Poll : Those who left vs Those who stayed.

[Tashigi.3159]

I left GW2 because "I stayed from GW2" does not meet my grammar kitten standards.

[costepj.5120]

Well that's pretty conclusive then. A small majority of GW2 forum users haven't quit GW2.

Edited March 30 by costepj.5120

[Batalix.2873]

30 minutes ago, costepj.5120 said:

Well that's pretty conclusive then. A small majority of GW2 forum users haven't quit GW2.

Lol. Roughly 2/3 of a stupendous pool of 19 players. At the moment it's just a handful of anecdotes.

If the respondent pool were larger and statistically significant, I would be concerned that 1/3 of forum users have effectively quit the game.

For the record, I quit because EoD released half-conceived, overtuned, copy pasted especs. And instead of properly revising them to be more consistent with HoT/PoF design sensibilities and power levels, they have doubled down on them by warping everything else in the game around the idea of normalizing them.

There are other reasons, such as abandoning horizontal progression by re-releasing masteries, and abandoning LWs to the extreme detriment of an underserved Cantha/EoD experience, and rushing dragon plotlines for no reason when both IBS and Cantha would have sorely benefited from people-centric arcs...

But it is the gutting of the core espec system that really just makes me not want to play. Nothing is unique anymore, every class spits out boons and condis indiscriminately. Job fantasy has been leveled and it has largely been in service of normalizing the garbage EoD especs.

[Ashen.2907]

2 minutes ago, Batalix.2873 said:

1/3 of forum users have effectively quit the game.

Claim to have quit the game.

Personally I have "left" for extended breaks a few times and still remain.

[Batalix.2873]

44 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Claim to have quit the game.

Personally I have "left" for extended breaks a few times and still remain.

I think that's just apologism on the part of the overly invested. Just because you still love the game doesn't mean you can project that onto people with differing opinions.

The fact is that if someone has quit GW2 for an extended period of time, or even skipped at least one expansion, that is revenue ANet is not receiving. Not to mention, in sufficient number dissent--even if it is sporadic--gains traction and deters new players from trying out the game. Imposing qualifiers to try to minimize that doesn't change the overall impact of "quitters."

We can't really know what the tipping point is to affect active/new participation. But 1/3 identifying as "having quit" (again, clarifying that a pool of now 23 people is not enough to really predict either way) would definitely be cause for alarm. That is 1 in 3 online commenters who were measurably dissatisfied with your game, mixing their opinions into the discourse and discouraging others from playing.

I comfortably feel like I have quit. I haven't played in over a year, other than two brief sessions that lasted less than an hour: once to try the new espec weaponsmastery and once to try the new weapons. Both times confirmed I disliked what the devs were doing and I never felt the urge to pick up and substantively play the game on my normal accounts otherwise. I have accepted that if GW2 will ever be in a state I feel is worth my time playing, it will be at least another year and likely longer before the devs' "new vision" for combat is realized, if ever. But I am quite happy to never pick it up again given how reckless, aimless, and impotent the combat design dev team has been for years.

Edited March 30 by Batalix.2873

[yoni.7015]

7 minutes ago, Batalix.2873 said:

I haven't played in over a year

And you still spend hours every day on the forums? Why? 

Edited March 30 by yoni.7015

[Batalix.2873]

1 minute ago, yoni.7015 said:

And you still spend hours every day on the forums? Why? 

That's a bit of an exaggeration. But it whiles the time here and there. Change never comes about from being quiet, and I do find it a bit of a curious experiment to see how much crowd thinking can be mitigated.

[yoni.7015]

8 minutes ago, Batalix.2873 said:

That's a bit of an exaggeration. But it whiles the time here and there. Change never comes about from being quiet, and I do find it a bit of a curious experiment to see how much crowd thinking can be mitigated.

I think it’s a bit sad, you haven’t played the game for a year so why don’t you let us who actually still enjoy and play the game have this? I mean all you really bring to the discussions here is negativity and toxicity. 
Why don’t you just move on? Find another game and another forum. 
 

Ah and for the record I voted that I left the game (while actually playing the game) just to show how idiotic these polls are. 

Edited March 30 by yoni.7015

[Batalix.2873]

25 minutes ago, yoni.7015 said:

I think it’s a bit sad, you haven’t played the game for a year so why don’t you let us who actually still enjoy and play the game have this? I mean all you really bring to the discussions here is negativity and toxicity. 
Why don’t you just move on? Find another game and another forum. 
 

