Do you like to have expansions and updates with a fixed and predictable deadline and content?

[Danikat.8537]

21 hours ago, Urud.4925 said:

You interpreted the way I intended it. FFXIV delivers the same amount of savage raids, trials and dungeons at every expansion+patches, and it seems (some of) their players are becoming bored to always know what they'll get. ArenaNet started only now to break down the content like that (every future expansion will have 2+1 map, 2 strikes and 1 fractal) so for now it's fine. But I wondered if after a couple of years this will also lead to some apathy and boredom, like (some) FFXIV's players are experiencing now.

In that case I don't mind if it's predictable or unpredictable, but it depends a lot on what it is. If we're always going to get the same type of thing it does mean anyone who doesn't like those types of activities might as well give up now rather than keep hoping they'll get something they like later on. That's not necessarily a bad thing, no game is going to appeal to everyone and a strong focus on one type of player can help a game find and keep it's niche, but it's not great for existing players who get the message they're no longer welcome.

Elder Scrolls Online does that. Every year there's a dungeon DLC, an expansion (more comparable to SotO than previous GW2 expansions - 1-2 maps with a storyline and 1 new feature), then another dungeon DLC, then a free update which this year was an 'endless' dungeon that takes about 3-6 hours per run. They used to do a story DLC with another new map but gave up on that.

It's ok, but because I don't play dungeons in that game enough to justify buying more it means I haven't bought any of the DLC in years which is probably better for me because it means I'm spending less on the game, but I doubt that's what the developers intended. But I've known since I started I'm not the kind of player they want and I'm playing it in spite of the game design (because I like the Elder Scrolls world and lore), not because of it.

[Caicai.8130]

I prefer a more stable ping due to server issue. preferably SEA server. currently playing at average ping 300.

[Ashantara.8731]

On 12/12/2023 at 10:48 PM, Urud.4925 said:

Do you like to have expansions and updates with a fixed and predictable deadline and content?

That assumes that we currently have prediactable content, but I would disagree. I never expected the small scope and mediocre quality that is SotO Update 1 after such a great campaign release.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Ashantara.8731

[Batalix.2873]

I prefer actual active development and not zombie expansions built on mostly reused assets and animations.

 

That's not about the expac being "ready". That's about the company investing in it's own kitten product.

[Urud.4925]

I knew it was going to be a very divisive question, but the results are different than what I expected, so it was interesting for me. The poll size is obviously not big enough to draw conclusions, but two answers are currently very close.

There are players who are more concerned about the communication than the in-game content ("ANet didn't tell us what they're going to do in a while, so maybe they will stop updating their only game with a revenue", like if we cared more about GW2 than ArenaNet itself), and the "winning" answers consider more the predictability of the content than its release. So it seems people want to know what they will play next, but it's less important when. I can relate.

There are pros and cons. When you have a fixed deadline (like we have now, where we can even see how many days we have until the next WV refresh), a developer can risk less to postpone the release, so the patches must be scheduled to be released slightly in advance, meaning that if everything goes according to the plans, they will have some days of development wasted. When you don't have a strict deadline, you can take more time to polish the content, or if you have a new idea during the development, you can add it to improve the content, without being afraid to exceed your development time.

Personally (and this is only my preference ofc), I liked more like it was in HoT and PoF, where I could see the whole picture and decide if a content was worth or not my time. 150 LI for the legendary armor? Yeah, I like the raids, I can see the skin and judge from the first day if I like it or not (I don't, but still... I know what I'll get) and I know that I will probably have a couple of years of time before another big expansion. Now I only have concept art, I don't know exactly how much farming it's required and in which content (maybe it will require mats from a dungeon/meta that I hate). It is better for people who farm content regardless, because it's an MMO, even without knowing if they will really need what they're doing. For casual players (and despite my 9.4k hours I still consider myself casual), it's less appealing. It means that I have to wait until the very last mini-patch to have the full picture, and then I'll have only 3 months before the content (i.e. convergence) will probably die. But again, only my personal preference, I tried to keep the poll as unbiased as possible. This didn't take in consideration the content, just how it's delivered.

