I have mixed feelings about SOTO [Merged]

[Elena.8734]

5 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

You choose the MMO you like based on the stuff you enjoy repeating.  For WoW and Final Fantasy that's mostly raids.  For Guild Wars 2 that's meta events, and probably stuff like crafting or weeklies. All any MMO is at the end of day is a list of stuff to do.

In a world where other ''bigger MMO's'' are drastically reducing the scope of things asked to players in order to keep up with the pace of the game, i'm not quite sure if that's still true, as more and more people have time to play more than one MMO those days.This is the answer you get everywhere when you ask for more content, an iteration of:

''If you are unsatisfied with the content here, go play this or this or this. This (in my entitled opinion) is not the focus of the game, deal with it.''

GW2 has the unique opportunity to bait a ton of lost semi-hardcore players left out by their game into high end content, as we speak (Wow as taken a super raid-log casual turn and FF14 aswell as wow are actually in a pretty bad spot for the 6 next months). Yet, Anet continue betting on the casual player and, as usual, not being great at advertising their game. If i wasn't playing during summer, cause Wow was in a low point, i would probably never have seen that there was a new expansion to launch. To be honest, if i were in their shoes in September-October, i would again have pushed back the WvW stuff (and i know i wont make friends with this statement) and i would have developed 4-5 Strikes with their CM's for Soto to launch with next patch and heavily advertised them. Kryptis are cool looking enough enemies to catch the eyes on a good trailer. Problem is not that GW2 lacks Raid-like content, it's that most players (even in those playing the game) either don't know it even exist or tried to get into it and hit their nose on the wall of unnecessary requirements elitist groups have in LFG.

Anet expressed and teased plans to be revealed soon for the next expansion for more PVE end content in a recent interview, but in 6 month from now FF14 and Wow launch their own expansions in the same window than GW2, which will close this unique opportunity of having a large influx of players to revitalize this content. It only needs content for at least 21 days straight to develop an habit. But timing and Anet...

Let's be clear, i like Meta Events. I think they're the best thing Anet is doing and that no other game come close to their expertise on this. But this does not means it must be the only focus of the game for one expansion straight, while having some of the weakest of them be under the spotlight. I dont dislike them doing Metas, i dislike having clearly underdevelopped Metas  on an expansion focusing on the casual content. Those should be epic to do, but they achieved to make them pretty much dull.

Edited January 7 by Elena.8734

[Phyb.6704]

7 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

This is complete crap, unless all you do is sit there, make a list of everything there is to do and check this off one by one.  People had the exact same complaint about Path of Fire.  But it wasn't most people. It was the content locusts. No developer can make a game that satisfies the content locusts. It's not possible.

Again, how many rides does Disney World add every month? Every two months?  You can see everything in a few days, but you keep going on your favorite rides.  WoW has you doing the same content over and over for weeks or even months on end.  I'm not sure why  anyone doesn't expect the same from any MMO.

If a new raid came out, the hard core community would rejoice. They'd do that over and over again for months. But most of the community would have nothing new at all, because most of the community doesn't raid.  I'm doing convergences several times a week, I'm doing the other metas in the zone. The game is 11 years old, and the new stuff by itself is never going to entertain you for 3 months straight, because PoF didn't, and that was a "full expansion".  That's why they broke it up like this.

For years now, we've had people saying half an hour of content every time a living story came out, but it was more content for me.  The rest of us do dailies and weeklies, Sometimes, fractals and raids, other favorite things in the game and the the new stuff.

This idea that MMO expansions come out, any of them and they can entertain you for more than a month or two is just not true for most people.  You choose the MMO you like based on the stuff you enjoy repeating.  For WoW and Final Fantasy that's mostly raids.  For Guild Wars 2 that's meta events, and probably stuff like crafting or weeklies. All any MMO is at the end of day is a list of stuff to do. I'm not sure why more people don't get this.

PoF did not? Pof had a hell of a lot more content and acheivments to keep me buisy for more then 3 months if I wanted to complete everything.... then soto currently has. It even had a whole set of elite specs to unlock. How did pof not entertain for at least 3 months? How did it not do more for the first 3 months then soto did when soto only had 2 non player hub zones until 2.5 months after release. 
It is a fact pof had more content in the first 3 months then soto. Total content.... elite specs.... acheivmetns, meta events, ect.
And comparing to disney world. Yes because if you watch the series disney has on their castles and rides..... there is a very long process of design, engineer, get permits, build, ect. This due to many factors takes a long time. Not comparable to what anet can do internally with a large enough team. They are not waiting for building materials, goverment permits and inspections.... and much else. IRL building development really should not be compared to game development. You can have as many people as you want and you're still waiting on the goverment to clear a permit. It will NEVER be as fast. 

