Anet needs to move away from Open World design and make new dungeons.

[Obtena.7952]

1 hour ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

I was going to sit down and link you to all the articles and discussion on reddit surrounding the layoffs  and why they were done  (with cited sources to boot) but I don't think showing you that, for the past  few years, ANet hasn't been focusing on making GW2 the best game it could be and, instead, dumping development resources into projects that went nowhere  would actually convince you that you're objectively wrong.

ANet's mismanagement is also a very common complaint about them on Glassdoor.  But what do I know? 

 

Go ahead ... it wouldn't change a single thing I said. This is nothing 'objectively wrong' with the fact that Anet is in the best position (and not players) to make decisions about the game. 

Edited December 21, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

7 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Go ahead ... it wouldn't change a single thing I said. This is nothing 'objectively wrong' with the fact that Anet is in the best position (and not players) to make decisions about the game. 

Alright, go ahead, stay blind to all the mismanagement ANet has done over the years and continue to believe that everything will be okay.  I'll believe it when they actually deliver instead of saying "Release cadence for LW is 2-3 months" then pushing it to 3-4 months.  Or how about 6 wings a year, only to get 4 new ones in (I think) 6 years?  New dungeon paths that were promised but never given beyond Aetherpath?  Fractal releases that were to happen every 2nd (Or was it 3rd release) of LW whe nit was over a year before Sunquah came out?  Or no more expansions only to go back on this twice. First after season 2 then again after IBS?  Or how IBS had a good start then rushed middle to end, leaving out key parts of the story?

I'll wait for them to prove that they're being well managed with the release of EoD. 

Edited December 22, 2021 by Sir Alymer.3406

[Teratus.2859]

I don't really understand how people can be really into harder group based content and yet complain about the open world being difficult.. that's quite funny imo.

I've been a vocal advocate for more dungeons for a very long time myself, Fractals are good and fun but I want that traditional dungeon experience back in Gw2.
(Might happen if efforts to push harder group content continues to fail as seen with raids and may possibly happen with strikes if some things don't change.)

But the open world being hard.. I can't get my head around that, sure there are areas of the game which can be a bit of a slog to get through if your build is lacking or simply not that capable against certain enemy types but overall the PvE open world is extremely easy especially when others are around.

Edited December 22, 2021 by Teratus.2859

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

4 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:

I don't really understand how people can be really into harder group based content and yet complain about the open world being difficult.. that's quite funny imo.

I've been a vocal advocate for more dungeons for a very long time myself, Fractals are good and fun but I want that traditional dungeon experience back in Gw2.
(Might happen if efforts to push harder group content continues to fail as seen with raids and may possibly happen with strikes if some things don't change.)

But the open world being hard.. I can't get my head around that, sure there are areas of the game which can be a bit of a slog to get through if your build is lacking or simply not that capable against certain enemy types but overall the PvE open world is extremely easy especially when others are around.

As much as I'd love more dungeons, Strikes are going to be Anet's default choice for the moment.  It solves a few things that players and ANet had with previous instanced content:

1) Boss familiarity.  Newbies have no idea who or what these things are now, but EoD strikes aim to fix that as, if they (the newbies) go through the main story, they'll find the bosses.
2) They're a single boss (Or event+boss)  which fixes what raiders were complaining about when learning raids. (Gotta kill all prior bosses or pray someone has an instance to give you that's just up to that boss you want to train on.)
3) The ability to modify the boss with new mechanics depending on Challenge mode  or whatever status (This one's more of ANet)
4) Ease of creation.  It's just a copy/paste of a story boss in a room with new mechanics as the living world/story team did all the work developing the boss.

[monpetit.9764]

I wonder what the development time with dungeons vs open world content is; I imagine the former is faster, but maybe not if you want to make a bunch of new animations, particle effects, and other mechanics for the dungeon. Obviously geometry will be easier, and maybe this would allow ANet to pump out new content more consistently in general. Although the main theme of the game has been for many years more open world content alongside living stories, many players that stay with the game have never felt this was a grabbing point for them, and only trudged through open world to get achievements and items they want. It would be fantastic to see ANet take dungeons as the general new style of reoccurring content, and also the performance in open world can be a challenge for the games engine as a whole, even with the drastic improvement from DX11. In return, it would be interesting to add more content to the already existing open world, new achievement tracks, skins, etc to compliment the dungeon's theme/where it's located, and in turn this content won't neglect the BnB of GW2's exploration style of gameplay.

