Is there a future for GW2 ?

[Thornwolf.9721]

@battledrone.8315 said:

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@battledrone.8315 said:

@voltaicbore.8012 said:

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

• BDO is $10, often discounted to $5, and has free content releases and sustains from its microtransactions
  quite well
  . Now you can make the argument that BDO is Pay to Win, I won't refute that because it arguably is...but it still muscled GW2 out of the way in MMOs in my opinion in terms of actual player retention.

You've said a bunch of stuff that I agree with in this thread, but the above point is one I

completely agree

with, and it pains me so deeply to observe it.

More so than the other games in your list, BDO is guilty of delivering a vastly inferior player experience, with so many of the hallmarks of the typical Korean money-grubbers we see published all the time. However, the folks who make BDO know what their players want, which is flashy aesthetics and attractive female character models (and to be able to turn server chat into a cesspool of filth and memes without consequences).

I think ultimately what makes BDO capable of retaining players goes back to another point you made earlier, which is the sinking feeling that ANet doesn't care as much about GW2 as it once did. I'm not sure what developer retention is like at Pearl Abyss (the folks who develop BDO), but it's pretty obvious that

someone

over there still has a very strong vision of the game, a wide-ranging dedication to many different systems in the game, and the guts to push improvements to very old systems that many players might have given up on. In contrast, what we see increasingly in Tyria is the dusty corpses of many promising concepts that the devs just let die, and never revisit. So every time there's even a small pause in the trickle of content, players begin to worry that the devs have abandoned yet another form of content, and frankly it's hard to blame people for those fears.

Not saying that BDO is perfect. In particular, they keep pushing UI 'enhancements' that nobody asked for, to a degree that makes me sincerely suspect they have some person with a questionable graphic design degree on their team whose insecurity drives them to pump out work product to justify their job. Indeed, I recently decided to take a 1- to 2-month break from it, because over the past month every time I logged out I realized I felt slightly worse than when I logged in. In contrast, I'm here in GW2 every day, and I don't really need a new content drop to keep me coming back.

All I'm saying is, the player retention and 'passion for their own game' factors that @KryTiKaL.3125 mentioned are things that I've noticed too, and I think those two factors go a very long way in why some other games (like BDO) just 'feel' like they have a more stable/secure future than GW2 does at the moment. It's not that I'm afraid GW2 will spiral into shutdown quickly or anything like that, but there's a much lesser feeling of trust in ANet's ability to steer the ship through stormy waters. I emphasize that it's just a

feeling

, and there's nothing really scientific or empirical about it.

please, BDO has good graphics and combat, but the rest is utter garbage. have fun doing the same "mini-game" over and over, just to unlock new quests.and the story...dear lord. it felt like a monty python sketch without any humor. i bought a couple of skins, and dumped it after a couple of weeks.

For you, sure, but others seem to enjoy it more than enough to where it retains players much more consistently and has a higher active population than GW2 does. You have your opinion, others have theirs, so at least try to be objective about how you perceive a game. For instance, I abhor ESO for a variety of reasons; clunky combat, leveling is slow, questing is monotonous. However it still achieves, arguably, a better PvE experience than GW2 for instance, as well as allowing for a fairly wide range of build variety. Now I'll never go back to playing it for the aforementioned reasons, but there are still things that it does that one should acknowledge as being pros, or at the very least being reasons for why people would play it. With BDO, some people like the grind, they like the constant and everlasting upgrading to their gear and character and also trying out the newer grind areas as well as new classes that release.

Also a big factor with what I believe keeps people playing BDO is the literal constant flow of ingame events whether they have to do with just being logged in or logging in daily for reset for rewards, but there are also events with loot drops from mobs or from fishing, along with the new Season server stuff they've added recently. Makes it kinda worth it a little bit to just constantly be playing to take advantage of those things. Also combat and the visuals I feel are pretty much the biggest factors that keep people around, they clearly can get over the arguably pay to win aspects as well as the grinding because of those things.

Again it isn't perfect, no game is, but clearly its doing something right. Or at least doing something more than ANet is.

one thing i like, is that they have made 2 new classes since launch. but as long as that converstion game is there, i wont return.it may be realistic, but it is also some of the most boring content padding i have ever seen.

