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

[Obtena.7952]

40 minutes 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?

You could but it wouldn't matter because your conclusion don't match what is real. I mean, again, you are trying to paint this picture that Anet is just bad at managing the game ... yet the game exists and continues to be developed based on that management. So ... your conclusion is lacking some rigor there because it's safe to assume companies that do more bad than good don't have products that stick around too long. 

I get that you worked really hard on this narrative and stringing together all the bad bits you could find to make your conclusions. Maybe next time your conclusions need to be analogous to what is actually true.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

4 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

You could but it wouldn't matter because your conclusion don't match what is real. I mean, again, you are trying to paint this picture that Anet is just bad at managing the game ... yet the game exists and continues to be developed. So ... your conclusion is lacking some rigor there. 

I mean, I give up.  I gave you clear, concise examples  of what ANet's done in the past, I've even  told you as to why poorly managed games can still stay afloat despite being poorly managed, and you're just being obtuse and arguing in bad faith now.  Duke Nukem Forever exists and, by god, you can't tell me that game wasn't poorly managed and still saw a release despite it.  Champions online is an MMO that still is going as of this post and, you can't tell me that game isn't poorly managed (It has content droughts that make the time between season 2 and HoT look like a brief hiatus.)

 

7 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

What I think is really great is how you managed to ignore all the good things that leads to the fact we have this game after nine years with an expansion coming out. That simply couldn't happen if everything Anet does is bad or maybe you got this theory everything good that has happened was just a happy coincidence.

I didn't ignore any of the good.  I enjoyed the good, because, get this, I like the game.  I'm critical  of it because it's a game I enjoy and ANet's a company I've given my money to for entertainment. If they're doing things I don't like, you can bet mystic coins on the fact that I'll be here or on the GW2 reddit, telling them about it.
 

 

8 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

But sure, tell us all again the story of how Anet somehow managed to create and develop GW2 by making all  bad decisions. 

Who's misreading who, now? 🤔  I've repeatedly stated that I'm skeptical of ANet's ability to deliver what they promise, gave examples of why over the 9 or so years and that's somehow saying that, over the course of GW2's development, that ANet's only made bad decisions?
 

[Obtena.7952]

12 minutes ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

I've repeatedly stated that I'm skeptical of ANet's ability to deliver what they promise, gave examples of why over the 9 or so years and that's somehow saying that, over the course of GW2's development, that ANet's only made bad decisions?
 

Sure, repeat it all you like. The fact is that this game's success is not an accident despite whatever level of poor management you say exists. If that makes you skeptical of their ability to deliver an expansion, you're just being biased by your own negative focus because Anet has delivered two expansions; obviously this fact has eluded your 'conclusion'. 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[AliamRationem.5172]

55 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. 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.

So now we're going to argue the degree to which this product has been mismanaged with the failure condition being nothing short of the game ceasing to exist?  Okay, I'm out.  Have fun winning the internet...

[Obtena.7952]

2 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

So now we're going to argue the degree to which this product has been mismanaged with the failure condition being nothing short of the game ceasing to exist?  Okay, I'm out.  Have fun winning the internet...

Of course we are ... because you think it's unreasonable to correlate the success of a product to how the company is managed? I don't. I mean, Anet has ONE service they provide with GW2. It seems pretty ridiculous to me that the current game state is the result of severe mismanagement. 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[AliamRationem.5172]

32 minutes ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

I mean, I give up.  I gave you clear, concise examples  of what ANet's done in the past, I've even  told you as to why poorly managed games can still stay afloat despite being poorly managed, and you're just being obtuse and arguing in bad faith now.  Duke Nukem Forever exists and, by god, you can't tell me that game wasn't poorly managed and still saw a release despite it.  Champions online is an MMO that still is going as of this post and, you can't tell me that game isn't poorly managed (It has content droughts that make the time between season 2 and HoT look like a brief hiatus.)

