Why ppl say GW2 is dead? :|

[Virdo.1540]

@"LilSpark.4567" said:Hello guys, i have a questions, i am new in the game, i play this game from 10 days and i play this game with the dlcs and my friends and other ppl tell me i waste time to play gw2 bcs is a dead game. Is that true?

tbh gw2 is one of the most alive games of all, with steadily growing playerbase.

The only reason why ppl are saying it is because of the way too high amount of content. For example one map, that came out years ago and isnt really profitable to farm will most likely be less full - empty. In this case people are taking the term "dead game". So dont worry about gw2 being dead at all.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@"Sir Alymer.3406" said:

3. Raids have been put on indefinite hiatus.
4. Strikes have gone the way of Raids.
5. Fractals got one update in nearly two years.
6. Dungeons are dead.This ignoring that the reason why all of this happened was because the majority of the playerbase didn't like/play them. So the fact Anet isn't making content most people didn't like isn't a sign of a dead game. Its a sign that they stopping making things that weren't liked.

Ah yes. No one liked strikes. Zero people enjoyed fractals. No one loved dungeons. HoT was trash and no one plays those maps. Zero people do Triple Trouble. No one figured out Tequatl after the rework. Everyone hated adventures wholesale and not the janky mechanics and uber-tight timers for gold attached to them. You ever stop to think that, maybe, people "enjoy" open world because it's the only thing that gets consistent updates? It's the only mode that has any sort of constant support. The rest are on life support.

[battledrone.8315]

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@"Sir Alymer.3406" said:

3. Raids have been put on indefinite hiatus.
4. Strikes have gone the way of Raids.
5. Fractals got one update in nearly two years.
6. Dungeons are dead.This ignoring that the reason why all of this happened was because the majority of the playerbase didn't like/play them. So the fact Anet isn't making content most people didn't like isn't a sign of a dead game. Its a sign that they stopping making things that weren't liked.

but they only stopped after they had spent many manhours on it, so now all those resources are tied up in unpopular content.manhours they are sorely lacking now to make a new xpac. GW2 had HUGE pontential, but they squandered it

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

@battledrone.8315 said:manhours they are sorely lacking now to make a new xpac. GW2 had HUGE pontential, but they squandered itWhat? All of that content, sans strikes, had ended long before they started making the new xpack. So them making it has no effect on the Xpack. Not to mention, by the time the xpack comes out it will be like a year and a half after its first announcement, which is generally how long xpacks take for most MMOs.

@"Sir Alymer.3406" said:Ah yes. No one liked strikes. Zero people enjoyed fractals. No one loved dungeons. HoT was trash and no one plays those maps. Zero people do Triple Trouble. No one figured out Tequatl after the rework. Everyone hated adventures wholesale and not the janky mechanics and uber-tight timers for gold attached to them. You ever stop to think that, maybe, people "enjoy" open world because it's the only thing that gets consistent updates? It's the only mode that has any sort of constant support. The rest are on life support.I said most, not all.And have you ever considered people don't enjoy dungeons, raids, fractals, and strikes, because they simply don't care for them, and that they don't play them because they don't want to and not because new ones aren't being added all the time?

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

whoops, meant to edit my previous post not quote it

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@battledrone.8315 said:manhours they are sorely lacking now to make a new xpac. GW2 had HUGE pontential, but they squandered itWhat? All of that content, sans strikes, had ended long before they started making the new xpack. So them making it has no effect on the Xpack. Not to mention, by the time the xpack comes out it will be like a year and a half after its first announcement, which is generally how long xpacks take for most MMOs.

@"Sir Alymer.3406" said:Ah yes. No one liked strikes. Zero people enjoyed fractals. No one loved dungeons. HoT was trash and no one plays those maps. Zero people do Triple Trouble. No one figured out Tequatl after the rework. Everyone hated adventures wholesale and not the janky mechanics and uber-tight timers for gold attached to them. You ever stop to think that, maybe, people "enjoy" open world because it's the only thing that gets consistent updates? It's the only mode that has any sort of constant support. The rest are on life support.I said most, not all.And have you ever considered people don't enjoy dungeons, raids, fractals, and strikes, because they simply don't care for them, and that they don't play them because they don't want to and not because new ones aren't being added all the time?

Yeah, I have, but that doesn't stop the fact that every day, in 2012, there were a ton of people in front of every dungeon entrance, trying to snag a group to go through and get loot. Then, when fractals were new, there were tons of groups for those as well with people trying to get the new shiny ascended rings. Same with raids and strikes when those came out. This is a theme park MMO. There's supposed to be content for everyone. Right now, the rides are old and there aren't any new rides coming in outside of the kiddie area (Open world) which leaves the ones who want those extreme thrills to leave. We also can't trust ANet's metrics as they've shown in the past that they consider anyone who enters WvW for a few hours to get a reward track done and then never touches it again as a WvW player. That's like considering someone getting a single full clear of raids and never touching them again as a raider or someone who plays 1 hour a month as a frequent player. This is on top of ANet actually hard nerfing dungeons back when HoT launched to kill them off because they were so popular back in the day and they wanted people to play the new content in the coming months.

Players didn't kill this content with disinterest. ANet continues to not implement content in a way that's actually effective and seems to continually ignore any feedback to make said content more open with a more gradual difficulty curve. See fractal tiers being suggested for Raids. See suggestions for a more robust tutorial. ANet never nurtured the community for this endgame. ANet wants you to play t heir new shiny content and forget about any of the older content types that they tried to deliver on which is a damn shame as GW2 has one of the best combat systems in an MMO and it's hardly ever capitalized on in anything story related.

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

@Sir Alymer.3406 said:There's supposed to be content for everyone.And there is content for everyone. Anet just stopped making rides that proved unprofitable like any business does.and seems to continually ignore any feedback to make said content more open with a more gradual difficulty curve.Problem is that a difficulty curve isn't going to solve the problem that most players don't want the difficulty period. Just see strikes. The first few easy, then they got harder, and when they did most people stopped playing them because they don't want that kind of difficulty. Adding a curve isn't going to make people more interested in the harder content.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@"Sir Alymer.3406" said:

3. Raids have been put on indefinite hiatus.
4. Strikes have gone the way of Raids.
5. Fractals got one update in nearly two years.
6. Dungeons are dead.This ignoring that the reason why all of this happened was because the majority of the playerbase didn't like/play them. So the fact Anet isn't making content most people didn't like isn't a sign of a dead game. Its a sign that they stopping making things that weren't liked.It's a bit more complicated than that. It's more like when they do run into a problem with something - which they often do, because it is very hard to get something perfectly right in the first attempt - instead of trying to fix it they just abandon it straight away.