Ah and for the record I voted that I left the game (while actually playing the game) just to show how idiotic these polls are. 

I'm sure I will move on at some point, not sure how it's any of your business why I'm commenting on publicly open forums; I haven't criticized you for wasting even more time on a game I think is exploiting its players. What you do with your time is whatever. If ANet didn't want commentary from non-players, they could have locked access to anyone without recent playtime.

Just because you don't like criticism of the game doesn't mean you can bully me into not posting.

Edited March 30 by Batalix.2873

[Zebulous.2934]

I used to play an mmo called Wakfu.  I hated the changes that they made to it over the years.  I still drop by their forums occasionally out of morbid curiosity.  A few times I even updated the client and logged in.  

Part of it is nostalgia. Part is a hope that they will change classes or mechanics back to what they were by accident.  They already did this with one mechanic: Willpower.  They removed it from the game and removed it from all equipment without balancing that equipment. Five years later they added a new stat called "Force of will" which is functionally identical to willpower.

Edit: so I can understand if a person who quits a favorite mmo still visits the forums.  Hope and nostalgia are quite inconvenient emotions.

Edited March 30 by Zebulous.2934

[Hsanrb.1570]

I stayed, only because its one of the few MMO's that seem to value world exploration and building a world that when I could fast travel, fly, or go on a fast mount... I actually have reasons to walk on the trail. That has disappeared because SotO is a flight heavy expansion (and I hate flying in ANY MMO)... and with Wizards Vault being more rewarding on the weekly scale than the daily I can take some of the time I would be grinding activities I enjoy doing to play some of the recent launches I COULD miss with other games while I wait for the rest of the third map so I can do the exploration and metas together as one as opposed to three disjointed but eventually united experiences.

Also the world music is AAA, FFXIV has the best music but its generally raid or story focused while this I could vibe to an EoD meta or play through some of the HoT map metas and just have that casual satisfaction of doing the content with the community. 

[Surelia.2651]

3 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

I think that's just apologism on the part of the overly invested. Just because you still love the game doesn't mean you can project that onto people with differing opinions.

The fact is that if someone has quit GW2 for an extended period of time, or even skipped at least one expansion, that is revenue ANet is not receiving. Not to mention, in sufficient number dissent--even if it is sporadic--gains traction and deters new players from trying out the game. Imposing qualifiers to try to minimize that doesn't change the overall impact of "quitters."

We can't really know what the tipping point is to affect active/new participation. But 1/3 identifying as "having quit" (again, clarifying that a pool of now 23 people is not enough to really predict either way) would definitely be cause for alarm. That is 1 in 3 online commenters who were measurably dissatisfied with your game, mixing their opinions into the discourse and discouraging others from playing.

I comfortably feel like I have quit. I haven't played in over a year, other than two brief sessions that lasted less than an hour: once to try the new espec weaponsmastery and once to try the new weapons. Both times confirmed I disliked what the devs were doing and I never felt the urge to pick up and substantively play the game on my normal accounts otherwise. I have accepted that if GW2 will ever be in a state I feel is worth my time playing, it will be at least another year and likely longer before the devs' "new vision" for combat is realized, if ever. But I am quite happy to never pick it up again given how reckless, aimless, and impotent the combat design dev team has been for years.

There are so many holes in these statements I am not even sure where to start.

First off, this game is not a subscription game.  It is buy to play.  Whether people are here playing every day for consecutive years on end and never leave once, or are here only sporadically, if they bought the content once that is all the revenue which the company may be guaranteed to see from people playing their game.  

Any other type of purchases players make, such as gems and gem store items, are each massively variable points from which to argue a revenue loss simply because players may come and go.  Or are you assuming that all players who play on a regular basis always spend real life money beyond the expansion they bought?  Because I can tell you I have met literally dozens of players over the years who report over and over that they never spend a dime on the gem store, citing reasons from income issues to hatred of the gem store, to preference for earning utterly everything in game.

 Everyone invests in the game differently when there is no sub required, and they do so according to not only their ability but their interest in doing so.  So for you to assume that players who are "quitters" is an issue that is somehow causing a revenue loss, you would not only have to produce documentation of the spending patterns of ALL players in the game, both the "quitters" as well as those who never leave -- something I highly doubt you have access to -- but also log in patterns of these players in order to compare them to each other and their respective purchase patterns to determine when such spending is actually occurring. 