 

I didn't ignore any of the good.  I enjoyed the good, because, get this, I like the game.  I'm critical  of it because it's a game I enjoy and ANet's a company I've given my money to for entertainment. If they're doing things I don't like, you can bet mystic coins on the fact that I'll be here or on the GW2 reddit, telling them about it.
 

 

Who's misreading who, now? 🤔  I've repeatedly stated that I'm skeptical of ANet's ability to deliver what they promise, gave examples of why over the 9 or so years and that's somehow saying that, over the course of GW2's development, that ANet's only made bad decisions?
 

What are you talking about?  You can't criticize ANet.  Their product still exists, therefore success! 🙄

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

2 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Of course we are ... because you think it's unreasonable to correlate the success of a product to how the company is managed? I don't. I mean, Anet has ONE service they provide with GW2. It seems pretty ridiculous to me that the current game state is the result of severe mismanagement. 

I don't believe I or anyone else in this thread was stating that the game's success is directly tied to poor management.  I've worked at places that have had poor management before and they're still around 10 years later with a new manager, that is.  This is why I'm-

-And I can't seem to emphasize this enough for you-

Skeptical of ANet's current promises when it comes to what they plan on releasing due to past experiences that I've already listed.
 

 

1 hour ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

What are you talking about?  You can't criticize ANet.  Their product still exists, therefore success! 🙄

Really makes one think.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Sir Alymer.3406

[Obtena.7952]

19 minutes ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

I don't believe I or anyone else in this thread was stating that the game's success is directly tied to poor management. 

You should be because there is a correlation between how a company is managed and it's success ... but hey, don't let two successful expansion releases stop you from speculating Anet can't do it a 3rd time.

Again, I'm not telling you something that isn't true ... you've convinced yourself Anet makes all these poor decisions because you've pieced all this bad bits of information together into some shaky narrative. Regardless of how true that narrative is (or not) and how skeptical you are, as I've said several times ... no one is in a better position to make game decisions except Anet. It can't be any other way. 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

2 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

You should be because there is a correlation between how a company is managed and it's success ... but hey, don't let two successful expansion releases stop you from speculating Anet can't do it a 3rd time.

Again, I'm not telling you something that isn't true ... you've convinced yourself Anet makes all these poor decisions because you've pieced all this bad bits of information together into some shaky narrative. Regardless of how true that narrative is (or not) and how skeptical you are, as I've said several times ... no one is in a better position to make game decisions except Anet. It can't be any other way. 

HoT wasn't a huge success, my friend.  They (ANet) moved away from all the design philosophies that came with HoT in PoF because HoT saw a steep decline in player retention and such, even after the nerfs.  ANet released, at most, two okay expansions that did well enough to continue development of the game.

Also your narrative is that people here are trying to manage ANet better.  Your whole argument is "Your opinion doesn't matter 'cause ANet does what they want with their data informing them." Which, in that case, why are you here on the forums? That goes for you too.  Your opinion, under those ideas, doesn't matter either.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Sir Alymer.3406

[Firebeard.1746]

I absolutely disagree. Instanced PVE in this game tends to get cliquish over time where people are expected to be forced into a META and the longer it's been sitting around, the more required the meta becomes. Anet's vision of no roles has been roflstomped to the ground because the community has organically created them and turned people into cogs in a machine. The promise of all the different stat combinations and the freedom they intended is gone in instanced PVE and that's a shame in some ways

People love OW because there's more freedom in what you can do and playstyles you can choose. people like WvW for the same reason. It's true that optimized groups way outperform unoptimized ones, but even an unoptimized group can be fun in WvW. 

Also, it's just not well designed: Is the DPS check in Siren's reef supposed to be checking for all the boons and profession enhancements you can pack into a single group? Or is it checking skill? Some combination of both? Where is the game teaching EITHER of these things? (An optimal rotation, or how to build a group, not to mention most professions don't even have a non-boon buff they can share, banner slave will still be meta in EoD). 

