Lack of endgame content, update

[Astralporing.1957]

6 hours ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

On that note, Anet's most recent statement (on its surface) does not seem to be making that mistake. I don't see any mention of "expanding the team" or any other telltale signs of "we're throwing money at the problem." Instead, it appears to be all about trying something different with the resources they have on hand. Of course, we've heard this sort of story before: Anet tries new thing! And.... it just kinda fizzles out over time.

Actually this time the problem they're trying to fix is exactly lack of resources. They just do not have the (GW2) team big enough to run more than one big project at a time. In this case, expanding the team (if they could afford it, of course) would be the solution. Now, the fact that instead of it they went for content downsizing suggests that they either can't afford it, or would prefer for the money to go elsewhere.

[voltaicbore.8012]

14 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

While more money doesn't guarantee a better product, not enough money does guarantee slow development.  Given the spotty release cadence and constant restructuring I think it's pretty obvious that money is an issue.

Yes.

8 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Actually this time the problem they're trying to fix is exactly lack of resources. They just do not have the (GW2) team big enough to run more than one big project at a time. In this case, expanding the team (if they could afford it, of course) would be the solution. Now, the fact that instead of it they went for content downsizing suggests that they either can't afford it, or would prefer for the money to go elsewhere.

Also yes.

It was fairly clear, but I'll clarify it further. I was saying that Anet, at least superficially, isn't trying to solve its immediate problems by increasing expenditures. This point in no way excludes "lack of money/resources" itself from being a problem.

Some of you might be thinking "of course! If lacking money is a problem, nobody would try to solve that by spending more money that they don't even have in the first place!" If you think so, you'd be surprised - people and corporations who should know better often use debt to do precisely that. People throw good money after bad all the time.

[Einsof.1457]

Wonder if those who complain about endgame have 18/18 leggi armor and HTCM title

[Gibson.4036]

29 minutes ago, Einsof.1457 said:

Wonder if those who complain about endgame have 18/18 leggi armor and HTCM title

Legendary armor is largely about repetition.

I know to an extent, that's what passes for "content" in MMOs, but it's always been a bit of a con.

Edited March 31, 2023 by Gibson.4036

[Sobx.1758]

On 3/31/2023 at 8:08 AM, Astralporing.1957 said:

Actually this time the problem they're trying to fix is exactly lack of resources. They just do not have the (GW2) team big enough to run more than one big project at a time. In this case, expanding the team (if they could afford it, of course) would be the solution. Now, the fact that instead of it they went for content downsizing suggests that they either can't afford it, or would prefer for the money to go elsewhere.

Meanwhile

Quote

Q: Do smaller expansions mean that there are fewer developers working on Guild Wars 2?

Nope, quite the contrary. In fact, thanks to the growth that Guild Wars 2 saw in 2022, we’re increasing the size of the Guild Wars 2 development team—largely in content and systems design. We’ve already hired a bunch of new folks since January, and we’ll be opening additional roles throughout the year.

[Astralporing.1957]

28 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Meanwhile

Actions speak louder than words, you know. Maybe it will change for the future, but so far what is happening does not support them having as much resources as they've had during, say, time leading to PoF launch. Also, they may be hiring new people, but they haven't exactly said from how low point they started the hiring, did they? And they did clearly mention earlier the changes are because they do not have enough resources to work on both old-style LS and expansion (something they did have at some point in the past). So, i don't see anything that changes what i said earlier.

[Sobx.1758]

5 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Actions speak louder than words, you know.

These words describe actions you we had no idea about, so all it was is a clarification of your misinterpretation of this situation and its incorrectly reached conclusions. I don't see the reason to first say "we have no information about it, so I'll come up with my own conclusions based on what we have", but then swap to "now we have information about it, but I, um, disagree so that information doesn't matter and my previous misinformed conclusion still has to hold!". But it doesn't hold and that's about it.

5 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Also, they may be hiring new people, but they haven't exactly said from how low point they started the hiring, did they?

Quick reminder of what you said in the previous post where you drawn your conclusions: "In this case, expanding the team (if they could afford it, of course) would be the solution. Now, the fact that instead of it they went for content downsizing suggests that they either can't afford it, or would prefer for the money to go elsewhere." 

