Has the GW2 design philosophy changed?

[Obtena.7952]

7 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It's quite clear to me that they are winding down resources they assign to GW2 project. Since it seems to happen at the time when they seem to be hiring fo other projects, it's most likely it's because those resources are more important for them elsewhere. It's unavoidable that such strategy will have a negative impact on GW2's prospects and its longterm success - and yet they seem completely fine with it. Sure, it does not mean they want the game to fail, but it certainly means its success became far less important to them than whatever else they may have on platter now. It's like with GW1 when they started developing GW2 - they did not want it to fail, but they didn't really care about it continued wellbeing past the point of GW2's launch either. And likely the only reason why it was not cancelled outright was because it required relatively minimal costs to automate and keep running.

In short, while people at Anet (and NCSoft) do not intentionally make decisions that would harm them, it does not mean those decisions would not harm GW2. What helps NCSoft might harm Anet. What helps Anet, might harm GW2. And so far it seems that at least one of those things is indeed happening - somewhere along the line, for whatever reason, a decision to siphon resources off GW2 has been made that is indeed harming GW2. Obviously, someone at some point intends to profit from that decision, but that someone is not GW2 players. 

That's why i mentioned that it's the players that have the most vested interest in this game's wellbeing.

Sure, but nothing there contradicts what is reality. 

What is real is that Anet is still developing this game and making money from it (unlikely anything else they might be doing) so it's pretty absurd to think they aren't the most significant stakeholder in the continued success of GW2. Even whatever new projects you speak of ... that's probably VERY dependent on GW2 being successful because it means Anet continues to exist at some level significant enough to develop them. 

Again, there is a scenario where what is good for Anet isn't continued success for GW2? Obviously that scenario isn't reality. Maybe Anet just aren't trying hard enough to tank GW2 to fulfill the doomer fantasy. Lucky for us I guess. 

This whole discussion is absurd, given the fact that GW2 is successful, even if you want to believe there is SOME scenario where GW2 not being successful benefits Anet SOMEHOW. 

Edited September 15, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Danikat.8537]

20 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Charitably, this is a good thing. The manual aspect was them pouring in tremendous manhours to create theme-park gameplay….months and months of dev time that would be burned through the player base in hours. It made no sense.

Hopefully what they mean by automation, is for the gameplay to be more complex, more or less player driven. Developers don’t make the content, players do…and that’s a way better trajectory to follow…because it means dev time can actually be given to improving upon old and abandoned systems, and focusing on bigger and better projects.

could automation also mean pointless daily quest grinding? It could…and that would suck…ideally you want the game to be novel, not repetitive but some people can’t see the sun rise, and are arguing about the wrong things. If they do happen to listen to players well I just hope that they are not listening to the whiny majority that can’t do basic maths.

I think you're reading far too much into it. The full sentence is "We’ll be updating some of our existing bonus events to reduce the amount of manual developer effort required to run them, which will make it easier to deploy them more regularly."

They're only talking about reducing the manual effort required to run some bonus events (like Fractal Rush), not the entire game or even big releases like new maps and stories.

My guess is they mean changes like the current Fractal Rush not including a community objective which progresses based on everyone's contributions. There was always debate around whether those were genuinely counting player activity or if it was an arbitrary bar that would go up no matter what and I guess however it worked it wasn't automated and required some developer input. Or maybe just standardising the achievements and rewards across events so they don't have to make new ones each time.

But whatever it means it's just talking about the bonus events, not the game as a whole.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

24 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I think you're reading far too much into it. The full sentence is "We’ll be updating some of our existing bonus events to reduce the amount of manual developer effort required to run them, which will make it easier to deploy them more regularly."

They're only talking about reducing the manual effort required to run some bonus events (like Fractal Rush), not the entire game or even big releases like new maps and stories.

My guess is they mean changes like the current Fractal Rush not including a community objective which progresses based on everyone's contributions. There was always debate around whether those were genuinely counting player activity or if it was an arbitrary bar that would go up no matter what and I guess however it worked it wasn't automated and required some developer input. Or maybe just standardizing the achievements and rewards across events so they don't have to make new ones each time.