And then a knockback mechanic: is it testing presence of stab? Or people dodging? While we're talking about dodging, is it testing the number of dodges you can do with or without vigor? Now imagine how many telegraphed attacks the anet devs can throw into one boss with knockback and a skilled group still properly deal with it with an HB present + dodging. Now imagine how frustrated everyone who isn't running this comp would feel. But on the flip side, imagine how bored those hardcore players with the HB could feel if they aren't pushed to their limits. This is the issue with GW2 PVE in a nutshell and why elite players feel bored so easy. 

Also some encounters feel like chaos where the only way to get through it is massive DPS. And sometimes, that bothers me. In other games, I'm used to playing mechanics more. Everyone on this game just wants to skip them. But, I'm not sure I want anet writing mechanics because sometimes they just don't think them through well or even don't go back and change them when there's a balance pass. I only instanced PVE in this game because it has the most ridiculous rewards and there are some roles I can do decently well. 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[Dayra.7405]

9 hours 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.

Lol. "Than I like", is a clear marker of my personal preferences. It can never be out of place to tell personal preferences, if they are marked as personal preferences. Only if they are hidden in phrases like "More than it should have" it becomes problematic.

[Teratus.2859]

9 hours ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

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. 

Yes I've also expressed similar opinions as well with the Dragon Response Missions which I still think are in theory a great story telling tool that suffered from the unfortunate bad storytelling of later IBS.

One of the things Gw2 was always sold on was an ever changing world an DRM's for the first time in many years actually give us that new content/events in old areas that progressed the story without needing to change the world like LWS1 did.

I still believe that DRM's can allow us to experience all kinds of things in Gw2 without impacting the overworld which in the past was kind of a ball and chain for Anet to do.
Back in Lake Doric we saw a Dam break and the lake being drained because of that.
Imagine if that had been the Eastern Dam instead and as a result Queensdale would have been flooded.
We could have had a DRM style mission where we'd get to see and play in a flooded Queensdale map without impacting the overworld map.
I'd have love to have seen something like that tbh. 
 

9 hours ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

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?

It's quite funny how so many see the difficulty scaling aspect of upcoming strikes as a positive thing when many of us have for years argued for the same thing in raids and had every subject on the matter pretty much shut down by the raid community.
I guess in the end we won though lol albeit not in the content we were hoping for.

Nevertheless I still stand by this being a good thing, the one major argument that has always been made by hardcore and casual alike is "I want to play this content my own way" be that casually with whatever builds you like or with a fine tuned group of meta builds.
Strikes catering to both isn't just the right thing to do, it's what Anet should have been doing years ago in the first place imo.

I've always stood by my argument that the main thing separating the hardcore and the casual is hands on experience, so i'm very much looking forward to seeing how many casual players end up beating the harder strikes.
They may not want to farm them regularly, falling more into how many players prefer to run T3 Fractals rather than T4.
It's not that they can't run T4, it's that they are more comfortable and enjoy doing T3's more than T4's.
I can speak for myself on that too, I enjoy the more chill T3 experience more.

I am confident that once casuals get a decent bit of hands on experience with these new strikes they will be capable of doing the harder ones albeit with a bit of struggling.
I've seen this happen in all PvE group content over the years, even raids.
The main thing I'd bet on driving them away from it will be the same thing that has driven them away in the past, and that is bad experiences with other players.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

18 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:

It's quite funny how so many see the difficulty scaling aspect of upcoming strikes as a positive thing when many of us have for years argued for the same thing in raids and had every subject on the matter pretty much shut down by the raid community.

It was shut down because almost every suggestion for easy mode raids had the caveat of earning LI/LD within it as well.  Basically, people suggesting easy mode raids wanted an easy route to legendary armor instead of just an easier way to experience the content.

[Dayra.7405]

On 12/23/2021 at 11:58 AM, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

It was shut down because almost every suggestion for easy mode raids had the caveat of earning LI/LD within it as well.  Basically, people suggesting easy mode raids wanted an easy route to legendary armor instead of just an easier way to experience the content.

I don't care about the easyness, I hate the group-building. A solo and/or 5-people possibility to earn LI/LD of the same difficulty is what I would prefer over any other10-people version.

