I don’t get why folks are excited by steam release

[TheQuickFox.3826]

16 hours ago, Lysico.4906 said:

Will just be an influx of toxic players.  When they poor into wvw and PvP it will finally kill those game modes.     That is what folks want?

 

Well, I don't think new players will be more toxic than existing players. Overall the playerbase is good to me. Only in sPvP I see players on a daily base that can't stand losing matches. For the rest, I find players very helpful and friendly.

 

And an expansion of the player base is a good thing for the future of the game. It brings in more income for ArenaNet and new attention to the game. This will help the long-term future of the game. We all can help to give the new players a warm welcome. Be patient and friendly and be ready to explain a but if you have the knowledge already.

[Gibson.4036]

Well, according to Mukluk, Steam release has almost doubled other MMOs population.

It's kinda like holding a big birthday, and inviting everyone on your social media lists.

Whether you are excited about how many people might show up to celebrate or dreading that it will mostly be your annoying coworkers and in-laws probably says more about you than anything.

Edited August 17, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[Mik.3401]

3 hours ago, roederich.2716 said:

dude.. please wake up. The lost ark hype happened cause all people from other mmos wanted to test the new game free to play. there where lots of players from gw2 even playing that game for a while. Same with games like new world. complete new game on the market = all go there cause they want new content. this has nothing to do with steam and gw2 is not a new game is 10 years old.

Its not that steam players can only play games on steam dude like "oh finally GW2 on steam what we never could play cause it wasnt available here".  players with a steam account are normal humans like you who can anytime register whatever game without a steam account.

stay realistic guys steam is not some unknown planet or place where its players couldnt get away from and  where suddenly a new race enters planet earth and all just waited for GW2.

my biggest concern is that our usual community heros will just buy more accounts now cause they want the game look good on steam but the only thing they cause with this is a manipulation of real numbers again. like anets "oh we have atm soooo many new players but in reality its been all the heroic keys given away on nvidia for free which people registered as their alt accounts once again...

coincidence that one cannot link existing accounts to steam on realease? 

our red rose glasses wearer will just swipe their credit cards in the hope that this would support the game not realising that this game makes minimum 10-15 million dollars per quarter already if nothing special like a expansion or so arrives. 

and did it "support the game developement" in the last 10 years?

 

I agree with you, you didn’t need go to in on such personal level. Whatever - following video games is not a big part of my life so I don’t know in’s and outs of lost ark release. Still for a moment population will soar and then it will flop it’s my prediction which goes in similar vein to what you said. My post was short.

[Naxos.2503]

The main concern in regard to steam I'd think is unmet expectations, and an additional medium with which to voice disappointment. Content players generally do not voice their happiness and just binge on the game. The steam forums have the unfortunate reputation of mostly being used to voice disatisfaction, of which there is sure to be some. Keep in mind that gw2 on steam was announced I believe... 2 years ago. Meanwhile they got the -first- bit of news on Steam regarding anything related to the game... Yesterday. About a game they cannot play on Steam yet. There has to be a certain amount of salt building up at the radio silence on the Steam medium this whole time.

The potential influx of players is also likely to put a strain on the servers, unless they've shored those up in anticipation. Which will cause... more disatisfaction to be voiced on Steam. And since discussions are visible to all, someone investigating the game on Steam is likely to find themselves checking the threads to see what's what.

That's the potential problems from it. Toxicity on Steam is a non-issue. They hang on the discussion threads for the most part, and if the moderator team is on watch duty, they should be able to tackle it decently enough. Once things have calmed down, things will normalize, unhappy people will have moved on, and those that stuck around like the game enough to play with it durably. 

[Bingus.4236]

It could be worse, it could become available on the blizzard launcher.

[Voyant.1327]

While yeah I do worry about PvP/WvW getting more hostile/less chill.

I'm mostly just looking at it hoping it'll normalize PvE and make that environment better then it is now.

Who really knows til launch, but lets just hope it fixes and adds to the community not degrade it further in any way. 

[Zanther Deathbringer.4762]

20 hours ago, DexterousGecko.6328 said:

Why will it be an influx of toxic players? do you think that Steam players are a monolith?