But whatever it means it's just talking about the bonus events, not the game as a whole.

For sure. charitable interpretation means you just give A-net the benefit of the doubt, in that you assume they are doing things with rational intentions. Automation...at least in most other places, is meant to expedite progress, by increasing productivity somewhere else (as this is typically how one improves money flow) which I assume Anet wants; to make money.

It could just be a minor thing (just applying to "bonus events" to relieve a few employees) or it could be a hint at a first step to a larger, more automatized workflow of the games systems. So, either interpretation is valid, depending on how you want to interpret Anets true intentions.

[Gorem.8104]

Its sad this. I mean I had quit again now due to SOTO and all these changes that no one asked for as they ignored pages upon pages of feedback while they patted themselves on the back as the game progressively dies. I mean you can tell the difference from where they are doing things right or wrong just based on the server size counts. For years they had been reducing the size of the wvw servers, and the first time in years during the Return to event they had to increase the size of the servers as they were all full. I remember when there was only 2 options to choose from not labelled full. 

Since then? Only a handful of full with them reducing them again. With "alliances" promised to be delivered years ago that supposedly to end this anyway as updates changed wvw to compensate for the alliances they never delivered as wvw was in a terrible state till the recent change... ONLY if you no lifed wvw and could camp out the final chest now. 

The game was on such a high with pof and lw4, if they kept that momentum going there would be so many thousands more people playing gw2 right now. If they stayed with their design philosophies there would be so much more people playing. This Wizard Vault has already cost the game players. It doesn't matter if you as an individual like it or defend it when people are quitting over it. It means it was a bad design choice they put in on purpose while listening to no feedback. Whose replacing all the people that are quitting as you cheer for these people to quit because they want the game to improve and be in a better state as they know it could have been? 

As soon as we start to see people compare GW2 to other mmo's, they have gone too far. And we've been seeing that with every announcement around SOTO. GW2 made a name for itself by being a different mmo unlike any other. If it becomes just like other mmo's, the many hundreds of mmo's that have died and gone forever, what exactly was the point of sending gw2 down that a path? 
A good game does not need people defending it on the forums or other social media sites (That are not moderated with bias and use censorship tactics), people know its good. Word of mouth always is stronger then what you read online. Physical evidence is stronger then any defending forum post tactic. 

I defended GW2 originally by just telling people to give the game a go because its not what they think it is. GW2 keeps this path, it will become what they think it is. 

[Vayne.8563]

15 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

For sure. charitable interpretation means you just give A-net the benefit of the doubt, in that you assume they are doing things with rational intentions. Automation...at least in most other places, is meant to expedite progress, by increasing productivity somewhere else (as this is typically how one improves money flow) which I assume Anet wants; to make money.

It could just be a minor thing (just applying to "bonus events" to relieve a few employees) or it could be a hint at a first step to a larger, more automatized workflow of the games systems. So, either interpretation is valid, depending on how you want to interpret Anets true intentions.

This is bad logic. It's like saying taking butter out of ther refrigerator could be the first step to me having a heart attack because it has choelesterol.

Logically, the company could have just said, very easily, we're running these more often from now on, without using the word automation at all. It wasn't necessary for that they wanted to say. They  used the word in a genuine manner, because they're automating this function. There's no reason to tell us they're automating everything, particularly if they're automating everything. 

Your logic is well is sorta could mean this, but the other argument is just taking it at face value, which is what is says. They are definitely automating repeating bonus events. Not sure why anyone would assume it has anything to do with anything else. I can say, if they were automating everything, they probably wouldnt' have use teh word so casually.

[Hindenburg.3415]

6 hours ago, Gorem.8104 said:

This Wizard Vault has already cost the game players. It doesn't matter if you as an individual like it or defend it when people are quitting over it. It means it was a bad design choice they put in on purpose while listening to no feedback.

It's an MMO. Here people will complain and quit because of ANY changes.   Objectively Wizard Vault is not a bad design choice by any means.

Also they did listened to feedback and added 5th option to daily tasks so we can skip now those stupid mini dungeons.

