Raids are worth developing

[Bakeneko.5826]

On 3/8/2023 at 2:37 PM, Einsof.1457 said:

The thing is, anet clearly wants people to raid. Emboldened proves that. They themselves said that strikes are stepping stones into raids. Wing 8 will come someday 

Emboldened is a way to prevent raids from doing dodo bird. It gives a way for new players to try/get into raids, but at the end of the day, raids are 3-4 bosses in a fancy box (same as strikes, but more boss encounters) with ok-ish reward, great items locked behind it and needs quite a bit of effort from newcomers. Also, IBS strikes were stepping stones, EoD ones have CMs that are on par with raids.

[Graymatter.4723]

11 hours ago, Radiancee.6537 said:

Raids are actually important.

Yes, a small fraction of the player base (including myself and my static) is raiding. Still, we are thousands. 

Endcontent like raids is generating goals for everyone. Even if a casual player never wants to raid, there is still something to reach. Raids create stable veteran communites, gathering high experienced players that can and will share their knowledge to lesser experienced, more casual players. Raids are also creating very loyal and active guilds. Raids might not be for everyone, of course, but they are still important for the health of the whole game and community structure. Many raiders are also extremely active players who are willing to spend more money on the game. Sure, some of us spend our gold but we also tend to buy a lot of additional gems because we also invest more time into our hobby.

Raids are kinda like a win win situation for everyone and should be supported by everyone. It's not like everyone has to raid and yes, some content is more important at first. But every MMO kinda needs the "hardcore endgame stuff" some like to do. Those players are often the most loyal ones. Also, raids can generate hype outside the community. Even Harvest Temple CM attracted some hype from other communites. This is about the impact of this type of content.

Now we have more and more Strikes, setting up the connection between lesser and higher experienced players. Many new raiders started with EoD Normal Mode Strikes, actually liking them, wanting more, dipping into raids and now clearing some CMs. Happening in my own static and other ones I know. Some even started raiding just by trying out the emboldened mode.

And ArenaNet is clearly capable of creating actually good raid encounters.

Not everyone wants to fish. Not everyone wants to farm. Not everyone wants to do open world. Not everyone wants to do story. Not everyone wants to just chill and socialize. Not everyone wants to explore. Not everyone wants to raid. And so on, you get the point.

We are still one community. We are all enjoying this game in our way. This is an MMO, don't forget it.

So yes, raids are worth developing too. Strikes are worth it. Fractals are worth it. Collections are worth it. Good open world metas are worth it. Good story is worth it. All of it makes Guild Wars 2 feel complete.

It's all about cost/benefit. You mention open world but there are vastly more players doing open world content than raids so it makes sense to invest there. You also mention fishing but the cost to add more fish types and fishing holes is minimal where the cost to add more raids is extremely high. If only 2000 players are doing raids then it may be costing more to create a single raid than the total revenue from those players.

I really like raids and have always advocated for them, even when I didn't play them, but I think the community needs to take it upon itself to get more players into the content. There are already a number of guilds and discords that do this but we can always have more. If you see someone doing fractals and know a training guild, invite them. If you are running around in the open world and see some players doing more difficult content, try and get them involved with raids. If you see a training run in LFG, join and help them, even if you have done the content 1000 times. See a turtle strike run, join that and help the people and then encourage them to join strikes and other raids. The more people we get into raids, the more likely we are to see more raid content in the future.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Graymatter.4723

[Swagger.1459]

On 3/7/2023 at 8:51 PM, Einsof.1457 said:

meanwhile thousands of players still raid every week

Do you have the stats to back that up, or you just assuming "thousands" to make it seem like more of an impactful statement? 

 

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by Swagger.1459

[Cyninja.2954]

38 minutes ago, Swagger.1459 said:

Do you have the stats to back that up, or you just assuming "thousands" to make it seem like more of an impactful statement? 

 

 

Actually we do thanks to logs and parses, but that stats means little because we do not know what those thousands of players are in relation to.

