Wizards Vault Developer Article

[jamesg.7128]

Hi gamers, came across this article today which is an interesting read -

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/production/deep-dive-reimagining-the-battle-pass-to-maximize-enjoyment-in-guild-wars-2

Some interesting points

1. Daily and weekly tasks are chosen from a "deck" that gets reshuffled when empty

2. No monetisation now but seems to be left open to some kind of "potential future monetization in this feature"

3. designed such that players can achieve the same level of progress as the old system "by logging in around 40% less frequently"

4. designed to encourage spending of reward currency "rather than hoarding"

 

 

[jamesg.7128]

4 minutes ago, Crystal Paladin.3871 said:

The full sentence "Any potential future monetization in this feature must avoid touching this core loop. " 

Is clipped by op... Is this a clickbait? 

Not at all, I said "seems to be left open". That it "must avoid touching this core loop" does not mean there can't be some kind of monetisation and the full sentence can interpreted as though it's been considered.

I have no idea what it might be but they didn't categorically rule it out. 

[Crystal Paladin.3871]

Why'd u made the title "wizard vault developer article"? Is the article really from developers of wizard vault who work at anet?

"Chris Casiano, product manager, and Rick Luebbers, lead designer, from the Guild Wars 2 team at ArenaNet"

is this really true?

edit: i did find their names from https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_credits

 

Edited October 27, 2023 by Crystal Paladin.3871

[Donari.5237]

There is an unfortunate Freudian slip typo where it reads "paying" instead of "playing."  At least I hope that's a typo.

[Marshall Sed.8643]

4 hours ago, jamesg.7128 said:

Not at all, I said "seems to be left open". That it "must avoid touching this core loop" does not mean there can't be some kind of monetisation and the full sentence can interpreted as though it's been considered.

I have no idea what it might be but they didn't categorically rule it out. 

I read this to mean - Nothing will ever change with the way this  system works.....BUT.....we may offer a gemstore item that will give bonuses, say +10% AA received, for a week/month/season.  Should that be the case then it'd be a high priced item (2k gems for a season).

 

[Shuzuru.3651]

6 hours ago, jamesg.7128 said:

2. No monetisation now but seems to be left open to some kind of "potential future monetization in this feature"

Well, according to what is written, I see it at quite the opposite, actually. The whole monetization part seemed kinda forced, there, like a "What if you had to monetized it?". It end up at a pretty empty statement like "Could be monetized, but not the core loop", well, the system isn't much more than a core loop... 

[Danikat.8537]

I wonder if the focus on why they didn't monetise it is because the article is written for other game developers and I imagine that would be a lot of their reader's first question: why make a battlepass which isn't monetised?
 

Quote

Every day, a set of new daily gameplay goals are generated for players, pulling from a “deck” that we reshuffle once empty to ensure variety.

That's interesting to me, because it sounds like you're not supposed to get a repeat daily until all the options have come around at least once. Considering how often some things (like daily activity) come up I wonder if they're in there more than once.
 

Quote

Secrets of the Obscure marks the first time a mount skin can be acquired through gameplay as part of our blurring the line between in-game rewards and MTX purchases.

This is interesting too. It's not actually the first time (I think that was the guild warclaw skin) but the fact that they say it's part of blurring the lines between in-game rewards and MTX. Hopefully that means we might start to see more of some types of items in the game, and I think also explains the gradual return of armour skins and even full armour sets to the gem store after they said years ago they'd keep those as in-game rewards. As long as it continues to be that most new stuff is in-game I think it could be good to have a variety of items in both places as I know some people much prefer just being able to buy cosmetics they like.
 

Quote

Increased engagement drives retention and MTX KPIs. It underscores our strategy to cast a wider net with our MTX rather than heavily focusing on a small number of high-spending players. Guild Wars 2 enjoys a healthy paying rate among its players, and the Wizard’s Vault is intended to emphasize that strength.

That's surprising to me. I've always heard that with free-to-play games only a tiny minority of players ever spend any money, I've heard that with buy-to-play it's slightly better but still the vast majority of players will never pay anything beyond the initial purchase price. (It came up recently with the Cyberpunk 2077 DLC, apparently that had exceptionally good sales when you factor in that most people who buy a game never buy any DLC or items, especially not months later.)

I know they'd never tell us but I'd love to know what percentage of GW2 players do spend money on the game after buying a copy (or before - maybe free players go for gem store purchases before expansions?) and how the total spend is spread among us - does most of it still come from a few 'whales' or is it more even?