Same reason FFXIV players thought so when the WoW exodus happened. BS. They felt they weren't special anymore and had a hissy fit when the game started to become more and more popular. Some even had dedicated discords to track down and harass  streamers trying out the game. They were scary obsessive on making sure their "haven" was left undisturbed. Funny enough, it turned out that they were the toxic ones and it backfired on them when they themselves were banned for harassments.

 

People worried about steam players is the same story. They legit need to seek help irl.

 

Edited August 17, 2022 by Zanther Deathbringer.4762

[Voyant.1327]

12 minutes ago, Zanther Deathbringer.4762 said:

Same reason FFXIV players thought so when the WoW exodus happened. BS. They felt they weren't special anymore and had a hissy fit when the game started to become more and more popular. Some even had dedicated discords to track down and harass  streamers trying out the game. They were scary obsessive on making sure their "haven" was left undisturbed. Funny enough, it turned out that they were the toxic ones and it backfired on them when they themselves were banned for harassments.

 

People worried about steam players is the same story. They legit need to seek help irl.

 

I get it. My guild has "WoW" as a banned term in our discord for example. We found discouraging discussion of it alone vastly increased the quality and vibe of our community. Classic example of grossly overreacting though by harassing new players.

But GW2 already has negative pushy players like that, I'm not worried about Steam introducing more. Realistically they'll get a surge of good at first and a lot more angry voices in the areas the game is suffering.

I don't think GW2's team is ready, but I'm still rooting for all of em that have done good work & hoping the others will check themselves and do better so I can root for em later. 

[roederich.2716]

6 hours ago, Taclism.2406 said:

You'd be surprised how many people literally refuses to install any games that aren't on steam. Remember the backlash against Uplay and Epic Games launchers ?

 

That's plain stupid. EVEN IF people tried to manipulate and create new accounts, it'll look bad unless they play those accounts for months, thanks to Steam Charts. New world is called dead rn because it had a million active users, and it plumetted to 10% of that number after a few months. Despite that fact, 100k players is more than enough for a MMO to survive

That's also implying Steam Reviews aren't a thing

Will every streamer hype the kitten out of steam release? Of course, the health of the game is tied to their income.
Can they "manipulate" (/influence) anything outside of their platform? No

dude... you will soon see that im right, and i stand with my opinion. 

the main customer base on steam will be our own existing playerbase yet once again.

the same will occur like some month ago when anet announced that they have a growth in player numbers just right after giving away free heroic edition keys via nvidia and pof+hot half price.

it was all over the community and lots got more alt accounts this way to grab the daily rewards with their 40+ accounts.

have a look at the survey on this forum. 50% of players voted to have 2 or more accounts.

-one cannot link existing account with steam

-steam will have an offer of complete edition - all expacs +all episodes.

clearly a case for our credit card heros who prevent the game from being developed properly since years cause easy cash = why change anything as a company.

one guy on reddit asked already if one can have GW2 run via the client and simultaneously via steam.

there are plans already to cause gametime for the steam statistics. thats what happens soon. play gw2 on your main account and have steam session running in the background plus twitch in your browser for lootdrops...

oh my god the game is soooooo active look at all the game time on steam and twitch viewers...

Good joke. Fake society 2022 planet earth planet of fakes.

 

[Labjax.2465]

9 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

YES

Personally, I'm not convinced steam users are any more toxic on average than other video game fans. My hypothesis is they might seem that way sometimes because they have a platform they can write honest reviews on, in an industry that regularly nurtures a culture among its players and forum moderation of burying, taunting, or shaming harsher criticisms. So not only are they able to be more honest, they are able to be more honest while already being resentful about how they get treated when posting criticisms on a less neutral platform for a given game, which causes the walls to come down more and all the pent up frustration to come out.

All that energy of people not only feeling like they aren't being heard, but also feeling like they are being actively screwed with for daring to try to be heard, creating a pressure cooker type situation where you see things like review bombing.

[Taclism.2406]

4 minutes ago, roederich.2716 said:

have a look at the survey on this forum. 50% of players voted to have 2 or more accounts.

