New boss release rate

[Vinceman.4572]

@"Draco.9480" said:people enjoy getting rewards for running with a commander in some zerg in open world and think they accomplish something. all they do is aa and not touching raids.

Yes, and in my opinion sadly that's what a lot of players really enjoy. On the other hand, turning off more complex brain actions and relax after an 8-10 hour working day - are they to blame for that? I doubt it.

anet just want to please the "majority" which isn't really believeable.

It isn't believable for you because you are acting/playing in a completely different bubble. As a player that plays instanced content preferentially myself I barely looked around and noticed what others are doing. There is a huge amount of map meta players and open world bosses, people that explore the maps, doing things for their legendaries etc. A lot of them don't play as long as raiders per day, maybe 1 hour or 2 while some of us are online for more than 10 hours a day (yes, they are!). That's why they have a ton of content in front of them while hardcore players are bored after 3 months of Wing 5. The players I mentioned haven't even touched a fractal or more than the raid entrance in Verdant Brink.

i saw anet's streaming about some black lion thingy market and had like 900 views and it's official from anet. and there you have teapot which isn't official and just a raider of some guild that hosted a tournament and you had 5k views livestream.

GW2 isn't a game that is well suited for streaming. And most of the streams are PvP related or just casual open world stuff. Then you have a couple of raid streamers with a little but solid viewership. Teapot's event which my guild and I enjoyed as well was a special thing that you have to keep in mind. A bigger event always pulls numbers, nothing special. I was happy to see almost 5k people watching it, on the other hand it also shows that "only" 5k people care about a raid event which is still nothing compared to the whole player base that predominantly hasn't noticed anything about this event at all. Those people don't even watch (GW2) streams.

raiders "minority" is so false. raiders are the sustainers of the game and yet they're getting ignored.

I still doubt that. I was shocked when I looked at the total numbers of mount skins available this week after the introduction of the new skins. Not even 1 year after mount release we already have freaking lots of skins. Do you really think we raiders are the target audience for these skins? Not really, do you? And realizing that we usually have a lot more gold than other players due to raids & fracs (I make a lot of gold out of both!) we are the ones that just change gold into gems so we do not really support Anet with high amounts of money. The huge income comes from the people that pull their credit cards.

in HoT you had like 3 wings in half a year. n

Do not forget: All 3 wings were developed during the content drought before HoT not after the release of it. I'd rather wait for 8 months to get a new wing than having a such a long content drought again which definitely scares more players away than anything else. GW2 suffered a lot and I don't want these player numbers and the critics we had in the past. Actually, the game is more stable than compared to 3-5 months after HoT release!

also all those casuals blame elitists for being toxic all the time while they give no value to the community nor the game and all you hear from 'em is "me, me, me".

I almost read that nowhere. Ofc, here and there are some "casual agitators", but hey, you are present in the other forum parts as well with that attitude and I know that you know your posts often are toxic towards others as well.

[maddoctor.2738]

@Vayne.8563 said:Raids didn't exist in this game for 3.5 years. What boggles my mind is people who thing raids are a thing in this game at all. They're really a side show. Only Anet knows what percentage of the playerbase raids, but I'm guessing it's very very small, because if a fairly large portion of the playerbase did it, they'd come out more off.

Well it's not like we get much Open World content either, but the majority of the population is playing Open World, yet we get so little of it. And by Open World I mean repeatable open world encounters. Yes we got a new map with Episode 3, but the meta is boring, the map itself lacks reasons to revisit it, other than the achievement grind for the turrets. The bosses and events use old mechanics, and there is nothing new. A Bug in the System was also bad regarding the open world, Sandswept Isles is also barren and lacks players, as much as Domain Kourna does. Daybreak was fine, sure it had the Palawadan meta which wasn't very exciting, but I think Amala was a nice Open World boss. The zone itself had way more things to do including acquiring 2 brand new weapon sets (!!!) something rather unique for a Living World episode.

[Deeyra.1476]

@"Amaranthe.3578" said:So Ive been raiding for a while and apperently new bosses are released at a laughably low paste,whats that all about?As an ex-wow player it just boggles my mind that people who raid have to wait more than 6 whole months for 3 new bosses 0_0"Im not expecting the abundance of new content wow had in a b2p game but the amount of new pve grouped instanced content is just so low that I cant understand how can someone call himself a raider.If somones main attraction is instanced group pve content apperently a-net massage to them is this is not the place for you.Im really not that big on raiding anymore and casually enjoy the open world content more(which is why im here) but the whole thing just seems really lazy

Fractal and raiding team were combined which means they have to do both obviously. And i guess they want top quality which im okay with. What i disagree with, is that they wait 3 months + to release a new wing and its still full of bugs and easily exploitable stuff.

