I remain confident in ANET. But magumma is likely their peak of excellence

[AliamRationem.5172]

2 hours ago, Leger.3724 said:

Basically Arena Net is not going to listen to a factually, financially inaccurate take like yours. You can say "no, not really" all you want. The sales are the sales.

At the time, many players found the combat overly difficult even after the correction.  Power creep and the popularity of extreme sustain solo builds have resolved that issue for most players.  Many players also didn't enjoy the gated exploration via the mastery system.  The mount system has resolved that issue for most players.  And if what you say is true, the players who really couldn't stand HoT are mostly gone anyway.  So what reason do we have to believe HoT-style maps wouldn't be positively received at this point in time?

[jokke.6239]

Not that big on HoT myself

Many areas were confusing/frustrating to navigate, but beautiful enviroments

Gliders were cool, but not as relevant anymore now that we have mounts

Meta's/Raids not something I sink as much hours in as many other people

But I understand why many people like it a lot

 

For me It's Core > PoF > HoT/EoD > SoTo

I know I probaby upset somebody by putting HoT and EoD on same level, but I enjoyed fishing and farming gen 3 legendaries (Wasn't that big fan of most of the gen 2 legendaries)

So I got a lot of gameplay out of EoD. But I have many dislikes and likes in both HoT and EoD. But in terms of features, I maybe got more out of EoD that I still use(unless I'm forgetting something)

Subjective at the end of the day

Edited April 7 by jokke.6239

[QueenKeriti.5176]

I like HoT now; it's my favorite now, but I hated it at release. The jump in difficulty was extreme at the time, it took forever to level masteries, and to say it was like navigating a jungle is an understatement and sucked if you didn't have movement skills/masteries unlocked. I quit pretty early on because I couldn't do anything without immediately dying, event XP sucked, mastery point unlocks sucked, the story was "hard" and then had more mastery blocks keeping me from progressing, and navigating sucked. It was much more enjoyable after some nerfs that toned things down, XP gain is much easier/higher, and now mounts have made it great.

I understand people loving modern HoT. Original HoT was...not quite as easily enjoyable.

[Derktarlms.6213]

HoT and PoF, the rest domains end

[Vayne.8563]

7 hours ago, Leger.3724 said:

This is the silent majority Arena Net should listen to extremely carefully.

The game's combat and mastery system became a nightmare in Heart of Thorns and tons, tons, tons of people dropped the game. It started to recover with the skyscale and end of dragons. Adding a second path to skyscale in Secrets of the Obscure and Legendary open world pve armor also helped sell a barebones expansion.

People will focus on Path of Fire not selling as well but the reality is Path of Fire sold poorly because everyone had flashbacks to Heart of Thorns.

End of Dragons should be the expansion Arena Net thinks about as they design Guild Wars 3. Core Tyria is what they should be thinking of when designing Guild Wars 3. That - and popular video games of today have extremely simple combat mechanics. Simple is better. Simple can allow for skill differentiation and complexity. Having players pick roles is not a bad thing either, whether that's traditional tank/dps/healer or Guild Wars 1 protection monks/support/frontline dps or it's league of legends - bruiser, caster, AD damage, support and jungler. Defined roles is a good thing.

Prove they're a majority.

Do you know what Anet have that you don't?  Stats.  They know who goes where. You're just believing something strongly and stating it as a fact.

[SuavePuppy.2809]

HoT: Beautiful to look at; Miserable to navigate

[Invoker.5462]

13 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

 people still call the maps mazes

Should this be interpreted as bad? I'd think the phrase "Getting Lost" is something we need to hear more of in area of worldbuilding. Perhaps the WoW era brainwashed everyone into the Barrens mindset.

[AliamRationem.5172]

7 minutes ago, Invoker.5462 said:

Should this be interpreted as bad? I'd think the phrase "Getting Lost" is something we need to hear more of in area of worldbuilding. Perhaps the WoW era brainwashed everyone into the Barrens mindset.

