PopeUrban.2578

earlier GW2 stuff did this a bit. then they moved away from it Yeah. Sadly raids are the only place left in the game where the world actually recognizes that you're not the only important character. The player-to-player voice interactions there are pretty sweet. I'd like to see agame that went back to GW1 style 'assemble a team build' gameplay, but without the "you can totally replace a party with NPCs" problem they introduced when they came up with the hero system. Like, I really liked henchmen. they were good to fill a few spots, but not so good that getting another player wasn't always the clearly better option.

I would buy a GW3 that: Utilized the excellent PvE combat mechanics of GW2, in terms of mobility, and the excellect PvE mechanics in GW1 in terms of focus on resource management, interrupts, and team based skill synergies. Returned the series to a lobby-based cooperative RPG built around challenging instanced content and away from a timer-based MMO primarily built on shallow open world content. Returned to a primarily buy to play model in stead of a primarily microtransaction model. Made assembling builds and acquiring new build enablers (be the GW1 style skill captures and buys, gear, whatever) part of the gameplay reward loop. Did away with the notion of NPC companions. Recognized groups of players in its narrative in stead of pretending there's only one player character.

You could do like other games and lay out the breadth of the content numerically. Lots of games brag about how big their new expansion's world is, or all the new gear it contains, or all the new monster types, stuff like that. Advertise how grand the expansion is to show potential customers the value of it and why now is the time to get in to or come back to GW2 because of all the new stuff. That tends to be more effective because its an objective statement that is inherently trustworthy rather than subjective statements from random players that for all they know you made up or random reviewers they may not have heard of or don't trust.

I dig it. It's unique, eye catching, and isn't lit up live seventeen suns formed from the remains of an interstellar fireworks factory. If I had the patience to build a legendary, this is one of the few I'd actually build.

Disagree. Potential customers should be told up front that they're buying a game that expects them to spend more money after they buy it. This store page is honest business and accurately portrays the GW2 business model for potential buyers.

Tell potential customers how many more mounts they can get by playing the game than the competition.

Anet can't even properly balance the one combat system they put all their effort in to very well. I don't think we need them to divide that effort to overhaul an even more complex set of content that we have to interact with to get anything important done. Let UW content be what it is already, an occasional distraction that isn't necessary to do anything important. At least that way all their guns are firing on the combat mechanics that actually mostly work well.

Looks like OH sword and greatsword are both very popular. In terms of actually implementing them I'd wager Anet would be more willing to go with greatsword if they have a drastic mechanical change (something with the impact of changing steal to malice) and offhand sword if the core mechanical change is more minor (something like a tack-on effect to an existing mechanic in the vein of daredevil's mechanics) Interestingly enough, for thieves adding an offhand or mainhand actually requires them to make the same number of skills as a 2 hand because of the dual skills. 2h weapon only requires a 1-5 bar, but a new offhand requires 2 new MH or OH skills plus 3 separate dual skills for pistol, sword, dagger. This means that any thief spec will always get at least 5 new weapon skills, and thieves overall get much higher impact build changes from new offhands or mainhands even before any core class mechanic changes because of the nature of dual skills than they do for 2h weapons, which are larger build changers for most other classes simply because a 2h in any other classes hands requires more new skills than a new MH or OH.

For the sake of argument, lets say we don't call this or the BLCs "gambling" Without using the terms gambling, I'll describe what these are. These are purchases mathematically designed to disappoint the buyer and use that negative experience to encourage them to spend more money. These are purchases designed to randomly inflate the cost of a desired product beyond that which the user would pay for it were it offered to them for direct sale for the majority of buyers. These are purchases designed to monetize players unable or unwilling to participate in the gem market directly by turning them in to an officially sanctioned gold farming service for wealthier players that may have otherwise stopped buying gems after acquiring what they personally desire from the gem store. These are purchases designed to add and directly profit from frustration and tedium in a product with the stated goal of providing entertainment to its customers. These are systems similar to loot rewards for playing the game, that actively draw resources away from adding to the loot pool of the game, and that actively reward paying more to play the game less.

