ArenaNet lying to the playerbase

[AHITCZ.5694]

I like to think about this game as a means of relaxation and whatever update we get is what we get. Now, I have not been playing as much these months, but there is tons to do and see. Now, feedback is certainly important and any company should listen to its customers. Considering the number of players and what may be going on internally,  someone has to make decisions on what is going to be new, fixed, improved, etc. and no way can we control or predict what will happen.

Some players will be fond of XYZ, but others will not like XYZ. Then, you have some who are neutral. Since this game is massive and there are so many players, they may simply not be able to handle everything that comes their way. Much like any other company, you can only have so much help. If you are short of people or they are out of office, it is simply the situation at hand and what is taking place.

Ultimately, it is good to voice one's opinions, but we have to think about that opinion and what does it mean? We all want to be valued, but we cannot take everything personally and sometimes nothing will happen or change. So, unfortunately, we have to go with the flow. No one is at fault -- you can think of each major update or expansion as a summation of all the circumstances, ideas, flow of thoughts, etc. that ArenaNet had. The end result, in this case, is the build that we as players receive.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

1 hour ago, kharmin.7683 said:

There are a lot of people around here who have no idea how businesses run.

Way too many people expect to get a constant stream of content for 30€ every 2-3 years, some of them even complain that the quality of the content they pay 30€ every 2-3 years for is not on the level of content others pay 40€ for every 2 years + 14€ per month on top. 

25€ isn't much for for games, even more so now when almost everywhere else you look they ask for a base 40€ for expansion or 70€ for a whole game. 

My favorite comparison is "25€ is enough for 4-5 plates of kebab"

[Balsa.3951]

2 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

They did not inform us that the story would be near non-existent and the 1/3 of the map would hold little to no interesting content.

If you really consider what we got here to be a "major update", then you are truly deluded. 😄 Personally, I haven't met anyone who has been through the full 11 years of GW2 content and would agree with this flyspeck of a release being "major".

u are absolutely right. Anet dropped quantity and quality with this last update but guys like him will never admit this.

anet can make a full release where u walk 12 stairs the end and this guy will say if u don't like it don't play it.:)

[Sobx.1758]

6 minutes ago, Balsa.3951 said:

u are absolutely right. Anet dropped quantity and quality with this last update but guys like him will never admit this.

anet can make a full release where u walk 12 stairs the end and this guy will say if u don't like it don't play it.:)

That's false and funnily enough nowhere here I wrote anything like "if you don't like it don't play it", so maybe instead of coming up with your irrelevant strawman, try addressing what was actually written in the posts you're referencing 🤷‍♂️

Edited November 18, 2023 by Sobx.1758
typo

[Balsa.3951]

20 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

Way too many people expect to get a constant stream of content for 30€ every 2-3 years, some of them even complain that the quality of the content they pay 30€ every 2-3 years for is not on the level of content others pay 40€ for every 2 years + 14€ per month on top. 

25€ isn't much for for games, even more so now when almost everywhere else you look they ask for a base 40€ for expansion or 70€ for a whole game. 

My favorite comparison is "25€ is enough for 4-5 plates of kebab"

the good old money argument...

any other way u can show that u have no plan about how gw2 major income is created? 

 

press O on ur keyboard next time u in game

[Daniyyel.3428]

This thread reminds me of the J G Wentworth commercial.   It's mine and I want it now.   /jk  I agree with some of your points.  Some I'm indifferent to.

Edited November 18, 2023 by Daniyyel.3428

[TheNecrosanct.4028]

1 hour ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

If only this update had have an equivalent of 100 pages! 😉 Sorry, but it is pointless to try to convince me that this was anywhere near a "major release". I know I am not the only one who feels this way -- and even if I was, it'd still be how I feel. 😆

I love this "This is how I feel and I'm allowed to feel that way", coming from the person who argued others' feelings are delusional. Not "That's great for you that you enjoy the new release" but "How in your right mind could you enjoy this release?!"