If you ask most people if they enjoy exploration they'll say yes.  But what some of them actually mean is they enjoy map completion, and actual exploration where you have to stop relying on your map and actually explore gets in the way of that.  Fortunately, the game world consists almost entirely of maps that are easy to complete, with only HoT and a few maps outside of it as exceptions.  I think we could stand to see more interesting map design.

[Leger.3724]

4 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

At the time, many players found the combat overly difficult even after the correction.  Power creep and the popularity of extreme sustain solo builds have resolved that issue for most players.  Many players also didn't enjoy the gated exploration via the mastery system.  The mount system has resolved that issue for most players.  And if what you say is true, the players who really couldn't stand HoT are mostly gone anyway.  So what reason do we have to believe HoT-style maps wouldn't be positively received at this point in time?

Because Arena Net's target market isn't 50,000 degenerates. That's why they never went back to Heart of Thorns map design. That's why they won't seriously consider it for Guild Wars 3. The goal is to have a large number of people playing their game to make sales to be profitable.

Edited April 7 by Leger.3724

[AliamRationem.5172]

12 minutes ago, Leger.3724 said:

Because Arena Net's target market isn't 50,000 degenerates. That's why they never went back to Heart of Thorns map design. That's why they won't seriously consider it for Guild Wars 3. The goal is to have a large number of people playing their game to make sales to be profitable.

 Have you thought about playing something more your speed?  I'm thinking a nice board game.  Maybe Candyland?  Yeah, that's a nice one.  You just move along a linear path until you reach the end and even the bad guys are pretty friendly, so you won't have to flip out and start calling people names just because they like different gameplay than you do.

[Invoker.5462]

7 minutes ago, Leger.3724 said:

Because Arena Net's target market isn't 50,000 degenerates. That's why they never went back to Heart of Thorns map design. That's why they won't seriously consider it for Guild Wars 3. The goal is to have a large number of people playing their game to make sales to be profitable.

Sooo.. I don't think i'm alone in stating there's some broad reaching corperate inquiry as of late regarding sales being the "end all be all" 

An older call of duty game beat expectations during its first month going live. That same call of duty is played by less people than you'd find in a single instance of WvW. 
There's 2 key differences in a model which drives long term growth.

#1. More motivated/Intellegent personel who like to stretch their congnitive abilities from time to time&more long term job security outlooks.
#2. A product which has a higher total return over a longer period than a product which sells quick and dies.

The upper echelon of people who are more pleasant to work with, who create amazing things, who stick around longer, are more interested in long term career building in a place where everyone is comfortably working with an established,  rich and long tenured company culture.

So it really depends - is it just about the money and only the money? Make a dopamine mill with cash-shop controls at every dopamine release (BDO)

Is it about creating something responsibly and taking pride in it (with like minded people?) = Make an ambitious product which sells off long-term merit.

A prime example of this was Blizzard up till about 2009. Games like warcraft and diablo were developed to be fun and interesting to play above all else.

[Leger.3724]

3 minutes ago, Invoker.5462 said:

Sooo.. I don't think i'm alone in stating there's some broad reaching corperate inquiry as of late regarding sales being the "end all be all" 

An older call of duty game beat expectations during its first month going live. That same call of duty is played by less people than you'd find in a single instance of WvW. 
There's 2 key differences in a model which drives long term growth.

When you invest hundreds of millions of dollars to make your art project, you're going to want it to appeal to more than 50,000 players. You're going to want millions of players.

Call of Duty is simple, Call of Duty is easy to get in and out of, Call of Duty has tens of millions of people playing it. Heart of Thorns is not simple, Heart of Thorns is not easy to get in and out of, Heart of Thorns has almost nobody playing it outside of meta events. Guild Wars 2 combat is not simple, Guild Wars 2 combat is not easy to understand, you can't jump from profession to profession, specialization to specialization.

Call of Duty is a great example. The 50,000 hardcore players on here whined incessantly that SOTO offered no new specializations. The people who play Call of Duty aren't complaining for new specs. They play because it's fun to play. And that should always be Arena Net's focus. That should be the focus of all MMO developers. Something simple and approachable where going out and doing stuff is fun.