I mean, at the very least they are adding something. Granted I think ESO is hot garbage in many ways; But clearly something they are doing is working because its more popular than Guild wars 2. (And thats not all due to brand name, part of it is but a good chunk isn't. Because I loved elder scrolls but I refuse to play ESO.)

@Zok.4956 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:Too many game modes have been left to rot, the balance changes feel like destructive knee jerk reactions and it seems like no one cares/enjoys developing the game.Without their enjoyment and passion, the games content becomes a reflection of their lack of motivation/care.

To me it seems Anet had very ambitous goals to make a game that revolutionaries the MMO(RPG) genre. And they did a lot of things better than in other games. But in the end, Anet missed its own goals with a lot of things and instead on improving on existing game parts/modes/systems they often abandon existing things and start new experiments (which are hit and miss) from scratch.

It also seems, that they once created a great game, but since then they haven't really understood their own strength and customers.

I think there are still many qualified and motivated developers at Anet. But the management of the company lost its clear vision and direction for the game a long time ago.

I believe you're correct, but I dont feel this will change. I think personally they are looking to move on, they want to move on. But they can't because NCsoft won't likely allow it; Which means they are being forced to work on a game/project that they themselves might not have the passion for anymore.

[voltaicbore.8012]

@"Zok.4956" said:

I think there are still many qualified and motivated developers at Anet. But the management of the company lost its clear vision and direction for the game a long time ago.

I don't have much basis for saying it, but I agree. If I had to guess, it might be that ANet takes a more "hey let's be friends and super collaborative/all the other silicon valley hollow corporate talk" approach to management, whereas other studios (particularly Asian ones) are pretty strictly hierarchical. But again, I have no direct knowledge of any of that, it's just based on my observations of how other related companies in both areas of the world seem to work. MMOs of this scale are pretty large projects, and anything of that size tends to require a firm hand on the wheel to keep things moving. I doubt that 'firm hand" describes ANet as a corporate entity.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

@battledrone.8315 said:

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@battledrone.8315 said:

@voltaicbore.8012 said:

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

• BDO is $10, often discounted to $5, and has free content releases and sustains from its microtransactions
  quite well
  . Now you can make the argument that BDO is Pay to Win, I won't refute that because it arguably is...but it still muscled GW2 out of the way in MMOs in my opinion in terms of actual player retention.

You've said a bunch of stuff that I agree with in this thread, but the above point is one I

completely agree

with, and it pains me so deeply to observe it.

More so than the other games in your list, BDO is guilty of delivering a vastly inferior player experience, with so many of the hallmarks of the typical Korean money-grubbers we see published all the time. However, the folks who make BDO know what their players want, which is flashy aesthetics and attractive female character models (and to be able to turn server chat into a cesspool of filth and memes without consequences).

I think ultimately what makes BDO capable of retaining players goes back to another point you made earlier, which is the sinking feeling that ANet doesn't care as much about GW2 as it once did. I'm not sure what developer retention is like at Pearl Abyss (the folks who develop BDO), but it's pretty obvious that

someone

over there still has a very strong vision of the game, a wide-ranging dedication to many different systems in the game, and the guts to push improvements to very old systems that many players might have given up on. In contrast, what we see increasingly in Tyria is the dusty corpses of many promising concepts that the devs just let die, and never revisit. So every time there's even a small pause in the trickle of content, players begin to worry that the devs have abandoned yet another form of content, and frankly it's hard to blame people for those fears.

Not saying that BDO is perfect. In particular, they keep pushing UI 'enhancements' that nobody asked for, to a degree that makes me sincerely suspect they have some person with a questionable graphic design degree on their team whose insecurity drives them to pump out work product to justify their job. Indeed, I recently decided to take a 1- to 2-month break from it, because over the past month every time I logged out I realized I felt slightly worse than when I logged in. In contrast, I'm here in GW2 every day, and I don't really need a new content drop to keep me coming back.