Edit: That doesn't neccesarily mean, that there should be a raid version for 1 or 5, it could also mean that LI/LD could be earned elsewhere.

Edited December 25, 2021 by Dayra.7405

[Teratus.2859]

27 minutes ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

It was shut down because almost every suggestion for easy mode raids had the caveat of earning LI/LD within it as well.  Basically, people suggesting easy mode raids wanted an easy route to legendary armor instead of just an easier way to experience the content.

Not mine, or a good few others I saw over time.
A lot of us wanted easy modes to be purely for training/experiencing the story and offer either severely diminished rewards (definitely not any LI/LD) or none at all.

I was very vocal about this from the start.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Teratus.2859

[costepj.5120]

1 hour ago, Dayra.7405 said:

"Than I like", is a clear marker of my personal preferences.

I think this forum would be a lot more pleasant read if more people prefaced their posts with "I want" or "I would like". No-one should purport to post on behalf of the community, but simply express their opinion and preferences.
Post that start "Anet needs to ..." are much more likely to polarise the responses.

[Fuchslein.8639]

14 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Not mine, or a good few others I saw over time.
A lot of us wanted easy modes to be purely for training/experiencing the story and offer either severely diminished rewards (definitely not any LI/LD) or none at all.

I was very vocal about this from the start.

Also not mine, or a good few other i saw said they don't want an easy mode.
Quite the opposite. So that everyone can experience the story and have a learning curve like in fractals, for this I was personally and many others I know and saw also. If you want to argue that casuals are not a big one-opinion-mass, you should also realize that the raid community is not one big mass.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Fuchslein.8639

[Sobx.1758]

On 12/22/2021 at 9:12 AM, 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.

Yup, this doesn't really make much sense, which is why -to me- this thread seems more like a request for making open world easier (and as I said before: I disagree with that idea), while using "introducing more hard instanced content" as a cover.

 

1 hour ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Not mine, or a good few others I saw over time.
A lot of us wanted easy modes to be purely for training/experiencing the story and offer either severely diminished rewards (definitely not any LI/LD) or none at all.

I was very vocal about this from the start.

...then what "shutting down" are you talking about exactly? Because as far as I remember, most people (from the limited number that participated in the thread/s) didn't have a problem with training mode, but just didn't like the ideas that were aiming at skipping the content by introducing main rewards into those training modes.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[Redfeather.6401]

Anet needs to quit thinking they can make an mmorpg that even comes close to the top 5. They just don't get it.

edit: And now I am thinking someone reading this has no clue that gw2 is not in the top 5 played mmoprgs because of how much fanboyism dominates the mindset. Wow, FF, NW, ESO, BDO, RS, L. Those are the top 7.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Redfeather.6401

[Teratus.2859]

2 hours ago, Fuchslein.8639 said:

Also not mine, or a good few other i saw said they don't want an easy mode.
Quite the opposite. So that everyone can experience the story and have a learning curve like in fractals, for this I was personally and many others I know and saw also. If you want to argue that casuals are not a big one-opinion-mass, you should also realize that the raid community is not one big mass.

Well aware of that.
It's always a vocal minority that tends to be the problem and hog the spotlight.

Unfortunately these days though such vocal minorities are rarely kept in check buy a larger community they claim to speak for but don't really represent.. and they have far more influence than I think a lot of people would recognise as well.
Tribalism really doesn't help this problem either.

[Teratus.2859]

1 hour ago, Sobx.1758 said:

...then what "shutting down" are you talking about exactly? Because as far as I remember, most people (from the limited number that participated in the thread/s) didn't have a problem with training mode, but just didn't like the ideas that were aiming at skipping the content by introducing main rewards into those training modes.

The kind that would just spout nonsense like "you just don't want to learn" or would accuse you of trying to control who they were allowed to play with etc.

Very common strawman arguments I heard often when arguing with some raiders who would just dismiss everything you say and claim nonsense like that to halt discussions.
Best part being during discussion topics that largely had nothing to do with them in the first place.
A lot of causals tend not to want to associate with hardcore players all that much anyway.

