Has the GW2 design philosophy changed?

[Drakz.7051]

The design philosophy was changed all the way back in HoT when elite specs where vastly superior to non-elite specs and from a "Play how you want" and "Not like others MMOs" and then they started to do exactly as other MMOs do anyway.

The wizard vault dailies and weeklies kinda suck not in the rewards department but in the you only have 4 dailies and need to do ALL 4 or miss out on the daily which sucks for anyone who has not begun progressing through expacs they own. An example is that I have access to EoD but not been to Cantha yet......and have missed out on dailies at least 3-4 times because it wants me to do a mini dungeon, meta or kill enemies of that area. Now imagine someone new gets the game and all the expacs then hits 80 and can't do their dailies or weeklies because of this.

A-Net just doesn't seem to be the company it used to be.

[Obtena.7952]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Obviously, if you change things for the worse, they do stop working as well as they did before. And yes, it is also clear to me that keeping players happy seems to no longer be a concern.

Sure, but that's only half the story because there are things coming in that do work for lots of people that don't regard them as worse. You aren't going to ignore the realities that this 11 year old game is part of a service Anet provides as a business and apparently, it's simply not enough for Anet to ride the GW2 on the revenues from it's established veterans by not changing things. 

Would I have preferred Anet stick to the original strategy? Sure, but I don't think it's realistic to think it's enough to keep the game going at this point and obviously neither did Anet.  Just how many skins do I need for my mounts? This business model was going going to work as long as there was an influx of players that didn't have skins willing to buy a few of them. 

Edited September 12, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[IndigoSundown.5419]

18 hours ago, Tanek.5983 said:

If this is the case, then I would say the answer to my question is that yes, the design philosophy has changed. Which, if that is what the devs have decided to do, I'd just like to be told.

Get used to telling yourself, "So, this is how it feels to want." because that's all you're going to get from ANet.  They either don't explain, or they (rarely) issue a public-relations-speak comment that is so vague you are still left wondering what drives them.

[Vayne.8563]

32 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Obviously, if you change things for the worse, they do stop working as well as they did before. And yes, it is also clear to me that keeping players happy seems to no longer be a concern.

Which players would those be? There are two forces at work here. The people making the game and the company trying to make a profit and that's always been the case. When they tried to add random mount skins with no selection box, the playerbase went wild and that was ages ago. There have always been complaints about Anet making changes to this game that were unpopular with a certain portion of the community. The introduction of ascended gear, just a few months after launch, was one of the most reviled changes and a lot of people left over it.  Heart of Thorns was an attempt to give the playerbase what it was asking for, since so many forum posts at the time were demanding harder content. But I remember a lot of casuals walking,  7 years ago, because the game was no longer for them.

You speak like this playerbase speaks with one voice, but it doesn't. It may not keep you happy. But for every person complaining about the Spirit Vault, someone else is loving it. I don't think Anet will ever make everyone happy, so they're making a game that they are happy with and those that are happy with it will keep playing and there are plenty of people that are happy with it.

You break it down to caring. If they cared all those years ago, why did they introduce ascended gear, which was a very unpopular decision? Hell even raids and mounts were contentious decisions, but some people wanted them.  It's a bold thing to say they don't care about keeping customers happy.  I'm not seeing the evidence of that. So many changes I didn't like in this game were made because people asked for changes (like repeatable hearts).  The new dailies and weeklies are much better for me. YMMV.

[Zok.4956]

57 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

I think it's time some people realize the goal here isn't to keep established players happy with what worked before.

Perhaps. Well, one thing is clear. This game is 11 years old, the core game is already F2P, the large influx of new players due to Covid is a long time ago and the game has already had its Steam release. Therefore, there will not be a large influx of new players.

At most, a few old players will return (because of the new PvE Legy Armor). But that too is only temporary.

It would therefore be rather careless to alienate existing players too much with changes, because this would definitely not bring many new players to GW2. It would be easier to "keep established players happy" so that they continue to spend money on the game.

It may also be a test of how much change they can afford to "optimize" player retention metrics before too many players become dissatisfied and stop playing or stop spending money on the game.

Anet has shown in the past that they sometimes change their direction completely if too many players were dissatisfied, if it had a negative impact on sales figures, or if there were changes in upper or lower management.

[DarcShriek.5829]

Yes, the design philosophy has changed.  It's been 12 years of development.  Opinions about what makes good game design change over time.  