Accept that other people managed their expectations, based on the information ANet released before the release, and you perhaps didn't. Or maybe you weren't satisfied with what you saw even back then. But what's the point of arguing with people who do get enjoyment out of the game. If you're allowed to feel the way you do, then so are they. Yet somehow, if this gets a direct response, I have a feeling it's going to be more arguing.

[Puck.3697]

8 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

. They did say they cannot develop both expansion and LS at the same time, but tried to downplay this revelation by making it seem like the release schedule reorganization would give us about the same amount of content as before

Well ye but we knew that weren't true, the reason they cut LS is because they can't create that quantity of content along side development for a expansion

[Ashen.2907]

Anet has, at times, lied to the playerbase since before the game launched. Nothing new there. If a particular lie bothers you, then use your primary power as a consumer, your wallet, to express your dissatisfaction.

[Puck.3697]

3 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Anet has, at times, lied to the playerbase since before the game launched. Nothing new there. If a particular lie bothers you, then use your primary power as a consumer, your wallet, to express your dissatisfaction.

Um?. The game has no sub. There's no using ur wallet about it. The game costs nothing... 

People confuse facing the truth 😂😂 if uve already bought SoTo uve already spent all the money the game costs. Buying gems is completely optional and there's nothing power related further to buy. 

I bought the expansion. I dont buy gems. The expansion cost is all the game will get from me if I do or don't play lol. And there's many alike me 😂😂 

There's no solid income nessercary to play the game past that. 

Edited November 19, 2023 by Puck.3697

[Ashen.2907]

4 hours ago, Puck.3697 said:

Um?. The game has no sub. There's no using ur wallet about it. The game costs nothing... 

People confuse facing the truth 😂😂 if uve already bought SoTo uve already spent all the money the game costs. Buying gems is completely optional and there's nothing power related further to buy. 

I bought the expansion. I dont buy gems. The expansion cost is all the game will get from me if I do or don't play lol. And there's many alike me 😂😂 

There's no solid income nessercary to play the game past that. 

I never said the game has a sub. The core game is free but every expansion as well as gems costs money. This leaves plenty of opportunity to vote with your wallet. How long do you think the game would keep running if no one bought expacs or gems? Even someone, as you describe yourself, who does not buy gems has the option to vote with your wallet by not purchasing expansions.

And yes buying gems is optional for us....but it is necessary for ANet. Without gem purchases the expacs would have to carry more of the weight of the company's financial health and that would be a stretch. The expansions may not be actual loss leaders but they exist as much to keep people playing so that they continue to be exposed to the gemstore. The cost of just payroll in ANet's area eats up much of the revenue that expacs for GW2 generate (based on average game dev salaries x cost to employ in their region).

So, again, as is true in any field, a customer who is sufficiently dissatisfied with a company or product has primarily one power to express that dissatisfaction in a meaningful manner.....with their wallet.

[Passerbye.6291]

11 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

It is nothing new to me that you must always have the last word and that you cannot accept other people's opinions or feelings. You just enjoy listening to your own (virtual) voice, which is why no one can ever win an argument with you, because you will keep going in circles until the other person goes, "Ahh, you know what, you are right."

Well, you are not going to hear me say that, because it is not the case. You merely lack the ability to see things from someone else's perspective. So, I'm out of here.

Reading through the exchange between you two and finally seeing you write this, I felt like I should chime in. I feel like you don't get to accuse someone of needing to have the last word when you have 14.2k messages on the forums, you both are very active on the forums and that is ok, this is where you discuss things, the guy isn't coming to your house at 3 am going "Psst, dude, you wanna argue some more? I didn't get my fix today!". 

So far, he has been very civil, more than I'd have been, and presented his points, and you've been the one going rogue just to win the argument, please take a step back to realize the situation you're putting yourself in.