For example, checking wingman just now, we can get the logs and parses which got uploaded just for this week:

Parsed 2331 logs of 24 bosses, including 21621 players (06.03.2023 - 10.03.2023)

or we could check the logs uploaded for last week:

Parsed 2211 logs of 24 bosses, including 20574 players (27.2.2023 - 05.03.2023)

We also know that not every log gets uploaded to wingman (actually just a fraction), but this gives us a rough estimate to work with. So yes, there are many thousands of players raiding weekly, but that stat alone means little if we don't know out of what the total of players is. (also these are just kill logs, not attempts)

Fun side fact: there are around twice as many logs for raids as there are for strikes. Which just tells us that far less logs get uploaded for strikes versus raids while chances are high that far more players are playing strikes weekly.

Edited March 10, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[Swagger.1459]

2 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

we do not know what those thousands of players are in relation to

Ok. 

[Graymatter.4723]

On 3/10/2023 at 1:55 PM, Cyninja.2954 said:

We also know that not every log gets uploaded to wingman (actually just a fraction), but this gives us a rough estimate to work with. So yes, there are many thousands of players raiding weekly, but that stat alone means little if we don't know out of what the total of players is. (also these are just kill logs, not attempts)

That is misleading. I have never uploaded a log to Wingman but there are plenty of logs uploaded that include me. There are also players with multiple accounts that raid on them (I know a few). In total, Wingman has 182250 unique players. That's pretty good but the number of players in GW2 is much higher than that.

It's getting there but we still need more people in raids (and strikes) to get the investment in those game modes.

[Cyninja.2954]

4 hours ago, Graymatter.4723 said:

That is misleading. I have never uploaded a log to Wingman but there are plenty of logs uploaded that include me. There are also players with multiple accounts that raid on them (I know a few). In total, Wingman has 182250 unique players. That's pretty good but the number of players in GW2 is much higher than that.

It's getting there but we still need more people in raids (and strikes) to get the investment in those game modes.

How is this misleading? If someone uploaded a log which includes you, you are part of the raiding population no?

I am well aware that the total population is far larger, hence why I stated that the number of "raiders" tells us little without knowing out of what pool. I merely wanted to clarify that earlier statements made on this topic about "thousands" of players raiding weekly is accurate. That's also why I refereed to this and last weeks uploaded logs and not total amount.

I am well aware that some players raid on multiple accounts. I do doubt that this is a relevant enough amount to make a dent in actual unique players.

Edited March 12, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I think its a combination of things:

- Raids are worth developing..

- Its worth making Fractals and strikes more numerous and difficult (more CMs, mostly)..

- Its worth making open-world more difficult..

 

Its not that one thing is exclusive to another, its that they're all necessary. Players shouldn't step out of a raid and immediately find everything else in the game to be trash, and likewise players shouldn't step into raids and immediately be overwhelmed. This is where the sunken cost ratio is coming from.

 

Content can be developed with less of a financial loss when there's more of a balance across the board. Re-using encounters for both story and strike missions was a good start, but its still just a start. As many players have pointed out, no type of instanced content is a replacement for any other type of instanced content (Fractals haven't even replaced dungeons, afterall). They're all equally important and need to be developed alongside each other.

Edited March 12, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Graymatter.4723]

14 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

How is this misleading? If someone uploaded a log which includes you, you are part of the raiding population no?

I am well aware that the total population is far larger, hence why I stated that the number of "raiders" tells us little without knowing out of what pool. I merely wanted to clarify that earlier statements made on this topic about "thousands" of players raiding weekly is accurate. That's also why I refereed to this and last weeks uploaded logs and not total amount.

I am well aware that some players raid on multiple accounts. I do doubt that this is a relevant enough amount to make a dent in actual unique players.

I was talking about when you said "We also know that not every log gets uploaded to wingman (actually just a fraction)". Fraction normally implies a small amount but I don't think it's that small of a percentage. Also, more than half of the logs uploaded for me are failed attempts (I did a lot of CM progression runs but I also see quite a few turtle runs where I helped to train people there).

The tricky thing here is that I agree that there are thousands of players doing raids and strikes each week. Perhaps even more than 10k weekly. The question is whether those are the same people week after week or are we getting fresh blood into the content.