All I'm saying is, the player retention and 'passion for their own game' factors that @KryTiKaL.3125 mentioned are things that I've noticed too, and I think those two factors go a very long way in why some other games (like BDO) just 'feel' like they have a more stable/secure future than GW2 does at the moment. It's not that I'm afraid GW2 will spiral into shutdown quickly or anything like that, but there's a much lesser feeling of trust in ANet's ability to steer the ship through stormy waters. I emphasize that it's just a

feeling

, and there's nothing really scientific or empirical about it.

please, BDO has good graphics and combat, but the rest is utter garbage. have fun doing the same "mini-game" over and over, just to unlock new quests.and the story...dear lord. it felt like a monty python sketch without any humor. i bought a couple of skins, and dumped it after a couple of weeks.

For you, sure, but others seem to enjoy it more than enough to where it retains players much more consistently and has a higher active population than GW2 does. You have your opinion, others have theirs, so at least try to be objective about how you perceive a game. For instance, I abhor ESO for a variety of reasons; clunky combat, leveling is slow, questing is monotonous. However it still achieves, arguably, a better PvE experience than GW2 for instance, as well as allowing for a fairly wide range of build variety. Now I'll never go back to playing it for the aforementioned reasons, but there are still things that it does that one should acknowledge as being pros, or at the very least being reasons for why people would play it. With BDO, some people like the grind, they like the constant and everlasting upgrading to their gear and character and also trying out the newer grind areas as well as new classes that release.

Also a big factor with what I believe keeps people playing BDO is the literal constant flow of ingame events whether they have to do with just being logged in or logging in daily for reset for rewards, but there are also events with loot drops from mobs or from fishing, along with the new Season server stuff they've added recently. Makes it kinda worth it a little bit to just constantly be playing to take advantage of those things. Also combat and the visuals I feel are pretty much the biggest factors that keep people around, they clearly can get over the arguably pay to win aspects as well as the grinding because of those things.

Again it isn't perfect, no game is, but clearly its doing something right. Or at least doing something more than ANet is.

one thing i like, is that they have made 2 new classes since launch. but as long as that converstion game is there, i wont return.it may be realistic, but it is also some of the most boring content padding i have ever seen.

Is this in reference to BDO? If so, they've added far more than 2 new classes to the game. Since it launched in NA/EU in 2016, it has added 11 classes; Musa, Maehwa, Ninja, Kunoichi, Dark Knight, Striker, Mystic, Lahn, Archer, Shai and Guardian.

As for the conversation game, do you mean talking to the NPCs for that "reputation", or as they call it "Amity"? That is not required for anything. It used to be important to get things like Yuria weapons, but that is the far flung past at this point and its mostly just irrelevant.

[knite.1542]

Yeah the game has a future. Probably not a very bright future for wvw, pvp, raids, or fractals. If you aren't finding what you want in the game, get out sooner rather than later. Anet probably won't change the way they do things (based on past experience). The sooner you come to terms with it, the less it hurts.

[kharmin.7683]

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

Is this in reference to BDO? If so, they've added far more than 2 new classes to the game. Since it launched in NA/EU in 2016, it has added 11 classes; Musa, Maehwa, Ninja, Kunoichi, Dark Knight, Striker, Mystic, Lahn, Archer, Shai and Guardian.How many classes were available at launch? How many classes are available now? Sorry, I don't play BDO so I don't know and was curious.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

@kharmin.7683 said:

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

Is this in reference to BDO? If so, they've added far more than 2 new classes to the game. Since it launched in NA/EU in 2016, it has added 11 classes; Musa, Maehwa, Ninja, Kunoichi, Dark Knight, Striker, Mystic, Lahn, Archer, Shai and Guardian.How many classes were available at launch? How many classes are available now? Sorry, I don't play BDO so I don't know and was curious.

On BDO's NA/EU launch there were a total of 8 classes available; Witch, Wizard, Warrior, Valkyrie, Tamer, Berserker, Sorceress and Ranger. Also I forgot one that they added just recently, the Hashashin. So there are a total of 20 classes available on BDO. They've added classes pretty regularly over the course of the last four years that the game has been out in NA/EU.

[kharmin.7683]

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

Is this in reference to BDO? If so, they've added far more than 2 new classes to the game. Since it launched in NA/EU in 2016, it has added 11 classes; Musa, Maehwa, Ninja, Kunoichi, Dark Knight, Striker, Mystic, Lahn, Archer, Shai and Guardian.How many classes were available at launch? How many classes are available now? Sorry, I don't play BDO so I don't know and was curious.