Also, dungeons were actually very popular when they axed them. In fact, when they officially announced abandoning that content (which happened long after they did it unoficially), they had to heavily cut rewards to them first in order to intentionally chase the people out (which they straight out admitted to), because they kept being popular long after dungeon team got dissolved and devs apparently didn't like that.

Fractals also were quite popular at some point, although why exactly lot of players stopped playing them might be something we all probably would not agree on (but no matter which side of discussion you would be on, all probably would agree that slow rate of content for fractals is definitely part of that problem).

Raids IMO should probably never have been introduced into the game, but after they already were there, there were several options Anet could have used to keep them popular enough to warrant further attention. It's just all of them would have been controversial to at least some part of the game population, and ultimately Anet did not decide to use any of them and just let raids die on the vine. Which definitely was the simplest solution, but (as with most simple solutions) almost certainly not a good one.

And strikes are just a fallout of the Raid situation. Again, Anet did not analyze the reasons why the mode didn't go as good as intended, and used that to improve the content further, but instead decided to (again) default to the simplest solution of abandoning the project altogether. And went into something new again (ominously called DRMs). Which likely will get abandoned as well, because this time they also didn't hit the mark.

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

@"Astralporing.1957" said:It's a bit more complicated than that. It's more like when they do run into a problem with something - which they often do, because it is very hard to get something perfectly right in the first attempt - instead of trying to fix it they just abandon it straight away.I've seen this comment made in pretty much every MMO I've ever played, and its simply never true. If Anet simply abandoned things straight away

• We would have never gotten Twilight Arbor's Aetherpath, because dungeons failed to lure in the majority at launch.
• We would have never gotten any of the raid wings past the first three, because raids failed to lure in the majority upon release.
• We would have never gotten strikes past the first one, since those failed to lure in the majority upon release.

All of these content types largely stopped having active development because they failed, even after multiple successive attempts to make them more desirable. Not because they failed immediately.

Also, dungeons were actually very popular when they axed them. In fact, when they officially announced abandoning that content (which happened long after they did it unoficially), they had to heavily cut rewards to them first in order to intentionally chase the people out (which they straight out admitted to), because they kept being popular long after dungeon team got dissolved and devs apparently didn't like that.I never said they weren't popular. So your comment, and proceeding paragraph, has no relation to the argument.

That being said, you can have 15-20% of the playerbase enjoy a type of content, which would make it popular among a noticeable percentage, but said content will still be considered a failure because the vast majority of the playerbase doesn't play it. Not to mention, the appearance of popularity is skewed via echo chambers(if you enjoyed dungeons, and hung around people who did also, you would be under the impression that most people do, since all the people around you say they do also), and because the vast majority of any game's playerbase(not just GW2s) doesn't go to official forums. Those that do tend to be the more hardcore crowd, who lean to those sorts of content types, and not the majority of players who don't.

This is also why game devs(not just GW2's) often make decisions that seem to "ignore" the common complaints on the forums. Because every game dev knows the official forums are not a particularly good representation of what the majority of the playerbase actually wants.

[battledrone.8315]

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@battledrone.8315 said:manhours they are sorely lacking now to make a new xpac. GW2 had HUGE pontential, but they squandered itWhat? All of that content, sans strikes, had ended long before they started making the new xpack. So them making it has no effect on the Xpack. Not to mention, by the time the xpack comes out it will be like a year and a half after its first announcement, which is generally how long xpacks take for most MMOs.

@"Sir Alymer.3406" said:Ah yes. No one liked strikes. Zero people enjoyed fractals. No one loved dungeons. HoT was trash and no one plays those maps. Zero people do Triple Trouble. No one figured out Tequatl after the rework. Everyone hated adventures wholesale and not the janky mechanics and uber-tight timers for gold attached to them. You ever stop to think that, maybe, people "enjoy" open world because it's the only thing that gets consistent updates? It's the only mode that has any sort of constant support. The rest are on life support.I said most, not all.And have you ever considered people don't enjoy dungeons, raids, fractals, and strikes, because they simply don't care for them, and that they don't play them because they don't want to and not because new ones aren't being added all the time?

so, you are saying, that their income isnt connected to the content they produce? unpopular content=less income=less resources to produce the next contentand the even spent a lot of those resources on "other projects" too.

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

@"battledrone.8315" said:so, you are saying, that their income isnt connected to the content they produce? unpopular content=less income=less resources to produce the next contentand the even spent a lot of those resources on "other projects" too.I don't know how you think video game funding works, but that isn't how funding for video games works.

It isn't a simple "you make X amount of dollars on the last thing, so now you have X dollars to use on the next thing". Money comes from the publisher, and is obtained by presenting the idea, and asking for a budget for things like general development, voice acting, time for the creation of new mechanics, and how all of that will make money on the investment.

Now, if your game has consistently bad profit intake, then publishers are less likely to give you money for the next big thing. But even then it isn't a 1:1 "you make X, you have X to spend" situation. The publisher can give you a bigger budget then the total profits you made previously, if you can convince them the expansion(in this case) will make up for it.

Iceboord Saga was budgeted before the EoD was even a thing, and the EoD was budgeted long before Champions came out, and even longer before any sort of negative impact of Champions would present itself. So they really wouldn't be connected in terms of taking budgeted time/resources away from each other.

[battledrone.8315]

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@"battledrone.8315" said:so, you are saying, that their income isnt connected to the content they produce? unpopular content=less income=less resources to produce the next contentand the even spent a lot of those resources on "other projects" too.I don't know how you think video game funding works, but that isn't how funding for video games works.