[Etheri.5406]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Vinceman.4572 said:

@"Etheri.5406" said:And here we have it again."We are the majority, and there is no reason to further support any minorities". The same attitude that results in alienating plenty of other players. Funny, a game so focussed on equality and playing how you like being so constant aggresive regarding any gameplay that isn't their prefered more. Funny, coming from a community that considers itself the friendliest of all mmorpgs.

The problem is: You read what you want from those posts. In no way Vayne has said that they are the majority and they have the rights to lead the way of the game. That barely happens, especially not here in this subforum, where

the overwhelming majority of us are raiders

. Most of us just realize and accept the pure facts even though it doesn't feel good or we disagree to the company decisions. Of course we can open threads here, express our concerns on reddit and vote with our wallet. All these things are completely fine and are already made. We'll see what happens in the longer run. My guess - and it's only a guess - if Anet ever has to decide between a hardcore community or the casual crowd they'll always cater to the latter. So, at this point I'm pleased that they'll release harder content like fracs and raids even if it takes that long. Better than getting nothing which would make me leave this game within a couple of days.

This.

Funny how starting basic fact and corrections on assumptions made based on fact is automatically consider hostile. Vayne made a correct observation and pointed this out (gw2eff only being representativ of part of the community). What people choose to read into that shows were they are coming from mentaly.

This is the dungeon, fractal and raid forum. The majority of people reading here are in some way involved in this content (be it actively clearing, interested or concerned) . As such even opinions stated here will not reflect the vast majority of the Player base.

Crying Wolf over and over without basis is something which will discredit you very fast among peers in a discussion and will definately not add to your creditibility @Etheri.

I never denied it was a minority of the community. I stated that if you'll cater only to the majority, you'll lose more than you gain. The same arguments were used to cut lose many other aspects of our community, and the result is not healthier or better.

You also fail to account for causation and correlation. Is the content worse, or is the content so unreliable the population has no way to remain big or healthy? Of course the casual PvE community is larger; they've had the very very dominant share of the dev efforts for 5-6 years.It's also absurd how others must bring facts, yet you don't. "Anet knows better". And if pseudofacts or things that come near come, it's not accurate enough. You're as selective as me.

What happens to already developped content, such as the previous 5 raid wings, which will be enjoyed by vastly fewer players AND be less enjoyable for non-hardcore raiders to do and get into because the scene dies? A population is part of the content - it's a team game and you do not get to play it without other players.

How do you think this works? I think the value of the content they ALREADY CREATED quickly diminishes as they show their populations they won't make an effort to keep them alive. This snowballs, leads to less investments and more players, which continues to snowball. It ultimately makes the content a waste of already spent dev expenses rather than a valuable addition to the game. I can think of quite a few "features" of GW2 that ended like this. And many did not have a healthy or big population.

Most raiders also do living story, adding extra value to this content. But they won't keep playing "just" for living story. Same for WvWers anad pvpers and so forth. These players still add value to the content you create for others. And others benefit from them, sponsoring to some extent the content they can occasionally enjoy. On top of that, the lving story players who are interested in these modes? Well they don't value from the improvements that could have made; in many ways sponsored by the players who are dedicated to this content. You simply LOSE these players, which is without a doubt a loss. And why? Because you can't release content more frequent than once a year for a tripple A mmorpg? Absolutely absurd. They also don't have the support of an established scene and trickle-down effects. Carefully ignored. We still LOSE players, and 10% of our playerbase is a HUGE number.

Commanders in EU WvW? hahahaha. Not one of the T1 EU MAIN servers has pugmanders that regularly lead their pugs. Just casuals asking for commanders and not a single person willing to play with them. Fractals? Yeahg oodluck jumping into those without KP. Raid training groups? Oh wait those are desperately struggling to retain their trainers who are bored with the game. Didn't one of the EU discords shut down? Oh yeah it did! What about the cost of this content that was developped, had projections to keep players entertained yet... because we let the community die it stops generating nearly as much value.

But hey, I don't have any "credibility" on the official forums. What will I do now. lul.

[Etheri.5406]

@Vinceman.4572 said:

@"Draco.9480" said:people enjoy getting rewards for running with a commander in some zerg in open world and think they accomplish something. all they do is aa and not touching raids.I almost read that nowhere. Ofc, here and there are some "casual agitators", but hey, you are present in the other forum parts as well with that attitude and I know that you know your posts often are toxic towards others as well.

