The way SotO was released was terrible - it's actually good and a real expac now

[Jumpin Lumpix.6108]

On 7/20/2024 at 3:30 AM, Randulf.7614 said:

This majority who left, what specific numbers of those who left Vs who stayed were published?

Also, are rifts really any worse than say the Mordrem Bloom event which was released uncompletable and with an apology? Is it worse than other rift events which have existed since 2013?

I am all for discussion and critiquing an expac, but maybe hyperbole, false figures and statements like “worst in the universe” are best left aside. There’s enough of that in the real world and politics, we don’t need it here
 

you're asking for proof that players left, do you have any proof that players stayed or proof that players thought the expansion was great?   I thought SoTo wasn't good at all especially compared to the other expansions. Most people I talk to in game/map chat or in my guild seem to agree...

Edited August 5 by Jumpin Lumpix.6108

[Astralporing.1957]

On 7/20/2024 at 9:30 AM, Randulf.7614 said:

This majority who left, what specific numbers of those who left Vs who stayed were published?

Also, are rifts really any worse than say the Mordrem Bloom event which was released uncompletable and with an apology? Is it worse than other rift events which have existed since 2013?

I am all for discussion and critiquing an expac, but maybe hyperbole, false figures and statements like “worst in the universe” are best left aside. There’s enough of that in the real world and politics, we don’t need it here
 

I know that gw2efficiency is not fully representative of the whole population, but this is still interesting to see. Notice, that gw2efficiency is most likely biased towards both more hardcore and more active part of the playerbase, so players that are more likely to play longterm, and buy any expansion as it comes. And yet we still see those massive drops with each new expansion after PoF.

[Vayne.8563]

On 7/21/2024 at 3:05 AM, Ashantara.8731 said:

Yes. Inner Nayos was worse in both regards.

In your opinion. I liked Inner Nayos more than I  liked Amnytas, actually.

[Zok.4956]

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I know that gw2efficiency is not fully representative of the whole population, but this is still interesting to see. Notice, that gw2efficiency is most likely biased towards both more hardcore and more active part of the playerbase, so players that are more likely to play longterm, and buy any expansion as it comes. And yet we still see those massive drops with each new expansion after PoF.

The large gap between HoT/PoF and later expansions could also be explained by the fact that there was a large loss of revenue and players after HoT and PoF, up until 2019 (the year in which Anet had mass layoffs).

However, if you look at the revenue figures from 2020 onwards (and these are real, hard facts), revenue has continued to rise in waves since the turning point in 2019, or at least stabilized at a higher level. In any case, there have been no "massive drops" in revenue since the end of 2019 up to the current quarterly figures. And revenue figures usually correlate quite well with player numbers.

 

 

 

[Omega.6801]

13 hours ago, Perisemiotics.4579 said:

but... Kourna and IBS were also within the timeframe you consider the "peak"

I specifically mention those, among other things,  as lowpoints (it's even in the snipet you quoted). Also I not once define or consider any timeframe as peak.

[Tren.5120]

On 8/5/2024 at 6:12 AM, Vayne.8563 said:

In your opinion. I liked Inner Nayos more than I liked Amnytas, actually.

Congrats.  Someone has to be the contrarian 😉

[Tren.5120]

On 8/5/2024 at 9:02 AM, Zok.4956 said:

The large gap between HoT/PoF and later expansions could also be explained by the fact that there was a large loss of revenue and players after HoT and PoF, up until 2019 (the year in which Anet had mass layoffs).

However, if you look at the revenue figures from 2020 onwards (and these are real, hard facts), revenue has continued to rise in waves since the turning point in 2019, or at least stabilized at a higher level. In any case, there have been no "massive drops" in revenue since the end of 2019 up to the current quarterly figures. And revenue figures usually correlate quite well with player numbers.

 

 

 

Revenue figures can't be depended upon to correlate "quite well" with player numbers in games with cash shop as casual players aren't going to be spending hundreds buying character slots, bank and inventory expansions, build and equipment template expansions, skins, etc.  The amount of investment in game shops tends to be very lopsided which is why there is always this conversation about "Whales and Freeloaders" in F2P or B2P games with a cash shop.

Making such correlations is almost guaranteed to lead to incorrect conclusions.

Revenue -> Players is more correlated with subscription games.  FFXIV and WoW, for example - even ESO (which is basically subscription, since most active players will have ESO+ because the game griefs you if you don't have it) are games where this would be more realistic to do.  Not games like GW2.

