ArenaNet's Approach: Analyzing GW2's Feature Lifecycle - What Lies Ahead????

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

This post definitely comes across as catastrophising the state of the game to an extreme. Sometimes the disconnect between what one experiences in the actual game and what he reads on the forum feels like we're talking about two different games. SotO is some of the best content ever released in the game's history, and I earnestly wonder if the vast majority of players are too busy enjoying it to post on the forums 

[Assolador.3598]

4 minutes ago, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

This post definitely comes across as catastrophising the state of the game to an extreme. Sometimes the disconnect between what one experiences in the actual game and what he reads on the forum feels like we're talking about two different games. SotO is some of the best content ever released in the game's history, and I earnestly wonder if the vast majority of players are too busy enjoying it to post on the forums 

I actually play the game in almost all my free time, across all game modes and social aspects, Including rping on lions arch, talking with people and helping noobies, and that's my vision of the actual state of the game, I did so many rifts, I commanded a 10 HOUR STRAIGHT RIFT HUNTING, I got about 1.5k pvp matches and a couple raids cleared, can do all frac cms and im full legendary armor, recently crafted eternity and I caught up on content, now trying to learn wvw comm.. Now I wait for more of those content I most liked: pvp, raids and leg open world collection. pvp gets no content since 2018, raids are done for some time, maybe forever, which is ''ok'' since they will add strikes that are 10-man content... but then they show me dagda. The new armor! I was so excited about it, I really thought it was something like season of dragons or vision, but no, it was a endless boring grind. While other leg armor ARE "grinds", they are locked behind exciting content, content you must turn ur brain on, there's challenge and lots of fun. What can I say about rifts? I do like the system, but the rifts itself are very bad mindless grind repeating the same thing again and again, wich is against the philosophy of gw2, who even have a system where players start losing drop rate when grinding the same thing.

[Ashen.2907]

2 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Be very careful what you wish for.  This could happen where it gets sold off to another company who decides to try to make more profits by forcing a subscription and heavy P2W model, completely abandoning horizontal progression which would force players to continue to pay and/or grind to keep up.

Be very careful.

Indeed.

As much as I believe that the game could be better, I know that it could be much, much, worse.

[Marikus.1875]

4 hours ago, illuminati.8453 said:

I've never seen a company abandon features as much as Anet.

then you haven't played WoW...the devs literally reinvent the game every single 2 years with each new expansion...there's features every 2 years that are abandoned...it's madness...there must be over 100 features that have been abandoned...so I don't want to hear anyone complain about that here...we have it GOOD.

Edited October 7, 2023 by Marikus.1875

[Balsa.3951]

game is obviously better than ever now. do we wish for more ofc.

what more? more everthing

but anet cant do it not enough fans to bring in the money they need.

new technology has arrived finding a cheaper faster way to create content is the main goal. once this is archived mmos will be much bigger than now

[enigmatic.3576]

2 hours ago, Balsa.3951 said:

game is obviously better than ever now. do we wish for more ofc.

what more? more everthing

but anet cant do it not enough fans to bring in the money they need.

new technology has arrived finding a cheaper faster way to create content is the main goal. once this is archived mmos will be much bigger than now

So paying nearly an expansion's price for barely half of an expansion's content every year means the game is better than ever?  The amount of content and the frequency of content releases has shrunk over recent years but I guess that's a good thing?  I mean, who wants content?

[Bladestrom.6425]

1 hour ago, enigmatic.3576 said:

So paying nearly an expansion's price for barely half of an expansion's content every year means the game is better than ever?  The amount of content and the frequency of content releases has shrunk over recent years but I guess that's a good thing?  I mean, who wants content?

Think about this, inflation is rampant so Anet is getting 15% or worse less profit than they did 2 years ago based on this alone, and yet your still not paying a Sub so  I would hardly consider Anet a greedy cynical company.  We all want masses of content, and Anet wants a happy player base, so what do you want to happen that is realistic that will pay for salaries, hardware, support and all the new content you want? 

Its really easy to say 'i want more stuff' but not so easy when you have to actually think about what that means,.

Edited October 7, 2023 by vesica tempestas.1563

[Fueki.4753]

As far as I can interpret the recent years, only disappointment lies ahead.

Since Season 5: Champions there's been little positive added the game. And the little that had been positive, Virtuoso in the first beta, had been ruined by having the pink abominations auto-refill even out of combat.

Champions is disappointing for obvious DRM reasons. We also lost Canach and got a massively under-delivering shadow of him instead.

EoD was the reason we got DRMs and yet it's significantly underwhelming and little better than the DRMs. Gyala Delve is even worse than Champions.

