The community becomes less demanding

[soulknight.9620]

Ive said during SOTO launch that anet went full in on "cut costs" policy. Back then people were trying to defend SOTO with vague arguments like "oh but you havent seen the full scope of SOTO yet". And now we have. I stand by the point i made. 

If we look at Janthir expac what do we see? Just look at the screenshots they provided: reskinned kodans (yeap now they are brown wow!), reskinned ice elemental (wow now its black and red/yellow), reused warclaw mount (wow new skills, but they dont have to redo all of the animations etc), spears (ive waited for eons to get a spear on my ele, right? nope. But hey at least anet wont have to design new weapons, right?), cant comment on the raid cause well it could be as reused as the new frac was. As for player housing... well we get hoelbrak personal instance, but a bit customisable. Good job! now give 25 euros!

If all of the above doesnt look like "CUTTING COSTS" then i dont know what is. I get that anet wants to utilise the resources they have, but anet is charging annualy for expacs now, its not free content like it was with LW. You could atleast put some effort into it. Sure, reuse the minor stuff, the filler stuff like generic events/enemies etc. But can we get something new for a change? New enemies, new textures, new locations (and not grothmar texture ripoff), new UNIQUE weapons, new trait lines, new pets, new mounts, upgraded jade bot, new ways of interacting with the game (like mounts/gliders were in HOT/POF) etc. And not just reskins, remakes, recolors all of the time. 

Ah forgot one more thing... about that new pvp mode! Anet are you serious? Didnt stronghold teach anything? That splitting whats left of spvp community between modes is bad? CTF format is dead on arival because of the class balancing. The whole pvp scene is balanced around "holding points". And since i dont see any major rework/rebalance in the latest "balance patch" i call it a fail in advance. 

Edited June 6 by soulknight.9620

[Astralporing.1957]

What did you expect? With each new expansion/major content release Anet manages to lower the bar more and more. People that can't adjust their expectations downward eventually leave, which obviously causes the community to be satisfied with less and less. Or, at least, learn to cope with their (lower and lower) expectations somehow always ending up unfulfilled.

[kharmin.7683]

16 hours ago, RaveOnYou.2819 said:

game is clearly in maintanence mode.

You clearly don't know what that term means.

[Tempest.8479]

I feel like people often fail to account for the release cadence when comparing the different models for releasing content, or at least minimize its impact on how much content the player base has actually received. Season 3 took a year to complete after 9 months of no content at all, and season 4 took 18 months to complete from its first release. This new release cadence actually provides content on a similar scale, just broken up into smaller chunks.

If you compare the major forms of content/progression delivered over the span of each of those Living World Seasons, you get something like this: 

Living World Season 3 (12 months + 9 month content drought)

• 6 maps
• 2 raids (4 wings) 
• 3 fractals
• 2 mastery lines

Living World Season 4 (18 months)

• 6 maps
• 3 raids
• 3 fractals
• 3 mastery lines
  • 2 mounts

 

The release cadence for both mini-expansions combined falls within a similar timeframe to either of those seasons. Assuming they release the updates for Janthir Wilds at the same pace, we'd get something like this:

SotO + Janthir Wilds (21 months)

• 6 maps
• 1 raid
• 2 strike missions
• 2 fractals
• 6+ mastery lines
  • 2 expanded mount masteries

And that's not even considering any of the expansion-level marquee features/overhauls added like: 

• Weaponmaster training
• 1 expanded weapon proficiency per profession
• 1 new weapon type for all professions
• Housing
• Wizard's Vault

 

I think there's plenty of discussion to be had as to the quality of the content these new expansions are providing, but I don't think the argument that they're providing less than they did before holds up if you account for release cadence. Neither expansion provides the amount of content that any of the previous expansions did, but that's the point.

Heart of Thorns launched with a $50 price tag. For the same price as launch HoT, the totality of content provided across these 2 expansions will be far closer to that of the most content-rich periods of the game's lifetime, or any other "regular" expansion, than many people are willing to admit.

[kiroho.4738]

1 hour ago, soulknight.9620 said:

If we look at Janthir expac what do we see?

