that it slowed the development cycle at all. And at least some signs that it
didn't
.

I never said they were doing nothing. They were working on unrelated projects instead, the LS release cadence gave them the opportunity, the window, to work on those unrelated projects, instead of working on their area. If their help was absolutely needed remains my big question, why were these people so badly needed. But I guess we won't have an answer to that

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@Astralporing.1957 said:Remember, that in the end it still was treated a lot better than, say, WvW or SPvP, so raiders really have no ground to complain. It's just that for a while they thought they were an apple of Anet's eye. And then didn't want to accept the reality when it turned out it wasn't really so.

We'll that's not completely true. Some gamemodes being worse of is not an excuse to not complain.

And to both you and @maddoctor.2738. You're both just making assumptions what could or could not be done. And are clouded by confirmation biases for your own opinion. It's probably better to just let it go. :)

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@Astralporing.1957@maddoctor.2738

I think you are both right, and both wrong. You are arguing as though there were sensible and reasonable decisions in favor of GW2 made between raid content and open world content, when in reality it probably was between this game and another game. Projects were cancelled which were unrelated to GW2 which took up developer resources. We know that there was a time when it wasn't assured that there would be any story beyond Season 4. At some point, there was a possibility that the game as a whole would have been discontinued. That basically means that everything, even the "successful" areas of the game were not successful enough. The fact that NCSoft intervened, or even how they intervened was not a factor at that time.

To now argue which content was deemed worthy supporting and which not, is like arguing over what came first: the chicken or the egg.

Obviously raid content was not delivered as promised, but those resources did not go to other GW2 content. They went to completely different projects. Yes, the raid community has suffered due to that unkept promise or expectation. I'd even go further and argue that the biggest issue is that a lot of resources and work goes into aspects of this game without guaranteed return. Other MMOs with similar approach charge players on a regular basis (not via subscriptions, but by locking players out of desired new endgame content). There is a reason that GW2 always comes up as the best value per $ by far within the genre. That's not something beneficial if the studio can't maintain it's staff payed, the owner happy and the future secured.

I've made my position know on this: I don't believe the game can or will succeed without a hardcore crowd. Open world content, even an expansion which hopefully will return players, will not keep the revenue up or players engaged enough to maintain this game. We'll soon have the quarterly results for the 2nd quarter of 2020 after very bleak 2019 and Q1 2020.

The Spvp community has been starved, the WvW community has been starved, the PvE raid community has been starved, even the basic instanced content players have been starved (hello almost 2 years until new fractal).

As far as raid development, that ship has sailed. The NA raiding scene is near non existent as far as I know, EU is heading there but barely alive still. Releasing a new wing even tomorrow would simply prolong the suffering. Strikes have shown how useless "easy" raid content is to get players raid ready. Players either are willing to engage with others and put in the work, or they are not. Those who are not willing simply scream for the loot, always have. If the developers want to put in the work to release "easy mode raids", go ahead and waste the resources there. At least that way the assets will see some use and given how there are no resources devoted to raid development there is no loss on that front. The incompetent players will still not see a transition to normal raids.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:Obviously raid content was not delivered as promised, but those resources did not go to other GW2 content.

Well we don't know exactly when they started working on the non-GW2 projects. The team was vastly expanded -after- Path of Fire, reached nearly 500 employees from less than 250, so I always assumed that work on those projects started with the release of Path of Fire or shortly afterwards. This leaves us with the duration of S3, which is the era me and Astral are having the argument about. But I guess it's pointless ancient history at this point

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I put my 2 copper in if you care to read, we must show support for raids and make them more accessible.

First off, don't get triggered that someone twisted your words, people do that for any dev in any game all the time and also claim false promises etc.. don't let it bother you, keep communicating.

I love raids because 1) they're epic , plain and simple. 2) They finally take advantage of the games combat system and went beyond auto attacking. 3) They introduced proper roles, trinity is NOT a bad thing specially if its accessible, look at ESO or GW1.

No offense, but ZoS succeeded completely where you guys failed completely in the "play how you want" department, because you dropped trinity. Raids changed this, and you can even see roles in strikes now, which feels important.