Good, time to spread elitism. Casuals spread their hyper-casual gameplay so aggresively the real mistake was not going full elitist earlier.

[Vinceman.4572]

Hmm, still your posts sounds like everything in this game is going downhill but the actual situation in the game is different. People - and again this is the core folks Anet is catering to - welcomed the Festival of the 4 Winds - one of the most wanted things to be back in the game. Marionette + some things from the LS1 are the only big things missing now and we are very good to go in these terms.The raid lfg is still very active and everybody who wants to get his weekly full clear done is easily able to do that with pugging - at least in EU no problem. Same goes for fractals. Can it be a pain to play T4s (non-CM-KP groups), yes but one is also able to get the dailies done, with special lfg, tricks or just faceroll comps a.k.a. 4/5 reaper or scourges etc. Also I see a lot of folks playing WvW with fun. I don't know about hardcore GvG guilds but the guys from my guilds that have played WvW years ago are still playing it on a fixed schedule.Does this game lose players and especially veterans? Undeniably! But it also brings in a steady flow of newer player mostly those that invest real money into the gem shop instead of converting gold to gems. From a business point of view you'll leave the moral out and don't care as long as the core community is healthy - which it is at the moment - so they won't care about those who leave.

@Etheri.5406 said:Good, time to spread elitism. Casuals spread their hyper-casual gameplay so aggresively the real mistake was not going full elitist earlier.

Don't think that's the right way and neither would it solve any problems you see but go ahead. Time and attitude will tell.

[Vayne.8563]

@Etheri.5406 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Amaranthe.3578 said:

@Etheri.5406 said:

casually enjoy the open world content

If you ask for any content that isn't exactly this; then you'll get an army of angry casuals telling you how you're a minority; this content isn't good and just a side project and only their open world / living story content matters.

If you say that regardless of that, content is very slow, they'll say you're playing too much or playing through it too quickly.

If you compare to other games or the content cadence we've literally had in the past; they'll deny most of it.

The truth is, anet's content output has drastically reduced.

If you enjoy hardcore or skill-based mmorpg gaming, then yes this is not the right game for you. If you aren't heavily invested into communities or the game, I suggest you find something else. It hasn't and won't get any better.

I understand that gw2 is a casual mmo at heart and ita main target demographic are very casual players.Which is fine since Im very casual myself, but more than 6 month for 3 raid bosses and a fractal per year is something I cant wrap my mind around.The thing is that withiut a "hardcore" community there is no community at all due to the trickle down effect...if there are no hc raiders,there wont be casual raiders since there bo where to progressno casual raiders>no occasion raiders = a very poor pve community

Raids didn't exist in this game for 3.5 years. What boggles my mind is people who thing raids are a thing in this game at all. They're really a side show. Only Anet knows what percentage of the playerbase raids, but I'm guessing it's very very small, because if a fairly large portion of the playerbase did it, they'd come out more off.

This game, in PvE, has always been centered around the open world and it's why most of us are here (in my opinion). Those who focus on raids think the open world is boring. I don't and never have. But I don't particularly enjoy raiding.

Actually you can get a pretty good idea about the percentage of people who raid. Few weeks ago a friend of mine did some digging in GW2Efficiency, comparing specific data from the statistics on the site with statements from GW2 devs. The numbers from gw2eff were a pretty good match on all criteria he checked, so we concluded the site can be regarded as a representative for the community as a whole.

So having that in mind, you just check the unlock statistics for e.g.

Fire Extinguisher

achievement which is awarded for killing Sabetha. So no, it's not a very very small percentage. A lot of people have progressed this far.

Wait a second. You don't think people who raid are not more likely to use Guild Wars 2 efficiency?

Casuals are less likely to raid and use Guild Wars 2 efficiency than most people in my opinion. Only a tiny tiny percentage of my casual guild uses gw2-efficiency. Most don't even know it exists. Everyone who raids in my guild, I can guarantee you, uses it. Not that many raid, but of the 400 or so people in my guild, the 10-15 who actually raid, all use GW 2 efficiency.

This assumption that gw2 efficiency somehow represents a microcosm of the playerbase is, in my mind, not supportable.

And here we have it again."We are the majority, and there is no reason to further support any minorities". The same attitude that results in alienating plenty of other players. Funny, a game so focussed on equality and playing how you like being so constant aggresive regarding any gameplay that isn't their prefered more. Funny, coming from a community that considers itself the friendliest of all mmorpgs.