[Sobx.1758]

3 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

That assumes that we currently have prediactable content, but I would disagree. I never expected the small scope and mediocre quality that is SotO Update 1 after such a great campaign release.

Well, considering story is usually directly connected to the available maps and this is like... 1/3rd of one map's worth of story content, you really should have expected that. 😄

[Ashen.2907]

2 hours ago, Urud.4925 said:

When you don't have a strict deadline, you can take more time to polish the content, or if you have a new idea during the development, you can add it to improve the content, without being afraid to exceed your development time.

Perhaps, but informal deadlines such as player drop-off due to lack of releases or updates impact time for polish and iteration very similarly to formal deadlines. The reality is that deadlines exist whether the studio announces them or not.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Ashen.2907

[Ashantara.8731]

1 hour ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Well, considering story is usually directly connected to the available maps and this is like... 1/3rd of one map's worth of story content, you really should have expected that. 😄

Sowwy. 😄 Didn't expect Nayos as a whole to turn out to be so small. 🤔

[Artemis.8034]

I think you need to take into account game model also op. wow and ff are sub based, they can afford to haul out the big guns in content release schedules. This game makes in a year what those games make a month. we are lucky we get what we get! 

[Vayne.8563]

On 12/13/2023 at 11:43 PM, Urud.4925 said:

You interpreted the way I intended it. FFXIV delivers the same amount of savage raids, trials and dungeons at every expansion+patches, and it seems (some of) their players are becoming bored to always know what they'll get. ArenaNet started only now to break down the content like that (every future expansion will have 2+1 map, 2 strikes and 1 fractal) so for now it's fine. But I wondered if after a couple of years this will also lead to some apathy and boredom, like (some) FFXIV's players are experiencing now.

 

Releasing when it's ready means that it can be earlier, later or exactly when they planned to deliver it. It means that ArenaNet is not forced to meet a deadline, and thus it doesn't make much sense to announce a strict schedule (like they did before, to avoid ppl complaining for missing a dealine). It would be something vague like "next year we will deliver the alliances in WvW". I'm not saying that this will be better, it's simply an option in the poll (I didn't vote, I was interested in what people think).

Wait, you're saying the downfall of an MMO and you're talking about FFXIV, arguably the second most popular MMO of all time?  Am I interpreting you correctly. If that's the case, you might want to look up the definition of the word downfall.

[Bingus.4236]

The problem isn't the release cycle, it's that there is only so many times you can recycle the content of older much better parts of the game.

[Donari.5237]

9 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Sowwy. 😄 Didn't expect Nayos as a whole to turn out to be so small. 🤔

But it's not Nayos as a whole, it's Nayos as a third.

I agree it didn't add very much to the story, though I like the bits we got other than the "hi I'm a cute wittle demon just trying to surv-- gack" bit (that character needed to be around longer, or how it ended up in peril after being delivered safely to camp needs explaining).  However, it did make farming for essence both easier and more interesting.  I like the Nayos rifts more since the idea is to intercept the resolute demons before they get to the rift for a certain amount of time rather than chase around after widely scattered mobs until enough of them are killed.  Convergences are also fun (for me) because there's a lot of different things to do to contribute to victory so I can veer around as I see fit from moment to moment and be useful wherever I go (yes, I do pay attention to what fights need more people, but if I snipe some turrets or knock down some catapults or wipe out some Spites on my way to the lieutenants and generals and feeding essence to Zojia that's ok).

Of course, having never had legendary armor due to not being a raider or pvper, I can see progress towards a goal happening whenever I do the Heitor meta or a convergence or anything in Skywatch or Amnytas.  I'm not sure SotO would be engaging me so fully without my working on the armor, other than as fuel for guild rp.

[Kera.3982]

Remove the MCU dialogues. Remove the forced politics and I'll buy any Expansion ANet releases. For those reasons, I will not buy SotO.