[Invoker.5462]

3 minutes ago, Leger.3724 said:

 Heart of Thorns has almost nobody playing it outside of meta events. 

I recently did a 100% completion run through HOT and there were so many players that i never had to do anything alone.
Heck even the beetle taming event had a couple of people doing it when i got there, and whenever i asked for help for a mini-group event or hero point, someone always showed up without fail. 

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 minute ago, Leger.3724 said:

When you invest hundreds of millions of dollars to make your art project, you're going to want it to appeal to more than 50,000 players. You're going to want millions of players.

Call of Duty is simple, Call of Duty is easy to get in and out of, Call of Duty has tens of millions of people playing it. Heart of Thorns is not simple, Heart of Thorns is not easy to get in and out of, Heart of Thorns has almost nobody playing it outside of meta events. Guild Wars 2 combat is not simple, Guild Wars 2 combat is not easy to understand, you can't jump from profession to profession, specialization to specialization.

Call of Duty is a great example. The 50,000 hardcore players on here whined incessantly that SOTO offered no new specializations. The people who play Call of Duty aren't complaining for new specs. They play because it's fun to play. And that should always be Arena Net's focus. That should be the focus of all MMO developers. Something simple and approachable where going out and doing stuff is fun.

So, according to your own words, PoF is an example of how they got it right.  Yet that place is a ghost town and even the metas don't get completed aside from a literal loot pinata.  But zone in to tangled depths and chances are the regular events are being progressed.  Unlike PoF, those events actually provide pretty decent rewards and give you a reason to participate.  Likewise all HoT metas remain popular to this day and you'll usually find multiple map instances completing them.  So are you sure you have it right?  Because it seems like you don't.

[Leger.3724]

1 minute ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

So, according to your own words, PoF is an example of how they got it right.  Yet that place is a ghost town and even the metas don't get completed aside from a literal loot pinata.  But zone in to tangled depths and chances are the regular events are being progressed.  Unlike PoF, those events actually provide pretty decent rewards and give you a reason to participate.  Likewise all HoT metas remain popular to this day and you'll usually find multiple map instances completing them.  So are you sure you have it right?  Because it seems like you don't.

The only reason HoT has any popularity is because of the non-tradeable legendary weapons. That is it. Like I said - the facts are the facts. The sales are the sales. People did not like Heart of Thorns. We've seen 3 expansions now and Arena Net has not gone back to Heart of Thorns style design.

So either the forum posters are right... or the company making the game is looking at their internal numbers and realizing HoT sucks. Personally I'll believe the company making the game over a bunch of anonymous users on the internet.

Edited April 7 by Leger.3724

[Invoker.5462]

7 minutes ago, Leger.3724 said:

They play because it's fun to play. And that should always be Arena Net's focus. That should be the focus of all MMO developers. Something simple and approachable where going out and doing stuff is fun.

Call of duty sells becouse its always had a strong marketing prescence. Call of duty 3 had a playable demo at every gamestop on a flatscreen TV when those were for well-off people. Now it's showcased on every console&platform when its released. It's also somewhat subsidized by the department of defense.

The comparison was moreso made in regards to long term merit. If ANET wants to copy the Call of duty model with rapid-firing expansions showcasing the same repeated game mechanics. Then i'm sure it's more passionate devs/artists will soon be lost to a company which seeks to innovate creatively.

[AliamRationem.5172]

42 minutes ago, Leger.3724 said:

The only reason HoT has any popularity is because of the non-tradeable legendary weapons. That is it. Like I said - the facts are the facts. The sales are the sales. People did not like Heart of Thorns. We've seen 3 expansions now and Arena Net has not gone back to Heart of Thorns style design.

So either the forum posters are right... or the company making the game is looking at their internal numbers and realizing HoT sucks. Personally I'll believe the company making the game over a bunch of anonymous users on the internet.

Do you just pull random nonsense out of a hat for these posts?  You think multiple map instances are full of players because of legendary crafting?  And the most popular part of the game according to you are the consistently dead maps with nothing going on?  Okay, champ.  Whatever you say.