An all new Housing system
A new Raid including 3 difficulty modes
Spear for all classes
New Fractal
New Convergence
New PvP mode
New story
New maps
Exploring a new culture
Warclaw Upgrade (which is much better than a new mount at this point as we have enough mounts already)
Also Warclaw update for WvW
Legendary Spear and backpack
New WV stuff
New Relics
New armor and weapon sets

Looks pretty good for 25€

[Wheezy.2846]

1 hour ago, Tempest.8479 said:

I feel like people often fail to account for the release cadence when comparing the different models for releasing content, or at least minimize its impact on how much content the player base has actually received. Season 3 took a year to complete after 9 months of no content at all, and season 4 took 18 months to complete from its first release. This new release cadence actually provides content on a similar scale, just broken up into smaller chunks.

If you compare the major forms of content/progression delivered over the span of each of those Living World Seasons, you get something like this: 

Living World Season 3 (12 months + 9 month content drought)

• 6 maps
• 2 raids (4 wings) 
• 3 fractals
• 2 mastery lines

Living World Season 4 (18 months)

• 6 maps
• 3 raids
• 3 fractals
• 3 mastery lines
  • 2 mounts

 

The release cadence for both mini-expansions combined falls within a similar timeframe to either of those seasons. Assuming they release the updates for Janthir Wilds at the same pace, we'd get something like this:

SotO + Janthir Wilds (21 months)

• 6 maps
• 1 raid
• 2 strike missions
• 2 fractals
• 6+ mastery lines
  • 2 expanded mount masteries

And that's not even considering any of the expansion-level marquee features/overhauls added like: 

• Weaponmaster training
• 1 expanded weapon proficiency per profession
• 1 new weapon type for all professions
• Housing
• Wizard's Vault

 

I think there's plenty of discussion to be had as to the quality of the content these new expansions are providing, but I don't think the argument that they're providing less than they did before holds up if you account for release cadence. Neither expansion provides the amount of content that any of the previous expansions did, but that's the point.

Heart of Thorns launched with a $50 price tag. For the same price as launch HoT, the totality of content provided across these 2 expansions will be far closer to that of the most content-rich periods of the game's lifetime, or any other "regular" expansion, than many people are willing to admit.

17 hours ago, RaveOnYou.2819 said:

game is clearly in maintanence

The dichotomy of man right here.

Look, Soto fell on its face in the follow up patches on story and open world. The alternative was another drought while we got nothing for 6+ months while they had the time to better reach for their ambitions. I'd rather we get stuff, they learn and keep moving.

Reused assets are smart and fine. Jesus Christ you don't need a new tree and bush model for everything. It's really ok. We'll get a few new things here and there mixed with some old. At this point the game has so many assets there's a huge variety to build with. It's money saving but it's also not reinventing the wheel for the sake of it, that's just stupid.

I swear people think if we can't get HoT levels of content every 12 months, which the game has NEVER done, it's somehow all garbage. There's criticisms to be made and feedback to give, but calling out 'maintenance mode', 'dead game's or similar comments is, frankly, a braindead take.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

1 hour ago, Wheezy.2846 said:

The alternative was another drought while we got nothing for 6+ months while they had the time to better reach for their ambitions. I'd rather we get stuff, they learn and keep moving.

There are other alternatives that allow for moderate releases. Not everything has to be the extremes of all new content, all the time versus droughts. The internet only seems to focus on extremes these days. 🤷‍♂️ SOTO would have been much better received if they just focused on a few pieces of the content each update. Instead of giving us a pitiful piece of story and map with some gameplay features every 3 months (trying to do a bit of everything each update with each piece half baked), they could have focused on the gameplay features for updates 2 and 3 to keep us grinding with enough new content/fractal/rifts/legendaries/etc. to hold us over. Then dropped all of Inner Nayos and the 2nd half of the story in the 4th, final update, and we could have taken our spoils from updates 2 and 3 into a meaty chunk of meta, map exploration, and story. It would have ended with an engaged playerbase instead of people playing for 2 hours and then saying, "well that was... there, for a bit." Even if the 6-9 months in between are less content, you'd still have something to do, and you'd leave the players with a memory of starting and ending strong instead of starting strong and fizzling out by the end. 

