Dear Arenanet

[Tanuki.4603]

Dear ArenaNet.

Stop making kitten content just to tick a box every year. Either make good, polished and fun content (fractals/strikes/dungeons/whatever, even drms) or don't make anything at all. Don't listen to people telling you they want MORE content, as you clearly can't satisfy the quantity and quality standards in any way.

At the moment 80% of strikes are complete bloat that nobody actually likes. There are 0 (ZERO) strike-focused guilds.

[TheNurgle.4825]

15 minutes ago, Tanuki.4603 said:

Either make good, polished and fun content

What is good, polished and fun content for you does not mean that is good, polished and fun content for me. In general it is about participation, retention and new players since you want to have majority of your playerbase to do the content on regular basis with increase of the playerbase.

How many ppl do EoD CM strikes? How many ppl do raids? Why do you think that CO strike NM and CM is designed as it is? If you spend time and resources on content almost noone is doing, then you failed.

Imagine that ANET would take all raid bosses and "rework" them as strikes with lower difficulty or as meta events. Majority of playerbase would see it as new content since they never did raids.

Also I watched some vids ppl complain about CO CM being too easy and when you see they team composition it is like *what did you expect? you use most broken specs in game which trivialize almost all content".

I knew some ppl which can create challenging content out of anything like "can I solo or duo this? Let me try.".

[Cyninja.2954]

The question has never been (or should never have been): how many players engage with the content.

The question should always have been: how many communities develop around content.

That's also where raids and fractals versus strikes differ. Raids have/had the most community development around them, fractals less due to their easier organizational nature, strikes near none.

Offering more content which attracts the same players which enjoy brainless open world content is pointless. There is enough of that content in abundance.  The goal of instanced content should be to encourage communities and the development of those or at least support. A MMO does not survive on loners alone.

[vares.8457]

2 hours ago, Tanuki.4603 said:

There are 0 (ZERO) strike-focused guilds.

How do you know that and why should there be strike focused guilds? I do Strike Missions once a week with the guild I am raiding with.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

8 hours ago, Tanuki.4603 said:

There are 0 (ZERO) strike-focused guilds.

Took me 5 seconds to open up LFG, look at Strike LFG and spot a squad advertising a Raid-Strike Guild, opening up Discord I see two servers belonging to Guilds only caring about Raids-Strikes(+Fractal on one). Leveling up crafting on my alt in Lion's Arch I saw 1 ad in map chat for "Endgame content" Guild and one more for "Raid, Strikes, Fractals" Guild.

The solution to your problem would be.. you know.. reading chat or taking a look at the LFG section of the content you wanna complain about.

[TheNurgle.4825]

9 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Raids have/had the most community development around them, fractals less due to their easier organizational nature, strikes near none.

This is strange since raids are "dead" population wise. I know some ppl still doing it, but some ppl also do activities. Real numbers are only seen by anet and there is reason why some content is discontiuned.

Also I hope that we all agree that raid sellers is not counted as "community development around them".

 

[Cyninja.2954]

36 minutes ago, TheNurgle.4825 said:

This is strange since raids are "dead" population wise. I know some ppl still doing it, but some ppl also do activities. Real numbers are only seen by anet and there is reason why some content is discontiuned.

Also I hope that we all agree that raid sellers is not counted as "community development around them".

 

Raids aren't "dead". If you looked at the limited metrics we have, you'd see that there is still tens of thousands of players playing them weekly. I believe wingman alone has around 24-25 thousands unique players weekly in their logs.

Raid sellers are around 100-200 players (it's basically a couple of guilds with sell rosters) out of dozens of thousands of players, so I am sure we are safe on that side.

[TheNurgle.4825]

15 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Raids aren't "dead". If you looked at the limited metrics we have, you'd see that there is still tens of thousands of players playing them weekly. I believe wingman alone has around 24-25 thousands unique players weekly in their logs.

Raid sellers are around 100-200 players (it's basically a couple of guilds with sell rosters) out of dozens of thousands of players, so I am sure we are safe on that side.