In games like WoW and FFXIV, this is easy.  Active players tend to keep their subscription running while those who are inactive turn them off.  This is true for ESO as well, though there are likely more people there playing without one, since it isn't required to access the game (but I always turn mine off when I'm not actively playing it for the same reasons I'd turn off a WoW or FFXIV) subscription.

There isn't really anything in GW2 that really demands someone keep investing in the game.  Cosmetics? Lol.  If you farm gold, you don't even have to invest USD into the shop, and that's pretty easy now with the Wizard's Vault, among other things.

Edited August 7 by Tren.5120

[Vayne.8563]

7 hours ago, Tren.5120 said:

Congrats.  Someone has to be the contrarian 😉

I don't know. I think a lot of people prefer a relatively easily understood demon realm, to what is essentially a mostly abandoned university type structure. Inner Nayos is more like one of the original Orr zones than Amnytas is. It as three metas, easy, medium and hard, and those metas aren't silly. Amnytas feels like a silly meta to me. Mechanically I mean. The whole standing in circles at the end and hitting the button 1 color at a time in order. Or the constant teleporting you below so you have to run back. Or the continual running around from place to place till we get to the boss and then we have to run it awy and do it again. I suppose there are people who love the Amnytas meta, but it's certainly the most annoying of the five. 

If you're just an old school I like to spend time in the open world and do some events while I'm there, Inner Nayos is a much better zone. If you're the kind of I want to show up for the meta, get my currency and go, maybe it's different for you.  Inner Nayos, to me, feels like lot more like the core game in structure than Amnytas does.

[Ashantara.8731]

On 7/23/2024 at 9:42 PM, Kozumi.5816 said:

Story missions don't matter

Yes, they do. No other expansion had such terribly designed, unchallenging and plain boring story missions like SotO (Inner Nayos in particular). If an expac is fun to play through, I do it on all nine characters. I stopped doing it right after EoD, namely when Gyala Delve released. Inner Nayos was even worse.

[Mungrul.9358]

On 8/2/2024 at 8:25 AM, Nash.2681 said:

Can only speak for myself, but to me it's the very contrary. When there's a new area, I usually go there and stray away from the main story to explore for a certain extend on my own. This includes doing events, leveling masteries, completing a significant part of the map, especially mastery points. If I then decide to take the next story steps and after endless talking all I get is "congratulations, you may now do the same events again you did for the last few hours of playing anyway", it sucks. Same goes for including metas. When it comes to the story, I want to play it at my own pace, at my own time. Being dependant of meta events is a no go for me. If I want to play a meta, I do so. I'm also fine with scheduling my game time for that. But if I want to play my personal story, leave me alone with this. Also wondering which genious thought it's a good idea to add an achievement for finishing the Eparch meta before doing the respective story.

So tl;dr: can't say you're alone since I can't know, but I definetly feel the opposite.

 

On 8/8/2024 at 12:22 AM, Ashantara.8731 said:

Yes, they do. No other expansion had such terribly designed, unchallenging and plain boring story missions like SotO (Inner Nayos in particular). If an expac is fun to play through, I do it on all nine characters. I stopped doing it right after EoD, namely when Gyala Delve released. Inner Nayos was even worse.

I'd just like to say that having started playing the game again after taking a break on the release of SotO (because I wanted to experience the expansion as a whole rather than wait for it to be delivered piecemeal), these two quotes really represent my experience.

I'm struggling to find a reason to progress the story, and haven't even left the first map yet, as I find it an unfocussed mess, with an unengaging story. I was mildly interested in being able to get Legendary armour through OW activities, but then saw how ridiculously grindy it is, and just lost all enthusiasm for it. And when it's pretty much the only worthwhile incentive for playing the expansion, it's pretty hard to find the will to continue (I also found this with EoD; so many of the activities were tuned around Legendary weapon acquisition, with little else remaining).

When I came back to the game during the pandemic, I took almost all of my characters through every story mission up until the end of IBS. I particularly enjoyed taking multiple characters through HoT to get the Knight of Thorns achievements, as it was cool to see how wildly varied the final fight against Mordremoth was depending on profession; my Warrior had a miserable time with the fight, but admittedly was still equipped with mostly exotics, and Celestial to boot!
But somewhat surprisingly, my Weaver had possibly the easiest time out of all of my characters.

This was fun, engaging content, and minimally grindy. It taught me a lot about how to play different builds on different professions and rewarded me with some cool stuff.

I'm just not getting that feel from SotO.

Also, a year away from GW2 has also meant I've been playing games that respect my time and money more, such as CP2077's Phantom Liberty, Baldur's Gate 3, Wrath of the Righteous, etc.
And playing those games has made me realise just how low effort and exploitative GW2 is in comparison. Yes, GW2 is better than a lot of other MMOs when it comes to dark pattern stuff.