It isn't a simple "you make X amount of dollars on the last thing, so now you have X dollars to use on the next thing". Money comes from the publisher, and is obtained by presenting the idea, and asking for a budget for things like general development, voice acting, time for the creation of new mechanics, and how all of that will make money on the investment.

Now, if your game has consistently bad profit intake, then publishers are less likely to give you money for the next big thing. But even then it isn't a 1:1 "you make X, you have X to spend" situation. The publisher can give you a bigger budget then the total profits you made previously, if you can convince them the expansion(in this case) will make up for it.

Iceboord Saga was budgeted before the EoD was even a thing, and the EoD was budgeted long before Champions came out, and even longer before any sort of negative impact of Champions would present itself. So they really wouldn't be connected in terms of taking budgeted time/resources away from each other.

lol. what number does the publisher look at, when granting that budget?...yea

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:It's a bit more complicated than that. It's more like when they do run into a problem with something - which they often do, because it is very hard to get something perfectly right in the first attempt - instead of trying to fix it they just abandon it straight away.I've seen this comment made in pretty much every MMO I've ever played, and its simply never true. If Anet simply abandoned things straight away

• We would have never gotten Twilight Arbor's Aetherpath, because dungeons failed to lure in the majority at launch.

This is false. For three years dungeon players had to use a third party site or join a guild to gather parties from more than just on their overflow map. Within that time period, reward tracks for PvP and WvW were released that allowed players in other game modes to not have to do dungeons to get dungeon skins or items which slowly killed dungeon participation. The final nail in the coffin was ANet purposefully nerfing dungeon rewards at the launch of Heart of Thorns which completely killed interest in dungeons. These days, they're still profitable, but no one runs them because the update that reverted the nerf was rather quiet.

• We would have never gotten any of the raid wings past the first three, because raids failed to lure in the majority upon release.

All of the raid wings were planned with the content they came with. Wings 1-4 give context and history to the events of season 3. Wing 5 shows what is happening in the underworld post Grenth leaving. Wings 6-7 expand on Djinn lore. What "killed" these was the fact that the game does nothing to prepare the player for what this sort of content expects of them and ANet not wanting to really add a way to step up to those expectations, leaving the curve very steep for most players.

• We would have never gotten strikes past the first one, since those failed to lure in the majority upon release.Strikes were a pretty big success with the casual crowd until ANet dropped the ball with many, many bugs that took ages to fix. Most people remember Boneskinner as this boss that just deletes you if you stand too close to it for too long, but now, it's not that.

All of these content types largely stopped having active development because they failed, even after multiple successive attempts to make them more desirable. Not because they failed immediately.

Also, dungeons were actually very popular when they axed them. In fact, when they officially announced abandoning that content (which happened long after they did it unoficially), they had to heavily cut rewards to them first in order to intentionally chase the people out (which they straight out admitted to), because they kept being popular long after dungeon team got dissolved and devs apparently didn't like that.I never said they weren't popular. So your comment, and proceeding paragraph, has no relation to the argument.

That being said, you can have 15-20% of the playerbase enjoy a type of content, which would make it popular among a noticeable percentage, but said content will still be considered a failure because the vast majority of the playerbase doesn't play it. Not to mention, the appearance of popularity is skewed via echo chambers(if you enjoyed dungeons, and hung around people who did also, you would be under the impression that most people do, since all the people around you say they do also), and because the vast majority of any game's playerbase(not just GW2s) doesn't go to official forums. Those that do tend to be the more hardcore crowd, who lean to those sorts of content types, and not the majority of players who don't.

Get this. a majority of players play open world because it's the only thing regularly being updated. No one wants to play a dead game or game mode. The stigma around PvP being dead with no regular balance updates, toxicity from players, mismatching match-maker where high ranking players fight against the newbies, and filled with bots in ranked is why no one new really wants to touch it. No one wants to get stomped then harassed and no one wants to play with bots in a stale meta.

The stigma around WvW being nothing but blob fights where only massive servers ever place first, very sparse rewards that trickle in slowly and punish players who haven't been within the game mode since launch, and, like PvP, a lack of regular balance updates that shake up the meta, hardly anyone but the hardcore players who've been playing that mode really stick around.

Raids had a good thing going. New raids allow new players to get their foot into the door and to slip in as new raids put everyone at nearly equal footing for figuring out the bosses. But again, the last update was almost two years ago now.

Fractals were getting major content updates ages ago. And you know what? Those days, the lobby was full of people. Map chat in LA and the LFG were both consistently looking for groups to conquer the new CMs. Raids on launch were the same way with people always by the portal in VB trying to get more to try to overcome VG. Strikes were a bit more organized, and the veterans were critical of them (The boss mechanics can literally be skipped so it doesn't really teach players anything) along with the bugs that just left a sour taste in everyone's mouth. These days, though ,pugs generally do one of two things; steamroll all of them for easy rewards or do just the easy strikes and call it a day.

This is also why game devs(not just GW2's) often make decisions that seem to "ignore" the common complaints on the forums. Because every game dev knows the official forums are not a particularly good representation of what the majority of the playerbase actually wants.

Then don't produce a game that has multiple game modes like PvP and WvW or game modes within game modes like Fractals, Raids, Strikes, and Dungeons. If they don't want to support them, either cut them out or straight up say they don't want to. Don't string people along consistently over the years with promises of something new and exciting only for them to really just be the next DRMs. Here for one chapter, gone the next.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:It's a bit more complicated than that. It's more like when they do run into a problem with something - which they often do, because it is very hard to get something perfectly right in the first attempt - instead of trying to fix it they just abandon it straight away.I've seen this comment made in pretty much every MMO I've ever played, and its simply never true. If Anet simply abandoned things straight away

• We would have never gotten Twilight Arbor's Aetherpath, because dungeons failed to lure in the majority at launch.Actually, dungeons were very popular at the point they released Aetherpath. Sure, they were not being done by a majority of players, but enough players did them to make their further development worthwhile. It's just that
  Aetherpath
  was met with dislike. And Anet, instead of trying to reason why it was so, decided it meant
  all
  dungeon development should be cancelled.

• We would have never gotten any of the raid wings past the first three, because raids failed to lure in the majority upon release.They still had some hope people will go into raids. They simply
  wanted
  raids to succeed. But they never really tried to
  improve
  on raids at all, they just kept repeating the same stuff over and over again until they had to admit to themselves it wasn't working. And then they simply cancelled it.