Yet you can't discuss WvW without being told the game is about PvE. You can't discuss PvP without being told it's toxic and anet should let it die. And that has been the case for what, 5 years? You can't ask for raid content without being told they're a side project. Meanwhile not one of them have seen content in half a year or more.

You know what's a waste of effort? Producing something requiring a lot of effort which isn't enjoyed, used or worthwhile. Like producing strondhold or guildhalls and letting them die completely. Like guildmissions and letting them die, too. Or perhaps desert bl. Or producing constant new living story maps or meta's which are barely played because their issues aren't fixed or their rewards aren't balanced - by which I mean istan gives better loot so why bother.

Do you think anet is in a better or worse state by losing major fractions its entire WvW / PvP / hardcore PvE / ... communities? I'll assume you enjoy it - it further makes you the majority! Yay! It proves you were right - PvE is more popular and you're an even bigger majority! Now surely we should only make content that we enjoy; right? Except it makes playing WvW - ESPECIALLY for players who just wanna jump in and enjoy it - worse. It makes raids - again especially for those who just wanna jump in and learn occasionally - worse. It makes PvP drastically more unfair and worse, too. Bye bye trickle-down economics because there's not enough players to trickle down from. Bye revenue from the dedicated players who enjoyed this. Byebye to a lot of the user created content, tools, publicity, ... I remember GvG's getting 1-2k+ viewers. Where'd those players go? Oh wait, they were a minority too.

And as these populations decline compared to the vast majority of casual players with hugely different expectations, they also further alienate themselves. No suprise, considering you'll bash them for being a minority if they so much as mention anything other than "oh we love living story updates".

Being a majority doesn't imply you should ignore the minorities. Alienating them with this copy-pasta argument made a 100 times doesn't fix our concerns, just further helps fuel more disagreement within the population. It also doesn't help anet create value from their development efforts, it effectively throws away many of their efforts. If we maintain the content well enough to support these players; this doesn't just lead to value from this new content. It also increases the amount old content is replayed and promoted. Content which is already paid for.

This is simply putting words into my mouth. I never said any of the stuff you're attributing to me. Maybe you need to look at the context of what I said and who I said it to.

A WoW player who comes to this game from a game largely centered on raids is amazed at how rarely raids came out. I point out to this person that since launch, we went 3.5 years without a single raid, and probably not that many people do raids. You wouldn't have to support raiders at all if you didn't actually add them to the game..but Anet did. So now they're in the game.

I'm certain if they were more popular, Anet would spend more time on them, because this is logical. This is how business works. When I ran a computer store, we had a PC section and a mac section. The mac section didn't get much business, so we didn't put many resources into it. That's a business decision.

If raids actually drove more people to this game, if harder content was what the bulk of the population was after, Heart of Thorns would have been more successful than it was. But it wasn't well accepted by the player base, so much so that Anet had to go back in and make changes to it. My guess is that it's not a priority because it's not giving Anet enough business to be a priority. A business has to put it's resources into what makes it money.

I'm not saying Anet should or shouldn't. I'm talking about the reality of a business investing in it's own best interest, or where it perceives it's own best interest to be. You've never seen me say they shouldn't put resources into WvW. I'm simply explaining to a raider who's amazed by the lack of support that raids get that this playerbase was casual as hell for years before the first raid ever got introduced, and that's why it's not supported.

I'd call that a reasonable assessment.

[Vayne.8563]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Amaranthe.3578 said:

@"Etheri.5406" said:

casually enjoy the open world content

If you ask for any content that isn't exactly this; then you'll get an army of angry casuals telling you how you're a minority; this content isn't good and just a side project and only their open world / living story content matters.

If you say that regardless of that, content is very slow, they'll say you're playing too much or playing through it too quickly.

If you compare to other games or the content cadence we've literally had in the past; they'll deny most of it.

The truth is, anet's content output has drastically reduced.

If you enjoy hardcore or skill-based mmorpg gaming, then yes this is not the right game for you. If you aren't heavily invested into communities or the game, I suggest you find something else. It hasn't and won't get any better.

I understand that gw2 is a casual mmo at heart and ita main target demographic are very casual players.Which is fine since Im very casual myself, but more than 6 month for 3 raid bosses and a fractal per year is something I cant wrap my mind around.The thing is that withiut a "hardcore" community there is no community at all due to the trickle down effect...if there are no hc raiders,there wont be casual raiders since there bo where to progressno casual raiders>no occasion raiders = a very poor pve community

Raids didn't exist in this game for 3.5 years. What boggles my mind is people who thing raids are a thing in this game at all. They're really a side show. Only Anet knows what percentage of the playerbase raids, but I'm guessing it's very very small, because if a fairly large portion of the playerbase did it, they'd come out more off.