6 hours ago, Gorem.8104 said:

Whose replacing all the people that are quitting as you cheer for these people to quit because they want the game to improve and be in a better state as they know it could have been? 

Oh common , stop pretending like people are quitting en masse because of WV or something.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

1 hour ago, Vayne.8563 said:

This is bad logic. It's like saying taking butter out of ther refrigerator could be the first step to me having a heart attack because it has choelesterol.

Logically, the company could have just said, very easily, we're running these more often from now on, without using the word automation at all. It wasn't necessary for that they wanted to say. They  used the word in a genuine manner, because they're automating this function. There's no reason to tell us they're automating everything, particularly if they're automating everything. 

Your logic is well is sorta could mean this, but the other argument is just taking it at face value, which is what is says. They are definitely automating repeating bonus events. Not sure why anyone would assume it has anything to do with anything else. I can say, if they were automating everything, they probably wouldnt' have use teh word so casually.

Well…smoking a cigarette is the first step to being a smoker.

Analogies aside…the logic is sound, and like Daniket said, it’s perfectly reasonable that it could be nothing important though if that’s the case then why tells us if it’s not important?

There’s an old saying I can’t remember the origin that goes something like :

“assume your enemies are smarter than you are”

which basically means that…you should charitably interpret someone’s actions under the assumption they’re motives are intelligent. Obviously it makes sense…and is perfectly logical to automate things in your company from just a business/capitalistic standpoint.

Edited September 16, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Vayne.8563]

8 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Well…smoking a cigarette is the first step to being a smoker.

Analogies aside…the logic is sound, and like Daniket said, it’s perfectly reasonable that it could be nothing important though if that’s the case then why tells us if it’s not important?

There’s an old saying I can’t remember the origin that goes something like :

“assume your enemies are smarter than you are”

which basically means that…you should charitably interpret someone’s actions under the assumption they’re motives are intelligent. Obviously it makes sense…and is perfectly logical to automate your company from just a business/capitalistic standpoint.

Why would I tell you something is not important if in fact, it's not important. That's not logic at all.

If you were a company that was struggling, you wouldn't likely portray you were struggling. Anet isn't sending messages out like this game is struggling. They're sending out messages that say this game is doing great. We had more people during the Soto launch than expected, and that's fair to question. Because it's in their best interest to say the game is doing well. It's not in their best interest to say the game is doing badly. It's just basic common sense.

It is not in their best interest to tell us that they're automating stuff, because some one will naturally leap to the conclusion you did. The only way that it makes sense for a company to say that is if they had no real thought process that someone would leap to that conclusion, because it's just a statement of what they're doing. You're presupposing that it could be the first step in automating other stuff, but if they planned that there would be no reason to tell us that.  It goes against their own best interest. 

I'm not charitably interpreting anything. I'm using solid logic. If you were going to automate stuff, and it was a bad thing,  you wouldn't tell people about it if there's no need to, and in this case, there's no need to. They could have simply said that we'll be running this stuff more often. You're making the leap of logic here, not me.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

Just now, Vayne.8563 said:

I'm not charitably interpreting anything. I'm using solid logic. If you were going to automate stuff, and it was a bad thing,  you wouldn't tell people about it if there's no need to, and in this case, there's no need to. They could have simply said that we'll be running this stuff more often. You're making the leap of logic here, not me.

I never said automation is a bad thing.

 

[Vayne.8563]

2 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

I never said automation is a bad thing.

 

But you did say it was a chartiable intepretation and then compared it to smoking. If it's not a bad thing, how did it get to be a charitble interpretation and not just an interpretation?

Edit: You want to to compare it to smoking.

Edited September 16, 2023 by Vayne.8563

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

2 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

But you did say it was a chartiable intepretation and then compared it to smoking. If it's not a bad thing, how did it get to be a charitble interpretation and not just an interpretation?

Edit: You want to to compare it to smoking.

I’m a smoker. Which is why I used that analogy.

The main point was that automation is typically used, for the purposes of improving the efficiency of one system, so you can divert resources to improve quality of another system…which you also make more efficient to divert resources again and so on…which in total increases the efficiency and quality of the company as a whole, more and more over time.