[Obtena.7952]

31 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

It would therefore be rather careless to alienate existing players too much with changes, because this would definitely not bring many new players to GW2. It would be easier to "keep established players happy" so that they continue to spend money on the game.

Sure ... which is why it's highly unlikely Anet make these game changing decisions carelessly. It's weird to assume keeping established players happy makes them continue to spend money on the game. The revenue-generation is WAY more complex than this. What I do know is that if Anet is making decisions about how the game works that affects revenue, it's because they did some work that suggests they needed to make those changes. 

Again, people should not be basing their arguments for how good or bad the game changes are on their personal opinions of those changes. Those people tend to forget that that most invested stakeholder that is aligned to the sustainability of the game is Anet. It's not players. Players are fickle. They leave, they come back; they don't die because they choose to play or not. For Anet, their success as a company depends on this game being successful more than anyone else and if they make a change and it bothers some people, they thought about that. They pay people to analyze that. That analysis affects their decisions. It's not likely they have people running around implementing random game changes without having thought about the impact. 

Edited September 12, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Zok.4956]

28 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

There are two forces at work here. The people making the game and the company trying to make a profit and that's always been the case.

There are way more forces at work here, because there are different forces within the company at work here. There are devs who are passionate about their job and want the best results and the most fun for the players, there are devs who only see their own interests, then there are the business departments and controlling, who only look at certain key figures and then want the game to be optimized for these key figures,... there are the owners who want to maximize sales with the lowest costs and which require the devs to squeeze the maximum revenue out of the players. etc. etc. Depending on the current management, the game can swing in one direction or more in the other. And then of course there are obvious errors. Things that seemed great on the drawing board, but don't work in reality of the game.

 

37 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

But for every person complaining about the Spirit Vault, someone else is loving it.

I can't determine exactly what the ratio of satisfied to dissatisfied people is. Especially since most truly dissatisfied players usually simply stop playing or spending money without expressing their opinion in the forum. And of course only very few happy players write in the forum.

 

40 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

It's a bold thing to say they don't care about keeping customers happy.

I think something like that (and its opposite) is an over-generalization. However: Of course, upper management is not interested in whether players are happy. Players are only perceived there as sales figures and key performance indicators. Up there, they're only interested in whether the game is good enough to keep enough players playing.

 

[Zok.4956]

31 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

For Anet, their success as a company depends on this game being successful more than anyone else

of course.

32 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

if they make a change and it bothers some people, they thought about that. They pay people to analyze that. That analysis affects their decisions. It's not likely they have people running around implementing random game changes without having thought about the impact. 

So it was a well-thought-out and meticulously planned and analyzed action to introduce the Desert Borderlands into WvW and thus almost completely kill WvW? So it was a well-thought-out and meticulously planned and analyzed action to first announce IBS as an equivalent alternative to expansion and then after a few months to essentially cancel IBS and develop EoD instead? Just 2 examples.

People make mistakes and things don't turn out as expected, sometimes things don't work out because you don't really understand your customers/players, sometimes things change because other people with different views simply come to crucial positions in the company.

But I think a kind of hero worship, in which Anet always knows what is right, is exaggerated and already refuted by the past/reality.

[Obtena.7952]

20 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

of course.

So it was a well-thought-out and meticulously planned and analyzed action to introduce the Desert Borderlands into WvW and thus almost completely kill WvW? So it was a well-thought-out and meticulously planned and analyzed action to first announce IBS as an equivalent alternative to expansion and then after a few months to essentially cancel IBS and develop EoD instead? Just 2 examples.

People make mistakes and things don't turn out as expected, sometimes things don't work out because you don't really understand your customers/players, sometimes things change because other people with different views simply come to crucial positions in the company.

But I think a kind of hero worship, in which Anet always knows what is right, is exaggerated and already refuted by the past/reality.

Sure ... they make mistakes. Any company does. MY point here is that their thought out mistakes are STILL going to be are more sound business approach to decision making than trying to appease random players' various, unaligned, poorly thought out, crystal ball solutions. 

Again, no one should come to a conclusion that Anet would make fewer mistakes if players were more involved in making these decisions on how the game works. These are business decisions. There are likely FEW qualified players able to advise Anet any better than the people they have employed to do that. That's not hero worship. That's just basic understanding of how organizations run their business. 