[Phyb.6704]

2 hours ago, Elena.8734 said:

In a world where other ''bigger MMO's'' are drastically reducing the scope of things asked to players in order to keep up with the pace of the game, i'm not quite sure if that's still true, as more and more people have time to play more than one MMO those days.This is the answer you get everywhere when you ask for more content, an iteration of:

''If you are unsatisfied with the content here, go play this or this or this. This (in my entitled opinion) is not the focus of the game, deal with it.''

GW2 has the unique opportunity to bait a ton of lost semi-hardcore players left out by their game into high end content, as we speak (Wow as taken a super raid-log casual turn and FF14 aswell as wow are actually in a pretty bad spot for the 6 next months). Yet, Anet continue betting on the casual player and, as usual, not being great at advertising their game. If i wasn't playing during summer, cause Wow was in a low point, i would probably never have seen that there was a new expansion to launch. To be honest, if i were in their shoes in September-October, i would again have pushed back the WvW stuff (and i know i wont make friends with this statement) and i would have developed 4-5 Strikes with their CM's for Soto to launch with next patch and heavily advertised them. Kryptis are cool looking enough enemies to catch the eyes on a good trailer. Problem is not that GW2 lacks Raid-like content, it's that most players (even in those playing the game) either don't know it even exist or tried to get into it and hit their nose on the wall of unnecessary requirements elitist groups have in LFG.

Anet expressed and teased plans to be revealed soon for the next expansion for more PVE end content in a recent interview, but in 6 month from now FF14 and Wow launch their own expansions in the same window than GW2, which will close this unique opportunity of having a large influx of players to revitalize this content. It only needs content for at least 21 days straight to develop an habit. But timing and Anet...

Let's be clear, i like Meta Events. I think they're the best thing Anet is doing and that no other game come close to their expertise on this. But this does not means it must be the only focus of the game for one expansion straight, while having some of the weakest of them be under the spotlight. I dont dislike them doing Metas, i dislike having clearly underdevelopped Metas  on an expansion focusing on the casual content. Those should be epic to do, but they achieved to make them pretty much dull.

Personal experience...... soto meta are not very epic compared to what has been made previously in other xpac. Inner nyos is actually kinda boring imo. 

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, Elena.8734 said:

In a world where other ''bigger MMO's'' are drastically reducing the scope of things asked to players in order to keep up with the pace of the game, i'm not quite sure if that's still true, as more and more people have time to play more than one MMO those days.This is the answer you get everywhere when you ask for more content, an iteration of:

''If you are unsatisfied with the content here, go play this or this or this. This (in my entitled opinion) is not the focus of the game, deal with it.''

GW2 has the unique opportunity to bait a ton of lost semi-hardcore players left out by their game into high end content, as we speak (Wow as taken a super raid-log casual turn and FF14 aswell as wow are actually in a pretty bad spot for the 6 next months). Yet, Anet continue betting on the casual player and, as usual, not being great at advertising their game. If i wasn't playing during summer, cause Wow was in a low point, i would probably never have seen that there was a new expansion to launch. To be honest, if i were in their shoes in September-October, i would again have pushed back the WvW stuff (and i know i wont make friends with this statement) and i would have developed 4-5 Strikes with their CM's for Soto to launch with next patch and heavily advertised them. Kryptis are cool looking enough enemies to catch the eyes on a good trailer. Problem is not that GW2 lacks Raid-like content, it's that most players (even in those playing the game) either don't know it even exist or tried to get into it and hit their nose on the wall of unnecessary requirements elitist groups have in LFG.

Anet expressed and teased plans to be revealed soon for the next expansion for more PVE end content in a recent interview, but in 6 month from now FF14 and Wow launch their own expansions in the same window than GW2, which will close this unique opportunity of having a large influx of players to revitalize this content. It only needs content for at least 21 days straight to develop an habit. But timing and Anet...

Let's be clear, i like Meta Events. I think they're the best thing Anet is doing and that no other game come close to their expertise on this. But this does not means it must be the only focus of the game for one expansion straight, while having some of the weakest of them be under the spotlight. I dont dislike them doing Metas, i dislike having clearly underdevelopped Metas  on an expansion focusing on the casual content. Those should be epic to do, but they achieved to make them pretty much dull.

That quote you said isn't what I said at all. I've played a lot of MMOs and heard the same complaints in all of them. Every one. It's not like you could go to another MMO and not hear people a couple of months after an expac saying they're bored, or there's nothing to do.  I play this game with a lot of people and sure I see and hear some complaints that people have nothing to do. But I hear far far more people who have too much to do and feel overwhelmed by it.