4) Its a fight in a controlled non-zerg environment, aka not open world so it feels 10x better already than any other content aside from fracs which are also too easy and limited to 5man.

And last but not least 5) They are FUN and not boring!

PS: instead of using resources on strikes (unless you want to design them along side raids) I believe you need to introduce an easier difficulty for raids. Don't let your content go to waste or try to push non-raiders in, if you get them an ez mode they will try it. This is extremely successful in WoW.

Consider an instance finder queue, which would massively boost dungeon and fractal participation while removing the anxiety (for introverts) of having to make a group.

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@Rednik.3809 said:Good riddance. If gamemode failing to appeal to broad audience, it is a waste of developers time, regardless of how many developers were assigned. WoW and FFXIV raids managed to adapt and succeded, GW2 ones isn't.

That's actually not true at all. And probably the biggest fallacy that gets used on the fora.

What a game mode must do is help keep the playerbase engaged.For exampleAssume for simplicity that you know that 10% of the players would leave by not adding a specific game mode. Presume that the remaining 90 are split 1% hates it and 89% does not care. Than adding this game mode would have value although it has no broad appeal.

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@yann.1946 said:

@Rednik.3809 said:Good riddance. If gamemode failing to appeal to broad audience, it is a waste of developers time, regardless of how many developers were assigned. WoW and FFXIV raids managed to adapt and succeded, GW2 ones isn't.

That's actually not true at all. And probably the biggest fallacy that gets used on the fora.True, that's way oversimplified, to the point it indeed becomes a fallacy. It's not (and never was) about gamemode not appealing to a broad audience. It's about gamemode appealing to an audience that is way too low in proportion to resources needed to sustain said gamemode. And that
is
a problem. It's all about gain per effort ratio.

Assume for simplicity that you know that 10% of the players would leave by not adding a specific game mode. Presume that the remaining 90 are split 1% hates it and 89% does not care. Than adding this game mode would have value although it has no broad appeal.That again is oversimplification. In the end, you don't add a new content in vacuum. I mean, it may be that 89% players do not care about adding such a gamemode. But if, in order to sustain that gamemode, you would need to shift the resources off from the content they like (or in any way affect the things they like), then suddenly you may find that those players are no longer as neutral as before.

And it's even a bit more wider than the gain per effort factor i mentioned before. A good example was the Envoy armor set - there were quite a number of players that, while not really caring about raids or their inclusion in the game at all, suddenly got angry due to PvE legendary armor getting raid-locked.

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@yann.1946 said:Assume for simplicity that you know that 10% of the players would leave by not adding a specific game mode. Presume that the remaining 90 are split 1% hates it and 89% does not care. Than adding this game mode would have value although it has no broad appeal.Except that I'm hardly can imagine that even a significant part of the active raiding population would leave because there is no new raids anymore.

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@"Astralporing.1957" said:True, that's way oversimplified, to the point it indeed becomes a fallacy. It's not (and never was) about gamemode not appealing to a broad audience. It's about gamemode appealing to an audience that is way too low in proportion to resources needed to sustain said gamemode. And that is a problem. It's all about gain per effort ratio.

"Game mode" is one way to look at it, but this only takes into account "those that Raid" vs "those that don't Raid". Why not make a comparison between actual content?

How many players enjoy/play the Beetle race or the Skyscale adventure in Grothmar Valley?Or even better, how many even have a Beetle or a Skyscale?How many players enjoy/play Whisper of Jormag or even Shiverpeak Pass Strike Mission?How many players enjoy/play the Light Puzzles in Bjora Marches? Or the Gauntlet of Khan Ur in Grothmar Valley?How many players got the complete map meta achievement of any given Living World Episode?

There are way too many things to compare the "Audience" of Raids with, but it appears that the comparisons around the forums only between "those that Raid" vs "those that don't Raid", as if the latter do absolutely everything else in the game, which is a fallacy. Raids got cancelled because of the "small audience" they attract, I'd like a comparison between the audience of Raids and the audience of any of the above (and more)

But if, in order to sustain that gamemode, you would need to shift the resources off from the content they like

What's the "content they like" is the big question

@Rednik.3809 said:If gamemode failing to appeal to broad audience, it is a waste of developers time, regardless of how many developers were assigned.