[Teratus.2859]

3 minutes ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

As much as I'd love more dungeons, Strikes are going to be Anet's default choice for the moment.  It solves a few things that players and ANet had with previous instanced content:

1) Boss familiarity.  Newbies have no idea who or what these things are now, but EoD strikes aim to fix that as, if they (the newbies) go through the main story, they'll find the bosses.
2) They're a single boss (Or event+boss)  which fixes what raiders were complaining about when learning raids. (Gotta kill all prior bosses or pray someone has an instance to give you that's just up to that boss you want to train on.)
3) The ability to modify the boss with new mechanics depending on Challenge mode  or whatever status (This one's more of ANet)
4) Ease of creation.  It's just a copy/paste of a story boss in a room with new mechanics as the living world/story team did all the work developing the boss.

I am hopeful but I am not willing to bet on their success just yet.

Strikes are going to suffer from the same toxicity that Raids and Fractals and even Dungons had at one point, this is unavoidable.

The deciding factor as always is going to be whether the casual playerbase decides to keep playing Strikes.
If they deem it too hard, too annoying or too toxic then they will abandon the content just like they did with raids and Strikes will eventually stagnate and die, just like raids did.
And I've warned of this since it was announced that Strikes will be the focus.

I hope it doesn't come to pass, but i'm not going to bet on that just yet.
Anet definitely seems to be on the right path with new Strikes but we'll just have to wait and see how it goes.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

3 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Strikes are going to suffer from the same toxicity that Raids and Fractals and even Dungons had at one point, this is unavoidable.

The unfortunate  reality, yeah.  People consider other players having a certain standard of experience and playstyle to be toxic and, f or some reason, think those groups common when the groups they're after fill so much faster and they could easily set up their own group.

[Teratus.2859]

1 minute ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

The unfortunate  reality, yeah.  People consider other players having a certain standard of experience and playstyle to be toxic and, f or some reason, think those groups common when the groups they're after fill so much faster and they could easily set up their own group.

Unfortunately strikes already have this issue but I expect it will be more common with the new strike focus.

Last time I encountered this kind of behaviour was in a strike mission, two people arguing over another players DPS output.. and we're talking about a very miniscule difference of like 3k dps it was pathetic.
One guy arguing it was fine and one elitist donkey demanding the player in question "use another build" 

Best part was the previously failed attempts were not because the boss enraged, we wiped to botched mechanics as some of our group were first timers running the boss, myself included.
We literally killed it on the next attempt though lol

Was never a DPS issue, it was simply a lack of experience issue which is vastly the more common cause of a failed run in group content like this, even in raids.

There was absolutely no reason for that one player to start complaining about DPS, but unfortunately you'll always have people like that in this kind of content.

[Rasimir.6239]

3 minutes ago, monpetit.9764 said:

Although the main theme of the game has been for many years more open world content alongside living stories, many players that stay with the game have never felt this was a grabbing point for them, and only trudged through open world to get achievements and items they want

The problem with "many" is that such claims are always anecdotal and with perception heavily influenced by the people you play with.

 

I've been a progression raider in previous games, and have always loved instanced group content. I really enjoy it in GW2, too, to the point where I am part of a guild that focusses on such content, and have been for many years. Most if not all other members of that guild are 20+ years younger than myself though, in totally different life situations, and with way less health issues limiting them on learning and playing that content.

 

My main guild, on the other hand, that I've been a part of for more than 8 years, is one of those made up of the infamous "hardcore casuals", a lot of people my age (50+) and older, that each have put more than 10k hours into the game since launch, have dozends of characters, achievement scores beyond 35k, and simply don't play instanced content. It's not something they feel comfortable with, especially not when pugging with people half their age, and with a totally different agenda. I tend to drag some of them through dungeons, fractals, or easy strikes occasionally, but it's just not something that meshes with their playstyle and the things they are looking for.

 

Subjectively judging from the people I play with in my guilds and on my friends list, I could come to the conclusion that the many people playing open world and keeping way from instanced group content are not only many, but the majority. I haven't the slightest idea if this is correct or not, since I (just like every other player) only see the part of the playerbase that I have contact with, which of course is influenced by my playstyle. ANet are the only ones that have the metrics about how many players play which part of the game, and how to spread their resources to develop content that best suits the game.

 

The "many" players that each of us sees are really just a very small part of the total playerbase. Decisions should be based on serious statistics, not on anecdotal evidence coming from players.