Guild Wars 2 was never really competing with WOW or FFXIV.  They are from bigger companies with more products, more money to promote and hell movies in the theaters. You ever see  a Guild Wars movie, because I haven't.  But I did see a Final Fantasy Movie.  This is Guild Wars TWO and that's Final Fantasy XIV.  And WoW was around before there was so much competition, coming off the heals of great success with Warcraft and Starcraft.  I've seen WoW TV commericals with William Shatner, MR. T, Chuck Norris.  So saying WoW does this or Final Fantasy  does that doesn't really affect me.

It's easy to say this game could make so much money if only they did this or only they did that.  Everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that the game is actually successful, and it's 11 years old. Seems to me that changing stuff to do what you want might make it more successful. Or it might make it less successful. The game is doing fine. Probably not amazing, but fine. But it's also probably exceeded the expectations of its business plan, which is what you're looking for. 

Everyone knows what would be best for the game, except apparently the developer.  Shrugs.  There are few enough long term successful MMOs. I'd say they've done a pretty good job so far.

Both of my sons buy every WOW expansion the comes out, play for a month or two and stop playing it till the next expansion comes out.  I'm not really sure that this whole there's nothing to do in the game affects as many people as you think.

[Vayne.8563]

12 minutes ago, ohericoseo.4316 said:

PoF did not? Pof had a hell of a lot more content and acheivments to keep me buisy for more then 3 months if I wanted to complete everything.... then soto currently has. It even had a whole set of elite specs to unlock. How did pof not entertain for at least 3 months? How did it not do more for the first 3 months then soto did when soto only had 2 non player hub zones until 2.5 months after release. 
It is a fact pof had more content in the first 3 months then soto. Total content.... elite specs.... acheivmetns, meta events, ect.
And comparing to disney world. Yes because if you watch the series disney has on their castles and rides..... there is a very long process of design, engineer, get permits, build, ect. This due to many factors takes a long time. Not comparable to what anet can do internally with a large enough team. They are not waiting for building materials, goverment permits and inspections.... and much else. IRL building development really should not be compared to game development. You can have as many people as you want and you're still waiting on the goverment to clear a permit. It will NEVER be as fast. 

If you didn't see the complaints, that's fine, but I know I read them and I guarantee you other people read them too.  I didn't think they were any more valid then than I did now. 

[Elena.8734]

On 1/7/2024 at 8:53 AM, Vayne.8563 said:

Guild Wars 2 was never really competing with WOW or FFXIV.  They are from bigger companies with more products, more money to promote and hell movies in the theaters. You ever see  a Guild Wars movie, because I haven't.  But I did see a Final Fantasy Movie.  This is Guild Wars TWO and that's Final Fantasy XIV.  And WoW was around before there was so much competition, coming off the heals of great success with Warcraft and Starcraft.  I've seen WoW TV commericals with William Shatner, MR. T, Chuck Norris. 

Of course they are bigger and can achieve to have better advertising.

But Anet themself have made far far far better advertising than what they've done with Soto in the past. HoT Trailer is a real banger. PoF one is kind of bad, but around the launch, it was everywhere. This added to the mouth work from the community about how GW2 had the best mount ever made in any videogame, made this expansion viewed by a ton of people (and it's still what most people outside the game knows about it). Even Icebrood Saga had a very atmospheric awesome trailer to hype the fight against Jormag and the stakes at hand. EoD had one too, i'd say it was the weakest as it didn't conveyed anything aside ''it's the last chapter of the dragon arc and it's in Cantha''.

In comparison to those, the weak Trailer Soto had was comparable to a random LW episode trailer, with the only shot being not too bad be in the last 3seconds of the trailer when they reveal Cerus. Worse, if i wasnt playing at that moment, none of my friends would have known it was to launch and they play a bunch of MMO's. It gives an idea of the reach they've had with this campain. On an expansion as focused on new player experience, they should have advertised it far more with a much more appealing and approachable Trailer for players who don't know about the game or old players that could return. But it was as if they didn't want to sell Soto at all, or only to their current players (Then why make so much gameplay effort to appeal new player then).

They've done a great job on other expansions, even in time where their employee count was dropping drastically, Soto is just an anomaly in that regard, even tho GW2 never reached the same level of advertising than FF or Wow (That also got it's movie 🤢 in 2016)

Edited January 12 by Elena.8734

[Vayne.8563]

25 minutes ago, Elena.8734 said:

Of course they are bigger and can achieve to have better advertising.