Edited September 12, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Zok.4956]

34 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

MY point here is that their thought out mistakes are GENERALLY STILL going to be better than players' poorly thought out, crystal ball solutions. 

Maybe. Maybe not. Well, it's clear that the players (and also some devs) are somewhat inhomogeneous in their qualifications. So I wouldn't necessarily want to generalize like that. Especially since generalizations are of little use in the specific case.

 

34 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Again, no one should come to a conclusion that Anet would make fewer mistakes if players were more involved in making these decisions on how the game works.

During the past balancing preview discussions, I had the impression that (if you ignore a few players who were letting off steam) there was quite a lot of expertise on the player side and that many consequences were pointed out there (consequences that are not those of Anet declared goals) which actually came to fruition.  When the Desert Borderlands was introduced, there were internal beta tests with players. The players there already pointed out the problems internally, which later occurred in exactly the same way.

Sometimes, just sometimes, it would be an advantage if Anet would listen to the players. But that's another discussion.

 

34 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

That's just basic understanding of how organizations run their business. 

Obtaining customer feedback is an important aid in decision-making in successful companies. 

Edited September 12, 2023 by Zok.4956

[Obtena.7952]

1 hour ago, Zok.4956 said:

Maybe. Maybe not. Well, it's clear that the players (and also some devs) are somewhat inhomogeneous in their qualifications. So I wouldn't necessarily want to generalize like that. Especially since generalizations are of little use in the specific case.

Of course you don't want to generalize like that because doing so shows the nonsensical nature of a company being able to assemble a large number of random customer 'feedbacks' into a single implementation that is satisfactory to all of those customers and avoid 'mistakes'. Again, that's not hero worship and it's not Anet ignoring people either. It's simply reality that these decisions can't give everyone what they want. 

1 hour ago, Zok.4956 said:

During the past balancing preview discussions, I had the impression that (if you ignore a few players who were letting off steam) there was quite a lot of expertise on the player side and that many consequences were pointed out there (consequences that are not those of Anet declared goals) which actually came to fruition.  When the Desert Borderlands was introduced, there were internal beta tests with players. The players there already pointed out the problems internally, which later occurred in exactly the same way.

Sometimes, just sometimes, it would be an advantage if Anet would listen to the players. But that's another discussion.

Right ... and again, nothing should give anyone the impression Anet doesn't listen to people, even if they don't act on the feedback they are given. It's simply unrealistic to think that Anet can (or should) act on all the feedback players give them. If a customer doesn't like the direction a company is going or how they are treated, they take their money and they go somewhere else. That's our power as a consumer. 

1 hour ago, Zok.4956 said:

Obtaining customer feedback is an important aid in decision-making in successful companies. 

Sure that goes without saying and nothing suggests Anet doesn't do that and nothing I said indicates I think they shouldn't. So ... what's your point?

TLDR: There are LOTS of people who think acting like a victim when they don't get something and pointing out Anet's past mistakes entitles them to a place at the table for business decisions. It doesn't. Our power as customers is where we spend our money. 

Edited September 12, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Gravitron.7982]

3 hours ago, Drakz.7051 said:

The design philosophy was changed all the way back in HoT when elite specs where vastly superior to non-elite specs and from a "Play how you want" and "Not like others MMOs" and then they started to do exactly as other MMOs do anyway.

The wizard vault dailies and weeklies kinda suck not in the rewards department but in the you only have 4 dailies and need to do ALL 4 or miss out on the daily which sucks for anyone who has not begun progressing through expacs they own. An example is that I have access to EoD but not been to Cantha yet......and have missed out on dailies at least 3-4 times because it wants me to do a mini dungeon, meta or kill enemies of that area. Now imagine someone new gets the game and all the expacs then hits 80 and can't do their dailies or weeklies because of this.

A-Net just doesn't seem to be the company it used to be.

You pretty much nailed it right here.

[Vayne.8563]

6 hours ago, Zok.4956 said:

There are way more forces at work here, because there are different forces within the company at work here. There are devs who are passionate about their job and want the best results and the most fun for the players, there are devs who only see their own interests, then there are the business departments and controlling, who only look at certain key figures and then want the game to be optimized for these key figures,... there are the owners who want to maximize sales with the lowest costs and which require the devs to squeeze the maximum revenue out of the players. etc. etc. Depending on the current management, the game can swing in one direction or more in the other. And then of course there are obvious errors. Things that seemed great on the drawing board, but don't work in reality of the game.