[Ashantara.8731]

3 hours ago, Donari.5237 said:

But it's not Nayos as a whole, it's Nayos as a third.

I wasn't talking about the current 1/3 of the map, but indeed the whole thing. By what we have now and the labeling when you press M you can predict its entire size. It's not nearly as big as I expected it to be, so the content scope of the next two updates doesn't look very promising.
 

Edited December 16, 2023 by Ashantara.8731

[Luthan.5236]

Better when it is ready. Without prior announcement. That way you can't get too high expectactions. The best were those QoL updates to the lfg and other stuff. Where no one had expected it and it suddenly happened. (Though people wanted improvements and made tons of threads over the years where nothing happened lol.)

Also old living world system was better I think. With only big stuff as expansions. The expansion thing gives pressure to also genereate new "content" besides just story. (Forcing them bascially to invent stuff like relics - which a lot of people did not really like at first cause it was a big change to the runes as well.)

[Gazrul.3086]

Personally I like predictable release dates, but it also needs to be sufficient amount of time between releases so that they can release more meaty patches. We'll see if three months between patches will be enough, though based on the release schedule of the LS episodes it should be fine. IBS patches were perfect in terms of quality and quantity of content and the amount of time we had to wait between releases. 

[Ashantara.8731]

12 minutes ago, Chronardis.4028 said:

We'll see if three months between patches will be enough, though based on the release schedule of the LS episodes it should be fine.

Errr... ANet was at least twice the size back then than it is today.

[Vayne.8563]

4 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Errr... ANet was at least twice the size back then than it is today.

I'm sorry, do you have a roster? Do you know how many -people Anet has working there? Do you know how many people they have working there that are working on Guild Wars 2? Do you know how many people were working there on Guild Wars 2 than there were back then? I only ask because when people make statements like this it implies specific knowledge. Unless you actually work there, or have a very good friend working there, I doubt you have that knowledge. 

[Bingus.4236]

2 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I'm sorry, do you have a roster? Do you know how many -people Anet has working there? Do you know how many people they have working there that are working on Guild Wars 2? Do you know how many people were working there on Guild Wars 2 than there were back then? I only ask because when people make statements like this it implies specific knowledge. Unless you actually work there, or have a very good friend working there, I doubt you have that knowledge. 

They had large layoffs that were written about in the press.

[Vayne.8563]

5 hours ago, Bingus.4236 said:

They had large layoffs that were written about in the press.

You're right of course. And if you read the articles, or listened to what was said, Anet had said that the majority of people layed off didn't work on Guild Wars 2 and some of them were moved to Guild Wars 2 instead of being laid off.  Some of those people were working on other projects that never came to life and many of them were hired just to work on those projects. One of them said they never worked on Guild Wars 2 at all, in a post when someone pointed out she'd be laid off.

Anet is a company that was given the green light to work on other projects, which either took too long or were not viable in the long term, and so they plug was pulled on those projects. Anet laid off people working on those projects. A few long time Guild Wars 2 people left as well, but it's likely some of them had been transferred to the project earlier.  Anet started with about 300 employees and grew to about 400. 

Without knowing who was working on that, you know what we know? Nothing. We have theories. It's easy to say that layoffs are why the game is putting out content slower than before, but two things happened in the interim besides layoffs. One was several changes in management, and that always throws a monkey wrench into things. Then there's the fact that Amazon opened a game studio near Anet and hired away some of Anet's top talent. That took time to reroute many of the jobs and learn new positions. And covid happened, which changed the way the company worked over all.

It's easy to say layoffs happened so there are less people. And it's a theory. It's even a viable theory. But we don't have the facts and I won't discuss theories as facts if I can help it.

[Bingus.4236]

Quote

It's easy to say layoffs happened so there are less people. And it's a theory.