Edited June 6 by Gaiawolf.8261

[Zera.9435]

3 hours ago, kiroho.4738 said:

An all new Housing system
A new Raid including 3 difficulty modes
Spear for all classes
New Fractal
New Convergence
New PvP mode
New story
New maps
Exploring a new culture
Warclaw Upgrade (which is much better than a new mount at this point as we have enough mounts already)
Also Warclaw update for WvW
Legendary Spear and backpack
New WV stuff
New Relics
New armor and weapon sets

Looks pretty good for 25€

Yeah that's reasonable pricing right there. I still won't pre-purchase though, at least not until August 19th at the earliest.

[vandrefalk.6823]

Alternatively, 5 xpacs in we would have 27 professions, with 6 elite specs each, and everything would be so watered down and bland because there's only so much diversity in gameplay mechanics related to skills/traits/etc. they could add...

Remember AA with its bazillion classes from choosing 3 skill lines... 95% players played about a dozen of them that became meta, the rest were mostly fluff...

Broadly speaking 😉

[kharmin.7683]

3 hours ago, vandrefalk.6823 said:

Alternatively, 5 xpacs in we would have 27 professions, with 6 elite specs each, and everything would be so watered down and bland because there's only so much diversity in gameplay mechanics related to skills/traits/etc. they could add...

Remember AA with its bazillion classes from choosing 3 skill lines... 95% players played about a dozen of them that became meta, the rest were mostly fluff...

Broadly speaking 😉

Kinda sounds like all of the ranger pets that we have.

[Ashantara.8731]

Almost every single thread in the Discussions section is a demand. So, why anyone would get the opposite impression of this community is beyond me. 😂

[Trejgon.9367]

On 6/5/2024 at 12:25 PM, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

and now Anet is gonna try to do the 3 maps thing AGAIN after it didn't work with IBS, then SotO...

IBS on planning stage was not meant to be 3 maps, it was supposed to be 5 maps, but the two maps with it's corresponding stories were cut to go all hands on deck with EoD development, with Champions episode smeared in to bridge the gap and wrap up the jormag vs primordus arc.

for SotO, while the plan was three maps from the start, the scope of story they wanted to fit into SotO was unfeasible for the amount of devtime, even if it could fit amount of maps on paper. AN has aknowledged that in retrospect on the SotO, and Janthir is stated to have better sized story scope for this kind of expac. How it will pan out we are to see, but there is improvement to be expected there. It will be sign to worry if it won't improve at all, but there is room for it improving not sufficiently to close that issue.

[motoii.1835]

On 6/5/2024 at 12:26 PM, Crystal Paladin.3871 said:

People see what they want to see... If u want to find faults with anet, u will, if u want to see what they did good, u will...

I don't like housing unless I get what I want from housing, 

I want a new cute Ranger pet and some don't even acknowledge the existence of Ranger class

Some like new legendaries, some don't even care and prefer to live with exotics and ascended

Some like new raid,PvP ... To some , the sentence won't even register in their minds

Some like story and rpg elements, some hate it

Refreshed warclaw mounts, new map, new weapon for landbased combat meaning new set of weapon skills obviously different for all classes(imagine you got what weapon u expected for the classes since they do have diff skills)weapon is just a placeholder imo... Skills, animations ,flashiness, stylish,  gameplay impact, fluid combat is what matters most

New enemies probably with interesting mechanics...

Are u one of the players who don't want anything from new expansion?

All this for 25$ and probably they will release tons of weapon skins every season... Some mount skins, Armor skin pieces that worth more gems, infusions, legy starter kits,... So on in WV

OH are you talking about the rushed story that fell flat? Or maybe another set of weapons that you won't really have anywhere to really use because the game struggles with content? Oh, you're talking about PvP? What PvP? It's been in the same exact state for god knows how long, king of the hill maps all the time and unbalanced classes. New enemies with interesting mechanics? Name one please, what are the mechanics? And the rest is just skins after skins after skins after skins... And we also have WvW but I will omit that topic cause we already know what has been happening with it for months, years even (nothing). 

 

'

Skills, animations ,flashiness, stylish,  gameplay impact, fluid combat is what matters most

New enemies probably with interesting mechanics...'

 

Was this AI generated? They've been recycling the same animations for multiple releases now, except this time hopefully it changes and we see some clean and nice looking stylish animations, but after seeing the introduction teaser to the three new spear wielding classes... it's all flashy and recolored to me. I might be wrong about this though, we'll see.