 

I can't determine exactly what the ratio of satisfied to dissatisfied people is. Especially since most truly dissatisfied players usually simply stop playing or spending money without expressing their opinion in the forum. And of course only very few happy players write in the forum.

 

I think something like that (and its opposite) is an over-generalization. However: Of course, upper management is not interested in whether players are happy. Players are only perceived there as sales figures and key performance indicators. Up there, they're only interested in whether the game is good enough to keep enough players playing.

 

 NO, management isn't just interested in whether players keep playing. Managmenent is interested in whether players keep spending money on the cash shop, which is very different from p.laying. If people aren't spending that's an issue and unhappy people don't spend. 

As for the rest of what you said, I'll put money on more people are making bank and enjoying the new dailies than are hating it. I can't prove it, but I'd make hte wager. A handful of people do have problems with it, and some of them have legit problems. When we get that one extra daily, it'll solve a portion of those problems.

[Smoky.5348]

On 9/11/2023 at 12:39 PM, Tanek.5983 said:

Some of the daily or weekly objectives in the Wizard's Vault have, however, introduced a kind of kill-stealing. The "defeat x enemies while under a nourishment/enhancement effect" only counts kills where you make the killing blow. Maybe this is a bug, but why does the killing blow mechanic even exist here? Where else in the game is it used? Have I just never encountered it before? Either way, unless and until this is changed, I have to worry when jumping into a fight whether I'm taking kills away from someone's weekly objective. And I have to worry that someone will take mine. Also, the incentive to help downed players is lessened when removal of those players will mean more kills for you.

I believe this system is in use for weapon master cheevos. For those, it's easier to check what weapon dealt the killing blow than to check what you hit them with last and whether you actually used that weapon for most of your damage. But for nourishment dailies, I'm guessing the new team just coincidentally chose that on-death event and didn't think it'd make a difference to use a more broad one. The fact the new team used a more forgiving event for other kill dailies tells me they didn't think everything through, either for being rushed or not knowing the game engine perfectly. Unfortunately, it's still a pretty edge case thing unless you're around a lot of players all the time, so who knows how long it could take for ANET to take notice.

[Solvar.7953]

I would like to be able to say I have confidence in the direction Anet is taking, but I can't.

The problem I see is that if GW2 becomes too much like other games, it then becomes a question of "why shouldn't I play those other games, which may be more bug free, better optimized, etc".  Maybe Anets plan right now is just to try to keep existing players buying stuff (and I'm guessing it worked, based on the number of people that bought SotO), add new gem shop items for people to buy, etc.  But it seems like attracting new players to an 11 year old game that is fairly similar to other games would be a tough task.

 

[leila.7962]

A lot of things have changed over the last 11 years for sure.. as they should. A lot of people would have stopped playing the game if it was still just like in 2012.. no level grind, no gear grind, no high end content, no challenging content. New players won't know how it was back then but people who played the game since it's release knows it wouldn't be good for the game's longevity if they kept it like that. How would they keep GW2 relevant if nothing new and exciting would come?

Changing things don't always bring the best results though.. during all these years there were a lot of hits and misses from Anet's side, but it's still impressive how they always try to acomodate most peoples gamestyle. There's something for every kind of player to do.. what I think that people forget is that they aren't going to like everything that is released, and it's not expected that they do.

The Wizard's Vault was a very shaky change to everyone. People liked their freedom of choosing which dailies they wanted to do, but it would usually be the same ones, that were fast to complete so they could go back to doing whatever they like to do. In that perspective, you would hardly ever go somewhere different than the usual, or do things that you never really got into because you were busy with the same old every day. Now that the dailies choices were narrowed down, you will get to do things that you may or may not have done before, and thi is good, specially new players, that get rushed through and miss out on a lot of cool things that the game has to offer. Also, with the current system, you find more players doing your kind of daily and there are usually people to help others doing them. That wouldn't happen so often with the old system.. because people would choose their fastest solo daily. It may be inconvenient for some people but it will help the game to keep going with the new players.

The Wizard's Vault also brought old players to the yard.. like me! and some of my friends that only bothered to play the newest content because we already did too much of everything over the years. I'm a veteran player, and I stopped doing dailies when I reached the 15k achievement points cap... mainly because since I would get no points, it wouldn't be worth for me to do dailies just for 2 gold a day. Now I have other reasons to do them again, replay old contents, do things with old friends or other players like me, that didn't bother with dailies anymore.