[Cyninja.2954]

7 minutes ago, Graymatter.4723 said:

I was talking about when you said "We also know that not every log gets uploaded to wingman (actually just a fraction)". Fraction normally implies a small amount but I don't think it's that small of a percentage. Also, more than half of the logs uploaded for me are failed attempts (I did a lot of CM progression runs but I also see quite a few turtle runs where I helped to train people there).

The tricky thing here is that I agree that there are thousands of players doing raids and strikes each week. Perhaps even more than 10k weekly. The question is whether those are the same people week after week or are we getting fresh blood into the content.

 

I am pretty sure it's just a fraction. This is best evidenced by the amount of strike logs uploaded, which is basically non existent (if we are to believe that strikes are far more popular than raids).

There are a LOT of groups, even more serious groups, which do not upload logs to wingman. For example, we also know from past communication that wingmans class representation is off by around 50%. Mechanist was showing up as being 35-38% represented during its prime, while the actual developer communication on this matter put it closer to 21%. That also shows that there is a huge lack of data uploaded.

Edited March 12, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[ZolracAtrox.2908]

On 3/7/2023 at 4:58 PM, Swagger.1459 said:

Devs- "the biggest challenge in creating more is the small audience they attract". Translation... We aren't going to waste developer time and resources on creating raids because the raid population doesn't justify it. We have better and more important things to spend our money on.  

 

Enjoy your strikes.

 

Time to move on to more productive topics.   

Like what; Strikes are not a big deal neither.

WvW has a big population and is even more dead than sPvP.

 

[Obtena.7952]

The same people doing the same content repeatedly does not prove "it's worth it" for Anet to develop raids. I would argue that it proves the opposite. 

Edited March 13, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Linken.6345]

8 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

The same people doing the same content repeatedly does not prove "it's worth it" for Anet to develop raids. I would argue that it proves the opposite. 

Is it better to do content people done once or twice then cry give me more content tho?

[Cyninja.2954]

3 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

The same people doing the same content repeatedly does not prove "it's worth it" for Anet to develop raids. I would argue that it proves the opposite. 

 

Not on its own, because frequency, duration and  player numbers are relevant. Other than that, maximizing content live time is one of the most economic ways to assign developer resources.

[Krzysztof.5973]

11 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

The same people doing the same content repeatedly does not prove "it's worth it" for Anet to develop raids. I would argue that it proves the opposite. 

What a horrible take, Jesus Christ. If tons of "the same people" are repeatedly doing metas, raids, fracs and whatnot because they enjoy it does not prove "it's worth it" then what does? 

[Obtena.7952]

56 minutes ago, Krzysztof.5973 said:

What a horrible take, Jesus Christ. If tons of "the same people" are repeatedly doing metas, raids, fracs and whatnot because they enjoy it does not prove "it's worth it" then what does? 

Then what does? The revenues that content generates, that's what. 

I mean, when people say it's 'worth' it to develop more raids, what do they mean? That Anet should just be charitable and forget about the fact they are a business? I can guarantee you that the question of 'worth' does not exclude how this content performs from a business perspective. 

Edited March 13, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Cyninja.2954]

41 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Then what does? The revenues that content generates, that's what. 

I mean, when people say it's 'worth' it to develop more raids, what do they mean? That Anet should just be charitable and forget about the fact they are a business? I can guarantee you that the question of 'worth' does not exclude how this content performs from a business perspective. 

You are obfuscating 2 different issues.

1. the issue of where revenue is generated, direct and indirect

2. how to distribute developer resources so that an equilibrium is found between time spent on content, which directly leads to player retention, and resources spent on unique content

If we were to reduce this to what you are doing: generate the most revenue per developer resource only, there would be literally 0 reason to produce ANY content besides gem store items and an expansion, at maximum possible price, at set intervals (and technically even this revenue would fall short to just pumping gem store stuff). That obviously completely ignores any type of player retention or continued engagement.