This game, in PvE, has always been centered around the open world and it's why most of us are here (in my opinion). Those who focus on raids think the open world is boring. I don't and never have. But I don't particularly enjoy raiding.

Actually you can get a pretty good idea about the percentage of people who raid. Few weeks ago a friend of mine did some digging in GW2Efficiency, comparing specific data from the statistics on the site with statements from GW2 devs. The numbers from gw2eff were a pretty good match on all criteria he checked, so we concluded the site can be regarded as a representative for the community as a whole.

So having that in mind, you just check the unlock statistics for e.g.

Fire Extinguisher

achievement which is awarded for killing Sabetha. So no, it's not a very very small percentage. A lot of people have progressed this far.

Wait a second. You don't think people who raid are not more likely to use Guild Wars 2 efficiency?

Casuals are less likely to raid and use Guild Wars 2 efficiency than most people in my opinion. Only a tiny tiny percentage of my casual guild uses gw2-efficiency. Most don't even know it exists. Everyone who raids in my guild, I can guarantee you, uses it. Not that many raid, but of the 400 or so people in my guild, the 10-15 who actually raid, all use GW 2 efficiency.

This assumption that gw2 efficiency somehow represents a microcosm of the playerbase is, in my mind, not supportable.

I forgot the specific, but I did seem a very solid conclusion. I was surprised as well. The numbers also suggested surprisingly high percentage of the overall playerbase using efficiency. So even worst-case scenarios where all raiders used efficiency ended up with numbers like 10% raiders. Which is still not "very very small". It's a considerable part of the community, especially since this was a very conservative estimate.

10% is very small,. because there are only 162,000 accounts on GW2 efficiency. If that's a significant portion of the community I'd be very surprised. And if most of the people on there are more dedicated, thus more likely to raid, then that 10% would be less than 10%. I'm simply saying using efficiency as a baseline is likely to be misleading, certainly that's my take on it.

[Vayne.8563]

@Draco.9480 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Amaranthe.3578 said:

@"Etheri.5406" said:

casually enjoy the open world content

If you ask for any content that isn't exactly this; then you'll get an army of angry casuals telling you how you're a minority; this content isn't good and just a side project and only their open world / living story content matters.

If you say that regardless of that, content is very slow, they'll say you're playing too much or playing through it too quickly.

If you compare to other games or the content cadence we've literally had in the past; they'll deny most of it.

The truth is, anet's content output has drastically reduced.

If you enjoy hardcore or skill-based mmorpg gaming, then yes this is not the right game for you. If you aren't heavily invested into communities or the game, I suggest you find something else. It hasn't and won't get any better.

I understand that gw2 is a casual mmo at heart and ita main target demographic are very casual players.Which is fine since Im very casual myself, but more than 6 month for 3 raid bosses and a fractal per year is something I cant wrap my mind around.The thing is that withiut a "hardcore" community there is no community at all due to the trickle down effect...if there are no hc raiders,there wont be casual raiders since there bo where to progressno casual raiders>no occasion raiders = a very poor pve community

Raids didn't exist in this game for 3.5 years. What boggles my mind is people who thing raids are a thing in this game at all. They're really a side show. Only Anet knows what percentage of the playerbase raids, but I'm guessing it's very very small, because if a fairly large portion of the playerbase did it, they'd come out more off.

This game, in PvE, has always been centered around the open world and it's why most of us are here (in my opinion). Those who focus on raids think the open world is boring. I don't and never have. But I don't particularly enjoy raiding.

that's why anet lost so many players in those 3 years where there was that useless open world achievements and living story thingy. it didn't work and didn't bring enough funds. so they decided to make expansion with raiders to keep players playing and not to get bored fast. if no raids more than half of the community wouldn't even play the game anymore and there would be nothing to do. what's the pointing zerging tons of mobs in open world. everyone cna press aa and get reward. the reward doesn't mean anything if anyone can do it easily."They're really a side show." - you have no idea what you're talking about."but I'm guessing it's very very small" - you don't know that, and you guess without any basis."This game, in PvE, has always been centered around the open world and it's why most of us are here (in my opinion)" - that's why so many quit cuz it was based on boring content and so are you. and again you express an opinion without any evidence."Those who focus on raids think the open world is boring. I don't and never have. But I don't particularly enjoy raiding. " - cuz it's boring, if you enjoy zerging mobs in open world then you have no skill. and how is raid is boring? did you try it? or you guess again and make baseless opinion.