Every time you make a choice to change something, someone or a group of people will be more affected than others.. the old system prioritized freedom of choice and it went against the community sense, while most things on GW2 are all about community. The new system promotes community sense while it goes against the freedom of choice. I guess there isn't a common ground here to satisfy everyone.. so they had to pick.

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by leila.7962

[willow.8209]

15 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

It's a bold thing to say they don't care about keeping customers happy.

Whether or not this is true in the present case (I would venture a guess that Anet cares somewhat about that), that's not bold to me at all.

Things have changed and hardly any big business gives a fig about either customers or employees. Best as I can tell, a lot of big businesses now care only about the 1 next quarterly report, or about creating losses with one branch to reduce or eliminate their income tax bill from another. Many big businesses do not seem to care about longevity of the business. Or many are run with ineptitude: that's also possible. (Not going into specifics: that would get political)

15 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

people tend to forget that that most invested stakeholder that is aligned to the sustainability of the game is Anet

maybe. maybe not. This can no longer be assumed IMO. 

[Vayne.8563]

23 minutes ago, willow.8209 said:

Whether or not this is true in the present case (I would venture a guess that Anet cares somewhat about that), that's not bold to me at all.

Things have changed and hardly any big business gives a fig about either customers or employees. Best as I can tell, a lot of big businesses now care only about the 1 next quarterly report, or about creating losses with one branch to reduce or eliminate their income tax bill from another. Many big businesses do not seem to care about longevity of the business. Or many are run with ineptitude: that's also possible. (Not going into specifics: that would get political)

maybe. maybe not. This can no longer be assumed IMO. 

But Anet isn't a "big business". NcSoft which owns ANet is a big business. And the people making the game aren't owners, and probably not stockholders. They're just devs. And devs who make the game, probably care about the game, because it's not the kind of industry you get into to not care, at least in my opinion. This is a company of artists. But at the end of the day, all programmers are on a budget, both time wise and money wise. There's only so much you can do. Saying they don't care, because business's don't care is like saying Anet isn't its devs. I think it is. And that's why it's bold.

And whether it's bold or not, people can say whatever they want on the web, without any regard to any kind of reason. Anet doesn't care. Oh? Prove it, or stop saying it, because right now, it's just a comment based on someone not liking what the devs are doing.  But there are people, plenty of people who do like what the devs are doing. Listening to them is bad, but listening to me is good. Is that what you mean by caring?   Cause that's what it looks like from where I'm sitting.

[Zok.4956]

8 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

NO, management isn't just interested in whether players keep playing. Managmenent is interested in whether players keep spending money on the cash shop, which is very different from p.laying. If people aren't spending that's an issue and unhappy people don't spend.

You're right, of course, that all that matters to management is how much money players spend in the cash shop. However, there is a clear correlation (which can be found in many games and can therefore be considered a general rule) between "how many players are playing or are recurring players" and "how much money do players spend in the cash shop".

Therefore: If you leave the cash shop unchanged (just as an example), but ensure that players stay in the game longer or log in more regularly, the cash shop income increases almost automatically. That was certainly the motivation at the time why GW2, like other games, introduced login rewards.

And I think with the WV, Anet is further "optimizing" this system to get more and finer control (and more metrics) on how to manage players' gaming behavior.

I don't like that because these changes in GW2 give me the increasingly clear feeling that Anet is trying more and more to manipulate my specific, daily gaming behavior like a guinea pig with the WV rewards.

 

9 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I'll put money on more people are making bank and enjoying the new dailies than are hating it. I can't prove it

I'm not sure if more players like it or not. A few days ago I already wrote that probably not many players share my opinion.

Because Anet has increased the rewards (even if some players' calculations are not clear, I think Anet has overall increased the rewards) there will of course be many players who think that there is more loot and therefore like the new system.

 

[Vayne.8563]

34 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

You're right, of course, that all that matters to management is how much money players spend in the cash shop. However, there is a clear correlation (which can be found in many games and can therefore be considered a general rule) between "how many players are playing or are recurring players" and "how much money do players spend in the cash shop".

Therefore: If you leave the cash shop unchanged (just as an example), but ensure that players stay in the game longer or log in more regularly, the cash shop income increases almost automatically. That was certainly the motivation at the time why GW2, like other games, introduced login rewards.