On BDO's NA/EU launch there were a total of 8 classes available; Witch, Wizard, Warrior, Valkyrie, Tamer, Berserker, Sorceress and Ranger. Also I forgot one that they added

just

recently, the Hashashin. So there are a total of 20 classes available on BDO. They've added classes pretty regularly over the course of the last four years that the game has been out in NA/EU.

Thanks.

At GW2 launch, there were Elementalist, Necromancer, Warrior, Engineer, Ranger, Thief, Guardian and Mesmer. That's 8. Then, Revenant came to make the total 9. Now, two elite specializations for each of the 9 classes adds 18 more for a total of 27. Some may argue that elites are not "new" professions; however, when gauged against BDO's number of classes that are available to play it seems to me that GW2 is the same if not better for having more options.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

@kharmin.7683 said:

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

Is this in reference to BDO? If so, they've added far more than 2 new classes to the game. Since it launched in NA/EU in 2016, it has added 11 classes; Musa, Maehwa, Ninja, Kunoichi, Dark Knight, Striker, Mystic, Lahn, Archer, Shai and Guardian.How many classes were available at launch? How many classes are available now? Sorry, I don't play BDO so I don't know and was curious.

On BDO's NA/EU launch there were a total of 8 classes available; Witch, Wizard, Warrior, Valkyrie, Tamer, Berserker, Sorceress and Ranger. Also I forgot one that they added

just

recently, the Hashashin. So there are a total of 20 classes available on BDO. They've added classes pretty regularly over the course of the last four years that the game has been out in NA/EU.

Thanks.

At GW2 launch, there were Elementalist, Necromancer, Warrior, Engineer, Ranger, Thief, Guardian and Mesmer. That's 8. Then, Revenant came to make the total 9. Now, two elite specializations for each of the 9 classes adds 18 more for a total of 27. Some may argue that elites are not "new" professions; however, when gauged against BDO's number of classes that are available to play it seems to me that GW2 is the same if not better for having more options.

Technically sure, they could classify as different classes. Arguably, however, each Elite Spec isn't that different from its core class. Whereas with BDO each class is significantly different from one another. Each class also has "Awakening" weapons which is another weapon set you unlock at level 56 that expands upon playstyle. They also have "Succession" which is also unlocked at level 56 that is an upgrade to the core playstyle of the class. Players are required to choose Awakening or Succession, you can't have both active at the same time; you have to choose one or the other. Using Awakening gives you this other weapon you can swap between with your regular "core" weapon set during combat, so similar to GW2 except it doesn't have nearly as drastic of a cooldown (its about like a second and a half if I'm remembering correctly) and Succession doesn't give you any weapon swapping but it does give you access to upgraded skills, as well as several newer ones to use that the "core" set doesn't have. Just to note, as well, attaining level 56 in BDO is a fairly easy endeavor, the current soft cap level is 62 or 63 I believe.

So for instance, Warrior starts off with Sword and Shield as their weapons, Awakening gives them Greatsword and their Succession provides the "upgraded" form of their Sword and Shield weapon set. Awakening plays differently, and has access to different skills, than Succession and of course vice versa. So if we're going by this logic that you're using for GW2, each BDO class has two differing "Specializations" that they can choose from which turns 20 classes into 40. By your logic.

Also I'm curious, and I don't mean this to be in any way combative or antagonizing its just an honest question, what other MMORPGs have you played? I sometimes find it interesting to see what other peoples MMO experience is to maybe get a better gauge of their perspective.

[Tazer.2157]

It depends. There is no vertical progression in this game, so the devs have to depend on creating new content to keep players interested. An end game of skin collection is not interesting universally, some enjoy it, others don’t. Competitive modes needs more updates such as maps and modes. GW2 is great for new players, but I don’t think it can retain many of those players with their current design. I’m one of those people who see no reason to grind events just for a shiny new skin. I want unique weapons, armor and better masteries. There are people content with the skin drops and they will keep on playing. In the end it comes down to the population of the latter.