In my opinion, SotO didn't bring anything positive to the table either. It's too expensive for how little it offers. Weapon Mastery requiring SotO, despite being otherwise completely unrelated is stupid. The Wizard's Toilet is simply annoying. I don't want to have to engage with your mobile game UI just to get rid of the red marker on the top left. Just let me right click a wiggling box above the map to get the login AA and remove the red marker. Give me an option to disable the toilet tracking on the top right.

We don't even know, if the upcoming new weapons will actually be core weapons as announced, or if the will end up being SotO weapons.

Edited October 7, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[Cyninja.2954]

2 hours ago, enigmatic.3576 said:

So paying nearly an expansion's price for barely half of an expansion's content every year means the game is better than ever?  The amount of content and the frequency of content releases has shrunk over recent years but I guess that's a good thing?  I mean, who wants content?

Expansion price, which expansion? The GW2 ones you are accustomed to which are among the industry cheapest? Or the actually industry standards?

Content has shrunk, compared to what? Season 4? It's always so comfortable to just mentally delete the HUGE content droughts this game has had. How much was it before HoT? 11 months? Post HoT? How long before EoD? Over 1 year? Post Season 4? 6 months? Some here would be well advised to visit the wiki and remind themselves of where the game was at in the past, seems a lot of rose tinted memories going around.

This game has always had around 3-4 living world episodes worth of "content" per year at best (and anything at 4 was watered down significantly, but sure let's forget that too, hello unfinished season 4 maps or HoT expansion). The only difference was when and how that content was developed and released.

The main difference now is:

1. The living world releases are rolled into a mini expansion like model and need purchasing

2. As trade-off for 1, there is some guarantees that content gets developed regularly (for now) and without content drought phases (for now)

That's pretty much it.

Edited October 7, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[Balsa.3951]

2 hours ago, enigmatic.3576 said:

So paying nearly an expansion's price for barely half of an expansion's content every year means the game is better than ever?  The amount of content and the frequency of content releases has shrunk over recent years but I guess that's a good thing?  I mean, who wants content?

it its simple math.

u have 4 apple now u got one more apple thats 5 apple.

u have more now than when u had 4

hope that helps u

[Assolador.3598]

7 hours ago, Balsa.3951 said:

game is obviously better than ever now. do we wish for more ofc.

what more? more everthing

but anet cant do it not enough fans to bring in the money they need.

new technology has arrived finding a cheaper faster way to create content is the main goal. once this is archived mmos will be much bigger than now

honestly they can do better, a little more marketing, do some dev streams playing the game, put a sub model inside gw2 with some perks, create new cosmetics instead of doing the same thing again and again(for example new mecha skins for engineers and skill recolors) do something about spvp which is litterally dying over the years, There's no more legendary rank, the top 1 is a platinum 3 guy who used to wintrade and somehow got unbanned, what about doing some market on our pvp?? some tournament that will redirect donations to charity, would cost almost nothing,Im pretty sure if they asked teapot or some other big gw2 streamer he would do it for FREE, exclusive new rewards for pvp top xxx, just like there's on wow seasons. wanna ressurect raids? well what about adopting the idea from someone here on forums and putting a ''ranked pve'' like there's on ESO?? Tier 5 fractals: would litterally put 1 more instability that already exists and buff hp/dmg of bosses, maybe put perma quickness on them, anything. the xxx rush is a start, wvw rush was so much fun with all those new faces playing it, full queues everywhere, every server, dungeons rush and pvp also will be a thing, wich is pretty cool, that's the type of content we need to boost the game modes with little resources. But somehow, they're reworking dailys guys, everything will be ok.

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

13 hours ago, Assolador.3598 said:

I actually play the game in almost all my free time, across all game modes and social aspects, Including rping on lions arch, talking with people and helping noobies, and that's my vision of the actual state of the game, I did so many rifts, I commanded a 10 HOUR STRAIGHT RIFT HUNTING, I got about 1.5k pvp matches and a couple raids cleared, can do all frac cms and im full legendary armor, recently crafted eternity and I caught up on content, now trying to learn wvw comm.. Now I wait for more of those content I most liked: pvp, raids and leg open world collection. pvp gets no content since 2018, raids are done for some time, maybe forever, which is ''ok'' since they will add strikes that are 10-man content... but then they show me dagda. The new armor! I was so excited about it, I really thought it was something like season of dragons or vision, but no, it was a endless boring grind. While other leg armor ARE "grinds", they are locked behind exciting content, content you must turn ur brain on, there's challenge and lots of fun. What can I say about rifts? I do like the system, but the rifts itself are very bad mindless grind repeating the same thing again and again, wich is against the philosophy of gw2, who even have a system where players start losing drop rate when grinding the same thing.

Nice, sounds like you must really enjoy the game then!