When it comes to complaints about lies, most of the points have already been made, but I'd like to reiterate the fact that we were made aware that the cadence of their content releases would change. With SotO, we're looking at the first of annually released expansions, which brought with it a massive undertaking in the form of class balance with the upcoming introduction of new weapons. While one could argue whether the current balance is good, that is beside the point, as there is a clear attempt to make each class have options for all roles. So we're looking at an expansion that potentially has much stricter deadlines than the previous expansions. Assuming they manage to deliver a decent enough balance where every class can do all roles with the new weapons and a few balance patches following it to tune down/up the outliers, who's to say that their new undertaking won't be something new?

Regarding reused assets, maybe I'm in minority, but I think they are good. I'd rather have bunch of reused assets if it means there can be more focus on content creation. We seem to be really hard to please when it comes to this subject. The devs provide an entirely new experience, we are disappointed by the quantity or the time gap between releases. They increase their cadence to provide more content or content more frequently while reusing assets to be able to meet this new cadence, we're salty that we don't get a new HoT every new year.
Look, I like HoT maps as much as the next guy, a lot of those maps are pure art, even Tangled Depths, while not the best place to spend your time in when you're new to it, makes you appreciate how intricate and beautiful it is. But are we really, realistically expecting them to make new maps with that level of thought and effort behind them when they have only 1 year to work on each expansion?

I have many issues with this game, but to this day, I'm happy that they didn't turn this into a pay to win cash grab and still continue to deliver new content. It baffles me when people bring games like WoW into this discussion as well. While games can be considered passion projects, they are also straight up businesses. The end goal remains to make profit. So comparing the content creation rate of gw2 to a game like WoW without factoring the fact that wow has a lot more monetization feels disingenuous to me. As much as I want every game developper to deliver like BG3 did, I feel like gw2 devs are doing what they can with what they have at their disposal. As much as I disagree with a bunch of decisions made over the years I've played the game, I never actually thought that they were intently trying to make the game worse (with the exception of that one balance dev who made balance changes because he didn't like certain weapons/classes, that indeed was a low point.) or somehow scam people out of their money, which is laughable considering this is by far one of the cheapest mmos to play.

Edited November 19, 2023 by Passerbye.6291

[ChronoPinoyX.7923]

44 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

So, again, as is true in any field, a customer who is sufficiently dissatisfied with a company or product has primarily one power to express that dissatisfaction in a meaningful manner.....with their wallet.

And yet there are those who think they are entitled to everything so they still expect more from ANet DESPITE not using their wallet to support the game.

[Balsa.3951]

4 hours ago, ChronoPinoyX.7923 said:

And yet there are those who think they are entitled to everything so they still expect more from ANet DESPITE not using their wallet to support the game.

well there are also many people who don't play gw2 because of how the game keeps fluctuate in performance.

btw ppl who complain and have critical thinking are the reason we ever got mounts in the game.

i still remember people like u calling people who ask for mounts entitled and they should go to other mmos if they don't like it.

u don't realize the reason things improve is because of critical response from the player base.

if u happy as the game is now be happy.

ps u don't know how much every person spends on the game, if it would be so less game would be not here for 11 years

downvote me as much u want doesn't change the fact that this game has slowed down dramatically

Edited November 19, 2023 by Balsa.3951

[Lucy.3728]

19 hours ago, Tanuki.4603 said:

They promised a no grind phiklosophy, now the ONLY expansion feature we got is braindead grind. (Rifts).

I've heard that players complained that they can't get legendary equipment by open world only. That leg. armor is tied either to raids or wvw or pvp. And that they want leg. armor for open world even when it means to grind a lot.

Now, they got what they asked for.

[ChronoPinoyX.7923]

1 hour ago, Balsa.3951 said:

i still remember people like u calling people who ask for mounts entitled and they should go to other mmos if they don't like it.

Funny, I don't recall being active in the forums when mounts became a thing.

1 hour ago, Balsa.3951 said:

u don't realize the reason things improve is because of critical response from the player base.