But Anet themself have made far far far better advertising than what they've done with Soto in the past. HoT Trailer is a real banger. PoF one is kind of bad, but around the launch, it was everywhere. This added to the mouth work from the community about how GW2 had the best mount ever made in any videogame, made this expansion viewed by a ton of people (and it's still what most people outside the game knows about it). Even Icebrood Saga had a very atmospheric awesome trailer to hype the fight against Jormag and the stakes at hand. EoD had one too, i'd say it was the weakest as it didn't conveyed anything aside ''it's the last chapter of the dragon arc and it's in Cantha''.

In comparison to those, the weak Trailer Soto had was comparable to a random LW episode trailer, with the only shot being not too bad be in the last 3seconds of the trailer when they reveal Cerus. Worse, if i wasnt playing at that moment, none of my friends would have known it was to launch and they play a bunch of MMO's. It gives an idea of the reach they've had with this campain. On an expansion as focused on new player experience, they should have advertised it far more with a much more appealing and approachable Trailer for players who don't know about the game or old players that could return. But it was as if they didn't want to sell Soto at all, or only to their current players (Then why make so much gameplay effort to appeal new player then).

They've done a great job on other expansions, even in time where their employee count was dropping drastically, Soto is just an anomaly in that regard, even tho GW2 never reached the same level of advertising than FF or Wow (That also got it's movie 🤢 in 2016)

The truth is, the game is 11 years old and new people are going to come on less than when a game is 3 years old, and advertising costs money. This is normal business logic. It's a return on investment. The game still has a ton of word of mouth advertising. All you have to do is do a quick search on Soto and you'd see reviews. I've also seen interviews. Not as much as POF, but the game is more than six years older than when PoF came out.  FFXIV has more players now than it did five years ago, so it adveritses more.  Games that have more players advertise more. That's just basic business common sense.
 

But ESO isn't strong on promotion. SWToR isn't strong on promotion. The two big games you can't compare anything else to, because they're the two big games. Your new softdrink doesn't advertise as much as coke or pepsi?  What a shock. This is normal for businesses.

Anet said themselves that putting more or less money into advertising doesn't seem to affect how many people buy the product, and they've succesfully depended on word of mouth for a very long time.  This game, particularly for an 11 year old game, is doing very well.  For a franchise that has only 1 IP, that makes this game an outlier.  I mean SWTOR is Star Wars, which is a pretty big franchise and it's not doing as well as this game.  

Just seems to me that everyone wants to tell a successful MMO how to do it better, ignoring the fact that it IS a successful MMO. My guess is this game is in the top five MMORPGs still. 

[Elena.8734]

42 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

But ESO isn't strong on promotion. SWToR isn't strong on promotion.

ESO is very strong in promotion, twice a year, when they announce their expansion (it should come in a couple of weeks) and in the summer when they launch it. And all their efforts in that regard paid as the last expansion was one of their greatest success since the launch of the game. I don't play much of this game, still i always know what's the current expansion is about and if the theme hypes me enough to play it.

SWTOR is not, but let's face it, this game is on maintenance mode since 5-6 years, launching a micro-expansion every 2 years with nothing more than a very small story content and a couple of Dailies/Weeklies. It was comparable to GW2 a couple years ago. Now it's more comparable to LOTRO, to be fair.

1 hour ago, Vayne.8563 said:

and they've succesfully depended on word of mouth for a very long time.

And this is why there still so many people thinking the game is in the same state it was when it launched. It's always confusing and funny to see the reaction to a Streamer's audience from another MMO trying the game as you see comments like ''Wait! There's Raids in this game?'' or ''Meh! They added mounts and look how they're awesome!'' or ''Those events are so cool!'' (cause they've seen only the boring events from the base game before). In the Wow sphere, we've had Bellular and Preach that tried the game which gave so much spotlight on GW2 since 2 years. You could argue that's Word of mouth being successful, but the context is that those Streamers were playing the game because Wow did messed up so badly that their own community were pushing back every time they talked about the game so they tried other games and this is why FF14 got is biggest influx in the last 2 years.

How bad must it be to count on sexual allegations scandals  combined with the worst patch cadence/content quality of a competitor to make people know your game still exist through word of mouth?

Yes, GW2 is successful in a way, but it could be so much more if they would have more people to play (and pay). If the leak about their yearly revenue is to be believed, it means there's between 10 000 and 80 000 recurring paying customer on the game per year, depending on the amount of money spent by player on average. This is not much. I'm not quite sure they should count only on Word of mouth with that few.

 

[Vayne.8563]

5 minutes ago, Elena.8734 said:

Yes, GW2 is successful in a way, but it could be so much more if they would have more people to play (and pay). If the leak about their yearly revenue is to be believed, it means there's between 10 000 and 80 000 recurring paying customer on the game per year, depending on the amount of money spent by player on average. This is not much. I'm not quite sure they should count only on Word of mouth with that few.