The question here is not as direct. Player retention matters and so does serving niche groups of players because as we have seen in the past (even if only looking at revenue) going to niche and 1 directional with content leads to very poor financial results. Which basically backs the statement I've made in the past: this game is composed of many niche communities, with differing sizes.

Repeatability of content directly relates to keeping players engaged while single (or limited play content) serves more as a bridge or 1-off engagement (at severe developer costs) to new areas or content (say the story connecting the different maps or instances). The earlier most often speaks to more engaged and "hardcore" players while the later is vastly more expensive developer cost wise serving mostly only as threads to keep things connected.

This thread is about the later without focusing to much on the earlier. Also your statement about this "proving the opposite", beside being nothing but forum bait, is insanely stupid.

TL;DR:

No matter how you spin it, replay-ability of content and investing resources into issues players care about besides spending money is a central criteria when it comes to assessment for developer resources. So much in fact, that the studio (at least currently and leading into EoD) is trying to offer a balance of each type of content, synergising work steps (scaling instanced content fights), expanding on niche content (WvW gets attention after years of neglect), balance updates (remember when these where 1-2 years apart?) and even introducing very grindy achievements to increase engagement. Meanwhile the revenue has started trending upward, as has the player count.

Edited March 13, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[Obtena.7952]

10 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

TL;DR:

No matter how you spin it, replay-ability of content and investing resources into issues players care about besides spending money is a central criteria when it comes to assessment for developer resources. So much in fact, that the studio (at least currently and leading into EoD) is trying to offer a balance of each type of content, synergising work steps (scaling instanced content fights), expanding on niche content (WvW gets attention after years of neglect), balance updates (remember when these where 1-2 years apart?) and even introducing very grindy achievements to increase engagement. Meanwhile the revenue has started trending upward, as has the player count.

Sure, there are LOTS of factors that go into determining the 'worthiness' of developing a specific kind of content .. I never said their wasn't, so I don't understand why you post is targetting ME and not the people that question me about 'what other' criteria could possibly exist in determining that worthiness.

What I have pointed out here is the people that shouldn't be pretending the 'worthiness' of Anet developing content is JUST a function of a bunch of people who continually desire this content and think that is enough to justify adding more of it ... and as you describe, it IS a complex determination of many things. 

I have no doubt that the people on the business side of Anet are not going to simply turn a blind eye to the history of the game when it comes to revisiting and approving further Raid development because they are more interested in data than anything else. Like, is there a business case here for more raids or not? That's not just about "oh, we have a dedicated group of people that repeatedly does this content"

I mean, look at the OP's post ... he's literally made the case to develop more raids simply based on ONE criteria that they are infinitely replayable and relevant ... and yet somehow has ignored the fact that there are OTHER criteria that has lead Anet to conclusion that raids aren't worth developing. Where is you post explaining to him his logic is lacking there? Oh right, you don't. I wonder why that is?

 

Edited March 14, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Graymatter.4723]

On 3/12/2023 at 2:47 PM, Cyninja.2954 said:

 

I am pretty sure it's just a fraction. This is best evidenced by the amount of strike logs uploaded, which is basically non existent (if we are to believe that strikes are far more popular than raids).

There are a LOT of groups, even more serious groups, which do not upload logs to wingman. For example, we also know from past communication that wingmans class representation is off by around 50%. Mechanist was showing up as being 35-38% represented during its prime, while the actual developer communication on this matter put it closer to 21%. That also shows that there is a huge lack of data uploaded.

I was making the point more about the number of people compared to the number of logs. I don't disagree that the number of logs are quite far behind the number of actual runs that take place. I think the number of players is much closer, though. It only takes one person to upload a log for all of the people in that group to get included. I was included in over 50 logs in Wingman despite no one from either of my two raiding guilds having uploaded a log. If anyone does any 10 man instanced group content outside of a static that doesn't upload logs, then there is a pretty reasonable chance that they get caught up in the net. Maybe not every week but once in a while.

Edit - Let me also add that I am not a big raider yet I was caught up in some logs.

Edited March 13, 2023 by Graymatter.4723

[Bakeneko.5826]

15 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Then what does? The revenues that content generates, that's what. 