There were some bad easy raid ideas going around for sure but plenty just wanted the in game tools to help them experience the content and learn in a less punishing environment with like minded and similarly experienced players.

But it usually devolved into just fighting and toxicity which is the main reason I eventually stopped giving a crap about raids entirely as well.

[robertthebard.8150]

33 minutes ago, Redfeather.6401 said:

Anet needs to quit thinking they can make an mmorpg that even comes close to the top 5. They just don't get it.

edit: And now I am thinking someone reading this has no clue that gw2 is not in the top 5 played mmoprgs because of how much fanboyism dominates the mindset. Wow, FF, NW, ESO, BDO, RS, L. Those are the top 7.

Interesting list.  I went through about 6 different site lists of Top 10 MMOs, and GW 2 was on all of them, including one that was all about finding people that actually play it.  It seemed to hover consistently around 8th, so I can see why you stopped at 7, right?  I'd say being in the Top 10 is pretty good, for an older MMO, including WoW here, because it's definitely older.  I've never played, but I can't argue about it's longevity.

[Obtena.7952]

9 hours ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

HoT wasn't a huge success, my friend.  They (ANet) moved away from all the design philosophies that came with HoT in PoF because HoT saw a steep decline in player retention and such, even after the nerfs.  ANet released, at most, two okay expansions that did well enough to continue development of the game.

Also your narrative is that people here are trying to manage ANet better.  Your whole argument is "Your opinion doesn't matter 'cause ANet does what they want with their data informing them." Which, in that case, why are you here on the forums? That goes for you too.  Your opinion, under those ideas, doesn't matter either.

What is the opinion you think I'm pushing here? I'm not the one that is skeptical, you are. Of course it applies to me ... and I'm not the one trying to shame Anet with a negative narrative to do ... something I want. Anet is gonna do what they want. Yes HoT wasn't that great ... and as you can see, Anet changed how they did PoF because of it. Just another example of Anet making changes good for their business that you somehow twisted into the image they can't do anything right to justify your skepticism. 

Anyways, the truth is that I see more good than bad going on, and the fact the game is still here being developed supports that narrative more than your 'Anet can't do anything right" one.  Which goes to the original topic ... no, Anet shouldn't be de-focusing from OW content ... it's the foundation of this game. That's ridiculous. 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Forum Moderator.3419]

Hello Everyone,

Just a reminder to keep it civil and avoid attacking each other.

Regards. ☃️

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

10 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Not mine, or a good few others I saw over time.
A lot of us wanted easy modes to be purely for training/experiencing the story and offer either severely diminished rewards (definitely not any LI/LD) or none at all.

I was very vocal about this from the start.

So, there's currently a post in Instanced Group Content:

that requests "As far as rewards, ANet could slightly reduce loot tables for public versions (as Blizzard does) but still give the Divinations/Insights to allow more players to craft Legendary Armor. "

I've always been for easy mod raids.  In fact, I've always wondered why ANet didn't just introduce raids like fractals.  Raid tiers with T1 being easy, T2 being current, then T3 for CM, T4 for even  more challenge.  But that never came as, to ANet, raids are r aids and can't have scalable difficulty (Or consistent difficulty between bosses, but that's another problem entirely).  But I've never been for giving the same rewards per teir.  Maybe splitting LI/LD into shards of LI/LD, give the shards out on the easier difficulties where  x many shards = 1 LI/LD where, yes, technically you could still progress, but a full clear of T1 raids would net you less LI/LD per week than just doing T2 or higher.

10 hours ago, Dayra.7405 said:

I don't care about the easyness, I hate the group-building. A solo and/or 5-people possibility to earn LI/LD of the same difficulty is what I would prefer over any other10-people version.

I honestly don't know what to tell you.  Raids are group content through and through.  They're balanced with 10 people playing specialized roles in mind.  There's not really a way to scale back the difficulty to allow one player to do them.  See  CoF  P1/P3 or other dungeon/fractal instances that require multiple people to get through.  Generally there's some exploit involved that makes it clear that solo isn't intended.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Sir Alymer.3406