 

I love how people think they know what would have happened if only.  I'm not sure what the leak about their revenue is, but I have seen quarterly reports and it's been fairly stable for a very long time. Through the horrid end of IBS, through EOD which some people definitely complained about, and now through Soto.  I don't trust leaks, I deal with proven data when I draw conclusions. 

This idea if you advertise more you get more doesn't always work sadly.  But the bottom line is, the game is in the top five MMOs as far as I can tell, and that's pretty kitten good for an 11 year old game that does relatively little advertising. The theory that it would do more is likely, but it's the wrong question. The question is will it do enough more to justify those advertising costs, which is a far more complicated question.

[Cuks.8241]

On 1/7/2024 at 2:53 PM, Vayne.8563 said:

It's easy to say this game could make so much money if only they did this or only they did that.  Everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that the game is actually successful, and it's 11 years old. Seems to me that changing stuff to do what you want might make it more successful. Or it might make it less successful. The game is doing fine. Probably not amazing, but fine. But it's also probably exceeded the expectations of its business plan, which is what you're looking for. 

Gw2 is in luck that all content is relevant and they can count on the old content.

If Soto was the current content in a vertical game this game would be dead in a week. Because there is for about 2 to 3 days of content in here and it's not of the best quality. And there is nothing that has any longevity; Soto instanced content is a joke, pvp and wvw are pretty much forgotten. And no wvw world restructuring is not content, they are trying to put this together for years, they scrapped alliances, so we are left with bare minimum that is still in beta and not even basics are working after years. And there is always a risk it might just straight kill wvw if they ever manage to get it together because it is a system that requires player/guild organisation to work to it's advantage. And I see wvw guilds dying at an alarming rate.

Sure there is legendary armour. But that's not even released, many of us already have it and it doesn't really matter if there is no new content to use it in.

[Vayne.8563]

4 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Gw2 is in luck that all content is relevant and they can count on the old content.

If Soto was the current content in a vertical game this game would be dead in a week. Because there is for about 2 to 3 days of content in here and it's not of the best quality. And there is nothing that has any longevity; Soto instanced content is a joke, pvp and wvw are pretty much forgotten. And no wvw world restructuring is not content, they are trying to put this together for years, they scrapped alliances, so we are left with bare minimum that is still in beta and not even basics are working after years. And there is always a risk it might just straight kill wvw if they ever manage to get it together because it is a system that requires player/guild organisation to work to it's advantage. And I see wvw guilds dying at an alarming rate.

Sure there is legendary armour. But that's not even released, many of us already have it and it doesn't really matter if there is no new content to use it in.

But it's not a vertical game, and I don't think that has anything to do with luck.  The game is simply designed differently. I used to have devs in my guild and one of them spoke with me at length about the difficulty of making new zones in a game without quest hubs.  You need a lot more dynamic events to populate a Guild Wars 2 zone as compared to quest hubs.

If you take Guild Wars 1 as an example (and yes I'm aware it isn't an MMO in the truest sense of the word), Prophecies launched with 203 quests. The core Guild Wars 2 game launched with 303 hearts and over 1500 dynamic events. In fact, Guild Wars 2 launched with more dynamic events than Guild Wars 1 had quests throughout it's entire run, through three games and an expansion.  

Guild Wars 2 zones also tend to be more complex to create due to the verticality you don't get in most MMOs. It's just harder and takes longer to create those zones. Other games tend to work on raids instead and put less emphasis on the open world.  It's a decision that was made by the devs early on. They always spent less time on instanced content than open world. 

And yes, many of us have legendary armor, including me.  But that doesn't matter, because I have a guild of 300 people and only a handful of us have it. Most of the people who play this game focus on the open world. Most aren't PvPers, or WvWer's or raiders. So now they've made something for the majority. It's the players who aren't in the majority who complain the most. Not enough to do. Game is too easy. They don't update my game mode.  And those people are right to complain. For those people this game isn't as good.

But for people who predominantly play the open world, who aren't as efficient, who play more casually, it's a completely different game than the one you complain about. Not every game fits every person. But it's no accident that this game remains in the top five for most of its life. 

Decisions were made to keep it there. Decisions some people in this forum disagree with, sure. But there's no guarantee their choices would have produced a game that was as or more successful. It's all just guesswork, even on my part.

Edited January 13 by Vayne.8563
wrong word typo

[Shiyo.3578]

21 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Gw2 is in luck that all content is relevant and they can count on the old content.