While I get the sentiment behind the rest of your post, keep one thing in mind : People visiting this forum are, for the most part, way more hardcore and/or ancient players than the average player. 
I have a thread rn with a poll resulting in 75% of the voters having commander tag. Yet I'm pretty sure saying 75% of the playerbase have it would be an overstatement

[Labjax.2465]

7 minutes ago, roederich.2716 said:

dude... you will soon see that im right, and i stand with my opinion. 

the main customer base on steam will be our own existing playerbase yet once again.

the same will occur like some month ago when anet announced that they have a growth in player numbers just right after giving away free heroic edition keys via nvidia and pof+hot half price.

it was all over the community and lots got more alt accounts this way to grab the daily rewards with their 40+ accounts.

have a look at the survey on this forum. 50% of players voted to have 2 or more accounts.

-one cannot link existing account with steam

-steam will have an offer of complete edition - all expacs +all episodes.

clearly a case for our credit card heros who prevent the game from being developed properly since years cause easy cash = why change anything as a company.

one guy on reddit asked already if one can have GW2 run via the client and simultaneously via steam.

there are plans already to cause gametime for the steam statistics. thats what happens soon. play gw2 on your main account and have steam session running in the background plus twitch in your browser for lootdrops...

oh my god the game is soooooo active look at all the game time on steam and twitch viewers...

Good joke. Fake society 2022 planet earth planet of fakes.

 

I don't think it's gonna be that bad, but there are clearly people who are getting ready to be fans to a degree that isn't even helpful for the game. I saw a post on the subreddit recently of someone encouraging people to add GW2 to their wishlist to make it more popular. And another where someone was encouraging people to make a new GW2 steam account to write a positive review about the game. Def not gonna look sus at all if 0 hour accounts are talking about how much fun they've gotten out of the game lol.

[Turin.6921]

This is the most " get off my lawn" post I read in years.

[greedywholesome.9081]

People excited due to the expected (and I hope anet succeeds since I'm a well-wisher) influx of players. It's healthy for the game and since GW2 doesn't charge sub, I hope it catches on. 

[Ashen.2907]

2 minutes ago, greedywholesome.9081 said:

since GW2 doesn't charge sub, I hope it catches on. 

Interesting point. If a larger playerbase comes to realize that a buy to play, no sub, no pay to win business model can work, produce a game worth playing, perhaps other studios can be influenced.

[peeposad.8067]

A little bit of salt is good for the body.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

I too am rather astonished at how (thankfully very few) people think that Steam users are necessarily or a majority more toxic than this playerbase.  I'd be willing to bet that a plurality if not the majority of GW2's playerbase are already Steam users. 

Edited August 18, 2022 by The Greyhawk.9107

[Kori Jenkins.9017]

On 8/17/2022 at 1:01 AM, Yaki.9563 said:

Interesting. I personally think the early personal story missions are fantastic and I miss the chat screen dialogue where I get to see my character talking to the npc. I've forgotten what my character's face looks like.

I dislike how absolutely irrelevant they are later on. Choices mean literally nothing at all. On top of that, they're extremely tame. Again, not a good hook, though I guess it's better than Elwynn wolves. 

[Dondarrion.2748]

Influx of players, interested in a variety of game modes, I can only think that both the PvP and WvW community should be relishing this opportunity. Toxicity and bad apples, it's not like Steam players will be bringing something new to the table that isn't already there.

[Juan.6124]

On 8/16/2022 at 11:47 PM, Lysico.4906 said:

Will just be an influx of toxic players.  When they poor into wvw and PvP it will finally kill those game modes.     That is what folks want?

You are toxic and you don't even need Steam for it.

[roederich.2716]

14 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

I don't think it's gonna be that bad, but there are clearly people who are getting ready to be fans to a degree that isn't even helpful for the game. I saw a post on the subreddit recently of someone encouraging people to add GW2 to their wishlist to make it more popular. And another where someone was encouraging people to make a new GW2 steam account to write a positive review about the game. Def not gonna look sus at all if 0 hour accounts are talking about how much fun they've gotten out of the game lol.

and this is sadly what will happen.

anet knows by now that a huge part of community is oversupportive buying everything inthe believ that this will one day lead to huge improvement even though it didnt happen for a decade.

it prolly went like this in some companies office:

boss: "yo guys its time again, any ideas how we can cash off the old content once again?"

some marketing guy: "yeah i have an idea boss, we create this hypetrain that we going for steam distribution"

boss: "hmm sounds good but how can we cash them off again with that? we want to cash them once more"