Not true. They came out with a harder expansion and raids and lost enough people to go back and redo HOT to make it easier, because it turns out, too many people in the community don't want that challenging content. The real issue is finding the sweet spot.

After HoT launched, all we got for 9 months was raids and PvP seasons and the game was in dire straights. It lost revenue. Do you want to guess why PoF was released as an anti hot? More soloable, less challenging, less timed metas that meant less altogether. Why would Anet do this if HoT was so successful?

[Vayne.8563]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:Raids didn't exist in this game for 3.5 years. What boggles my mind is people who thing raids are a thing in this game at all. They're really a side show. Only Anet knows what percentage of the playerbase raids, but I'm guessing it's very very small, because if a fairly large portion of the playerbase did it, they'd come out more off.

Well it's not like we get much Open World content either, but the majority of the population is playing Open World, yet we get so little of it. And by Open World I mean repeatable open world encounters. Yes we got a new map with Episode 3, but the meta is boring, the map itself lacks reasons to revisit it, other than the achievement grind for the turrets. The bosses and events use old mechanics, and there is nothing new. A Bug in the System was also bad regarding the open world, Sandswept Isles is also barren and lacks players, as much as Domain Kourna does. Daybreak was fine, sure it had the Palawadan meta which wasn't very exciting, but I think Amala was a nice Open World boss. The zone itself had way more things to do including acquiring 2 brand new weapon sets (!!!) something rather unique for a Living World episode.

Always people on Sandswept Isles and frankly I find people in every Season 3 map and every Season 4 map so far. That's because it's not designed to zerg. People seem to think that if you don't have something like Palawadan or Auric Basin, a zone is dead. It's simply not true. A zone is populated and events tend to get done. They're simply done by people who don't want to zerg. There are plenty of us around, but you don't see us all together in one place, so it's easy to assume we're low in numbers.

I'm relatively sure that's not the case.

[Feanor.2358]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Amaranthe.3578 said:

@"Etheri.5406" said:

casually enjoy the open world content

If you ask for any content that isn't exactly this; then you'll get an army of angry casuals telling you how you're a minority; this content isn't good and just a side project and only their open world / living story content matters.

If you say that regardless of that, content is very slow, they'll say you're playing too much or playing through it too quickly.

If you compare to other games or the content cadence we've literally had in the past; they'll deny most of it.

The truth is, anet's content output has drastically reduced.

If you enjoy hardcore or skill-based mmorpg gaming, then yes this is not the right game for you. If you aren't heavily invested into communities or the game, I suggest you find something else. It hasn't and won't get any better.

I understand that gw2 is a casual mmo at heart and ita main target demographic are very casual players.Which is fine since Im very casual myself, but more than 6 month for 3 raid bosses and a fractal per year is something I cant wrap my mind around.The thing is that withiut a "hardcore" community there is no community at all due to the trickle down effect...if there are no hc raiders,there wont be casual raiders since there bo where to progressno casual raiders>no occasion raiders = a very poor pve community

Raids didn't exist in this game for 3.5 years. What boggles my mind is people who thing raids are a thing in this game at all. They're really a side show. Only Anet knows what percentage of the playerbase raids, but I'm guessing it's very very small, because if a fairly large portion of the playerbase did it, they'd come out more off.

This game, in PvE, has always been centered around the open world and it's why most of us are here (in my opinion). Those who focus on raids think the open world is boring. I don't and never have. But I don't particularly enjoy raiding.

Actually you can get a pretty good idea about the percentage of people who raid. Few weeks ago a friend of mine did some digging in GW2Efficiency, comparing specific data from the statistics on the site with statements from GW2 devs. The numbers from gw2eff were a pretty good match on all criteria he checked, so we concluded the site can be regarded as a representative for the community as a whole.

So having that in mind, you just check the unlock statistics for e.g.

Fire Extinguisher

achievement which is awarded for killing Sabetha. So no, it's not a very very small percentage. A lot of people have progressed this far.

Wait a second. You don't think people who raid are not more likely to use Guild Wars 2 efficiency?

Casuals are less likely to raid and use Guild Wars 2 efficiency than most people in my opinion. Only a tiny tiny percentage of my casual guild uses gw2-efficiency. Most don't even know it exists. Everyone who raids in my guild, I can guarantee you, uses it. Not that many raid, but of the 400 or so people in my guild, the 10-15 who actually raid, all use GW 2 efficiency.

This assumption that gw2 efficiency somehow represents a microcosm of the playerbase is, in my mind, not supportable.