If Soto was the current content in a vertical game this game would be dead in a week. Because there is for about 2 to 3 days of content in here and it's not of the best quality. And there is nothing that has any longevity; Soto instanced content is a joke, pvp and wvw are pretty much forgotten. And no wvw world restructuring is not content, they are trying to put this together for years, they scrapped alliances, so we are left with bare minimum that is still in beta and not even basics are working after years. And there is always a risk it might just straight kill wvw if they ever manage to get it together because it is a system that requires player/guild organisation to work to it's advantage. And I see wvw guilds dying at an alarming rate.

Sure there is legendary armour. But that's not even released, many of us already have it and it doesn't really matter if there is no new content to use it in.

This is why most vets are quitting. SotO gave us 3 days of content.

I don't consider old content relevant anymore due to power creep. Old metas are waay too easy and thus boring now.

Edited January 14 by Shiyo.3578

[Cuks.8241]

On 1/13/2024 at 11:08 PM, Vayne.8563 said:

But it's not a vertical game, and I don't think that has anything to do with luck.  The game is simply designed differently. I used to have devs in my guild and one of them spoke with me at length about the difficulty of making new zones in a game without quest hubs.  You need a lot more dynamic events to populate a Guild Wars 2 zone as compared to quest hubs.

Yeah it's designed that way. Sometimes I use figures of speech from my native language and they don't work in English. 

Anyway they are focusing on new players and casual players and trimmed or just scrapped pretty much everything else. Which imo is a shame but it's a business decision, I hope it works for them. For example wvw is a great mode that is unmatched in mmorpgs. I think it's a shame that it's completely forgotten. Most players even in gw2 probably have no idea how a good wvw gvg even plays out.  How dynamic and interesting such a fight can be. And it will just quietly be forgotten with veteran players and guilds leaving.  While new games advertise their massive pvp battle modes which in reality don't come close to gw2's smoothness, tactics and strategies (yeah even in current meta, before someone starts crying about boons). 

17 hours ago, Shiyo.3578 said:

I don't consider old content relevant anymore due to power creep. Old metas are waay too easy and thus boring now.

This is also a big problem. It's not even about being easy. I started with pof. OW metas were easy but at least I saw the thing play out. Today everything is zerged down so  fast you don't see 75% of the mechanics and they just blow past. Gerrent rarely goes to stage 2 (it rarely went to stage 3 when I started but stage 2 was common). Mouth of Mordremoth gets zerged down in the first burn phase. Or in a rare case it doesn't, it doesn't live to the second burn phase. They should really think about disabling mounts there. Such a good fight, there is not a mmorpg out there that has such bosses in open world but no one gets to see it. 

[Vayne.8563]

35 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Yeah it's designed that way. Sometimes I use figures of speech from my native language and they don't work in English. 

Anyway they are focusing on new players and casual players and trimmed or just scrapped pretty much everything else. Which imo is a shame but it's a business decision, I hope it works for them. For example wvw is a great mode that is unmatched in mmorpgs. I think it's a shame that it's completely forgotten. Most players even in gw2 probably have no idea how a good wvw gvg even plays out.  How dynamic and interesting such a fight can be. And it will just quietly be forgotten with veteran players and guilds leaving.  While new games advertise their massive pvp battle modes which in reality don't come close to gw2's smoothness, tactics and strategies (yeah even in current meta, before someone starts crying about boons). 

This is also a big problem. It's not even about being easy. I started with pof. OW metas were easy but at least I saw the thing play out. Today everything is zerged down so  fast you don't see 75% of the mechanics and they just blow past. Gerrent rarely goes to stage 2 (it rarely went to stage 3 when I started but stage 2 was common). Mouth of Mordremoth gets zerged down in the first burn phase. Or in a rare case it doesn't, it doesn't live to the second burn phase. They should really think about disabling mounts there. Such a good fight, there is not a mmorpg out there that has such bosses in open world but no one gets to see it. 

Saying WvW is completely forgotten during a 3 week beta for a change that's likely to be fully implemented later this year is a bit of an overstatement. And yes, power creep is a real probably this game suffers. The thing is, parts of the game are still difficult for a percentage of the playerbase. This comes from not enough up ramps to how to play in the game, even now.

[Cuks.8241]

17 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Saying WvW is completely forgotten during a 3 week beta for a change that's likely to be fully implemented later this year is a bit of an overstatement.

First beta was what 1,5 year ago? The idea is many years old (and was scrapped and restarted in between). Recently they scrapped large part of it, the alliance part. When first beta hit us, my guild and several guilds we play with were making plans, recruiting. Now my primary guild is dead, not coming back (decided last summer). I don't see many other guilds anymore even during these betas. Often you hear, x guild disbanded for good. Or they are just there but don't really run organised.