• We would have never gotten strikes past the first one, since those failed to lure in the majority upon release.Content need not be run by a majority of the playerbase to be popular or worth developing further. Less than half the active players finish each LS story chapter. Does that mean LS should be cancelled, since majority is not even finishing it? Or should that rather mean devs should look into it and decide to improve things to get a better ratio next time around?

Also, if you really want to go that way - the majority of GW2 players are no longer playing the game. According to your reasoning they should have cancelled this game even before HoT. Because a majority was no longer playing it.

All of these content types largely stopped having active development because they failed, even after multiple successive attempts to make them more desirable. Not because they failed immediately.Repeating something over and over again without iterative attempts to fix the initial problems is not "successive attempts to make them more desirable". Also, the earlier strikes were doing quite fine. It's the Boneskinner that was a problem (and for more than one reason).

Also, dungeons were actually very popular when they axed them. In fact, when they officially announced abandoning that content (which happened long after they did it unoficially), they had to heavily cut rewards to them first in order to intentionally chase the people out (which they straight out admitted to), because they kept being popular long after dungeon team got dissolved and devs apparently didn't like that.I never said they weren't popular. So your comment, and proceeding paragraph, has no relation to the argument.You said "Its a sign that they stopping making things that weren't liked.". Dungeons

were

liked. They

had to actively chase people away from them

.

That being said, you can have 15-20% of the playerbase enjoy a type of content, which would make it popular among a noticeable percentage, but said content will still be considered a failure because the vast majority of the playerbase doesn't play it.That's not a failure. 15-20% is actually pretty good. In a MMORPG with a population of 1 mil that would be 150-200k players. That's some massive numbers. Numbers you'd really

not

want to lose.

If you decided to abandon any part of the game as long as its popularity drops below 50%, you would end with nothing left. Lose 15% of your playerbase 4 times, and you're left with only 44% (a minority) of your original player number.

You simply can't get the player counts for an AAA size MMORPG with very uniform playerbase that all plays only the same kind of content and all want the same things.

This is also why game devs(not just GW2's) often make decisions that seem to "ignore" the common complaints on the forums. Because every game dev knows the official forums are not a particularly good representation of what the majority of the playerbase actually wants.Problem is, the devs don't seem to know what the playerbase wants as well. They are just throwing stuff at the wall blindly, trying to find something that sticks. And, surprise surprise, the more they do it, the more new people decide to just not come in. Because, you know, they can see all the walls that are covered in kitten all over.

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

@battledrone.8315 said:lol. what number does the publisher look at, when granting that budget?...yeaThey look at trends within the game over years, and the current playerbase numbers.

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Actually, dungeons were very popular at the point they released Aetherpath. Sure, they were not being done by a majority of players, but enough players did them to make their further development worthwhile. It's just that Aetherpath was met with dislike. And Anet, instead of trying to reason why it was so, decided it meant all dungeon development should be cancelled.Again, popular among a relatively small group of people =/= successful, or actually popular. Stop trying to move goalposts. Also, Aetherpath was made using the common criticisms of the other dungeons to try to make them more popular. The fact that it failed is why they canned future dungeons. They already listened when making Aetherpath, the majority didn't care.They still had some hope people will go into raids. They simply wanted raids to succeed. But they never really tried to improve on raids at all, they just kept repeating the same stuff over and over again until they had to admit to themselves it wasn't working. And then they simply cancelled it.Except they very obviously did try to improve upon raids. Later raids made some changes to bosses and enemy encounter design to try to make them more palatable to the majority. The problem with raids is that the majority literally doesn't care about hard content like raids. The only way to make them more popular would be to water them down into Living World levels of difficulty, which defeats the point of raids in the first place.Content need not be run by a majority of the playerbase to be popular or worth developing further. Less than half the active players finish each LS story chapter. Does that mean LS should be cancelled, since majority is not even finishing it? Or should that rather mean devs should look into it and decide to improve things to get a better ratio next time around?Also, if you really want to go that way - the majority of GW2 players are no longer playing the game. According to your reasoning they should have cancelled this game even before HoT. Because a majority was no longer playing it.Content DOES need to be run by the majority to be worth developing for. If you are a game developer, and you ave a decision between putting more money toA. More living world content that the majority of your playerbase will playB. A raid maybe 15%-20% of the playerbase will playThe former will always win out since its a better investment of time and money. This is how games work in general. Hell, this is the cited reason in every MMO as to why the devs stopped doing X, Y, and Z, at some point. Also, thats a horrible argument. Devs use the active playerbase, not the number of people who bought the game.Repeating something over and over again without iterative attempts to fix the initial problems is not "successive attempts to make them more desirable". Also, the earlier strikes were doing quite fine. It's the Boneskinner that was a problem (and for more than one reason).Except there were changes made each time to try to make them more desirable. Also, its rather ironic you say earlier strikes were fine, when the whole point of strikes was that they were supposed prep people for raids, and early strikes were massively criticized by the raiders for being WAY too easy compared to raids. The whole point of the Boneskinner was that they had already thrown easier strikes at you, now its time for a harder one to bring it closer to raid difficulty. People complained because most people who play games don't want raid-like difficulty at all, which is why dungeons, fractals, and raids, all failed in the first place.You said "Its a sign that they stopping making things that weren't liked.". Dungeons were liked. They had to actively chase people away from them.Being liked by a small minority =/= being liked by the playerbase.That's not a failure. 15-20% is actually pretty good. In a MMORPG with a population of 1 mil that would be 150-200k players. That's some massive numbers. Numbers you'd really not want to lose.If you decided to abandon any part of the game as long as its popularity drops below 50%, you would end with nothing left. Lose 15% of your playerbase 4 times, and you're left with only 44% (a minority) of your original player number.You simply can't get the player counts for an AAA size MMORPG with very uniform playerbase that all plays only the same kind of content and all want the same things.That's actually really bad, and I've seen entire features stop getting development when even up to 1/3 of the playerbase used them, because that simply isn't enough.