 

I love this game but ever since PoF the content has been so uninspiring and not exciting at all. I still enjoy the game as a whole, but mostly because I revisit the older maps since the newer ones are pretty much 'complete them once and never look back' and also because of the nostalgia grip the game has over me. 

Edited June 7 by motoii.1835
typo

[motoii.1835]

15 hours ago, soulknight.9620 said:

Ive said during SOTO launch that anet went full in on "cut costs" policy. Back then people were trying to defend SOTO with vague arguments like "oh but you havent seen the full scope of SOTO yet". And now we have. I stand by the point i made. 

If we look at Janthir expac what do we see? Just look at the screenshots they provided: reskinned kodans (yeap now they are brown wow!), reskinned ice elemental (wow now its black and red/yellow), reused warclaw mount (wow new skills, but they dont have to redo all of the animations etc), spears (ive waited for eons to get a spear on my ele, right? nope. But hey at least anet wont have to design new weapons, right?), cant comment on the raid cause well it could be as reused as the new frac was. As for player housing... well we get hoelbrak personal instance, but a bit customisable. Good job! now give 25 euros!

If all of the above doesnt look like "CUTTING COSTS" then i dont know what is. I get that anet wants to utilise the resources they have, but anet is charging annualy for expacs now, its not free content like it was with LW. You could atleast put some effort into it. Sure, reuse the minor stuff, the filler stuff like generic events/enemies etc. But can we get something new for a change? New enemies, new textures, new locations (and not grothmar texture ripoff), new UNIQUE weapons, new trait lines, new pets, new mounts, upgraded jade bot, new ways of interacting with the game (like mounts/gliders were in HOT/POF) etc. And not just reskins, remakes, recolors all of the time. 

Ah forgot one more thing... about that new pvp mode! Anet are you serious? Didnt stronghold teach anything? That splitting whats left of spvp community between modes is bad? CTF format is dead on arival because of the class balancing. The whole pvp scene is balanced around "holding points". And since i dont see any major rework/rebalance in the latest "balance patch" i call it a fail in advance. 

This made me realize that the spear animations existed during the Icebrood Saga already, so once again it's just utilizing what they already had and slapping some appropriate colors to the recycled animations... I still can't believe how we went from having such pretty and inspiring animations (mirage, tempest, reaper) to constant reusal of the same animations...

[Amantiel.3542]

On 6/5/2024 at 3:28 PM, Suyheuti.1732 said:

First of all, developing Gw3 will be a mistake. I think NCsoft made a market research by checking people’s reaction. Let’s put out our head from the sand and lets be realistic.  People’s expectations will be too high. If they release Gw3 with the same content or less content than core Gw2, Gw3 will born dead. People will buy, play couple months and come back to continue Gw2. People will expect to have more content than core gw2 + some features of HoT+PoF expansion. That requires minimum 6-8 years. I believe Anet thinks the same. 

2nd, they are doing marketing strategy, they sold that idea to community like great thing and most of ppl bought that. Less innovation and content than Living Stories, name it as expansion and ask minimum double price. If they succeeded, I wouldnt say anything but it didn’t. 

3rd, I want to save you from huge disappointment. Please lower your expectations to minimum. I told my friends before SotO release about that, even I didn’t expect such a mess. Now, maps are populated, ppl dont realize but lets think couple years later from now. Many people will deal newer contents and too few people will be in SotO maps. With this condition, who will do events and metas. Even with full squad, killing boss is true pain because of insane HP pool. (Today inner nayos meta failed even there were much more people than 1 full squad.) Dragon’s End meta is at least required full organization and needs to follow mechanics not to fail and fun. 
 

Lets take Janthir Wilds. 

* Housing: I dont expect too difference than home instance. Maybe better visuals, a little feature to keep community silent. That will be all.

* Raids: Just 1 wing, with normal mode, challenge mode (more HP), legendary challenge mode (insane HP)? Who is asking more HP by the way. Anet should stop increasing HP pool, that is annoying. Killing SotO elites takes more time than old content’s champion, killing SotO champions is worse than killing old content’s legendaries, killing SotO legendaries is like undead dummies. Please lower HP pools, put more mechanics. And the most important thing is organic storyline. Pushing hard stories are not fun. 
 