On these forums we don't state such obvious facts as: Anet needs to make money first. People get confused and angry.

[Cyninja.2954]

10 hours ago, Graymatter.4723 said:

I was making the point more about the number of people compared to the number of logs. I don't disagree that the number of logs are quite far behind the number of actual runs that take place. I think the number of players is much closer, though. It only takes one person to upload a log for all of the people in that group to get included. I was included in over 50 logs in Wingman despite no one from either of my two raiding guilds having uploaded a log. If anyone does any 10 man instanced group content outside of a static that doesn't upload logs, then there is a pretty reasonable chance that they get caught up in the net. Maybe not every week but once in a while.

Edit - Let me also add that I am not a big raider yet I was caught up in some logs.

Okay, let's take you as an example. First you state, no one of your 2 raiding guilds uploads logs. That is quite common actually. Guilds and especially statics either go one way or the other. There is a large amount of players in more fixed groups which are completely not represented on wingman. That's an argument FOR missing players in the logs we have because no matter how many players from your 2 raid guilds might occasionally get caught up in a group outside their static, they will always be less represented than if they uploaded logs weekly themselves.

Second, if we check wingman logs for raids, sort for all eras, kills+fails and for any log in which you are present, the result is:

Parsed 176 logs of 23 bosses, including 394 players (Spent 4m 25s 645ms).

of which 33 are kills and 143 are fails (and we can assume that many of these logs where created in the same runs, aka multiple fails until success happens. Which either all get logged, or none get logged). Your personal killproof.me shows you as having 57 LI. Even going by your personal stats, you are off by almost half of successful kills represented on wingman via logs.

Your own stats are a great example of how half of your successful raid time (it is harder to make this assumption about unsuccessful, though we could assume that successful logs might get uploaded more often) is not reflected on wingman.

So I'll repeat: don't overestimate how many players might be not represented in logs on wingman, especially the ones in more casual but static guild groups.

Still all of this in the end is irrelevant. I've already stated that knowing that thousands of players playing raids is no metric to go by, if we have no total number to go off of. I merely used the wingman logs to point out that the insinuation that there might not be thousands of raiders is incorrect. There are thousands of raiders, if not tens of thousands (and not even counting inactive raiders due to lack of new content) and we can show that to be the case.

Edited March 14, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[Bakeneko.5826]

On 3/14/2023 at 10:37 AM, Cyninja.2954 said:

I've already stated that knowing that thousands of players playing raids is no metric to go by, if we have no total number to go off of.

Most people here fail to understand this, too.

[LadyMari.7920]

Maybe we can get a daily wing that gives us rewards, like the strikes. It's hard to do raids again during the week when the time vs reward makes it not worth it. I'll help out training runs or groups that need fills because I love the fights and the challenge, but I'm always sad when I realize that I am spending this time (my very limited gaming time) and not getting anything for it... 😕

[Sobx.1758]

On 3/11/2023 at 1:56 AM, Swagger.1459 said:

Ok. 

But you were asking for proof of thousands of players and you got that proof. Now you didn't even quote -let alone address- it? What happened there?

 

On 3/13/2023 at 3:54 PM, Obtena.7952 said:

I mean, when people say it's 'worth' it to develop more raids, what do they mean? That Anet should just be charitable and forget about the fact they are a business? I can guarantee you that the question of 'worth' does not exclude how this content performs from a business perspective. 

I'm not sure why you're even asking this in the context of this thread and its title. Did you not read the first post of this thread? Well, then that's clearly what OP means when he says it's worth it. And it's nothing about "charity" or "forgetting about being business".

Edited March 21, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[Obtena.7952]

21 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

I'm not sure why you're even asking this in the context of this thread and its title. 

Because it should be obvious to people like the OP that 'raids being worth' developing is not JUST about the fact they want them. The question here will never be about why raids are worth it to an individual; the game doesn't cater to individuals. 

Again, what do they mean 'worth it'? What they ACTUALLY mean is that they just want more raids. Whether it's worth it or not, they have no idea because it's irrelevant to discuss if it's worth it to just them. 

Edited March 22, 2023 by Obtena.7952