There's critical thinking, then there's shoehorning opinion as fact. It's easy to separate the two based on what I've seen on this entire thread

1 hour ago, Balsa.3951 said:

ps u don't know how much every person spends on the game, if it would be so less game would be not here for 11 years

Of course I don't. If I knew how much every person spent on this game specifically, I'd be able to easily predict ANet's approach to content.

Doesn't make my statement any less true. It's a broad statement, there's always going to be someone in the vast playerbase who spend bare minimum but expecting AAA Quality and quantity content to be delivered. It's not gonna happen but there are those who definitely expect it to

Edited November 19, 2023 by ChronoPinoyX.7923

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

There are always two factors, which lead to the great disapproval:

1.) They tend to change directions more frequently. That happens because they replace leadership quite often, both for the company and for the teams. New heads have different opinions and are more likely to change directions. For many companies, this strategy is a well of eternal productivity and innovation. But in GW2 it lead to a very huge pile of discontinued features that keeps growing sky-high. The fanbases of those features are obviously not very happy with that situation.

2.) They follow community requests. A lot of people, angry people, will disagree about this. But a lot of the changes we have seen in the past 11 years for QOL, combat and game-design itself were inspired by player feedback. The huge problem is that we are gamers and not developers. We change our opinions a lot faster than them and what may sound great in theory, even from our own mouth, may turn out in a total disaster once it goes live. Some of the player-suggestions in the game brought wealth and glory. While others caused despair and agony. It is a lottery at best.

[Dean.3056]

I see a lot of comments about instance content failing, pvp or wvw and yet the most repayable content in the game are these modes and its the mainstream on twitch as well.

Yes in every MMO most people are casuals who ghosting around the world and do random events for their adventure but instance content, pvp and wvw will always be how MMO are being judged and probably will be the most fun to watch.

This is a personal opinion but I think GW2 failed to be bigger because they gave too much care to the casuals, yes I know they provide more money but never the less this is why it got the "Casual" persona.

A good example is HT CM ( less than 3% people managed to kill it? ) and yet it was one of the greatest stream moments, even other content creators streamed the game and got invested. I don't recall this being a thing for random open world events.

Edited November 19, 2023 by Dean.3056

[Balsa.3951]

26 minutes ago, Dean.3056 said:

I see a lot of comments about instance content failing, pvp or wvw and yet the most repayable content in the game are these modes and its the mainstream on twitch as well.

Yes in every MMO most people are casuals who ghosting around the world and do random events for their adventure but instance content, pvp and wvw will always be how MMO are being judged and probably will be the most fun to watch.

This is a personal opinion but I think GW2 failed to be bigger because they gave too much care to the casuals, yes I know they provide more money but never the less this is why it got the "Casual" persona.

A good example is HT CM ( less than 3% people managed to kill it? ) and yet it was one of the greatest stream moments, even other content creators streamed the game and got invested. I don't recall this being a thing for random open world events.

yes non repeatable content is something anet keep focus on. while wvw should be anets greatest strengh.

i want play wvw but not much was put into it.

SOTO is only fun if u new or that casual that after.11years u still don't get any legendary armor or weapons.

veterans have not much to do.

pvp is endless entertainment but get ignored for years now.

SOTO brings barely more than free icebrood saga. and people defend this like they get paid for it.

anet keeps puring money they make via gw2 to other projects. 

rushing and abandon stuff half way through. u can point me to a source if anything i wrote here is not true

Edited November 19, 2023 by Balsa.3951

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

14 hours ago, Balsa.3951 said:

the good old money argument...

any other way u can show that u have no plan about how gw2 major income is created? 

 

press O on ur keyboard next time u in game

What else would the argument be about when most of the moaning about Soto is "I paid 25€ for this and now I'm mad I didn't get all the content at once, despite Anet saying exactly that"?
GW2's income comes from gemstore purchases and.. believe it or not.. expansions. I like this picture a lot, it shows that whenever an expansion releases it bumps up the earnings around the release date of the expansion through pre-order and post-launch purchases.