Because businesses are made of people, people aren't immune to making mistakes, and on average people often prioritize shot term gain at the expense of long term loss. As a business, why would Microsoft try and create a competing music player when the ipod dominated the market even though they already had a stable product and business model? The Zune is a great example here. It was an objectively pretty good piece of tech, but Microsoft misunderstood the market they were trying to break in to and lost a bunch of money in stead of doubling down on the one they were already been successful in. Companies don't TRY to lose money, but companies often DO lose money by placing the desires of the company for profit above the products or services that their customers actually want. In the case of GW2 specifically, they jumped on a bandwagon early, like everyone else, and failed at their "buy once play forever because we have microtransactions" model so hard they started selling expansions again to subsidize falling gem store profits. AND THEY LEARNED NOTHING from that experience. And doubled down on the gem store even after making a monetization move that should have rendered it obsolete, specifically because they halfassed it because they were investing even more in the business model that was already failing them. People noticed. Go back to the old forums and check out the player responses to HoT, how disappointed they were with its value for the asking price. As for the MMO market being different, that doesn't really apply to this discussion. Part of the reason players have gravitated to the most successful current MMOs is specifically because they're more complete experiences than the free to play alternatives with even more predatory cash shops than this one. The reason GW2 is doing better than a lot of games is specifically because it relies less on microtransactions, not because it keeps adding more of them. The industry as a whole moved to microtransactions specifically because they saw how much money it raked in, true, but I'll remind you that the industry did the same thing after WoW's improbable success, attempting to create a whole range of subscription based WoW clones until they learned that simply doing a thing because it makes someone else money does not guarantee your competing product will also make money. How many of these new CCGs inspired by hearthstone's success do you think will be around in five years? How many games do you think will have the sheer audactiy to tie progression directly to loot box economies like battlefront 2? Businesses love to look at numbers in a vaccum and in doing so make a lot of costly mistakes. The gaming industry specifically makes SO MANY costly mistakes because more often than not the people in charge of most of the money have very little understanding of their audience and how fickle that audience is in an extremely competitive market. The MMO market is smaller today specifically because companies invested millions in products and business models that were derivative to chase profits. They saw short term gain from WoW's example, then lost a lot of money when they realized that just because what someone else is doing is working, doesn't mean your consumers want two of that same thing. The thing you're saying excuses increasingly more customer hostile business models is the result of customer hostile business models. Attempting to replicate some else's profit numbers while simultaneously attempting to pull customers away from the thing you are emulating is why MMOs are in a downturn. Its why everyone is trying and failing to emulate the success of Marvel's cinematic universe. People who don't understand their customers don't understand that movies and video games are not toasters. In entertainment, specifically, can't just make the same product cheaper and expect the consumer to see it as a good value, and you can't charge the users for a luxury model with options and expect them to accept the increased cost. If what they were doing was working... they would have simply sold skins at a similar price point to gliders. The fact that they've attempted to implement a scheme specifically designed to cost the customer more on average to obtain a similar "optional" microtransaction indicates that what they were doing is NOT making them money as well as they expected, and their response to that problem is "let's try and force them to give us more money since we're not selling as many as we want" in stead of "lets figure out what they want to buy and sell them that" This is why the term 'exploitative' is often used in these discussions. Rather than attempting to create new customers and retain existing once by offering a better product or service, they're banking on upscaling the cost for what they believe is a captive audience. They're raising the price of bread because they're the only deli in town, and they know you love sandwiches, which only works as long as long as you don't get tired of sandwiches made with increasingly more shitty bread and decide to switch to soup. Or, god forbid... make your OWN sandwiches.

Did anyone stop to consider sales are declining because they go out of their way to make threadbare expansions specifically so they can offer them for reduced prices and overcharge you for gem store skins on the back end for increased profit while intentionally making a more frustrating game with less rewarding content? If they'd ACTUALLY moved to the expansion model and away from the "free updates subsidized by your annoyance at how few rewards are in them so you buy gem store stuff" model that was failing before they started working on HoT... has anyone considered they might be in a better place now? I mean by and large they used this model in the first game and made enough money to make a completely new game. An undertaking that costs way more time and money than making an expansion for an existing one. Has anyone considered "free updates" does not actually mean "free updates" and you've been relying on a fickle and transient minority of the player base buying overpriced wallet-farming loot to provide the majority of the revenue rather than focusing on making the best possible product to make it attractive to the most possible users? Did anyone stop to consider that the sales decline might be because they go out of their way to make a game where the point is convincing players to buy gems (or become licensed gold farmers for other players) rather than creating experiences so rich and rewarding people are happy to pay 60 bucks for expansions and tell everyone how awesome the game is?

