Were the sustain nerfs *really* needed?

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

Let's be honest about the reason for the pivot in content you are talking about.
This had absolutely ZERO to do with any request from any player or group of them. Pinning this on airquoted types of people you don't like is a big part of the problem around here.

The transition to harder content happened at the beginning of Icebrood Saga. For the many months prior to this, under the direction of Mike Z, this company was catering exclusively to the "chill open world experience". We were fed an unending stream of weak and often bugged community driven events like Boss Rush or Fractal Rush.
There was zero content in this game for anyone else being worked on.
This culminated in the release of Grothmar Valley, an episode/map that was widely praised by the casual community.
A map with no ambient threat other than a few devourers and a laundry list of grindy achievements to create the content to keep players happy.

The result of  only catering to portion of the community who desire an easier game was the single worst financial quarter this company had seen.
The results of this single minded focus put Anet and Guild Wars firmly in the sights of parent company NCSoft, who sent Game Director Mike Z packing without so much as a goodbye and lead to Adrew Grey's "mea culpa" post on not paying any attention to the more invested players in this franchise.
You know the post ...that came one business day after the NCSoft quarterly financials were released.

The proper play was obviously to make changes in the content and try and reclaim lost players and attract new ones. This gave us the shift in content to the mix of increased difficulty and repeatable instances of Icebrood Saga.

Which...oddly enough... worked...the revenue started going up.

The damage done by Mike Z to this game is incalculable. Your comment here with it's fingerpointing at other players rather than facing of the objective truths of the business behind the game is ample evidence of that.

Thanks for the history lesson.  I think it's enlightening and relevant.

I like Grothmar Valley.  Or rather I want to like it.  It has some really fun events that I love to share with friends experiencing the game for the first time.  Everyone loves the Metal Legion concert, right?  And I'm a big fan of that silly Charr chef, too!  Charr cars and shooting practice are pretty fun and different, too.  But do I like grind achievements?  Do I like the complete lack of any sort of challenging content (other than the JP I guess?)?  Sorry, no, I don't.  It's boring and despite loving a lot of the events on this map, I rarely visit it except to show a new player the rock concert event.

It's a pretty good example of why pure casual pandering fails.  Even for players like me who are into solo play, it doesn't hold my interest.  I can spend 90% of my time by myself (and I probably do!) and I still wouldn't play this game if it only catered to that demographic.