[Taclism.2406]

1 hour ago, Assolador.3598 said:

There's no more legendary rank, the top 1 is a platinum 3 guy who used to wintrade and somehow got unbanned, what about doing some market on our pvp?? some tournament that will redirect donations to charity, would cost almost nothing,Im pretty sure if they asked teapot or some other big gw2 streamer he would do it for FREE, exclusive new rewards for pvp top xxx, just like there's on wow seasons. wanna ressurect raids? well what about adopting the idea from someone here on forums and putting a ''ranked pve'' like there's on ESO?? Tier 5 fractals: would litterally put 1 more instability that already exists and buff hp/dmg of bosses, maybe put perma quickness on them, anything. the xxx rush is a start, wvw rush was so much fun with all those new faces playing it, full queues everywhere, every server, dungeons rush and pvp also will be a thing, wich is pretty cool, that's the type of content we need to boost the game modes with little resources. But somehow, they're reworking dailys guys, everything will be ok.

Does gw2 have enough mechanical depth for more complex encounters & a better pvp scene? Absolutely.
Are the players remaining interested in that sort of content? Barely, most that were already left.
Is it financially sound for Anet? kitten no, selling skins & gold is way more profitable and way less worktime.

In a world where they make enough money to tick all the boxes, most wouldn't mind some "hardcore mode" because there's more of everything - including their prefered activity.
In our world tho, Anet is somewhat broke for a MMO. They can't tick all the boxes, so doing anything is seen as taking away other opportunities. And since the vast majority doesn't care for hardcore content ...

(On that note, I don't get why they keep promising they'll deliver on WvW alliances. It concerns such a small fraction of the playerbase its virtually unimportant, another giant waste of dev time like the steam launch)
 

[rune.9572]

idk man, I just want gw3.

gw2 feels played out. Adding more seasoning to this stale burger doesn't make it taste good anymore.

Gimme a new game where everything isn't 100% solved and metagamed to death.

I jumped ship after SotO and had so much blast in other games that don't have all the fun optimized out of.

It also gave me a good idea of how old the gw2 engine is compared to things Unreal 5 can do out of the box.  Felt like time travelling to CURRENT_YEAR from 2004, and being blown away by the technology.

Edited October 7, 2023 by rune.9572

[enigmatic.3576]

7 hours ago, vesica tempestas.1563 said:

Think about this, inflation is rampant so Anet is getting 15% or worse less profit than they did 2 years ago based on this alone, and yet your still not paying a Sub so  I would hardly consider Anet a greedy cynical company.  We all want masses of content, and Anet wants a happy player base, so what do you want to happen that is realistic that will pay for salaries, hardware, support and all the new content you want? 

Its really easy to say 'i want more stuff' but not so easy when you have to actually think about what that means,.

It's less about wanting more but instead more about wanting what we had before.  This is a buy to play game and they make their money through the game store as that's where 90% of the new cosmetics are available from.

We had expansions with at least 4 maps and a decently length story but now we're getting essentially half that on top of the story having filler such as having to do a specific number of open world events such as rifts.  We're now getting an LS3/4 episode's worth of content piecemealed out as separate releases when we used to get an entire episode.  Since LS5, the story potion of releases have gotten smaller and then padded out with filler content, such as forcing players to do open world events, in order to artificially extend them back out.  

Edited October 7, 2023 by enigmatic.3576

[enigmatic.3576]

6 hours ago, Balsa.3951 said:

it its simple math.

u have 4 apple now u got one more apple thats 5 apple.

u have more now than when u had 4

hope that helps u

Except what you're not seeing is that the apple got significantly smaller

 

Edited October 7, 2023 by enigmatic.3576

[Bladestrom.6425]

1 hour ago, rune.9572 said:

idk man, I just want gw3.

gw2 feels played out. Adding more seasoning to this stale burger doesn't make it taste good anymore.

Gimme a new game where everything isn't 100% solved and metagamed to death.

I jumped ship after SotO and had so much blast in other games that don't have all the fun optimized out of.

It also gave me a good idea of how old the gw2 engine is compared to things Unreal 5 can do out of the box.  Felt like time travelling to CURRENT_YEAR from 2004, and being blown away by the technology.

gfs doesn't make a good mmorpg, see Amazons new world.

[Balsa.3951]

1 hour ago, enigmatic.3576 said:

Except what you're not seeing is that the apple got significantly smaller

 

its a question if the game improve and it does with whatever anet added so far. 

ur issue is u want more faster but that doesn't say game is better than ever wrong.

 

[Linken.6345]

10 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

As far as I can interpret the recent years, only disappointment lies ahead.

Since Season 5: Champions there's been little positive added the game. And the little that had been positive, Virtuoso in the first beta, had been ruined by having the pink abominations auto-refill even out of combat.

Champions is disappointing for obvious DRM reasons. We also lost Canach and got a massively under-delivering shadow of him instead.