You suggested they should have expanded the team, but they're not doing it. Now that we know they were -and are- doing it, you're moving the goalposts to say "maybe it's still not the size of the team I wanted". But the final size in relation to whatever other timeperiod wasn't the point, the point was pretty clearly about "not being able -or not wanting- to expand the team". And as we know now, that's clearly wrong.

Anyways, just clearing the misinformation from the thread in light of the news we got, I don't see much reason to dispell what we know now because someone doesn't want to admit they just guessed wrong (which doesn't necessarily make it a bad guess! But it was a guess nonetheless), w/e.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Sobx.1758
typo

[Einsof.1457]

How many hours does it take to clear 7 runs of fractal cms t4s, w1-7 and eod strike cms each week ? Now compare that to how long it takes to clear the 4 savage fights in FFXIV each week. To say gw2 doesn't have endgame displays misunderstanding of gw2. 

Edited May 1, 2023 by Einsof.1457

[Mistwraithe.3106]

7 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Actions speak louder than words, you know. Maybe it will change for the future, but so far what is happening does not support them having as much resources as they've had during, say, time leading to PoF launch. Also, they may be hiring new people, but they haven't exactly said from how low point they started the hiring, did they? And they did clearly mention earlier the changes are because they do not have enough resources to work on both old-style LS and expansion (something they did have at some point in the past). So, i don't see anything that changes what i said earlier.

It's human nature to expect GW2 developers to be able to develop new functionality as quickly now as they did 5 or 10 years ago, but it isn't realistic because of how software development works.

You need to keep in mind that software development progress per hour spent it isn't linear across the lifetime of a software product. On a new immature software product it's easy to make huge progress per hour of development. However, as the software gets more mature and has more functionality the progress per hour of development slows down because any new features need to mesh nicely with existing features, ideally any similar code which already existed should be refactored to include the new functionality (if you don't then you get a short term saving but long term your downwards slope is much faster), there is a lot more to test, etc.

This continues indefinitely. Occasionally you get a win where new functionality means that some old crappy code gets refactored which speeds up future development (eg Arena Net expect DirectX 11 and CEF to be notable examples of this) but those are exceptions, the rest of the time it gets harder to add new functionality the bigger your project gets.

 

[Zzik.5873]

On 3/27/2023 at 5:46 PM, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Isn't anything released for L80 characters end-game content?  If not, what exactly does OP consider end-game content? 

75% of the game nowday is basically end game XD

[Astralporing.1957]

7 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

It's human nature to expect GW2 developers to be able to develop new functionality as quickly now as they did 5 or 10 years ago, but it isn't realistic because of how software development works.

You need to keep in mind that software development progress per hour spent it isn't linear across the lifetime of a software product. On a new immature software product it's easy to make huge progress per hour of development. However, as the software gets more mature and has more functionality the progress per hour of development slows down because any new features need to mesh nicely with existing features, ideally any similar code which already existed should be refactored to include the new functionality (if you don't then you get a short term saving but long term your downwards slope is much faster), there is a lot more to test, etc.

This continues indefinitely. Occasionally you get a win where new functionality means that some old crappy code gets refactored which speeds up future development (eg Arena Net expect DirectX 11 and CEF to be notable examples of this) but those are exceptions, the rest of the time it gets harder to add new functionality the bigger your project gets.

 

I'm not talking about new functionality though. I am talking about content. They obviously cannot make it at a rate they could in the past, and that was, btw, exactly the reason they gave for changes to the delivery schedule.

[Mistwraithe.3106]

17 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I'm not talking about new functionality though. I am talking about content. They obviously cannot make it at a rate they could in the past, and that was, btw, exactly the reason they gave for changes to the delivery schedule.

That's somewhat fair and I agree that sort of work should scale better, but even what you call content is going to involve a fair amount of the same sort of development problems I'm talking about, whether that is altering shared assets, enhancing common macro scripts, adding new engine hooks or additional parameters into existing hooks, adding new animations, or even just checking consistency with the existing published parts of the game.

Each new map or story segment is not created in a vacuum.

Edited May 3, 2023 by Mistwraithe.3106

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

I don't want "end game" content as much as I want more storied collections. Except when they aren't repeatable. Wasted resources.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

My idea of "end-game content" is content that is infinitely repeatable, not which is released frequently.