EDIT: I forgot to add this, because I was in a rush for lunch: Yeah, when your game is designed around releasing paid content 2-3 years there needs to be something to pad out the time inbetween with. In GW2's case it's gemstore, which is not mandatory, but we can look over to WoW or FF14 who do it by demanding a sub from you on top of having a cash shop. An alternative is higher priced expansions, which, both WoW and FF14 have, so.

 

Edited November 19, 2023 by IAmNotMatthew.1058

[kharmin.7683]

48 minutes ago, Balsa.3951 said:

u can point me to a source if anything i wrote here is not true

That's not how debating works.  It is your responsibility to provide concrete, verifiable facts to support your position. 

[Puck.3697]

6 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

never said the game has a sub. The core game is free but every expansion as well as gems costs money. This leaves plenty of opportunity to vote with your wallet. How long do you think the game would keep running if no one bought expacs or gems? Even someone, as you describe yourself, who does not buy gems has the option to vote with your wallet by not purchasing expansions

Yes but 100% of people don't buy gems a % of the peoppe active do, and I'm afraid, I find it unlikely the big whales of the gem spending, are the ones threatening to quit. 

And true I could. But I prolly will still buy its expansions. The expansions £20. You rly csnt expect greatness. Its so cheap, it rly doesn't matter realistically. 

[Izzy.2951]

Guys they are moving forward with a new game while they have a small team working on gw2 in the meantime. Thats why your gonna see less content, reused assets and so on.

[Astralporing.1957]

5 hours ago, Lucy.3728 said:

I've heard that players complained that they can't get legendary equipment by open world only. That leg. armor is tied either to raids or wvw or pvp. And that they want leg. armor for open world even when it means to grind a lot.

Now, they got what they asked for.

In about the same way as someone that asked for something to warm him up and has been set on fire. In short, no, Rifts was not what people asked for. Monkey's Paw style deliverance of wishes is never good.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Dean.3056 said:

I see a lot of comments about instance content failing, pvp or wvw and yet the most repayable content in the game are these modes and its the mainstream on twitch as well.

Most twitchable, yes - because casual, ow-style playerbase does not watch twitch. Most replayable? not by a long shot. There's still players doing core map world boss trains (even though those are not really rewarding at all). HoT metas are still going strong. And all those are very old content.You just don't hear about it too much, because you listen to twitch, where mostly instanced content is being streamed.

1 hour ago, Dean.3056 said:

Yes in every MMO most people are casuals who ghosting around the world and do random events for their adventure but instance content, pvp and wvw will always be how MMO are being judged and probably will be the most fun to watch.

This is a personal opinion but I think GW2 failed to be bigger because they gave too much care to the casuals, yes I know they provide more money but never the less this is why it got the "Casual" persona.

A good example is HT CM ( less than 3% people managed to kill it? ) and yet it was one of the greatest stream moments, even other content creators streamed the game and got invested. I don't recall this being a thing for random open world events.

That's because it's primarily the instance content/PvP lovers that are doing the judging. Or, to be more precise, that voice their judgment in any other way than with their feet. In the end however the game rises (or falls) on the backs of its casual playerbase, not hardcore one.

1 hour ago, Dean.3056 said:

This is a personal opinion but I think GW2 failed to be bigger because they gave too much care to the casuals, yes I know they provide more money but never the less this is why it got the "Casual" persona.

A good example is HT CM ( less than 3% people managed to kill it? ) and yet it was one of the greatest stream moments, even other content creators streamed the game and got invested. I don't recall this being a thing for random open world events.

My view on it however is the exact opposite. They failed to get bigger because they always kept waffling about which playerbase they should aim for. Even though the strongest point of the game compared to its competitors was always Open World content (and the content aiming at casuals) Anet visibly kept pushing for hardcore players they could never satisfy enough anyway. Mixed messages are always the worst type of content advertising, because it invariably ends with both sides thinking the game might not be for them.