* Land Spears: I would like to see Polearm but I cannot comment before beta. 

 

 

Expectations for GW3 boil down to "Don't be EoD". If that's too high, then ANet is doomed.

[Mistwraithe.3106]

16 hours ago, Tempest.8479 said:

I feel like people often fail to account for the release cadence when comparing the different models for releasing content, or at least minimize its impact on how much content the player base has actually received. Season 3 took a year to complete after 9 months of no content at all, and season 4 took 18 months to complete from its first release. This new release cadence actually provides content on a similar scale, just broken up into smaller chunks.

If you compare the major forms of content/progression delivered over the span of each of those Living World Seasons, you get something like this: 

...

Best comment in the thread.

The response is overall positive because it sounds overall positive to the majority of people (my guess is also that a larger number of forum readers were inspired to post in response to the expansion release so we got a wider spectrum of responses than we normally get on the forums).

Apparently that's rough for those who are doom and gloom about GW2 but remember you don't necessarily represent everyone.

[Hemi.5267]

And we were spoiled for years. The maps we got from SotO were fine for that price. You can't expect them to keep handing out free maps. If you look at other games, like destiny 2, it's just a 1 map update. D2 constantly rehashes content in raids/strikes etc. 

No I'm fine paying 25 euro's for some new GW2 gameplay. I love running around the maps of tyria.

Is it nostalgia fueled? Probably. Do I care? Nah, I like it and can pick it up after breaks.  

And a PvE worthy Warclaw? Sign me up. Long overdue. 

[Mr Istom.5426]

19 hours ago, Tempest.8479 said:

I feel like people often fail to account for the release cadence when comparing the different models for releasing content, or at least minimize its impact on how much content the player base has actually received. Season 3 took a year to complete after 9 months of no content at all, and season 4 took 18 months to complete from its first release. This new release cadence actually provides content on a similar scale, just broken up into smaller chunks.

If you compare the major forms of content/progression delivered over the span of each of those Living World Seasons, you get something like this: 

Living World Season 3 (12 months + 9 month content drought)

• 6 maps
• 2 raids (4 wings) 
• 3 fractals
• 2 mastery lines

Living World Season 4 (18 months)

• 6 maps
• 3 raids
• 3 fractals
• 3 mastery lines
  • 2 mounts

 

The release cadence for both mini-expansions combined falls within a similar timeframe to either of those seasons. Assuming they release the updates for Janthir Wilds at the same pace, we'd get something like this:

SotO + Janthir Wilds (21 months)

• 6 maps
• 1 raid
• 2 strike missions
• 2 fractals
• 6+ mastery lines
  • 2 expanded mount masteries

And that's not even considering any of the expansion-level marquee features/overhauls added like: 

• Weaponmaster training
• 1 expanded weapon proficiency per profession
• 1 new weapon type for all professions
• Housing
• Wizard's Vault

 

I think there's plenty of discussion to be had as to the quality of the content these new expansions are providing, but I don't think the argument that they're providing less than they did before holds up if you account for release cadence. Neither expansion provides the amount of content that any of the previous expansions did, but that's the point.

Heart of Thorns launched with a $50 price tag. For the same price as launch HoT, the totality of content provided across these 2 expansions will be far closer to that of the most content-rich periods of the game's lifetime, or any other "regular" expansion, than many people are willing to admit.

THANK YOU for this breakdown of the various release periods and their corresponding content. Of course you can say that you got more from the old “big” expansions. But it is hardly comparable due to the changed release structure. I soon find it unbearable that there is always so much moaning and complaining. If you don't like it, stop playing the game. But many people won't do that again and will end up buying and playing the add-on anyway. As it always is.
I'm quite excited about the new announcement. The only point that keeps me a little hesitant is the housing. A feature I don't feel Guild Wars needs, but well... that's what I thought about mounts back in the day.😄

[Futa.4375]

33 minutes ago, kiroho.4738 said:

You quoted me wrong on purpose, just because you are to lazy to use the quotations properly?! What The F***?!...
Your "clarification" is big BS. Just quote me correctly or not at all.
What's wrong with you?...

He/she quite clearly answered to your points, even before the editing.

[RaveOnYou.2819]

problem is not the number of fractal, raid, strike, map whatever. its the quality. i think we never get quality of raids what we get before or fractals like nightmare, observatory and maps like pof, hot, eods. we are giving half money for half baked meal.