But it still has it all, in the form of dailies (sorry, "Wizard's Vault"), legendary grinds and the economies surrounding them, cash shop QoL and abstraction of value, etc.

And when I add all that up with the overall poor quality of SotO, there's very little to stop me noping out and going back to character creation in BG3...

 

[Panda.1967]

On 7/19/2024 at 6:06 PM, Kozumi.5816 said:

Is this same mistake going to happen with janthir?

Yes… it is…

they did at least learn that locking the major selling points behind a mid-late expac update was a bad idea though… seeing as how we are getting, Spears, Homesteads, and PvE Warclaw at launch this time around… no BS of “new weapons coming later with no actual ETA”

[Ghastly.3914]

Just wanted to reply and say I highly disagree with OP. I rather get base expansion with updates of 3-4 months compared to 2-3 years of living worlds like in path of fire and previous expansions.

30 minutes ago, Panda.1967 said:

Yes… it is…

they did at least learn that locking the major selling points behind a mid-late expac update was a bad idea though… seeing as how we are getting, Spears, Homesteads, and PvE Warclaw at launch this time around… no BS of “new weapons coming later with no actual ETA”

Yeah I'll have to agree with this, the big features should be on release day. If the expansion itself is good enough on its own they shouldn't be scared to put the exciting features in the beginning.

Edited August 9 by Ghastly.3914

[Astralporing.1957]

5 hours ago, Ghastly.3914 said:

Just wanted to reply and say I highly disagree with OP. I rather get base expansion with updates of 3-4 months compared to 2-3 years of living worlds like in path of fire and previous expansions.

Well, SotO is basically a half-size living story that's being called an expansion, so that's exactly what you get - but without an actual expansion in between LS seasons.

[Linken.6345]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Well, SotO is basically a half-size living story that's being called an expansion, so that's exactly what you get - but without an actual expansion in between LS seasons.

If they want to pay 100 bucks over 4 years to get 40-50% of what we got before in 3-4 years for 30-50 bucks why wont you be happy for them.

Everyone else can buy it at a discount later if the content is worth it.

[Astralporing.1957]

10 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

If they want to pay 100 bucks over 4 years to get 40-50% of what we got before in 3-4 years for 30-50 bucks why wont you be happy for them.

Everyone else can buy it at a discount later if the content is worth it.

Honestly, i am more concerned about being happy for myself - and this drop in content quality and quantity makes it quite hard for me.

[Linken.6345]

7 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Honestly, i am more concerned about being happy for myself - and this drop in content quality and quantity makes it quite hard for me.

Same here still waiting to pick up SotO let alone JW

[Ghastly.3914]

People that don't want to spend money wouldn't have spent it whether it was a yearly expansion or not until a sale, iirc.

[Linken.6345]

31 minutes ago, Ghastly.3914 said:

People that don't want to spend money wouldn't have spent it whether it was a yearly expansion or not until a sale, iirc.

Kinda false when I bought core, hot, pof and eod at release.

SotO and JW dont justify the cost since I wont know the full picture until 10 months after release.

I might like the first content drop and feel that the second third and fourth dont hold the same standard as the old full expansions.

Kinda how I liked most of season 4 but Domain of Kourna for example did not feel as finished as the rest.

[Tren.5120]

On 8/7/2024 at 7:14 PM, Vayne.8563 said:

If you're the kind of I want to show up for the meta, get my currency and go, maybe it's different for you.

Nothing in my post indicated this.

This also applies to Skywatch and Amnytas, who also have their own META events.

If you just want to go in, do the META and get out, then Inner Nayos is probably going to be preferable because the zone facilitates that much better.

On 8/7/2024 at 7:14 PM, Vayne.8563 said:

Inner Nayos, to me, feels like lot more like the core game in structure than Amnytas does.

Lol.  It's like half the size of Amnytas when you factor in the vast areas that exist only for META events.  This also means that it became repetitive a LOT faster since by the time people got to Nayos they were already burning out on Rifts and the smaller surface area of the zone itself inherently leads to people doing the same events more often than they would have on Skywatch or Amnytas when jumping from Island or Bastion to Island or Bastion.

Nayos' issue is that the story was not that great once it move over to there and the zone was not big enough to be chopped up which led to people burning out on running the same [relatively] limited set of events over and over for weeks at a time.

And when things get repetitive and people start to burn out, people get bored.

It feels like a Living World Episode.  You know, where many go and do what they need to do and then barely go back unless another forced to for Achievements or what not.

Edited August 14 by Tren.5120