Of the few things we do know from publicly published reports on quarterly earnings, it is often the case that revenue (similar to in nearly all other MMOs) tends to spike immediately after an expansion or a sale of expansions and then tapers off --- even when there IS a subscription model driving access to the game this tends to hold true.  Again, we do not sub here, we are on a buy to play model.

Second, if by your own admission you no longer play and and yet feel totally comfortable coming into the forums to actively post negative feedback, I'd say you are really taking a gamble on being able to no only continue doing this, but to come back to the game.  For one, your game account and your forum account are tied.  For another, to quote the CoC:  "your ability to participate in the forums is a privilege and not a right."  So, tread lightly with how far you want to take your arguments against them and the game because moderation does have consequences.

[Ashen.2907]

4 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

I think that's just apologism on the part of the overly invested. Just because you still love the game doesn't mean you can project that onto people with differing opinions

I am projecting nothing.

I do tend to look with suspicion on claims of having quit the game by people who continue to frequent the forums. I left previously because I was disgusted with ANet, and did not "wander" around the forums talking about how much I was NOT playing the game. When I leave again, quite possibly very soon, because I am again disgusted with ANet,  I will be gone until such time as a friend (many of my guildmates are people I know in real life) lures me back or something of the sort. As it stands now I would hardly say that I currently "love" the game as I am primarily playing because people I wish to spend gaming time with are doing so....but even that draw is finite.

[Zera.9435]

1 minute ago, rylien.3824 said:

It’s an honor, but I think you overestimate me a little too much. Go have a good day/evening, take care of your knitting. 🤦‍♂️

 After you.

[Westenev.5289]

My guildmates don't play anymore. One of my old guilds got passed into the hands of someone who sold the guild, so I got kicked. As the guild scribe and one of the main contributors back in the day, that sucked.

 

Plus, idk, I just hate Soto. Feels like a huge step down from living world, both in terms of writing and activities. I guess Living World Episode 5 prologue spoiled me, but I haven't really had fun with new content since End of Dragon's Elite Specs and Strike missions (story wasn't terrible either).

 

Feels like when I log in, it's more productive to focus on Dungeons, Strikes, Fractals, WvW, PvP. Anything Soto related tends to get me to log off within 15 minutes.

Edited March 31 by Westenev.5289

[QueenKeriti.5176]

1 hour ago, Surelia.2651 said:

Second, if by your own admission you no longer play and and yet feel totally comfortable coming into the forums to actively post negative feedback, I'd say you are really taking a gamble on being able to no only continue doing this, but to come back to the game.  For one, your game account and your forum account are tied.  For another, to quote the CoC:  "your ability to participate in the forums is a privilege and not a right."  So, tread lightly with how far you want to take your arguments against them and the game because moderation does have consequences.

Just a note here: your forum account getting banned does not automatically ban your ingame account. Two separate systems there, with very different standards. I imagine if you admit to something particularly egregious on the forums that gets your account investigated by a GM or do something supremely out of pocket on a level that makes the GMs/Rubi go "👀bro u did not just post that," then that will get your ingame account banned, too, by the GMs, but a forum ban =/= an ingame ban.

That said, "kitten around" at one's own risk; the "find out" part can be very unpleasant.

[Cyninja.2954]

7 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

I'm sure I will move on at some point, not sure how it's any of your business why I'm commenting on publicly open forums; I haven't criticized you for wasting even more time on a game I think is exploiting its players. What you do with your time is whatever. If ANet didn't want commentary from non-players, they could have locked access to anyone without recent playtime.

Just because you don't like criticism of the game doesn't mean you can bully me into not posting.

You are free to do as you please and I doubt any one says otherwise.

Giving context to your addicition and inability to move on though might give context to your, what I persume you believe to be reasonable, opinions and posts.

You said it yourself (paraphrasing here): every one gets to waste their time the way they want. You just decide to waste it on a video game forum for a game you do not play while focusing on the negatives. That by its self kinda says a lot.

But again: you do you.

Edited March 31 by Cyninja.2954

[Tiamat.8254]

I both left and came back. Your poll doesn't account for this. I didn't leave because of the game. It's still better than any other mmo I've tried. 

[Gehenna.3625]

I've left and come back various times. In recent years I've played a ton of WvW but I've taken a break from that now getting back into PvE. WvW just isn't fun to me anymore (boonballs, siege nerfs, etc.). I hope PvE will still be fun but if not I'll take a break from GW2 entirely... again.

And yeah, the "I've stayed from GW2" is an eye sore. Since you explained what it meant I took that option just the same but it's with the caveats I put above.