EoD was the reason we got DRMs and yet it's significantly underwhelming and little better than the DRMs. Gyala Delve is even worse than Champions.

In my opinion, SotO didn't bring anything positive to the table either. It's too expensive for how little it offers. Weapon Mastery requiring SotO, despite being otherwise completely unrelated is stupid. The Wizard's Toilet is simply annoying. I don't want to have to engage with your mobile game UI just to get rid of the red marker on the top left. Just let me right click a wiggling box above the map to get the login AA and remove the red marker. Give me an option to disable the toilet tracking on the top right.

We don't even know, if the upcoming new weapons will actually be core weapons as announced, or if the will end up being SotO weapons.

Oh dont worry the weapons will be useable by core classes but needing SotO to access for sure.

[Astralporing.1957]

21 hours ago, vesica tempestas.1563 said:

no idea what 'lucked out ' means. 

That during all those years no competitor arrived at MMORPG market that would even try to aim at the same target group as the one that is GW2's strength. Most of GW2 players cannot go to any other MMORPG not because GW2 is best at supporting their gameplay style, but because it is the only one doing so.

[Sobx.1758]

46 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

That during all those years no competitor arrived at MMORPG market that would even try to aim at the same target group as the one that is GW2's strength. Most of GW2 players cannot go to any other MMORPG not because GW2 is best at supporting their gameplay style, but because it is the only one doing so.

And what about that has to do with "luck"? If that gameplay style (wonder what exactly you mean by that -I have my guess, but I probably shouldn't need to guess to understand what you're trying to say here?) was such a sure hit and easy source of money, the competitors would be there. Perhaps the gameplay style you're talking about simply isn't as sustainable as you might think.

[Solvar.7953]

I can certainly see that competitors may not have decided to go after GW2s player base because they knew at best they would just be splitting that player base, and it might not be a big enough base that a split of it doesn't make sense.

It might be some luck that other MMOs that came out (many/most of which do have a no monthly fee system, though you miss out on features) just wasn't close enough to siphon away a lot of GW2 players even though that wasn't that MMOs goal (they may have been targeting some other large group of players).  It isn't like people fall neatly into specific buckets - many players will play many different video games, some very different from each other.  Various games that become unexpected hits probably luck into it in that they designed a game for players of a certain type, but it also appealed to many players outside of it.

Back to original post, I've skipped buying SotO for now - IMO, everything since/including the IBS wasn't that great.  I give IBS a bit of a pass because it was done during COVID times, though in retrospect, I wonder if focusing dev effort on something different (like going through fixing all sorts of bugs or doing other improvements instead of doing DRMs).  I feel the game has changed a lot from what was originally released as done as the design goals, and some of that evolution makes sense - I left the game a year or so after launch because I had played through with a couple characters, basically had top (exotic) gear at that point, and was left with not a lot of goals to go for.  Having easy to get top gear and fast leveling sounds great, but then needs something to keep people playing.

But I have no real idea of what, if any, manifesto they have now, other than make as much money as possible.  Lots of stuff just feel grindier than in the past.  SotO seemed to make a lot of changes that really didn't seem necessary or were downgrades, and IMO never really explained on why they made those changes.

 

[illuminati.8453]

1 hour ago, Solvar.7953 said:

But I have no real idea of what, if any, manifesto they have now, other than make as much money as possible.  

Honestly, I don't think they are even trying to make money.  There are many things (simple gem shop stuff) that could make money from the veterans but they aren't doing it.   From a development standpoint, they are using artists (a fairly cheap and easy to debug resource) to generate revenue and not doing any heavy lifting stuff like engineering that requires extensive debugging.   I kid you not, I wouldn't be surprised if SoTo was created by about 5 engineers and 12 artists.  

The most annoying thing about this company is that here we are talking, debating and rationalizing design choices and they will never engage with their players (apart from a social event which doesn't do anything to shore up confidence).   

When all is said and done, Arena Net will go down as a promising game company that fell short of greatness due to a crippling lack of self-confidence. 

Edited October 7, 2023 by illuminati.8453

[enigmatic.3576]

7 hours ago, Balsa.3951 said:

its a question if the game improve and it does with whatever anet added so far. 

ur issue is u want more faster but that doesn't say game is better than ever wrong.

 

My issue is that I want what we had before, not less.  

How has the game improved with the current model that wouldn't have occurred with the one prior to LS5?

[DarcShriek.5829]

On 10/6/2023 at 5:17 PM, illuminati.8453 said:

I'm glad you are, there is definitely fun to be had but many of us are starting to look at their development trend and are worried.  For me, the frustration with this company comes from the realization that the title could be in a lot better shape if they hadn't decided to move on. 

Define "Many" and how did you get this information.  Frankly, I think the "Many" are simply the voices in your head.  Prove me wrong.