Interesting. So you are telling me that devs ignore content which is played regularly by 24-25 thousands ppl? Why is it so hard to believe?

[Cyninja.2954]

23 hours ago, TheNurgle.4825 said:

Interesting. So you are telling me that devs ignore content which is played regularly by 24-25 thousands ppl? Why is it so hard to believe?

Yes, because in the grand scheme of things, with a couple of hundred thousand players, 5-15% of them are to niche to develop content for them, according to the developers.

That doesnt make the content dead though, it makes the studio to small to support it.

Which is why they've been trying to save on resources and combine content because while these 5-15% might not be the majority, they are still a significant amount of players.

Also read between the lines: I said wingman is showing 24-25k unique players. Now factor for not all players showing up on wingman and the actual number of players playing raids, to this day, is likely at least double that.

That's what limited metrics we have access to show and it beats assumptions or subjective beliefs.

EDIT:

here just for you, I double checked wingman with following criteria:

Successful clear/kill: yes

Date Range: 20.11.2023 - 26.11.2023 (last week) (EDIT: the actual date range was obviously 13th-19th. Mistake in notation on my part)

All raids

This is what you get: Parsed 2410 logs of 26 bosses, including 22706 players (Spent 12s 481ms).

Now let's do the same for unsuccessful kills: Parsed 2371 logs of 26 bosses, including 22237 players (Spent 12s 70ms).  Which makes sense since most often only successful logs get uploaded.

I actually didn't let the site parse for to long because otherwise I'd be waiting for a long time (and even a limited parse was sufficient to prove my point). That's what I got after waiting for around 10 seconds. Now given the limited parse and the fact that not every group uploads their logs to wingman: it's easy to say the actual number of players playing raids currently weekly TO THIS DAY will be far higher. So as far as dead content, you couldn't be more wrong no matter what you want to believe.

Edited November 20, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[Dean.3056]

On 11/18/2023 at 11:31 AM, TheNurgle.4825 said:

What is good, polished and fun content for you does not mean that is good, polished and fun content for me. In general it is about participation, retention and new players since you want to have majority of your playerbase to do the content on regular basis with increase of the playerbase.

How many ppl do EoD CM strikes? How many ppl do raids? Why do you think that CO strike NM and CM is designed as it is? If you spend time and resources on content almost noone is doing, then you failed.

Imagine that ANET would take all raid bosses and "rework" them as strikes with lower difficulty or as meta events. Majority of playerbase would see it as new content since they never did raids.

Also I watched some vids ppl complain about CO CM being too easy and when you see they team composition it is like *what did you expect? you use most broken specs in game which trivialize almost all content".

I knew some ppl which can create challenging content out of anything like "can I solo or duo this? Let me try.".

 

There are a few issues in what you wrote.

In every MMO most people are open world casual players who do metas and random events does it mean that all content is always open world? No.
The key is not participation but replayability and community. In instance content, PvP and WvW you have this, its endless content which is interactive and you have many communities built around it. This makes this content a success and even after years of neglection people are hardcoring this scene, now imagine how it would be if this scene would not be neglected.

Open world is fine and strikes are okish as well its like trials in WoW or whatever but it cannot be the only focus because this content is linear and "touch and go" and for the most part not interactive. If you go to twitch most people are streaming interactive content as well such as instance,pvp or wvw which makes sense.

I agree with OP, SOTO is fine but missing elements to the other scenes. This game needs a pvp/wvw expansion and each open world expansion should have strikes and raid instance with a new fractal.

[Jedrik.3109]

This is the second thread from you that I have read recently.  You are either new or do not pay attention to the development news of the game. 

My advice is to enjoy what is there and what small new things we get or to move on and enjoy other games.

[TheNurgle.4825]

20 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Yes, because in the grand scheme of things, with a couple of hundred thousand players, 5-15% of them are to niche to develop content for them, according to the developers.