Yes because all those I mentioned above appeal to such a broad audience, it's staggering!

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Rednik.3809 said:Good riddance. If gamemode failing to appeal to broad audience, it is a waste of developers time, regardless of how many developers were assigned. WoW and FFXIV raids managed to adapt and succeded, GW2 ones isn't.

That's actually not true at all. And probably the biggest fallacy that gets used on the fora.True, that's way oversimplified, to the point it indeed becomes a fallacy. It's not (and never was) about gamemode not appealing to a broad audience. It's about gamemode appealing to an audience that is way too low in proportion to resources needed to sustain said gamemode. And that
is
a problem. It's all about gain per effort ratio.

Edit:Sort of but not completely, otherwise you could argue the ls should disappear . Its about saturation levels of content (whats enough of a contenttype to keep people playing/happy without overinvesting and its about gains in playernumbers by introducing things in the game.

Assume for simplicity that you know that 10% of the players would leave by not adding a specific game mode. Presume that the remaining 90 are split 1% hates it and 89% does not care. Than adding this game mode would have value although it has no broad appeal.That again is oversimplification. In the end, you don't add a new content in vacuum. I mean, it may be that 89% players do not care about adding such a gamemode. But if, in order to sustain that gamemode, you would need to shift the resources off from the content they like (or in any way affect the things they like), then suddenly you may find that those players are no longer as neutral as before.

And it's even a bit more wider than the gain per effort factor i mentioned before. A good example was the Envoy armor set - there were quite a number of players that, while not really caring about raids or their inclusion in the game at all, suddenly got angry due to PvE legendary armor getting raid-locked.

Well yes my example was an oversimplification, but is was mostly used to show that in some cases things that have no broad appeal can be better investmenst then those that are. (the game doesn't consist out of two groups after all and all these groups are intertwinged). The hardest part in real life is knowing the numbers.

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@Rednik.3809 said:

@yann.1946 said:Assume for simplicity that you know that 10% of the players would leave by not adding a specific game mode. Presume that the remaining 90 are split 1% hates it and 89% does not care. Than adding this game mode would have value although it has no broad appeal.Except that I'm hardly can imagine that even a significant part of the active raiding population would leave because there is no new raids anymore.

Then i guess you've not been paying attention? Lots of guilds left because of the perceived drought for example.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:True, that's way oversimplified, to the point it indeed becomes a fallacy. It's not (and never was) about gamemode not appealing to a broad audience. It's about gamemode appealing to an audience that is way too low in proportion to resources needed to sustain said gamemode. And that
is
a problem. It's all about gain per effort ratio.

"Game mode" is one way to look at it, but this only takes into account "those that Raid" vs "those that don't Raid". Why not make a comparison between actual content?

How many players enjoy/play the Beetle race or the Skyscale adventure in Grothmar Valley?Or even better, how many even have a Beetle or a Skyscale?How many players enjoy/play Whisper of Jormag or even Shiverpeak Pass Strike Mission?How many players enjoy/play the Light Puzzles in Bjora Marches? Or the Gauntlet of Khan Ur in Grothmar Valley?How many players got the complete map meta achievement of any given Living World Episode?

There are way too many things to compare the "Audience" of Raids with, but it appears that the comparisons around the forums only between "those that Raid" vs "those that don't Raid", as if the latter do absolutely everything else in the game, which is a fallacy. Raids got cancelled because of the "small audience" they attract, I'd like a comparison between the audience of Raids and the audience of any of the above (and more)

But if, in order to sustain that gamemode, you would need to shift the resources off from the content they like

What's the "content they like" is the big question

@Rednik.3809 said:If gamemode failing to appeal to broad audience, it is a waste of developers time, regardless of how many developers were assigned.

Yes because all those I mentioned above appeal to such a broad audience, it's staggering!

This does explain what i was trying to way better. I completely agree. :)

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