[Nash.2681]

21 hours ago, Tempest.8479 said:

I think there's plenty of discussion to be had as to the quality of the content these new expansions are providing, but I don't think the argument that they're providing less than they did before holds up if you account for release cadence. Neither expansion provides the amount of content that any of the previous expansions did, but that's the point.

Heart of Thorns launched with a $50 price tag. For the same price as launch HoT, the totality of content provided across these 2 expansions will be far closer to that of the most content-rich periods of the game's lifetime, or any other "regular" expansion, than many people are willing to admit.

I agree that SotO + JW together roughly equal quantity of the former expansions, so the combined price seems fair at first sight. But it starts to taste sour when we remember that HoT also included LS3 and PoF included LS4+IBS basicly for free, so there's already quite a difference in content and feature quantity. I can understand this change in business modell from the company's perspective, but as a customer, it still feels really really bad. Now factor in the quality of the newer releases and it doesn't get better.

[Astralporing.1957]

23 hours ago, kiroho.4738 said:

An all new Housing system
A new Raid including 3 difficulty modes
Spear for all classes
New Fractal
New Convergence
New PvP mode
New story
New maps
Exploring a new culture
Warclaw Upgrade (which is much better than a new mount at this point as we have enough mounts already)
Also Warclaw update for WvW
Legendary Spear and backpack
New WV stuff
New Relics
New armor and weapon sets

Looks pretty good for 25€

Similarily made list for SotO also seemed quite good for the price. And technically we did get everything that was on that list. And yet we still ended with the mess it turned into.

So far i haven't seen anything that'd suggest JW will end up any better. Especially when i see a number of the lessons they claimed they learned from SotO apparently being still ignored for JW.

[kharmin.7683]

6 hours ago, Hemi.5267 said:

And we were spoiled for years. The maps we got from SotO were fine for that price. You can't expect them to keep handing out free maps. If you look at other games, like destiny 2, it's just a 1 map update. D2 constantly rehashes content in raids/strikes etc. 

No I'm fine paying 25 euro's for some new GW2 gameplay. I love running around the maps of tyria.

Is it nostalgia fueled? Probably. Do I care? Nah, I like it and can pick it up after breaks.  

And a PvE worthy Warclaw? Sign me up. Long overdue. 

I love exploring maps, too, but then when maps are gated behind masteries or story line (which I really don't delve into), then I have a problem with them.  I feel forced to pursue a particular way of gaming to get the full value of what I paid and that isn't fun for me.

As for the warclaw in PvE, I really don't get it.  PvE has enough mounts already.  I would have preferred to unlock some additional skills on them rather than this warclaw push.  /shrug

[Gorani.7205]

Quote

The community becomes less demanding

Concerning the headline of the thread: I think the community "demands" even more than in the past. Looking at some of the threads we already have on the forum, the players seem to demand what we get now, something extra on top and a complete new thing already, because JAW's new features don't meet a "demand" already (without us even knowing about details)

Is 25€ too high a price for what we will get? At half the price of HoT & PoF, I don't think so. juts compare with e.g. going to one movie, parking, a drink after the movie etc.

In the end, it all comes to how much will you get out of the expac. With a WvW legendary armour set already done, SotO gave me very little, because pretty much every map currency and Rifts are all focused on the armour acquisition. New weapon for my main was bad (not the worst, but not on par with what I have now). Story was nothing I could connect to (no, you don't make me sympathize with demons fighting other demons) and WV was good. Perhaps JAW only looks like "too few for the buck" and I can potentially get way more out of it than I could get out of SotO (and EoD). 🤷‍♂️ 

[Trejgon.9367]

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Especially when i see a number of the lessons they claimed they learned from SotO apparently being still ignored for JW.

"a number" is arguable one with information so far, and it being the one on redundancy on new systems, which is arguable, because it was a common complain that home instances are not satisfactory home mechanic, and none of them would thematically have any room to add in mechanics in popular demand in terms of decorating, because all of them were basically whole city districts.

So unless in your book "one" constitutes "a number" (implied plural in general english use), I fail to see where do you see multiple ways that current state of announcements of JW is going against, the "lessons" listed in AN retrospective blog?