That doesnt make the content dead though, it makes the studio to small to support it.

Which is why they've been trying to save on resources and combine content because while these 5-15% might not be the majority, they are still a significant amount of players.

Also read between the lines: I said wingman is showing 24-25k unique players. Now factor for not all players showing up on wingman and the actual number of players playing raids, to this day, is likely at least double that.

That's what limited metrics we have access to show and it beats assumptions or subjective beliefs.

EDIT:

here just for you, I double checked wingman with following criteria:

Successful clear/kill: yes

Date Range: 20.11.2023 - 26.11.2023 (last week)

All raids

This is what you get: Parsed 2410 logs of 26 bosses, including 22706 players (Spent 12s 481ms).

Now let's do the same for unsuccessful kills: Parsed 2371 logs of 26 bosses, including 22237 players (Spent 12s 70ms).  Which makes sense since most often only successful logs get uploaded.

I actually didn't let the site parse for to long because otherwise I'd be waiting for a long time (and even a limited parse was sufficient to prove my point). That's what I got after waiting for around 10 seconds. Now given the limited parse and the fact that not every group uploads their logs to wingman: it's easy to say the actual number of players playing raids currently weekly TO THIS DAY will be far higher. So as far as dead content, you couldn't be more wrong no matter what you want to believe.

You date range is strange since it is in future.

I checked data from last week for all strikes normal and CM with kill+fails and you get Parsed 1135 logs of 12 bosses, including 9587 players (Spent 4s 417ms)..

So you have more ppl doing raids than strikes based on this GW2 wingman data. I worked in corp and you always go with bussiness cases so you get return on your investment. Information can be inaccurate, but based on that raids are more popular than strikes.

This would suggest that you allocate resources on raids and not strikes. Even if that would mean to polish raids or create some "story" version so more ppl get into raids since you have more engagement with that content.

[Cyninja.2954]

55 minutes ago, TheNurgle.4825 said:

You date range is strange since it is in future.

Sorry, I accidentally wrote this week dates. The correct dates for the data set was obviously last week 13-19th (ending in Sunday 19th November). The mistake happened when I was moving the yearly date but forgot to adjust that 19th in this thread. The values are still accurate from wingman since there I had selected the last week correctly.

Quote

 

I checked data from last week for all strikes normal and CM with kill+fails and you get Parsed 1135 logs of 12 bosses, including 9587 players (Spent 4s 417ms)..

So you have more ppl doing raids than strikes based on this GW2 wingman data. I worked in corp and you always go with bussiness cases so you get return on your investment. Information can be inaccurate, but based on that raids are more popular than strikes.

 

Which is not a surprise, given raids have far better rewards and are more fun to the target audience. It's also worth mentioning that a majority of players engaging in strikes are raid players. Without raids or the instanced community from them, strikes would actually be dead content.

Quote

This would suggest that you allocate resources on raids and not strikes. Even if that would mean to polish raids or create some "story" version so more ppl get into raids since you have more engagement with that content.

Well now you understand why players are unhappy. Strikes by now where meant to achieve different things:

1. become introductory content to raids (which then was changed into strikes becoming more difficult than raids in some cases)

2. allow better sharing or resources between different types of content, aka streamlining developer resources

3. rebrand/rename content once again in an attempt to convince players to try said content

What we ended up with is a less popular type of content, with less engagement, worse rewards and worse community development.

If raids are dead, then strikes are ghosts by now.

[AliamRationem.5172]

On 11/18/2023 at 2:31 AM, TheNurgle.4825 said:

What is good, polished and fun content for you does not mean that is good, polished and fun content for me. In general it is about participation, retention and new players since you want to have majority of your playerbase to do the content on regular basis with increase of the playerbase.

How many ppl do EoD CM strikes? How many ppl do raids? Why do you think that CO strike NM and CM is designed as it is? If you spend time and resources on content almost noone is doing, then you failed.

Imagine that ANET would take all raid bosses and "rework" them as strikes with lower difficulty or as meta events. Majority of playerbase would see it as new content since they never did raids.