[Obtena.7952]

10 hours ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

Alright, go ahead, stay blind to all the mismanagement ANet has done over the years and continue to believe that everything will be okay.  

I'm not ignoring it. It simply has nothing to do with what I'm telling you is a fact. Mismanaged or not, it's Anets decisions to make and no players are in a better position to make better decisions than they are. Believe what you like because you seem to have an axe to grind but if the game was so badly mismanaged because of Anet's bad decisions, it wouldn't exist. 

Edited December 22, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

7 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

I'm not ignoring it. It simply has nothing to do with what I'm telling you is a fact. Mismanaged or not, it's Anets decisions to make and no players are in a better position to make better decisions than they are. Believe what you like because you seem to have an axe to grind but if the game was so badly mismanaged because of Anet's bad decisions, it wouldn't exist. 

Bruh, it's not a zero sum game where if the management is bad, there's no game.  I know, capitalism and all that says there shouldn't be, but humans suck and will continually pay for things that have gone bad due to the sunk cost fallacy ("I've played this game f or x many hours & put x many dollars into this game, it can't be bad").  Management can be kitten poor and there would still be the barebones development to keep the common income sources happy & hopeful enough to throw money at the business while not much is actually being done and actively developed.

I'm saying that this game was poorly managed in the past, hasn't reached its full potential because of garbage management and that I'm skeptical of ANet's ability to deliver on anything related to PvE instanced content that they promise is coming with EoD due to past promised release cadences falling through.  There's a modicum of good will with the WvW restructuring and them being clear about what's going on there, but I've yet to see that level of structure inside the areas of the game I actively play currently. If ANet finds an actual steady release cadence for strikes (And other instanced content) along with actually designing meaningful, difficult encounters with Strike CMs, I'll trust them again.

[Obtena.7952]

30 minutes ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

I'm saying that this game was poorly managed in the past, hasn't reached its full potential because of garbage management and that I'm skeptical of ANet's ability to deliver on anything related to PvE instanced content that they promise is coming with EoD due to past promised release cadences falling through.

I know what you are saying ... and it has nothing to do with anything I said in this thread ... so why are you replying to me with things that aren't related to what I'm telling you? 

Again, I get it ... you have a big axe to grind and you don't trust Anet. NEWFLASH: you don't have a choice. Obviously it's not as bad as you say, or you or the game wouldn't be here. 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

2 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Again, I get it ... you have a big axe to grind and you don't trust Anet. NEWFLASH: you don't have a choice.

No axe here, just don't understand why everyone keeps giving ANet all this good faith, despite, y'know, them being a company first, having made poor management decisions in the past, etc.

Also, wow, no choice?  Since when is ANet holding me at gunpoint saying I have to pay for EoD regardless of them actually releasing content I enjoy playing? I'll take a wait and see if ANet delivers in EoD a consistent cadence of instanced content.

I'm also pretty sure that if ANet keeps flubbing their promises about PvE content, people will begin leaving.  Even the whitest of knights have a limit to how much crap they can put up with before a line is crossed.

[Obtena.7952]

1 minute ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

No axe here, just don't understand why everyone keeps giving ANet all this good faith, despite, y'know, them being a company first, having made poor management decisions in the past, etc.
 

Probably because your view is not considered accurate by some people. Unlike you, some reasonable people understand not every decision Anet makes will be good for them or the game. Such is life. 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

Just now, Obtena.7952 said:

Probably because your view is based on your own perception?

Which is built up from 9 years worth of experience of ANet promising things, under-delivering, delivering late, or never delivering. (Remember the  fractal level reset for fractal leader boards that never happened?)

[Obtena.7952]

16 minutes ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

Which is built up from 9 years worth of experience of ANet promising things, under-delivering, delivering late, or never delivering. (Remember the  fractal level reset for fractal leader boards that never happened?)

.... or you just having unreasonable expectations and being sensational. Again ... things happen and change. There was no apocalypse here, even if some things changed  ... Game is still good. 

I mean, you're trying to paint some picture that in 9 years, Anet has never delivered or always under delivered? That's just nonsense. If that were the case, the game wouldn't be here. You don't have an axe to grind? The hell you don't.  Sounds like you have a couple.