I forgot the specific, but I did seem a very solid conclusion. I was surprised as well. The numbers also suggested surprisingly high percentage of the overall playerbase using efficiency. So even worst-case scenarios where all raiders used efficiency ended up with numbers like 10% raiders. Which is still not "very very small". It's a considerable part of the community, especially since this was a very conservative estimate.

10% is very small,. because there are only 162,000 accounts on GW2 efficiency. If that's a significant portion of the community I'd be very surprised. And if most of the people on there are more dedicated, thus more likely to raid, then that 10% would be less than 10%. I'm simply saying using efficiency as a baseline is likely to be misleading, certainly that's my take on it.

The number on efficiency is (almost) 20%. 10% is the most conservative estimate we came up with, accounting for people not using the site. So again, no, it's not very small. You're right to question external data sources and to be wary of skewed data. But it was accounted for in this case.

[Etheri.5406]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Etheri.5406 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Amaranthe.3578 said:

@Etheri.5406 said:

casually enjoy the open world content

If you ask for any content that isn't exactly this; then you'll get an army of angry casuals telling you how you're a minority; this content isn't good and just a side project and only their open world / living story content matters.

If you say that regardless of that, content is very slow, they'll say you're playing too much or playing through it too quickly.

If you compare to other games or the content cadence we've literally had in the past; they'll deny most of it.

The truth is, anet's content output has drastically reduced.

If you enjoy hardcore or skill-based mmorpg gaming, then yes this is not the right game for you. If you aren't heavily invested into communities or the game, I suggest you find something else. It hasn't and won't get any better.

I understand that gw2 is a casual mmo at heart and ita main target demographic are very casual players.Which is fine since Im very casual myself, but more than 6 month for 3 raid bosses and a fractal per year is something I cant wrap my mind around.The thing is that withiut a "hardcore" community there is no community at all due to the trickle down effect...if there are no hc raiders,there wont be casual raiders since there bo where to progressno casual raiders>no occasion raiders = a very poor pve community

Raids didn't exist in this game for 3.5 years. What boggles my mind is people who thing raids are a thing in this game at all. They're really a side show. Only Anet knows what percentage of the playerbase raids, but I'm guessing it's very very small, because if a fairly large portion of the playerbase did it, they'd come out more off.

This game, in PvE, has always been centered around the open world and it's why most of us are here (in my opinion). Those who focus on raids think the open world is boring. I don't and never have. But I don't particularly enjoy raiding.

Actually you can get a pretty good idea about the percentage of people who raid. Few weeks ago a friend of mine did some digging in GW2Efficiency, comparing specific data from the statistics on the site with statements from GW2 devs. The numbers from gw2eff were a pretty good match on all criteria he checked, so we concluded the site can be regarded as a representative for the community as a whole.

So having that in mind, you just check the unlock statistics for e.g.

Fire Extinguisher

achievement which is awarded for killing Sabetha. So no, it's not a very very small percentage. A lot of people have progressed this far.

Wait a second. You don't think people who raid are not more likely to use Guild Wars 2 efficiency?

Casuals are less likely to raid and use Guild Wars 2 efficiency than most people in my opinion. Only a tiny tiny percentage of my casual guild uses gw2-efficiency. Most don't even know it exists. Everyone who raids in my guild, I can guarantee you, uses it. Not that many raid, but of the 400 or so people in my guild, the 10-15 who actually raid, all use GW 2 efficiency.

This assumption that gw2 efficiency somehow represents a microcosm of the playerbase is, in my mind, not supportable.

And here we have it again."We are the majority, and there is no reason to further support any minorities". The same attitude that results in alienating plenty of other players. Funny, a game so focussed on equality and playing how you like being so constant aggresive regarding any gameplay that isn't their prefered more. Funny, coming from a community that considers itself the friendliest of all mmorpgs.

Yet you can't discuss WvW without being told the game is about PvE. You can't discuss PvP without being told it's toxic and anet should let it die. And that has been the case for what, 5 years? You can't ask for raid content without being told they're a side project. Meanwhile not one of them have seen content in half a year or more.

You know what's a waste of effort? Producing something requiring a lot of effort which isn't enjoyed, used or worthwhile. Like producing strondhold or guildhalls and letting them die completely. Like guildmissions and letting them die, too. Or perhaps desert bl. Or producing constant new living story maps or meta's which are barely played because their issues aren't fixed or their rewards aren't balanced - by which I mean istan gives better loot so why bother.