 

For example, I think most Living World is poor end-game content compared to Heart of Thorns, even though many players might disagree with this.. HoT just had such "staying power" that every single map in it is still run daily by massive numbers of players for rewards that are still relatively prestigious.

 

When I think of end-game, I think of things that can be repeated hundreds of times without getting old:

- Dungeons (though they need some quality of life due to powercreep).

- Fractals (could also be buffed a bit).

- Raids (though I wish they were more approachable by PUGs, so they could be developed more).

- Strike Missions

- Story missions with variations (most of the early Personal Story, not recent stories which are linear).

- Open-world meta events from Heart of Thorns and End of Dragons. (not Path of Fire), along with a few Living World meta maps and events like Dragonfall.

 

This type of content lets you not only hunt harder achievements, but also learn many new ways of playing the game, how to master that specific content (good builds, skips and so on), and encourages socalising with other players and sometimes even making long-term friends.

 

To me, that's what "end-game" of an MMO means, and what I wish we had more of, even if it just means going back and tweaking what's already there to be much more enjoyable, and approachable by new players. These games are, and always will be, centered around social interactions.

 

To be honest, at this point the game seems big enough to me that we could really use a "Guild Wars 2 Version 2.0" instead of "Living World 6" or "Expansion #4" and such.

Edited May 3, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Barabbas.8715]

Yeah, I hope Anet adds a gear treadmill that includes about 50 daily quests like every other MMO so that I can bore myself to death every day just to keep ahead of the curve instead of playing the content I enjoy. 🙄🙄

[Gravitron.7982]

Well how small is their dev team these days? It's gotta be bigger than say the DAoC or Runescape dev team right?

[Vayne.8563]

On 5/2/2023 at 3:30 AM, Astralporing.1957 said:

Actions speak louder than words, you know. Maybe it will change for the future, but so far what is happening does not support them having as much resources as they've had during, say, time leading to PoF launch. Also, they may be hiring new people, but they haven't exactly said from how low point they started the hiring, did they? And they did clearly mention earlier the changes are because they do not have enough resources to work on both old-style LS and expansion (something they did have at some point in the past). So, i don't see anything that changes what i said earlier.

It depends on how many people are working on fixing the old stuff, while making new stuff. Right now they said they're working on both an expansion, and a living world chapter and also working on projects that take people away from making new content. People have been asking for that for a long time.  Season 1 is the perfect example of that. I think adding Season 1 back to the game was the right move, and that ultimately it's better for the game to have a complete story. A lot of people aren't counting that as new content, but it undoubtedly took work to bring to it up to current code.

Now they say they're going back and futureproofing the game. Graphic updates. An queue system instead of having to spam to get in like some sort of lottery. They are working toward a system of affecting allied AOE effects in combat. This is all stuff people have asked for that all takes programming time.

They haven't stopped working on content, they're just limited the content while they work on other stuff, and I think that too is better for the game.

 

Just throwing out more and more content isn't the answer, or at least, it wouldn't be the answer for me.

I'm getting a lot of use out of the randomize buttons since they put them in the game. But people aren't focused on that, because it's not a new zone or a new fractal or a new raid.

And yet, somehow, I think it's probably helpful to a larger precentage of the population than a new raid. 

 

What's happening now does support them having resources or that older stuff wouldn't get getting changed/fixed. New features wouldn't be being added. And most developers will tell you as a game gets older a lot of stuff does take longer. Just my thought process.

[Solvar.7953]

I do wonder if some of this drive is to try to attract and retain new players.  They will never be able to produce enough content to keep the PvE players (which are probably a big majority) of players happy, so best bet for long term growth might be to get new players - even if the quit playing after a few years, they got those sales.  The Steam release certainly seems to reinforce that idea.

So enticing the F2P players to upgrade, or those who only bought the core game to buy the expansions, etc, makes a lot of sense.