The logic that the game can not survive on box purchases alone is false. We'd be paying a lower distributed cost in more frequent expansions at the cost of having as many free updates. We'd be paying full box price for these expansions. We'd be getting the full result of an entire development effort in once chunk. Actual cost of hosting servers in 2017 is DRASTICALLY lower than the days of the subscription model. Actual cost of developing games has not changed as drastically as you are led to believe, as the labor market in the industry is much more competitive and it is far easier to acquire better talent for less investment. Microtransactions effectively monetize a minority of a game's player base for the majority of their revenue by specifically targeting so-called "whales" Effective expansion models effectively monetize every player by distributing the income across the entire player base, and encourage the developers to release high value content loaded with whatever the players find desirable rather than specifically building their games in such a way as to withold content in order to drive cash shop sales under the guise of "free updates" The cost of developing and hosting an MMO in 2017 is not drastically dissimilar than the cost of maintaining online services for the plethora of shooters and sports games that offer these services for free, release iterative games once a year, and did not adopt microtransaction models until very recently although their business model was already so sustainable it bootstrapped multiple other projects. Very little of the added value from embracing a microtransaction model is actually reinvested in developing the game you buy them in. The idea that "they have to have a cash shop" is a myth. Offering discreet large chunks of complete content for direct pricing and placing all of the rewards within that package is very much a sustainable business model. If I had to choose between buying slightly more expensive expansions with no free updates that have all the rewards in the game, or having more free single map updates with two skins and being saddled with a cash shop and living in an environment where playing the game is not sufficient to access whatever reward mechanisms exist, I would most certainly choose the former. The problem is that without those people who "should know better" or "have the money anyway" spending hundreds and hundreds of collars more than the average on "optional" cash shop items, the profits do not keep pace with the rest of the industry. Making enough to continue making your game and paying your developers well is not the objective of such systems. Making as much as the rest of the industry that is exploiting their players for piles of money to deliver to cranky shareholders is.

This game has had randomized loot boxes since launch. Nobody cared because they could pay other players in gold to gamble in stead of doing it themselves. Doesn't change the fact that Anet is heavily monetizing a minority of the player base at the expense of the majority's selection of ingame rewards and always has been. When people buy skins or BL items for gold they are still supporting this business practice and actively saying to anet they'd rather be nickel and dimed a skin at a time than buy larger more content rich expansions at a standard game price point.

I've been saying the same thing about black lion chests for quite a while. Hilariously nobody cared about the exploitative real money RNG until it walled off something they actually wanted and they had to pay for it themselves in stead of getting some other anonymous player to do it for them. You people brought this on yourselves by supporting Anet's "you might win 1/10 of a weapon skin or get boosters we give you for logging in" nonsense in the first place. You people brought this on yourselves by BEGGING to pay ten bucks for mount skins in an expansion that cost forty dollars. Imagine a world where you all got up in arms about the ridiculous stacking rng of black lion tickets, or the overpriced nature of GW2 skins in general. Imagine how much better the game would be. Imagine how much more loot would actually exist in the game that wasn't clones of stuff you already had. You're mad now, sure, but where was that rage before? Where was that rage when you wanted that nice black lion skin? Where was that rage when arenanet released gliders or mounts as a focal point of an expansion, in a game where cosmetics collecting is the rewards loop, with no customization in sight for MONTHS without asking someone to pull out their credit card? Where was your anger when someone who wasn't you was paying for the gems you got "for free" on the currency exchange? Where was that anger when in the entire lifetime of HoT the VAST majority of rewards appeared not in the expansion you already paid for, but in the gem store? Where was that anger when on RELEASE DAY Anet was selling you glider skins while having none to earn at all? Where was it? Why are you surprised? You voted with your wallets, and in doing so indicated that you are complicit with overpriced skins and RNG bullshark. My advice to you: Learn from this experience. Stay Angry. Stop buying Gems. Demand better value for your consumer dollars. Stop treating gems you get on the exchange like they're free. Stop giving Anet a free pass to exploit you.

This is the one thing we agree on. This thread should be evidence that your system also fails to please everyone. The fact of the matter is that until all players value all types of content and reward equally, you can not please everyone. That will never happen. People are different, and want different things for different reasons. Specifically, you're removing context from all rewards in this manner. While that would certainly please you, such a drastic change to the fundamental reward mechanisms of the game is bound to upset just as many or possibly more people as it pleases. In a world where you simply can not please everyone, I'd prefer the status quo, because it has proven tolerable enough to all involved that it seems an adequate compromise. Your absolutist revision that aims to decouple reward from content is certainly intriguing as a general idea, were some game built around it from the ground up, but ill suited for a game that already has an entrenched user base largely content with the existing mechanism. I would find your approach to loot dreadfully boring to play as I rather enjoy the act of downing specific dungeons or bosses for their unique drops, and I dislike systems in which I can just buy everything on the trade post. I know its difficult for you to really understand, but when I save up tokens or gold or whatever and buy stuff from a vendor, its doesn't feel earned, and one of the specific reasons I play these types of games is to earn loot. I don't begrudge you this desire for everything. I simply don't find this system appealing, and I prefer the one we already have. That system is part of why I continue to play the game. I like being rewarded with skins relative to what I'm doing in the game, and thus I've been playing a game that does that for around five years.