You also make the blunder of equating people who play that kind of content with people who play the game ONLY for that kind of content. The majority of people who play things like dungeons, raids, strikes, etc. don't play the game simply for those things. And while they may be sad to see them go, they would still keep playing for the game's other content. You would only actually loose a very small % of that playerbase group because only a minority of the minority hinges their investment into a game based on one limited game type.

Problem is, the devs don't seem to know what the playerbase wants as well. They are just throwing stuff at the wall blindly, trying to find something that sticks. And, surprise surprise, the more they do it, the more new people decide to just not come in. Because, you know, they can see all the walls that are covered in kitten all over.Its ironic you say this when they very clearly do seem to know what the playerbase wants.

• They stopped making dungeons, raids, and to a lesser extent fractals and strikes, because the playerbase very clearly showed they didn't want them
• They kept making more living world/open world content because that is what most players wanted

Even when it comes to these Champions releases

• People have been asking for more LWS1 style content.
• But they also asked that it doesn't go away once over.
• They want bosses harder then normal open world bosses.
• But not near the difficulty of raid or strike mission bosses.
• They asked for older maps to get reused/new content added to them.
• But to not do so where its permanently alters the map like Tower of Nightmares did.
• They have also asked for something that actually feels like the dragons are attacking the world.
• But in a way that doesn't actually cause any permanent damage for the same reasons as the Tower of Nightmare situation I mentioned above.

And what did we get with Champions?

• LWS1 style content
• That doesn't go away once the story is over
• With bosses harder then normal open world bosses
• But not as hard as raid/strike bosses
• That uses older maps
• But doesn't change them permanently
• That involved the dragons actually attacking the world
• But in a way that doesn't actually cause any permanent damage to the world

The "unpopular" Champions Dragon Response Mission format is, quite literally, Anet doing everything people have been asking for on the forums for years. It is, quite literally, a bullet point "here is everything you've asked for" content format.

[Blude.6812]

@Sir Alymer.3406 said:If you're new, there's plenty to do and a ton of people to do it with. If you're after things like the endgame..

1. PvP hasn't had new maps for ages and has a bot problem that's taking forever to go away/be solved.
2. WvW hasn't had much love outside of a mount that's been nerfed into the ground.
3. Raids have been put on indefinite hiatus.
4. Strikes have gone the way of Raids.
5. Fractals got one update in nearly two years.
6. Dungeons are dead.

When the only content getting regular, consistent, bi/tri monthly updates is Living World and Gemstore with it's nearly weekly updates, it does get a bit doom and gloom with the veterans who want more of this challenge and more reason to go through with it.

So they intro forced grouped in the new LS with the DRM??? Not smart at all. Raid and strikes should never have been introduced. They just have to admit it and move on. The DRM may not kill the game, but it has added a nail to the coffin for me (which started with Drizzle LS). It is the first time that I am considering not buying the next exp and am not buying more gems at this point. (have both GW and GW2 and all the expansions, LS episodes BTW).So it's not dead yet, but is moving in that direction with the current team and the direction they are taking.

[Klypto.1703]

This is where we ask for someone to provide proof of life because no one has seen any in two years now.

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

@Sir Alymer.3406 said:snipI'll just direct you to my post above, since it covers most of what you mention here already.

That being said

Get this. a majority of players play open world because it's the only thing regularly being updated.Except open world was still the only thing that really got played even when the other content types were getting regular, or semi-regular updates. So this argument is wrong.

Then don't produce a game that has multiple game modes like PvP and WvW or game modes within game modes like Fractals, Raids, Strikes, and Dungeons. If they don't want to support them, either cut them out or straight up say they don't want to. Don't string people along consistently over the years with promises of something new and exciting only for them to really just be the next DRMs. Here for one chapter, gone the next.That isn't how game development works.

Pre-launch you don't know what people are going to take too, so you need to develop all of the basic game modes in case. Over time, you look at what game modes aren't working out so well, make fixes to try to bring more people into them. You can't know how successful your attempts to fix the problems will be until they are out in the open either, so you need to do that multiple times as well.

If that doesn't work, you try out new forms of content to see if that can replace that older content, or help nudge people into the older content.

• Dungeons failed at launch, and still failed even when new paths were added.
• So they moved to fractals to get that same kind of harder content, but in a more bite sized, and scalable, manner, to see if they could slowly build people up that way.
• When that didn't work they tried to see if the could court the more modern hardcore crowd with actual raids.
• When that didn't work they tried making Strikes to build people up to raid level akin to fractals, but even more bite sized.etc. etc.

Also, you aren't going to straight up cut entire game modes when there is already perfectly viable content made for them, and people still play them. There is no reason to do that when you can just stop making more of it.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Actually, dungeons were very popular at the point they released Aetherpath. Sure, they were not being done by a majority of players, but enough players did them to make their further development worthwhile. It's just that Aetherpath was met with dislike. And Anet, instead of trying to reason why it was so, decided it meant all dungeon development should be cancelled.Again, popular among a relatively small group of people =/= successful, or actually popular.

Again, a less than 50% of a big number is not small. At the time dungeons got abandoned, their population was

not

small by any means. Frankly, considering that the game had then way more people than it does have now, it's entirely likely that more people were running dungeons then than are doing LS now.

Also, Aetherpath was made using the common criticisms of the other dungeons to try to make them more popular.Did you actually play at that time? Two most common criticisms of dungeons at that time wereabout them being:

• too difficult
• nor rewarding enoughAnd yet, Anet decided to create a dungeon that was way more difficult than most of the previous dungeon paths, and was also far less rewarding per effort required and time spent. So, if they really based Aetherpath's design on "common criticism" it would only be to completely
  ignore
  it.

The fact that it failed is why they canned future dungeons.Yes. The fact that Aetherpath failed was why they canned future dungeons. Because they didn't even try to understand

why

it failed and whether it could have been improved (hint: it

could

have been improved. Aetherpath was an

exception

, not the norm). WHich goes back to my original point - they kept giving up on their projects too easily, without ever trying to improve them

They already listened when making Aetherpath, the majority didn't care.Actually, Aetherpath failed because people

did

care. It's just Anet

didn't listen

They still had some hope people will go into raids. They simply wanted raids to succeed. But they never really tried to improve on raids at all, they just kept repeating the same stuff over and over again until they had to admit to themselves it wasn't working. And then they simply cancelled it.Except they very obviously did try to improve upon raids. Later raids made some changes to bosses and enemy encounter design to try to make them more palatable to the majority.Lol, which ones? The only wing that went into this direction was w4 - and that happened by a mistake, not by intention.