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, Leger.3724 said:

When you invest hundreds of millions of dollars to make your art project, you're going to want it to appeal to more than 50,000 players. You're going to want millions of players.

Call of Duty is simple, Call of Duty is easy to get in and out of, Call of Duty has tens of millions of people playing it. Heart of Thorns is not simple, Heart of Thorns is not easy to get in and out of, Heart of Thorns has almost nobody playing it outside of meta events. Guild Wars 2 combat is not simple, Guild Wars 2 combat is not easy to understand, you can't jump from profession to profession, specialization to specialization.

Call of Duty is a great example. The 50,000 hardcore players on here whined incessantly that SOTO offered no new specializations. The people who play Call of Duty aren't complaining for new specs. They play because it's fun to play. And that should always be Arena Net's focus. That should be the focus of all MMO developers. Something simple and approachable where going out and doing stuff is fun.

Where are you getting the 50,000 number from? Where are you getting any numbers from?
I get it. The stronger you feel about something, the more like you are to believe that it's obvious and everyone feels that way. This is a deeply divided playerbase. There are tons of casuals who don't like heart of thorns. There are lots of hard core players who really like Heart of Thorns, but most people are somewhere in the middle and they're not as evenly split as you seem to believe.

I've watched a whole lot of people who didn't like Heart of Thorns warm to it, and then start liking it, and the start spending real time in there.  You can pull numbers out of thin air as much as you like, but Anet has the numbers and you do not.

Heart of Thorns kept a lot of players in game that would have left if it wasn't here. For some of us (and I'm not a hard core player myself), it remains the height of this games design potential and has not been equaled since.

[Obtena.7952]

12 hours ago, Leger.3724 said:

This is the silent majority Arena Net should listen to extremely carefully.

The game's combat and mastery system became a nightmare in Heart of Thorns and tons, tons, tons of people dropped the game. It started to recover with the skyscale and end of dragons. Adding a second path to skyscale in Secrets of the Obscure and Legendary open world pve armor also helped sell a barebones expansion.

People will focus on Path of Fire not selling as well but the reality is Path of Fire sold poorly because everyone had flashbacks to Heart of Thorns.

End of Dragons should be the expansion Arena Net thinks about as they design Guild Wars 3. Core Tyria is what they should be thinking of when designing Guild Wars 3. That - and popular video games of today have extremely simple combat mechanics. Simple is better. Simple can allow for skill differentiation and complexity. Having players pick roles is not a bad thing either, whether that's traditional tank/dps/healer or Guild Wars 1 protection monks/support/frontline dps or it's league of legends - bruiser, caster, AD damage, support and jungler. Defined roles is a good thing.

Lots of opinion presented factually here. There is no 'silent majority' Anet should listen to ... Anet SHOULD be using data from the game to determine what content and mechanics works for players and what doesn't. Anet has over 10 years of data to tell them these things. As veteran game designers, they will port 'the good things' to GW3. To be honest, what will make GW3 a success is more about what Anet offers players to get them to spend money on the game. Sure, that's good content, but it's also how willing Anet is to follow the trends of selling things that allow players to 'accelerate' their progression. 

As for the thread, it's easy for people to look back now and say HoT is the best. I think a more objective look at the data suggests HoT at the time of its release was not the pinnacle of game experience most players were looking for. I think it's looked on positively at this point because we have obvious power creep (which shouldn't have ever happened) and it's simply very familiar with most players. 

IMO, the success of HoT over the history of the game is due to it's re-play value and not necessarily it's content. I liked the content in PoF the most, but there isn't much reason for me to revisit going there. 

 

Edited April 8 by Obtena.7952

[Gehenna.3625]

15 hours ago, Leger.3724 said:

The only reason HoT has any popularity is because of the non-tradeable legendary weapons. That is it. Like I said - the facts are the facts. The sales are the sales. People did not like Heart of Thorns. We've seen 3 expansions now and Arena Net has not gone back to Heart of Thorns style design.