And I think with the WV, Anet is further "optimizing" this system to get more and finer control (and more metrics) on how to manage players' gaming behavior.

I don't like that because these changes in GW2 give me the increasingly clear feeling that Anet is trying more and more to manipulate my specific, daily gaming behavior like a guinea pig with the WV rewards.

 

I'm not sure if more players like it or not. A few days ago I already wrote that probably not many players share my opinion.

Because Anet has increased the rewards (even if some players' calculations are not clear, I think Anet has overall increased the rewards) there will of course be many players who think that there is more loot and therefore like the new system.

 

It's funny how people think this is all a science. Getting people to play your game. Getting people to spend money in your game. It's like advertising. Everyone does it (except Anet lol) and no one really understands how it works. They throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. There's a saying in advertising. 20% of your advertising gets 80% of your business. The problem is, it's impossible to know which 20% that is, so you have to do it all.  I've been through this myself in retail management and I can tell you this magic they have data so they can manipulate me or they know me is not there yet, and it's not close to getting there. Anet has metrics as to what people are playing sure, but it's very very easy to misread those metrics. No one really had a dial on it yet. I can tell from the ads that pop up on various servers for me.

[Zok.4956]

16 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

It's funny how people think this is all a science. Getting people to play your game. Getting people to spend money in your game. It's like advertising.

Well, it's funny how you respond to something and then refute it that I didn't even write. Or did you agree with me and just wanted to be more general and I misunderstood your intention? I think your answer is more suitable as a counter to the opinions that say you should blindly trust Anet because Anet already knows exactly what they are doing.

 

18 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

They throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.

This is overly simplified but there is truth in it. And from “what sticks” you can then learn for the future what works and what doesn’t work. With the WT, Anet has now created a tool with which they can do exactly that much more easily and quickly. Anet has implemented something here (battle pass, but without payment) that already works for this purpose in other games.

 

[willow.8209]

1 hour ago, Vayne.8563 said:

But Anet isn't a "big business". NcSoft which owns ANet is a big business.

I did assume NCSoft has a big say. That's an assumption--I expect none of us really know these things.

I personally suggested ANet probably cares about players, at least somewhat (the qualification because they also probably care about other things, like servers and budgets and so on, and it's not possible to please everyone all the time). 

Generally I follow what you say. Just I took issue with you and the other poster saying it was ridiculous to think other than that a company (any company) will necessarily do the right thing to keep the company healthy. Lots of companies don't. Some do, of course. 

And sometimes the players do know better. But also the players do have lots of different and sometimes mutually exclusive opinions too. And sometimes the change that wasn't liked by players and still works out. (I imagine some people will still be bitter about runes/relics in the future [missing effects, and having to make relics that are related to runes which they already had legendries of], and some of us will still be wondering why we need a whole trinket for a skill that only activates on elite skill, but it's really unlikely to break the game IMO, and maybe a few more runes will be meta.)

None of it is science, I agree. And I think we're all guessing.

[Vayne.8563]

25 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

Well, it's funny how you respond to something and then refute it that I didn't even write. Or did you agree with me and just wanted to be more general and I misunderstood your intention? I think your answer is more suitable as a counter to the opinions that say you should blindly trust Anet because Anet already knows exactly what they are doing.

 

This is overly simplified but there is truth in it. And from “what sticks” you can then learn for the future what works and what doesn’t work. With the WT, Anet has now created a tool with which they can do exactly that much more easily and quickly. Anet has implemented something here (battle pass, but without payment) that already works for this purpose in other games.

 

And since I'm enjoying the game more with it, I'm okay with it.

[kharmin.7683]

4 hours ago, Zok.4956 said:

 However, there is a clear correlation (which can be found in many games and can therefore be considered a general rule) between "how many players are playing or are recurring players" and "how much money do players spend in the cash shop".

 

 

 

Not sure I can agree here.  A clear correlation?  Sure, many other games are run by subscription fees, so there could be a correlation between the number of players playing and the income revenue; however, in the case of F2P/B2P games, there are probably far more players who play than spend money -- maybe even a larger disparity in GW2 due to the ability to convert gems -> gold.  There have been many posters on the forum here (which, admittedly represent a very small fraction of the playerbase) who have claimed to have never spent any money on the game other than for expansions. I can't imagine that this vocal few are the only ones.