Fractal level reset and leader boards never happened? Neither of those things would affect gameplay very significantly ... so I think a congratulations is in order for Anet for canning those ideas. See, where you see failure ... I see mindful decisions being made for plausible reasons. 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[AliamRationem.5172]

13 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

.... or you just having unreasonable expectations and being sensational. Again ... things happen and change. There was no apocalypse here, even if some things changed  ... Game is still good. 

I mean, you're trying to paint some picture that in 9 years, Anet has never delivered or always under delivered? That's just nonsense. If that were the case, the game wouldn't be here. You don't have an axe to grind? The hell you don't.  Sounds like you have a couple.

They pretty famously promised more, delivered less, and then changed course. You don't have to go back 9 years to find examples of that. That's ongoing right now. 

It's a good game, but poorly managed and has been for the years I've been playing. 

[Obtena.7952]

9 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

They pretty famously promised more, delivered less, and then changed course. You don't have to go back 9 years to find examples of that. That's ongoing right now. 

It's a good game, but poorly managed and has been for the years I've been playing. 

Sure ... and I've yet to see an MMO that doesn't survive by changing game ideas they have to adapt for some reason. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm saying we should EXPECT that kind of thing to happen and not attribute that to some kind of incompetence or malice ... like MANY people do. In fact, I would argue that the changes show a level of business acumen, not incompetence. 

I think we need to have less concrete expectations here. It's really easy to diagnose things from the player side as bad management. The kinds of bad decisions that impacted the game as a business we should care about are things like; HOT difficulty and IBS as a 'not-expansion' expansion. Stuff like fractal leaderboards, etc ... that's just little nothings. If there were many more significantly bad decisions affecting the game, it simply wouldn't be here.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

On 12/18/2021 at 4:30 PM, Dayra.7405 said:

The Strength of GW2 is Open-World Design.

I would say: Stay with the Strength, there is already more Small Closed Group Content (From Dungeons and Fractals to Raids and Dragon Response and Strike Mission) than I like.

There's vastly more OW content than instance-based. One of the strengths of GW2 is offering multiple options to multiple players, and they don't have to like each and every one of them. Hence, the "-- than I like" -part feels out of place, odd and even selfish. Which I'm sure you didn't intend for.

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

15 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

I am hopeful but I am not willing to bet on their success just yet.

Strikes are going to suffer from the same toxicity that Raids and Fractals and even Dungons had at one point, this is unavoidable.

The deciding factor as always is going to be whether the casual playerbase decides to keep playing Strikes.
If they deem it too hard, too annoying or too toxic then they will abandon the content just like they did with raids and Strikes will eventually stagnate and die, just like raids did.
And I've warned of this since it was announced that Strikes will be the focus.

I hope it doesn't come to pass, but i'm not going to bet on that just yet.
Anet definitely seems to be on the right path with new Strikes but we'll just have to wait and see how it goes.

I'd imagine at least SOME of the new strikes will be similar to Visions of the Past: Forging Steel, albeit shorter in length. I firmly believe this was Anet testing out how the return to a more GW1-esque mission-style model of playing works out and is received by the player base. 

Thanks to the CMs, it's easier to adjust the difficulty, too. If designed and handled well, it can be the best of both worlds for both (casual and more hardcore) parties. The biggest issue comes in the form of replay value: will the casuals have the patience and attitude that enables them to repeat and potentially learn and improve? Will the more hardcore base become bored or not?

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

43 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

.... or you just having unreasonable expectations and being sensational. Again ... things happen and change. There was no apocalypse here, even if some things changed  ... Game is still good. 

I mean, you're trying to paint some picture that in 9 years, Anet has never delivered or always under delivered? That's just nonsense. If that were the case, the game wouldn't be here. You don't have an axe to grind? The hell you don't.  Sounds like you have a couple.

Fractal level reset and leader boards never happened? Neither of those things would affect gameplay very significantly ... so I think a congratulations is in order for Anet for canning those ideas. See, where you see failure ... I see mindful decisions being made for plausible reasons. 

Man, am I going to have to list all of the things ANet has done that has lead me to my conclusion?

That fractal reset was one example.

You've ignored (In no particular order) the repeated examples of delays and failure to deliver on instanced content in relation to fractals, raids, and strikes(Fractals are something everyone could enjoy too as they get added to T1); repeated delays and inconsistency in story telling within the Living world, going from every 2-3 months to every 3-4 months to eventually every 4-5 months in release; repeated rebranding of content (Dungeons to fractals, raids to strikes to DRMs), the New Player Experience that removed a lot of content in the starting  areas, the subsequent killing of dungeons when HoT launched (Severe reduction in rewards that was undone, but the damage was already done to dungeons), and there's much more that I'm not listing here due to time constraints IRL.  I may edit to add m ore later.
 