It will take what? 2,5 - 3 years to implement this, what will in the end be a matchmaking system. That's a development cycle of a full game, not a rewamp of matchmaking system. The funny thing is, it is aimed primarily at guilds, guild-less players won't really see much of it. The guilds that won't be there anymore. Might do more harm than good that way.

[Vayne.8563]

8 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

First beta was what 1,5 year ago? The idea is many years old (and was scrapped and restarted in between). Recently they scrapped large part of it, the alliance part. When first beta hit us, my guild and several guilds we play with were making plans, recruiting. Now my primary guild is dead, not coming back (decided last summer). I don't see many other guilds anymore even during these betas. Often you hear, x guild disbanded for good. Or they are just there but don't really run organised.

It will take what? 2,5 - 3 years to implement this, what will in the end be a matchmaking system. That's a development cycle of a full game, not a rewamp of matchmaking system. The funny thing is, it is aimed primarily at guilds, guild-less players won't really see much of it. The guilds that won't be there anymore. Might do more harm than good that way.

The alliance part was catering to people who want ginormous guilds and that causes it's own problem. It's logical to do this a step at at time, and in truth, Anet has always called the update world restructing. Always. Every post says it. The fact that the community called it alliances, that's not the issue.

The real problem that exists in WvW is servers, at least from my point of view. The different between one server and another when one is completely dominant ruins an entire week for the people against that dominant server.

I'm on TC. Back in the day, when I was more heavily into WvW, we were usually up against other Tier 1 teams, blackgate and JQ. But both of those servers were more populated than we were. We were stronger than any of the serrvers in T2 and weaker than the other servers in T1. We went up and down, up and down, up and down like a yo yo. If we didn't intentionally lose in T2, we ended up back in Tier 1.  1 week winning fairly easily, one week getting killed. And people stopped showing up because it wasn't fun. It's why I stopped playing in the first place. I can assure you I'm not the only one.

That's the problem Anet needed to fix. The alliance thing was a bone to throw people so they could play with their friends and Anet never said they weren't going to implement it. They said that they were doing this part first. Since this is what they called it, and it's the most important part for many people, I'd call that a win. Do I believe alliances will come out as well. Sure. But doing two major changes like that at the same time has always been lunacy.

The playerbase focused on the term alliances and that's what we called it. But Anet has always called these World Restructuring betas. It's clear from that where the true priority lay.

[Shiyo.3578]

On 1/15/2024 at 4:54 AM, Vayne.8563 said:

Saying WvW is completely forgotten during a 3 week beta for a change that's likely to be fully implemented later this year is a bit of an overstatement. And yes, power creep is a real probably this game suffers. The thing is, parts of the game are still difficult for a percentage of the playerbase. This comes from not enough up ramps to how to play in the game, even now.

They didn't fix a single bug in the beta. The same bugs that have been there since day1 of the "restructure beta" are still there. It's been, what, 3 years now with 0% progress?

Do you even understand the things you adamantly defend 24/7?

Edited January 16 by Shiyo.3578

[Ashen.2907]

1 hour ago, Shiyo.3578 said:

It's been, what, 3 years now with 0% progress?

Going on six isnt it?

[Vayne.8563]

3 hours ago, Shiyo.3578 said:

They didn't fix a single bug in the beta. The same bugs that have been there since day1 of the "restructure beta" are still there. It's been, what, 3 years now with 0% progress?

Do you even understand the things you adamantly defend 24/7?

No bugs were fixed?  Are you sure? I know people like to say stuff like that, but have you seen the bug list. Some bugs are still there, for sure, though.

[Ashantara.8731]

15 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Some bugs are still there, for sure, though.

The biggest being making it impossible for many people to play with their WvW guild for days, all while a WvW Bonus Event was running and people would have loved to play.

I understand the dismay. Not one single World Restructuring beta so far started without this very issue.

[Vayne.8563]

3 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

The biggest being making it impossible for many people to play with their WvW guild for days, all while a WvW Bonus Event was running and people would have loved to play.

I understand the dismay. Not one single World Restructuring beta so far started without this very issue.

There was a period of time when these betas were much worse. I'm seeing improvement in them. I feel bad for the percentage of people that haven't been able to participate with this server or guild, but my guess is there are fewer this time than when it started. Other bugs I have experienced before that I haven't now, like targets being the wrong color seem to be fixed though. Saying they haven't fixed a single bug is a guess at best, and almost definitely not true.