The problem with raids is that the majority literally doesn't care about hard content like raids.Yes, you are right.

The only way to make them more popular would be to water them down into Living World levels of difficulty, which defeats the point of raids in the first place.There were other options as well, like introducing easy mode, for example. Whether it would have worked or not, we don't know, because they never tried anything. They just gave up when they realized their original approach was not working.

Content need not be run by a majority of the playerbase to be popular or worth developing further. Less than half the active players finish each LS story chapter. Does that mean LS should be cancelled, since majority is not even finishing it? Or should that rather mean devs should look into it and decide to improve things to get a better ratio next time around?Also, if you really want to go that way - the majority of GW2 players are no longer playing the game. According to your reasoning they should have cancelled this game even before HoT. Because a majority was no longer playing it.Content DOES need to be run by the majority to be worth developing for. If you are a game developer, and you ave a decision between putting more money toA. More living world content that the majority of your playerbase will playB. A raid maybe 15%-20% of the playerbase will playThe former will always win out since its a better investment of time and money. This is how games work in general. Hell, this is the cited reason in every MMO as to why the devs stopped doing X, Y, and Z, at some point.For that the percentages need to be way, way lower than 15-20%. In MMORPGs those are considered to be great values.

Notice, that Anet kept raids afloat for a while when their numbers were higher. It's only when they dropped below a certain value (which definitely was way lower than 15%) that they got cancelled.

Also, thats a horrible argument. Devs use the active playerbase, not the number of people who bought the game.Sure they use active playerbase, but you need to remember that those people left for a reason. And one of the reasons might have been that the part of the game they liked got neglected. Devs need to think not only about their current playerbase, but also about their future one.

Let's put it this way: if you concentrate on content 55% of your game population does, and ignore everything else, it means you are flat out giving up on 45% of your game population. No sane developer would be willing to do that. Doing that once is bad enough. Doing that consistently can only lead to death of the game.

Repeating something over and over again without iterative attempts to fix the initial problems is not "successive attempts to make them more desirable". Also, the earlier strikes were doing quite fine. It's the Boneskinner that was a problem (and for more than one reason).Except there were changes made each time to try to make them more desirable. Also, its rather ironic you say earlier strikes were fine, when the whole point of strikes was that they were supposed prep people for raids, and early strikes were massively criticized by the raiders for being WAY too easy compared to raids.Yes, that part of the idea behind strikes was ... let's say, not too well thought out. But don't you think that after seeing that part of the idea is not working, but some strikes are

still

quite popular, abandoning the whole concept instead of just concentrating on the part that worked would not be a good idea?

The whole point of the Boneskinner was that they had already thrown easier strikes at you, now its time for a harder one to bring it closer to raid difficulty. People complained because most people who play games don't want raid-like difficulty at all, which is why dungeons, fractals, and raids, all failed in the first place.Agreed. Which doesn't mean that strikes in general were a failure. Only that the idea of "stairway to raids" was.

You said "Its a sign that they stopping making things that weren't liked.". Dungeons were liked. They had to actively chase people away from them.Being liked by a small minority =/= being liked by the playerbase.Again, that "minority"

wasn't

small. There are whole games (AAA games even) that are built around smaller target groups.

That's not a failure. 15-20% is actually pretty good. In a MMORPG with a population of 1 mil that would be 150-200k players. That's some massive numbers. Numbers you'd really not want to lose.If you decided to abandon any part of the game as long as its popularity drops below 50%, you would end with nothing left. Lose 15% of your playerbase 4 times, and you're left with only 44% (a minority) of your original player number.You simply can't get the player counts for an AAA size MMORPG with very uniform playerbase that all plays only the same kind of content and all want the same things.That's actually really bad, and I've seen entire features stop getting development when even up to 1/3 of the playerbase used them, because that simply isn't enough.In gw2? Sure, you did. That actually is a part of the problem though.

You also seem to not understand, that there are two things that matter here - not only percentage of the population, but also absolute numbers. A mode with enough players can easily become self-sufficient even if it's a minority.

You also make the blunder of equating people who play that kind of content with people who play the game ONLY for that kind of content.No, you do. You think people play the game only for some types of content a majority plays. In reality, people play MMORPGs for multiple types of content, some of which are minority. Remove one of those types, some of them may leave, some of them may stay. Remove all of those minority contents, and you will see even people that you're supposedly still creating content for leaving. Because while a majority of players play open world, it doesn't mean that open world is enough for a majority of players.

Besides, again, "majority" may be as low as 51%. Would that mean you are willing to lose 49% of game population? If you do, then i can only be glad you are not the developer of any game i play.

The majority of people who play things like dungeons, raids, strikes, etc. don't play the game simply for those things.True, but it doesn't mean those things are not important for them.

And while they may be sad to see them go, they would still keep playing for the game's other content.We actually have 8 years of this game's history showing us that it simply isn't true.

You would only actually loose a very small % of that playerbase group because only a minority of the minority hinges their investment into a game based on one limited game type.One, yes, but you are willing to lose all game types except for the "majority" ones. If someone plays 3-4 modes, and they loce 2-3 of them and are left with only one, they are very likely to leave.Hint: a majority of players play at least one of the "minority" modes. Many play more than one.

Problem is, the devs don't seem to know what the playerbase wants as well. They are just throwing stuff at the wall blindly, trying to find something that sticks. And, surprise surprise, the more they do it, the more new people decide to just not come in. Because, you know, they can see all the walls that are covered in kitten all over.Its ironic you say this when they very clearly do seem to know what the playerbase wants.

• They stopped making dungeons, raids, and to a lesser extent fractals and strikes, because the playerbase very clearly showed they didn't want themThat's a flat out lie. Especially in the dungeons' case.

• They kept making more living world/open world content because that is what most players wantedI'm quite sure that while most players probably do indeed like Anet to continue developing living world/open world content, they would
  not
  want them to do that to the exclusion of everything else.