 

[Mewone.3247]

On 5/3/2023 at 9:03 AM, Barabbas.8715 said:

Yeah, I hope Anet adds a gear treadmill that includes about 50 daily quests like every other MMO so that I can bore myself to death every day just to keep ahead of the curve instead of playing the content I enjoy. 🙄🙄

How is daily meta train, fractal and strike rewards any different from daily quests in other mmos? They are all braindead easy content and ppl are already doing them for years which is more autistic than anything that could be said about some 10min daily chores in an mmo like WoW/FF14 where you actually get new content in form of maps and raids. I am at a point where I don't expect any content because from what I have read the next strike is like half a year away so basically 1year schedule for any endgame content. Most of the patches revolve around shifting the meta in a game where theres no hardcore playerbase to begin with which makes no sense. Nice my Reaper now benches for 33k auto attacking that seems like a job well done, sadly the patch bugged other specs like any patch they release.

[Kozumi.5816]

On 3/27/2023 at 5:27 PM, kawaiiboy.2685 said:

is arenanet aware that gw2 is better than WoW, BDO, final fantasy? 

there's a demand for more but ArenaNet is not doing anything they are ignoring the demand equals loss of profit.

Is it because the game does not have subscription like WoW? 

This game is just being milked to fund Anet's other games(that never come out), sadly.

[Dreamonology.8362]

Sadly the gaming industry is revolved around social media and streaming for their marketing/income; only reason world of warcraft even still has brand recognition even after 4-6 years of bad reviews and Blizzard in general falling apart....is the streamers/twitch/youtube/etc still advertises their games to millions of people across the normie demographics.

Blizzard pays enormous amounts to people like asmongold/summit/shroud, even the cringy classic world of warcraft hardcore is only relevant because of streamers even though it's awful, it's only reason people still pay for bad products, they will buy anything they see their fav content creator buy.

GW2 marketing is almost non existent, most mainstream demographics don't even know it's a game. Most of us pretty much been playing Guild wars since guild wars 1 back in like 2006. So it's been kinda just bleeding players and retaining veterans of the game.    

 

 

[Kelly.7019]

On 3/27/2023 at 5:55 PM, Danikat.8537 said:

They released a new map and story which is only available to level 80 characters (meaning it's end game content) last month.

Gaya Delve isn't end game content that's cantha content.

end game to me has always meant after you complete the main story/game line of content- other stuff to do.

Now probably to each their own but usually players follow a line however fluctating it is, but usually they ignore parts of the game and a game with a lot of content has multiple paths to follow. and thsoe multiple paths can lead to more content to play after you've finished the main line.

 

games that are a straight line don't have a lot of end game content

 

but also end game content can mean horizontal content. content that isn't about finishing, but goes on forever based on the players attention to it. 

 

one big aspect of this games end game content is decorating, but anet has worked hard to entirely ignore it!

Edited May 18, 2023 by Kelly.7019

[Kelly.7019]

On 3/27/2023 at 6:06 PM, Randulf.7614 said:

I agree, but this has been discussed a lot recently. They are cutting back their open world output significantly with the desire to focus more across the board and also avoid crunches (which I support since crunches are an abhorrent practice).

GW2 might be the better game, but it’s not the bigger draw. Their lower resources - which after 11 years is prob going to be progressively less going forward - means smaller, more spread out over time content drops, which should at least cover more game modes

more drip drip drip only drives more people like me away, which mean less money to develop things which means more drip drip drip....

[Kelly.7019]

On 3/27/2023 at 7:17 PM, Ashen.2907 said:

I spend vastly more on gw2 than a sub fee normally runs (although I have scaled back of late due to the direction of development). I do think that the quality of the most recent content additions (EoD and WLB) prevents them from serving as end game content for me, but they do exist. Hopefully a more frequent release schedule of smaller patches will allow more people to find end game content that works for them. If one release is a dud the next might be only a couple months away.

months... i wish that was weeks.

yea they are basically f'ed. they really need to make a sub gw3 mmo. something along the lines of eso. play for free but sub and get better access to things. but dont be like wow and subs and still have a gemstore/micro transaction for things you should have gotten/use tro get for free in the sub.

Edited May 18, 2023 by Kelly.7019

[vares.8457]

18 minutes ago, Kelly.7019 said:

one big aspect of this games end game content is decorating, but anet has worked hard to entirely ignore it!

What? Decorating is not a big aspect of end game content and never has been.