I'm glad people on this forum are okay with hyperbole, but you can post a complaint without saying stuff that's factually wrong. If that had been the post, I wouldn't have replied. The post I replied to said something else however.

[Ashantara.8731]

13 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I'm glad people on this forum are okay with hyperbole, but you can post a complaint without saying stuff that's factually wrong.

I am in a WvW server guild, where many guilds are present, and tons of people in it had been assigned to different servers. So, in my personal experience, this is not wrong but fact.

[Vayne.8563]

2 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

I am in a WvW server guild, where many guilds are present, and tons of people in it had been assigned to different servers. So, in my personal experience, this is not wrong but fact.

Not interested in your "fact".  It's very simple. I responded to a post that claimed "no bugs" were fixed at all between the betas. Whether that bug exists or doesn't exist isn't the question. If a bug doesn't exist now that existed in the first beta the post I responded to is factually wrong.

If  you want to defend the guy I responded to go ahead. If you want to state a fact that's irrelevant to what I was saying, go ahead.

But it doesn't change the issue at all. I'm pretty sure the guy I responded to was factually wrong. Some bugs have been fixed, whether that one has or not.

Edited January 18 by Vayne.8563

[WinterBeats.1092]

On 1/7/2024 at 6:35 AM, Elena.8734 said:

In a world where other ''bigger MMO's'' are drastically reducing the scope of things asked to players in order to keep up with the pace of the game, i'm not quite sure if that's still true, as more and more people have time to play more than one MMO those days.This is the answer you get everywhere when you ask for more content, an iteration of:

''If you are unsatisfied with the content here, go play this or this or this. This (in my entitled opinion) is not the focus of the game, deal with it.''

GW2 has the unique opportunity to bait a ton of lost semi-hardcore players left out by their game into high end content, as we speak (Wow as taken a super raid-log casual turn and FF14 aswell as wow are actually in a pretty bad spot for the 6 next months). Yet, Anet continue betting on the casual player and, as usual, not being great at advertising their game. If i wasn't playing during summer, cause Wow was in a low point, i would probably never have seen that there was a new expansion to launch. To be honest, if i were in their shoes in September-October, i would again have pushed back the WvW stuff (and i know i wont make friends with this statement) and i would have developed 4-5 Strikes with their CM's for Soto to launch with next patch and heavily advertised them. Kryptis are cool looking enough enemies to catch the eyes on a good trailer. Problem is not that GW2 lacks Raid-like content, it's that most players (even in those playing the game) either don't know it even exist or tried to get into it and hit their nose on the wall of unnecessary requirements elitist groups have in LFG.

Anet expressed and teased plans to be revealed soon for the next expansion for more PVE end content in a recent interview, but in 6 month from now FF14 and Wow launch their own expansions in the same window than GW2, which will close this unique opportunity of having a large influx of players to revitalize this content. It only needs content for at least 21 days straight to develop an habit. But timing and Anet...

Let's be clear, i like Meta Events. I think they're the best thing Anet is doing and that no other game come close to their expertise on this. But this does not means it must be the only focus of the game for one expansion straight, while having some of the weakest of them be under the spotlight. I dont dislike them doing Metas, i dislike having clearly underdevelopped Metas  on an expansion focusing on the casual content. Those should be epic to do, but they achieved to make them pretty much dull.

lol, group content in GW2 isn't easy to access, it's 2024 and there isn't a que or group finder for their dungeons and fractals you think FFXIV and WoW players who are used to getting instant groups or queing up for them from a menu will put up with the old as dirt time consuming LFG system in GW2? Anet needs to invest in making their group content instantly accessible or people will not waste their time on it. 

Also 98% of the player base in FFXIV doesn't bother with midcore or hardcore raiding which is Savage and Ultimate they do the easy 24/8 man group content and the story dungeons for their dailies. 

GW2 CAN grab the casual FFXIV player though, the ones that run world boss Hunt trains, make Relic weapons for each job including crafters, achievement hunters, Eureaka and Bozja enthusiast, Mount/Glamour/minion collectors, FFXIV players would love the Map meta grind. Anet doesn't market their game to FFXIV casuals, they need to. 

GW2 needs to introduce their game systems better in general, new people need to have objectives to reach besides get to 80

[Shiyo.3578]

5 hours ago, WinterBeats.1092 said:

GW2 CAN grab the casual FFXIV player though, the ones that run world boss Hunt trains, make Relic weapons for each job including crafters, achievement hunters, Eureaka and Bozja enthusiast, Mount/Glamour/minion collectors, FFXIV players would love the Map meta grind. Anet doesn't market their game to FFXIV casuals, they need to. 

Yes they do..they've been desperately trying to be FFXIV since EoD.