 

23 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Sure ... and I've yet to see an MMO that doesn't survive by changing game ideas they have to adapt for some reason. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm saying we should EXPECT that kind of thing to happen and not attribute that to some kind of incompetence or malice ... like MANY people do.

I've yet to see an MMO that survives by consistently rebranding content, having inconsistent release cadences, and continually ignoring the veteran community who wants to play something more difficult in their favorite game.  I do expect things to change course sometimes, just not every other release.  I also expect that  ANet keeps to the course they set with  only minor veering here and there  off course if an idea they had for a feature doesn't work.  I don't expect them to repeatedly release new content types (Game modes, etc) and then ignore them (Remember PvP Strongholds?  How about EotM in WvW?  Adventures in PvE?  The one off masteries in all the new maps that are really only useful on those maps and maybe one other?).

Generally, if an  MMO is going through those things at the start, it's either new and the devs are getting their bearings or it has a lack of focus brought upon itself by poor management or work ethic. Now  I don't want to call ANet devs lazy (They're anything but from the few conversations I've had with a few within the company) so that leaves  only the management.

 

 

16 minutes ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

There's vastly more OW content than instance-based. One of the strengths of GW2 is offering multiple options to multiple players, and they don't have to like each and every one of them. Hence, the "-- than I like" -part feels out of place, odd and even selfish. Which I'm sure you didn't intend for.

Almost all story content is a mix of instance-based and open world.  I'd argue that every release has you spending about as much  time in an instance as you'd be in the open world.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Sir Alymer.3406

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

1 minute ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

Man, am I going to have to list all of the things ANet has done that has lead me to my conclusion?

That fractal reset was one example.

You've ignored (In no particular order) the repeated examples of delays and failure to deliver on instanced content in relation to fractals, raids, and strikes(Fractals are something everyone could enjoy too as they get added to T1); repeated delays and inconsistency in story telling within the Living world, going from every 2-3 months to every 3-4 months to eventually every 4-5 months in release; repeated rebranding of content (Dungeons to fractals, raids to strikes to DRMs), the New Player Experience that removed a lot of content in the starting  areas, the subsequent killing of dungeons when HoT launched (Severe reduction in rewards that was undone, but the damage was already done to dungeons), and there's much more that I'm not listing here due to time constraints IRL.  I may edit to add m ore later.
 

 

I've yet to see an MMO that survives by consistently rebranding content, having inconsistent release cadences, and continually ignoring the veteran community who wants to play something more difficult in their favorite game.  I do expect things to change course sometimes, just not every other release.  I also expect that  ANet keeps to the course they set with  only minor veering here and there  off course if an idea they had for a feature doesn't work.  I don't expect them to repeatedly release new content types (Game modes, etc) and then ignore them (Remember PvP Strongholds?  How about EotM in WvW?  Adventures in PvE?  The one off masteries in all the new maps that are really only useful on those maps and maybe one other?).

 

 

Almost all story content is a mix of instance-based and open world.  I'd argue that every release has you spending about as much  time in an instance as you'd be in the open world.

Only if you just rush through the story.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

Just now, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

Only if you just rush through the story.

Define "rushing" when you can use mounts and such to go fast between objectives? Also if you're rushing, the instanced content becomes shorter too...

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

1 minute ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

Define "rushing" when you can use mounts and such to go fast between objectives? Also if you're rushing, the instanced content becomes shorter too...

Skip achievements, skip unlockable skins, available events and encounters, etc. etc. 

Rush --> take the shortest available path. This game has an insane amount of open world content, and I doubt many people even realize this because they're tunnel-visioning.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

3 minutes ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

Skip achievements, skip unlockable skins, available events and encounters, etc. etc.

So what a majority of people do already?

You know the instances have achievements tied to the content as well, some of them are actually more difficult to do on your own as well and take multiple attempts even for skilled players/groups.

 

Quote

Rush --> take the shortest available path. This game has an insane amount of open world content, and I doubt many people even realize this because they're tunnel-visioning.

This is too true.  So many people just turn on the meta event timers and just do those and ignore literally everything else on a map.  It's the same with any daily system though.  People come on, do those dailies, then log out.