Another marketing guy: "well we wont give them the possibility to link their existing accounts to a steam version; since these donuts believe they must support us by buying everything they will buy new accounts then again. we did a good job making the impression that the game needs cash to improve what we actually dont have in mind."

boss: "nice idea guys! lets get the partners into the boat we need their trusted streamers to make them believe that this steam will change anything and let the register ring ring ring.! We need all your support players! Steam is an important step for us... LOOOOL"

marketing guys 1,2,3 and 4: "LOOL TROLLLOLOLOLOLOOOL" 

someone from the kitchen "HAHAHA you guys did it again"

Edited August 18, 2022 by roederich.2716

[Turin.6921]

That strange parallel universe some of you guys live in your head is incredible. It sounds like a really exiting place. Gw2 forums...

Never change 🤣

Edited August 18, 2022 by Turin.6921

[Freya.9075]

2 hours ago, roederich.2716 said:

and this is sadly what will happen.

anet knows by now that a huge part of community is oversupportive buying everything inthe believ that this will one day lead to huge improvement even though it didnt happen for a decade.

it prolly went like this in some companies office:

boss: "yo guys its time again, any ideas how we can cash off the old content once again?"

some marketing guy: "yeah i have an idea boss, we create this hypetrain that we going for steam distribution"

boss: "hmm sounds good but how can we cash them off again with that? we want to cash them once more"

Another marketing guy: "well we wont give them the possibility to link their existing accounts to a steam version; since these donuts believe they must support us by buying everything they will buy new accounts then again. we did a good job making the impression that the game needs cash to improve what we actually dont have in mind."

boss: "nice idea guys! lets get the partners into the boat we need their trusted streamers to make them believe that this steam will change anything and let the register ring ring ring.! We need all your support players! Steam is an important step for us... LOOOOL"

marketing guys 1,2,3 and 4: "LOOL TROLLLOLOLOLOLOOOL" 

someone from the kitchen "HAHAHA you guys did it again"

This conspiracy theory is fascinating to me. Why would players who have accounts decide to buy another purely based on steam release? 
 

if this theory was true, why do they not milk players with subscriptions and p2w factors in gemstore already? Quite imaginative this one. Entertaining though, I’ll give you that. 

[Shiina.4192]

It is to be expected. However, it never meant that the influx will consist entirely of toxic players. Just as there are going to be toxic players, there are also going to be nice players.

But I am of the belief that the way the game works encourages positivity and co-operation, which I think helped with the in-game community being as friendly as it is today. It's not flawless, but it helps. Sometimes, toxicity in a community based around an interest stems from the stress said interest causes.

What we can simply do is ignore/report the bad ones and help the good ones feel welcome. If they spread the word that the GW2 playerbase is a welcoming and friendly one, more people who prefer a welcoming and friendly playerbase will turn to GW2.

 

What is good about Steam is that it'll encourage many people to give the game a try. For some reason, some of them refuse to try a game if it's not out on Steam.

At the same time, it's just good exposure for the game. When it releases, many users will find it when browsing the MMORPG tag, and it may even be visible on the store's front page banner. I'm not quite sure how likely that is, though, as I don't use Steam too often to notice.

Considering ANet's marketing (or the lack thereof), many still assumed that GW2 is a d.ead game. With the announcement of its Steam release, however, there's already people interested in trying the game out from what I've seen.

I personally have my reservations as to how much the playerbase will grow, but I believe that any growth is good growth, something that especially GW2 will benefit from.

[roederich.2716]

41 minutes ago, Freya.9075 said:

This conspiracy theory is fascinating to me. Why would players who have accounts decide to buy another purely based on steam release? 
 

if this theory was true, why do they not milk players with subscriptions and p2w factors in gemstore already? Quite imaginative this one. Entertaining though, I’ll give you that. 

stop calling it conspiracy. there are already folks who announced to have gw2 in original client and also in steam client running simultaneously to make the game look more active on steam. 

same happened already with the free heroic edition key + pof half price campaign. these fanatics think they support the game developement with spending like that what is not happening. anet was like "oh we have a growth in new players". But these where our credit card heros registering new accounts in special offer campaign.

same people are already all over reddit ala "we need to bring all guides up to date" "think about how we can hook them steam guys up" "we need to help them"...  as if next week all maps are suddenly swarmed by millions of new players... these oversupportive people have the rose color glasses on losing all realism once again.