There isn't a situation where you have layoffs and end up with more people. I'm not making any theories, I don't know  why the game updates are getting worse.  Is the game putting out content slower than before? Seems like they plan to be putting it out more often to to me, so they can charge more often for lower quality quickly done content.

[Bladestrom.6425]

28 minutes ago, Bingus.4236 said:

There isn't a situation where you have layoffs and end up with more people. I'm not making any theories, I don't know  why the game updates are getting worse.  Is the game putting out content slower than before? Seems like they plan to be putting it out more often to to me, so they can charge more often for lower quality quickly done content.

This thread has ignored one of the major reasons there is less content - inflation and the wold economy.  Costs have increased (massively).  So lets say inflation is running at 7% a year, in 3 years we either have to pay 20% more, or get 20% less content than we did 3 years ago.  in this time inflation has also affected the customer base so they spend less and as Anet allows players to play with no Sub, the cost to players per hour played is objectively less than every other AAA mmorpg on the market.  To give you an example, eve online is now $20 a month.

Edited December 17, 2023 by Bladestrom.6425

[Urud.4925]

50 minutes ago, Bladestrom.6425 said:

This thread has ignored one of the major reasons there is less content - inflation and the wold economy. 

I wrote "This didn't take in consideration the content, just how it's delivered." This wasn't a poll to say if SotO was a good expansion in terms of content. That can depend on a lot of different things, like the people who worked on it, the screenwriters and game designers. If we have a plain story and grinding quests (for some of us), it's not because the expansion is delivered in blocks of 3 months each, it's an entirely different topic. The question was to understand how players feel when they know that another patch will be delivered in exactly 3 months and they already know the content in advance (tier 2 of legendary armor? Ok, then I'll wait last patch before working on the tier 1, maybe I'll waste mats for nothing). And it seems that the majority of the players who answered, prefer to know it in advance.

As for the inflation, I'm happy if your salary increased by 7% per year. I think SotO already costs more than the previous expansions, so ArenaNet didn't forget to adjust the costs. I paid 30€ for PoF, and it lasted 4 years (but let's say 3 years is the average waiting time), with good living world contents released for free. Now we have to pay 25€ x 3 in the same amount of time, so yes, they considered it very well. If 3 mini-expansions like SotO are better or worse than a big one like PoF + a couple of seasons of living world, again this is another topic.

[Albadaran.1283]

I would like Anet to take more time for making a decent expansion. Let's say 2 years and add something unpredictable, e.g. a Fighter mage with a morning star as main weapon.

[Bladestrom.6425]

18 minutes ago, Urud.4925 said:

I wrote "This didn't take in consideration the content, just how it's delivered." This wasn't a poll to say if SotO was a good expansion in terms of content. That can depend on a lot of different things, like the people who worked on it, the screenwriters and game designers. If we have a plain story and grinding quests (for some of us), it's not because the expansion is delivered in blocks of 3 months each, it's an entirely different topic. The question was to understand how players feel when they know that another patch will be delivered in exactly 3 months and they already know the content in advance (tier 2 of legendary armor? Ok, then I'll wait last patch before working on the tier 1, maybe I'll waste mats for nothing). And it seems that the majority of the players who answered, prefer to know it in advance.

As for the inflation, I'm happy if your salary increased by 7% per year. I think SotO already costs more than the previous expansions, so ArenaNet didn't forget to adjust the costs. I paid 30€ for PoF, and it lasted 4 years (but let's say 3 years is the average waiting time), with good living world contents released for free. Now we have to pay 25€ x 3 in the same amount of time, so yes, they considered it very well. If 3 mini-expansions like SotO are better or worse than a big one like PoF + a couple of seasons of living world, again this is another topic.

personally i would prefer 1 big meaty expansion every 2-3 years, regular balance drops and perhaps half yearly min drops.  Agree that Anet has taken inflation into account (they must do)  I would also happily pay a sub if it helped, perhaps one that gives a bonus to magic find , bonus storage and build slots and gems each period.

Edited December 17, 2023 by Bladestrom.6425