I'm not going to quote it all but the whole 'Accessible for All' section is very encouraging to me, although I'd pretty much worked it out myself. I am very much the player they're describing - someone who can't play every day and doesn't want to have to do dailies every day I can log in (I know they don't take long, but 10-15 minutes can be a significant chunk of the time I can be online) and it was a very nice surprise that I was still able to get all the stuff I wanted from the Wizard's Vault.

[kharmin.7683]

2 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I'm not going to quote it all but the whole 'Accessible for All' section is very encouraging to me, although I'd pretty much worked it out myself. I am very much the player they're describing - someone who can't play every day and doesn't want to have to do dailies every day I can log in (I know they don't take long, but 10-15 minutes can be a significant chunk of the time I can be online) and it was a very nice surprise that I was still able to get all the stuff I wanted from the Wizard's Vault.

I'd wager that this describes a significantly large portion of the player base.

[Donari.5237]

11 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

That's surprising to me. I've always heard that with free-to-play games only a tiny minority of players ever spend any money, I've heard that with buy-to-play it's slightly better but still the vast majority of players will never pay anything beyond the initial purchase price. (It came up recently with the Cyberpunk 2077 DLC, apparently that had exceptionally good sales when you factor in that most people who buy a game never buy any DLC or items, especially not months later.)

That's the part that I think was (or should have been) a typo.  The overall context is talking about wanting people to engage with the game rather than login for daily rewards and vanish.  Also they are making a big point about not wanting to do bad monetization like other companies' battle passes.  So I think it's at least possible the sentence should refer to a healthy playing rate.

[draxynnic.3719]

11 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

That's interesting to me, because it sounds like you're not supposed to get a repeat daily until all the options have come around at least once. Considering how often some things (like daily activity) come up I wonder if they're in there more than once.

Particularly since it feels like daily activity is often paired with Vexa's Lab or some other minidungeon that's sufficiently time-consuming that it's still tempting to afk an activity. 

[Danikat.8537]

22 minutes ago, Donari.5237 said:

That's the part that I think was (or should have been) a typo.  The overall context is talking about wanting people to engage with the game rather than login for daily rewards and vanish.  Also they are making a big point about not wanting to do bad monetization like other companies' battle passes.  So I think it's at least possible the sentence should refer to a healthy playing rate.

I doubt it's a typo, it would be redundant to say the game has a healthy playing rate among it's players, and in the context of the whole paragraph I think paying makes sense. It seems like the whole article is trying to answer the question of why Anet would make a 'battle pass' system without monetisation, or why they'd spend time developing any extensive new system which doesn't directly bring in money, especially replacing a fairly standard one like login rewards.

In that paragraph the answer was that they expect the new system to drive higher engagement with the game, which indirectly leads to more gem store sales, which works in this case (when it may not in some other games) because there's a good rate of players choosing to pay for things in the game, which isn't always the case. They then go on to list other benefits of the system which aren't directly related to driving microtransaction sales.

Now I'm wondering how buying gems with gold is accounted for in their reporting (something else I know they'll never share). I know that converting gold to gems doesn't lose Anet money because all those gems are ones someone else bought with real money and converted into gold. But I wonder if, when they're looking at how well different items sell or what percentage of players use the gem store they also try to calculate how many of those sales are using gold bought gems and how many are using cash bought gems. If not that could explain a higher than average rate of paying players.

[Donari.5237]

1 hour ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I doubt it's a typo, it would be redundant to say the game has a healthy playing rate among it's players, and in the context of the whole paragraph I think paying makes sense.

Earlier in that paragraph though:

"Our old system saw players overwhelmingly aim for the fastest daily objectives, and it was rare for anyone to keep playing where the dailies directed them or, in some cases, at all for the day."

"Playing rate" could mean duration of play.  I agree that "paying" also makes sense, I'm not asserting it definitely is a typo.  But from a PR viewpoint, when they're talking about trying to be rewarding and incentivize more engagement with play in longer play sessions, plus saying the Vault is intended to emphasize that strength, it's a sour note to say that the "strength" is how much players shell out.  Especially since they've just been talking about how the Vault doesn't monetize, so how does its strength lie in getting more money?

@Rubi Bayer.8493 Are you able to clarify which word was intended here?  It's very ambiguous and does rather change the point of the whole interview depending on which was meant.