[Shinnon.6047]

 

18 hours ago, rylien.3824 said:

The point is to find out why you left or stayed, so that it might be useful to ArenaNet, in case I think of it, for a whole bunch of reasons that they don’t care: I think that it can in any case serve as advice to the new one who wishes to venture on the cold and latent waters of the game... 

 But also serve as a demonstration/factual proof of what is happening on Guild Wars 2.

I work in data for a triple AAA games studio in the live service space. Though not an MMO (maybe one day!). This is a pretty typical user research topic and GW2 will likely already have a good understanding as to why people stay and why people leave from email based surveys. And if they're super serious.. clustering based analysis that groups people together, ideally with their game activity data taken into account.

Not to say polls like this arnt useful as you get qualitative data from your most... "Interested" players/past players. But I can't say iv gone to the forums to answer a question like this as chances are the people who have left guild wars 2 arnt hanging around on the forums.

That said. I dont play anymore but I'm here arnt I? Though only because Google thought I'd be interested in this forum post and told me about it. As I imagine is the case with many others. Too many uncontrolled variables for this poll to give much insight 😞

I like the passion though. You clearly care about the game and the Devs will appreciate that dearly.

Edited March 31 by Shinnon.6047

[Kalavier.1097]

19 hours ago, rylien.3824 said:

The point is to find out why you left or stayed, so that it might be useful to ArenaNet, in case I think of it, for a whole bunch of reasons that they don’t care: I think that it can in any case serve as advice to the new one who wishes to venture on the cold and latent waters of the game... 

 But also serve as a demonstration/factual proof of what is happening on Guild Wars 2.

Factual proof: OP says he doesn't really play the game, posts a poll with a wonderful sub-50 votes as of this posting. This proves... nothing Considering the "average players" using the steam client alone are...  in the ranges of 3-4k. 

 

13 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

I think that's just apologism on the part of the overly invested. Just because you still love the game doesn't mean you can project that onto people with differing opinions.

The fact is that if someone has quit GW2 for an extended period of time, or even skipped at least one expansion, that is revenue ANet is not receiving. Not to mention, in sufficient number dissent--even if it is sporadic--gains traction and deters new players from trying out the game. Imposing qualifiers to try to minimize that doesn't change the overall impact of "quitters."

We can't really know what the tipping point is to affect active/new participation. But 1/3 identifying as "having quit" (again, clarifying that a pool of now 23 people is not enough to really predict either way) would definitely be cause for alarm. That is 1 in 3 online commenters who were measurably dissatisfied with your game, mixing their opinions into the discourse and discouraging others from playing.

I comfortably feel like I have quit. I haven't played in over a year, other than two brief sessions that lasted less than an hour: once to try the new espec weaponsmastery and once to try the new weapons. Both times confirmed I disliked what the devs were doing and I never felt the urge to pick up and substantively play the game on my normal accounts otherwise. I have accepted that if GW2 will ever be in a state I feel is worth my time playing, it will be at least another year and likely longer before the devs' "new vision" for combat is realized, if ever. But I am quite happy to never pick it up again given how reckless, aimless, and impotent the combat design dev team has been for years.

Just because you claim to "have quit the game" a year ago doesn't mean you can project your own displeasure or dislikes onto other people and assume a lot of people also dislike it.

Forum goers are famously a tiny percent of overall player base, and can never be used to judge how the game is doing. Hell, how many people claim to quit, claim GW1 is always superior, yet still play, fairly often. Or they say stuff like this because they are spiteful, unhappy people who don't like that others are having fun? For all we know every single "Quit" vote has put in 24 hours of gametime over the past week.

5 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

You are free to do as you please and I doubt any one says otherwise.

Giving context to your addicition and inability to move on though might give context to your, what I persume you believe to be reasonable, opinions and posts.

You said it yourself (paraphrasing here): every one gets to waste their time the way they want. You just decide to waste it on a video game forum for a game you do not play while focusing on the negatives. That by its self kinda says a lot.

But again: you do you.

It's funny how much energy people will put forth into talking about something they dislike/hate or have supposedly moved on from a year or more ago. Especially when they speak of it as if there is no way for it to turn around and get them back.

[Apraxis.4803]

This is so kittening dramatic lmao I — 😭🤣

[Antycypator.9874]

Open World content is something that keeps me playing this game. I can play literally whatever and however I want, so I'm still having fun.

[Forum Moderator.3074]

Locking this thread as ir serves no real purpose and has already derailed.