That isn’t always the case though as automation could be used simply to make things efficient with no regard to increase in quality and that depends on ones interpretation of their actions. The charitable assumption is the former.

Could also be this is some one-off-inconsequential thing and this is Danikets take (taking Anets statement at face value) and that’s perfectly valid too.
 

 

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Hindenburg.3415 said:

Objectively Wizard Vault is not a bad design choice by any means.

Since there are cases (and people) for whom it is a change for the worse, you are objectively wrong.

[vares.8457]

18 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Since there are cases (and people) for whom it is a change for the worse, you are objectively wrong.

No he is not. That it is bad for some few does not mean that it is objectively a bad design choice. 
An example: as a smoker you may find a smoke ban in restaurants bad but objectively it is a good thing. 

Edited September 16, 2023 by vares.8457

[Hindenburg.3415]

15 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Since there are cases (and people) for whom it is a change for the worse, you are objectively wrong.

There is always people complaining about any change as I said.
It's not an objective metric.

For example I keep complaining that forcing elementalist to play with melee weapons is bad design because I want to get my classic wizard fantasy. But I don't think it makes elementalist class design objectively bad.

Edited September 16, 2023 by Hindenburg.3415

[Astralporing.1957]

3 minutes ago, vares.8457 said:

No he is not. That it is bad for some few does not mean that it is objectively a bad design choice. 

"not a bad design choice by any means" is a statement that could objectively be true only if there was absolutely no factor by which someone might consider any element of that design to be bad. Since there are cases like that, it cannot be objectively true.

(also, generally, "good" and "bad" are practically always subjective, not objective statements, because they are always tied to hidden qualifiers saying for whom they are good or bad).

That finishes my short explanation on Logics basics, and the meanings of the words "objective" and "subjective". No need to thank me.

[vares.8457]

39 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

"not a bad design choice by any means" is a statement that could objectively be true only if there was absolutely no factor by which someone might consider any element of that design to be bad. Since there are cases like that, it cannot be objectively true.

(also, generally, "good" and "bad" are practically always subjective, not objective statements, because they are always tied to hidden qualifiers saying for whom they are good or bad).

That finishes my short explanation on Logics basics, and the meanings of the words "objective" and "subjective". No need to thank me.

Nice little explanation, unfortunately not true. So yeah, there is no need to thank you.
You can consider something bad but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t objectively good. 

Edited September 16, 2023 by vares.8457

[Astralporing.1957]

7 minutes ago, Hindenburg.3415 said:

There is always people complaining about any change as I said.
It's not an objective metric.

For example I keep complaining that forcing elementalist to play with melee weapons is bad design because I want to get my classic wizard fantasy. But I don't think it makes elementalist class design objectively bad.

Precisely. Good and bad are almost always subjective metrics, not objective ones.

[Hindenburg.3415]

4 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

"not a bad design choice by any means" is a statement that could objectively be true only if there was absolutely no factor by which someone might consider any element of that design to be bad. Since there are cases like that, it cannot be objectively true.

(also, generally, "good" and "bad" are practically always subjective, not objective statements, because they are always tied to hidden qualifiers saying for whom they are good or bad).

That finishes my short explanation on Logics basics, and the meanings of the words "objective" and "subjective". No need to thank me.

I appreciate the attempt but your underlying premise is completely wrong because according to it every game that exists is bad because it doesn't allow me to play rainbow elephant with 8 legs and giant wings.

You can consider WV "not as good" as previous system. But it certainly not "bad".

[Astralporing.1957]

2 minutes ago, Hindenburg.3415 said:

I appreciate the attempt but your underlying premise is completely wrong because according to it every game that exists is bad because it doesn't allow me to play rainbow elephant with 8 legs and giant wings.

The question was not about something being good or bad. It was about it being objectively good. So, yes, there are no objectively good games, because there are no objective metrics about what makes games good. That still leaves us with a lot of good (or even fantastic) games - we're just using subjective metrics to judge them.

[Hindenburg.3415]

16 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Precisely. Good and bad are almost always subjective metrics, not objective ones.