Even when it comes to these Champions releases

• People have been asking for more LWS1 style content.
• But they also asked that it doesn't go away once over.
• They want bosses harder then normal open world bosses.
• But not near the difficulty of raid or strike mission bosses.
• They asked for older maps to get reused/new content added to them.
• But to not do so where its permanently alters the map like Tower of Nightmares did.
• They have also asked for something that actually feels like the dragons are attacking the world.
• But in a way that doesn't actually cause any permanent damage for the same reasons as the Tower of Nightmare situation I mentioned above.

And what did we get with Champions?

• LWS1 style content
• That doesn't go away once the story is over
• With bosses harder then normal open world bosses
• But not as hard as raid/strike bosses
• That uses older maps
• But doesn't change them permanently
• That involved the dragons actually attacking the world
• But in a way that doesn't actually cause any permanent damage to the world

The "unpopular" Champions Dragon Response Mission format is, quite literally, Anet doing everything people have been asking for on the forums for years. It is, quite literally, a bullet point "here is everything you've asked for" content format.

You know, it's ironic that at one point you say that Anet should not listen to what few people on forums say, and then you try to claim that Anet "knows what the community wants" based on how what they did matches what few people on forums asked for (and not even those same people, a lot of those things are unpopular ideas one-two posters - different ones in each case - had and most other posters disliked. You also ignored like 90% of other things people were talking about in the same places at that same time, that conflicted with all of the above.

Great cherry-picking there.

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Again, a less than 50% of a big number is not small.Yes it is. By definition less then 50% of anything is small compared to the whole. I also find the claim of more people doing dungeons then LW extremely laughable. There is no basis for that.Did you actually play at that time?Yes, and I recall people who did dungeons often complaining they were far too easy, and getting the entire dungeon item sets in a flash because dungeons were so over rewarding.(hint: it could have been improved. Aetherpath was an exception, not the norm).Aetherpath was the norm. Even story modes were complained about being too hard for dungeons, but making them easier would defeat the point of dungeons, and would be detrimental to the dungeoners who found dungeons too easy to begin with.Actually, Aetherpath failed because people did care. It's just Anet didn't listenBackwards again. Aetherpath failed because the majority of the playerbase didn't care, and listening to the people who did didn't improve anything.There were other options as well, like introducing easy modeWhich is literally what I just said. And no, they didn't just give up. Easy mode raids are strikes.For that the percentages need to be way, way lower than 15-20%. In MMORPGs those are considered to be great values.I don't know what MMOs you are basing that off of, but in everyone I've played thats a massive failure. You need 60%+ to be considered a success.Devs need to think not only about their current playerbase, but also about their future one.Yes, and you think about your future playerbase by looking at what has worked, and making more of it, because thats obviously what most people want, and thus, what new people are most likely to say for.Let's put it this way: if you concentrate on content 55% of your game population does, and ignore everything else, it means you are flat out giving up on 45% of your game population.Games are not so harshly divided into segments as you seem to think they are. It isn't a "people only do X, Y, or Z" its "the vast majority do X, and some do Y and Z, and while not making more of Y and Z may cause us to lose some people, most people who play those are fine with X to begin with,"But don't you think that after seeing that part of the idea is not working, but some strikes are still quite popular, abandoning the whole concept instead of just concentrating on the part that worked would not be a good idea?There is no part of strikes that worked. The ones that are popular are popular because they are stupidly easy, and massively over reward for how little effort is put into them. If the only reason people like it is because its badly balanced in player's favor, then that just means you should fix the bad balance. Which in turn means people aren't going to like it, and thus, you have no reason to continue making it.Again, that "minority" wasn't small. There are whole games (AAA games even) that are built around smaller target groups.And those games are typically indie games with low cost investment, that need low income to make their money back. apples and oranges false comparison fallacy.You also seem to not understand, that there are two things that matter here - not only percentage of the population, but also absolute numbers. A mode with enough players can easily become self-sufficient even if it's a minority.Nope, that isn't how games work. Star Trek Online for example had to cut its feature that let users generate their own missions because only about 50% of the playerbase used it, and that simply wasn't enough to justify keeping funding on developing new assets for it, and fixing the bugs that sprung up.No, you do. You think people play the game only for some types of content a majority playsI literally said the opposite.True, but it doesn't mean those things are not important for them.We actually have 8 years of this game's history showing us that it simply isn't true.We actually have 8 years of the game's history showing us that it is true. The fact that continued development did nothing to make those mode more popular, and that a lack of development hasn't stopped the game from being profitable, proves it.Hint: a majority of players play at least one of the "minority" modes. Many play more than one.That's entirely untrue. Most harder content is played by the same small minority of people, while the majority of people don't touch any of them because they don't like the harder content to begin with. Different flavors of things they don't like is still things they don't like.That's a flat out lie. Especially in the dungeons' case.Except its flat out now, and confirmed by the in-game dataI'm quite sure that while most players probably do indeed like Anet to continue developing living world/open world content, they would not want them to do that to the exclusion of everything else.And yet, even when Anet put development into anything else, only a small minority cared.You know, it's ironic that at one point you say that Anet should not listen to what few people on forums say,I said nothing of the sort. I said they tend to make decisions that seem to contradict what forum posters ask for, not that they shouldn't listen to them at all. Please don't lie about what I said, especially when its that easy to scroll up and check my previous posts. It does nothing but make you look bad, and weaken any point you may have had.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Again, a less than 50% of a big number is not small.Yes it is. By definition less then 50% of anything is small compared to the whole.So, China is a small country. Good to know.That's some interesting "definition" you are using.

I also find the claim of more people doing dungeons then LW extremely laughable. There is no basis for that.More people doing dungeons

then

than LW

now

.Remember, we've had over 4 million players then. Perhaps even as much as 5-6 million. I doubt we have even one million now. We might not even have 500 000 tbh.

For that the percentages need to be way, way lower than 15-20%. In MMORPGs those are considered to be great values.I don't know what MMOs you are basing that off of, but in everyone I've played thats a massive failure. You need 60%+ to be considered a success....and what, pray tell, MMORPGs did you play before? Because all MMORPGs i know of have still actively supported content types and elements that are used by less than 50% of the playerbase. And those parts are

not

considered a massive failure.