That's not the only reason but it's one of the reasons I'm sure. Afaic gen2 legendaries are the best-looking overall and therefore worth the effort. You state an opinion and then say facts are facts, but that's not a fact. 

A lot of people didn't like HoT at all. I do agree with that. Having said that, the sales were the best of all of the expansions but the quarterly sales after release tanked. However, the quarterly sales also tanked after PoF came out. It did take longer to hit rockbottom but the quarterly sales were never as low as Q3 of 2019 and Q1 of 2020. But the quarterly sales were already down to the same level after HoT by the end of 2018. EoD sales were also lower but there's no data availabe of the time just before SoTO and currently because NcSoft stopped reporting individual sales for their games. Though the quarterly sales have remained fairly decent till the end of the data. Those are the facts and sales numbers.

And I also hated HoT initially, however, it grew on me over time because they're zones that you need to master in the end and my brain still likes learning things. How many people have made that turn-around on HoT, I just don't know so I can't claim any numbers there.

15 hours ago, Leger.3724 said:

So either the forum posters are right... or the company making the game is looking at their internal numbers and realizing HoT sucks. Personally I'll believe the company making the game over a bunch of anonymous users on the internet.

It's not that black and white. Anet doesn't say anything on the topic really so there's nothing to believe or disbelieve, and really when they do speak it's not always truthful as we've seen. Let's call it marketing speak. Having said that, I wouldn't take the word of forum users for anything that's not factual. 

However, people who say they're being factual but aren't actually also create a problem because you can't convince those people with facts ironically.

[kharmin.7683]

29 minutes ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

 Having said that, the sales were the best of all of the expansions

This could also be due to it being the very first expansion around which was a lot of hype before release?  PoF not doing as well might be due to players being more cautious after getting burned with the (original) release of HoT?

[Ashen.2907]

I preferred the Art in PoF by a very large margin. Didn't care for the design of HoT much at the time but dont dislike it as much now as I did originally.

[Leger.3724]

1 hour ago, kharmin.7683 said:

This could also be due to it being the very first expansion around which was a lot of hype before release?  PoF not doing as well might be due to players being more cautious after getting burned with the (original) release of HoT?

This is what people want to pretend is not true.

Path of Fire sold poorly because people who bought Heart of Thorns checked out of the game. And it's not because they were busy washing their pants and underwear at how awesome Heart of Thorns was. It's because they hated it and stopped playing.

[Gehenna.3625]

1 hour ago, kharmin.7683 said:

This could also be due to it being the very first expansion around which was a lot of hype before release?  PoF not doing as well might be due to players being more cautious after getting burned with the (original) release of HoT?

Sure, the numbers don't explain the why

[Surelia.2651]

25 minutes ago, Leger.3724 said:

This is what people want to pretend is not true.

Path of Fire sold poorly because people who bought Heart of Thorns checked out of the game. And it's not because they were busy washing their pants and underwear at how awesome Heart of Thorns was. It's because they hated it and stopped playing.

Cause and effect in the MMO world is not that simple though.  What you state may have been part of it, but you also have to consider that generally speaking Anet has never invested a huge amount in marketing this game.  The PoF release for GW2 was also up against some other top tier MMO titles which were reaching incredibly strong tenure plateaus in their own right in 2017.

For me, I started GW2 during its beta.  Having come here initially from LoTRO, the HoT expansion was my GW2 equivalent of original Moria - vertical maps that made little sense and were a pain to navigate, much tougher mobs trying to kill you in every corner, and people complaining left and right about how miserable it was.  It was all awesome! 😂   The one thing I've always really liked in games is when the possibility of getting my behind handed to me is real.  When the story is definitely not something I can blow through in 15 min., even better. 

Personally, I enjoyed PoF very much and love going there still, for similar yet also different reasons.  I don't think that it gets enough credit compared to the HoT experience, but in context, what follows something amazing is always going to be viewed in a more critical lens.  Some things are just a tough act to follow. 

Edited April 8 by Surelia.2651
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