Also I watched some vids ppl complain about CO CM being too easy and when you see they team composition it is like *what did you expect? you use most broken specs in game which trivialize almost all content".

I knew some ppl which can create challenging content out of anything like "can I solo or duo this? Let me try.".

So the premise is they released low effort strikes because there's not enough interest in that type of content?  Okay, let's go with that.   Presumably, open world is their bread and butter.  Would you say the most recent update is high on either quantity or quality?

[Shiyo.3578]

On 11/18/2023 at 4:02 AM, Tanuki.4603 said:

Dear ArenaNet.

Stop making kitten content just to tick a box every year. Either make good, polished and fun content (fractals/strikes/dungeons/whatever, even drms) or don't make anything at all. Don't listen to people telling you they want MORE content, as you clearly can't satisfy the quantity and quality standards in any way.

At the moment 80% of strikes are complete bloat that nobody actually likes. There are 0 (ZERO) strike-focused guilds.

Strikes are bad content with terrible rewards from a bad game where the company is literally scrambling for revenue increases by firing  workers because the games update model(that Anet is so desperately trying to copy) is failing and bleeding players and generating less profit every year. (Destiny 2)

Edited November 23, 2023 by Shiyo.3578

[Obtena.7952]

OH look, someone else forgot that the game isn't about them. 

[zeyeti.8347]

0 guild .... guess my guild counts for nothing , Op is just too bad to join  the lfg or too antisocial to join a guild , or both !

On 11/18/2023 at 10:02 AM, Tanuki.4603 said:

At the moment 80% of strikes are complete bloat that nobody actually likes. There are 0 (ZERO) strike-focused guilds.

Yeahhh i am in the 20% , i am 20% special !

[Holmindeboks.3490]

On 11/18/2023 at 11:02 AM, Cyninja.2954 said:

The question has never been (or should never have been): how many players engage with the content.

The question should always have been: how many communities develop around content.

That's also where raids and fractals versus strikes differ. Raids have/had the most community development around them, fractals less due to their easier organizational nature, strikes near none.

Offering more content which attracts the same players which enjoy brainless open world content is pointless. There is enough of that content in abundance.  The goal of instanced content should be to encourage communities and the development of those or at least support. A MMO does not survive on loners alone.

The game was made for open world content. But ppl wanted to raid. They got some and now they want more. They knew that it was based on open world.
 

If i was anet i had create a raid or strike with a difficulty of a 25 man squad on cm mode but just for 10 ppl only. So they have 15 ppl to few difficulty wise. Just so ppl who say that everything is too easy are quiet for some years. As if they are gonna kill a boss that needs 15 more skills players. And if they whine for a nerf then they just say, not everything is (to easy) go on. 

[Cyninja.2954]

1 hour ago, Holmindeboks.3490 said:

The game was made for open world content. But ppl wanted to raid. They got some and now they want more. They knew that it was based on open world.
 

If i was anet i had create a raid or strike with a difficulty of a 25 man squad on cm mode but just for 10 ppl only. So they have 15 ppl to few difficulty wise. Just so ppl who say that everything is too easy are quiet for some years. As if they are gonna kill a boss that needs 15 more skills players. And if they whine for a nerf then they just say, not everything is (to easy) go on. 

It was was it? The majority of "end game" content on release was dungeons, shortly followed by fractals.

In fact the only reason this game did get this amount of "open world content" was due to a later shift in design when the temporary season/content model did not work out, which as mentioned earlier provided a very limited amount of content (easy to be seen in how small season 1 was). Even season 2, which added 2 maps for the entire season saw far more instanced content development than actual "open world" content given the amount of fractals released.

It's not until season 3 that open world content was the main amount of content developed.

Let's not start imagining things here please. In case you are unsure, the wiki has release dates for all content added into the game. This can easily be double checked instead of coming up with alternate assumptions.

Edited December 7, 2023 by Cyninja.2954