Devs need to think not only about their current playerbase, but also about their future one.Yes, and you think about your future playerbase by looking at what has worked, and making more of it, because thats obviously what most people want, and thus, what new people are most likely to say for.

No

MMORPG i know of is doing it the way you say it should be done. It is the fastest way to lose

all

players.

But don't you think that after seeing that part of the idea is not working, but some strikes are still quite popular, abandoning the whole concept instead of just concentrating on the part that worked would not be a good idea?There is no part of strikes that worked. The ones that are popular are popular because they are stupidly easy, and massively over reward for how little effort is put into them. If the only reason people like it is because its badly balanced in player's favor, then that just means you should fix the bad balance. Which in turn means people aren't going to like it, and thus, you have no reason to continue making it.You again allow yourself to be guided by what type of content

you, personally

like, and how

you

think it should look like. "Stupidly easy and massively overrewarded" is your personal opinion. Incidentally, according to your own ideology, since that opinion of your is in minority, it should be ignored. I wonder why in this case you think your own rules do not apply.The truth is that there

were

parts of strikes that worked and made those individual strikes popular, no matter what you personally think about the reasons behind that popularity.

You also seem to not understand, that there are two things that matter here - not only percentage of the population, but also absolute numbers. A mode with enough players can easily become self-sufficient even if it's a minority.Nope, that isn't how games work. Star Trek Online for example had to cut its feature that let users generate their own missions because only about 50% of the playerbase used it, and that simply wasn't enough to justify keeping funding on developing new assets for it, and fixing the bugs that sprung up.That's not because "below 50% of the playerbase used it". That's because not enough players in absolute numbers used it. The costs of designing and supporting a feature like this do not really scale up with bigger population. Same with stuff like dungeons, raids and strikes. It doesn't matter if you do that type of content for 1 thousand players, 10 thousands, or a million, you need the same amount of devs, resources and time.

Doing that for 60% of a population of 100 000 players is less worth than doing it for a 10% of a population of 1 million. Which, again, is less worth than doing it for a 5% of a population of 4 million

That is the simple thing you do not seem to understand.

No, you do. You think people play the game only for some types of content a majority playsI literally said the opposite.No, you didn't. You claimed that people would still happily play the game if their options were reduced

only

to the "majority" ones. Which simply isn;t true. For the vast majority of players, playing

only

majoity content is simply not enough. At least not in any longer term (and MMORPGs are all about long haul).

Hint: a majority of players play at least one of the "minority" modes. Many play more than one.That's entirely untrue. Most harder content is played by the same small minority of people, while the majority of people don't touch any of them because they don't like the harder content to begin with. Different flavors of things they don't like is still things they don't like.Untrue. Some players play raids, some play Fractals, some play WvW, or SPvP, some are achievement hunters, some are active farmers - those are

not

, for the most part, the same players. And each single thing i mentioned is a minority content.

That's a flat out lie. Especially in the dungeons' case.Except its flat out now, and confirmed by the in-game dataOh, please, do show me that data telling me how unpopular and abandoned by players dungeons were when they decided to cancel their further development.

I'm quite sure that while most players probably do indeed like Anet to continue developing living world/open world content, they would not want them to do that to the exclusion of everything else.And yet, even when Anet put development into anything else, only a small minority cared.And yet, when anet concentrated only on LS, the game started shedding players like crazy. Perhaps you haven't seen their income numbers for early parts of LS5? The game tanked

hard

then.

You know, it's ironic that at one point you say that Anet should not listen to what few people on forums say,I said nothing of the sort. I said they tend to make decisions that seem to contradict what forum posters ask for, not that they shouldn't listen to them at all.You first said that they don't listen to the forums, because forums are a minority and not a voice of the community. Then your example of them listening to the community was showing how they made content based on few of threads on forums.Make your mind, will you.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"Sir Alymer.3406" said:What "killed" these was the fact that the game does nothing to prepare the player for what this sort of content expects of them and ANet not wanting to really add a way to step up to those expectations, leaving the curve very steep for most players.

Of course that alone killed Raids and not sending the group responsible for making Raids to make living world episodes instead, even after presenting to us a so called Raid team. Or how they handled the Path of Fire Raids. Do note that the developers were surprised by the popularity of Raids, so they exceeded their initial expectations. Then they blew it

[Linken.6345]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Sir Alymer.3406" said:What "killed" these was the fact that the game does nothing to prepare the player for what this sort of content expects of them and ANet not wanting to really add a way to step up to those expectations, leaving the curve very steep for most players.

Of course that alone killed Raids and not sending the group responsible for making Raids to make living world episodes instead, even after presenting to us a so called Raid team. Or how they handled the Path of Fire Raids. Do note that the developers were surprised by the popularity of Raids, so they exceeded their initial expectations. Then they blew it

Well they did boast that at maximum they could do 6 raids a year at top preformance.Guess they set the bar abit high there.

[Black Storm.6974]

There is probably almost no content in Guild Wars 2 which is played and enjoyed by most of the “active player base”. ArenaNet specified that they are trying to develop some content for everyone, despite knowing that only a minority will enjoy playing it. They try to bring more players to enjoy it, and they try to develop new things hoping they can be more successful, but I think they know that is not realistic to make those things successful among the majority of us.

We are too different from each other, we do not enjoy the same things, and they keep developing something for everyone from time to time. Since this game was, since its release (if not before), something that was supposed to not keep its players playing all the time (letting them feel free to take a break and come back at any time without feeling punished), that’s nice.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Sir Alymer.3406" said:What "killed" these was the fact that the game does nothing to prepare the player for what this sort of content expects of them and ANet not wanting to really add a way to step up to those expectations, leaving the curve very steep for most players.

Of course that alone killed Raids and not sending the group responsible for making Raids to make living world episodes instead, even after presenting to us a so called Raid team. Or how they handled the Path of Fire Raids. Do note that the developers were surprised by the popularity of Raids, so they exceeded their initial expectations. Then they blew it

I'm pretty sure I covered the f act that the raid team being moved away from making raids was one of the factors in the death of raids.