Not really.  There are certain OBJECTIVE criteria that can be applied to any piece of media or entertainment  Like story flow , character dynamics , underlying idea , technical details ( camera angles , light and so on )

For example Terminator 2 is OBJECTIVELY good movie ( regardless of your opinion ) just like Tremors 5 is OBJECTIVELY mediocre at best ( even though I like it )

Edited September 16, 2023 by Hindenburg.3415

[Vayne.8563]

40 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Since there are cases (and people) for whom it is a change for the worse, you are objectively wrong.

 

5 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

The question was not about something being good or bad. It was about it being objectively good. So, yes, there are no objectively good games, because there are no objective metrics about what makes games good. That still leaves us with a lot of good (or even fantastic) games - we're just using subjective metrics to judge them.

There are no design choices that affect everyone well. The question is what percentage of people are badly affected, rather than if anyone is badly affected. The old system was bad, in my opinion because it rewarded people (like me), with so much for logging in that it didn't matter of we played our alt accounts or not. People should be rewarded for playing, not logging in in my opinion.

That was a bad design choice. This choice was to fix a problem. I'd wager far more people are happy with the new dailies than are unhappy with them, by percentage, and that is what would make it a good or bad design choice, not whether some people have a problem with it.

[Morvran.8265]

On 9/15/2023 at 9:14 AM, Ghastly.3914 said:

People say there's harm, but what harm? The quality hasn't changed, the expansions just come out earlier now. I started GW2 in june 2023, made it to HoT, and then started SOTO in august. The quality of SOTO is as good as HoT. 

If people have disagree with SOTO please give examples instead of "ncsoft or anet is hurting GW2." Without examples those statements are empty.

With examples Anet can read this and say "they're right, let's look into this."

You can argue about quality but in terms of quantity SotO is nowhere near HoT.

[Sobx.1758]

6 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

"not a bad design choice by any means" is a statement that could objectively be true only if there was absolutely no factor by which someone might consider any element of that design to be bad. Since there are cases like that, it cannot be objectively true.

(also, generally, "good" and "bad" are practically always subjective, not objective statements, because they are always tied to hidden qualifiers saying for whom they are good or bad).

That finishes my short explanation on Logics basics, and the meanings of the words "objective" and "subjective". No need to thank me.

Nope, just because someone prefers x over y, doesn't make "y" a "bad design". As such, whatever you're attempting to explain here doesn't touch on the subject of anything here being "objectively bad or good design". Some people on this forum just like to claim "the design is bad" because "they don't like something". But them disliking it doesn't make anything a bad design.

 

6 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

The question was not about something being good or bad. It was about it being objectively good. So, yes, there are no objectively good games, because there are no objective metrics about what makes games good. That still leaves us with a lot of good (or even fantastic) games - we're just using subjective metrics to judge them.

Not really, it was about good or bad design. And what gorem wrote in order to claim it's "a bad design" (and what was then  specifically quoted and responded to) was this:
"This Wizard Vault has already cost the game players. It doesn't matter if you as an individual like it or defend it when people are quitting over it. It means it was a bad design choice they put in on purpose while listening to no feedback. "

So first of all: if "player/s quitting" makes something "a bad design" then good design doesn't exist. At that point mentioning anything about "bad design" makes no sense, because apparently everything is a bad design.
Secondly: I wonder how gorem can access all these stats he's talking about here. Spoiler alert: he can't, he dislikes something so "he totally quits and tons of players do exactly the same". Ok, sure. 🙄

Edited September 16, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[Izzy.2951]

I dont think the GW2 phylosophy have had any consistency over the years.

At this point i just expect Qol updates, automated bonus events, balance updates and some story with every posible assets reuse until their new game project comes to live. Good times to be a gw2 fan.

Edited September 16, 2023 by Izzy.2951

[kharmin.7683]

23 hours ago, Morvran.8265 said:

You can argue about quality but in terms of quantity SotO is nowhere near HoT.

SotO hasn't been fully released yet.  Of course the quantity will be different than a fully-released HoT.  What a silly statement.