Do you think anet is in a better or worse state by losing major fractions its entire WvW / PvP / hardcore PvE / ... communities? I'll assume you enjoy it - it further makes you the majority! Yay! It proves you were right - PvE is more popular and you're an even bigger majority! Now surely we should only make content that we enjoy; right? Except it makes playing WvW - ESPECIALLY for players who just wanna jump in and enjoy it - worse. It makes raids - again especially for those who just wanna jump in and learn occasionally - worse. It makes PvP drastically more unfair and worse, too. Bye bye trickle-down economics because there's not enough players to trickle down from. Bye revenue from the dedicated players who enjoyed this. Byebye to a lot of the user created content, tools, publicity, ... I remember GvG's getting 1-2k+ viewers. Where'd those players go? Oh wait, they were a minority too.

And as these populations decline compared to the vast majority of casual players with hugely different expectations, they also further alienate themselves. No suprise, considering you'll bash them for being a minority if they so much as mention anything other than "oh we love living story updates".

Being a majority doesn't imply you should ignore the minorities. Alienating them with this copy-pasta argument made a 100 times doesn't fix our concerns, just further helps fuel more disagreement within the population. It also doesn't help anet create value from their development efforts, it effectively throws away many of their efforts. If we maintain the content well enough to support these players; this doesn't just lead to value from this new content. It also increases the amount old content is replayed and promoted. Content which is already paid for.

This is simply putting words into my mouth. I never said any of the stuff you're attributing to me. Maybe you need to look at the context of what I said and who I said it to.

A WoW player who comes to this game from a game largely centered on raids is amazed at how rarely raids came out. I point out to this person that since launch, we went 3.5 years without a single raid, and probably not that many people do raids. You wouldn't have to support raiders at all if you didn't actually add them to the game..but Anet did. So now they're in the game.

I'm certain if they were more popular, Anet would spend more time on them, because this is logical. This is how business works. When I ran a computer store, we had a PC section and a mac section. The mac section didn't get much business, so we didn't put many resources into it. That's a business decision.

If raids actually drove more people to this game, if harder content was what the bulk of the population was after, Heart of Thorns would have been more successful than it was. But it wasn't well accepted by the player base, so much so that Anet had to go back in and make changes to it. My guess is that it's not a priority because it's not giving Anet enough business to be a priority. A business has to put it's resources into what makes it money.

I'm not saying Anet should or shouldn't. I'm talking about the reality of a business investing in it's own best interest, or where it perceives it's own best interest to be. You've never seen me say they shouldn't put resources into WvW. I'm simply explaining to a raider who's amazed by the lack of support that raids get that this playerbase was casual as hell for years before the first raid ever got introduced, and that's why it's not supported.

I'd call that a reasonable assessment.

Here we go again.

Let's take that HoT example. You talk about going back to it and fixing things, as if it's a bad thing. Players said it was not succesful and they had to revise many mistakes they made - that is true. Yet HoT content is currently more active than PoF content outside of istan. It's almost as if the issue wasn't just the difficulty, but the HUGE AMOUNT OF ISSUES HoT had on release. You know, forcing EVERYONE ingame to play HoT maps for specializations; a LOT of bugs; huge mastery grind which was often required to explore the maps; low rewards; ...Fuck, WvW was LITERALLY lagging out every 2 hours on a timer for months... and you say "oh no they had to revise content". What the fuck are you on about? I remember they went and "fixed" ORR because it was too difficult for some players who complained. Not initial design; just carebears looking for their place crying if something kills them.

And yet - even the revision for PvE was long before any other revisions and heavily focussed on casuals I'd say HoT overall was a very succesful expansion; would you not? That's why WvW is my example - they had a large community asking for fixes and changes and they got a grand big nothing. Not a "casual pve drought" they qq'd about for years. No, far worse which ended up killing most of the community. And you know what any complaints here received? Yeah but, PvE is clearly the focus of this game.

The argument that we should neglect parts of the game; of anets product, because it's not played by the majority of players is absurd. Especially if their metrics are based on the fact that EVERYONE in the game is forced to play living story. I remember certain anet devs saying "Everyone in WvW really enjoys PvE". Yeah that really pissed some people off. One; they really don't. Two; they were literally forced to go PvE to play the expansion content... Are you suprised the numbers add up this way?

If anet does what you ask, it's a business decision based on numbers they know better. If anet doesnt' do what you ask, it's a mistake. Meanwhile there's plenty of things which are CLEARLY mistakes by anet; showing they do make mistakes and their data and business sense might not be as accurate as you're pretending.

I'm glad you like to compare to simplistic examples; now lets look at things more nuanced. Playerbase is currently predominantly casual. Probably because development has been... insanely heavily focussed on that; and probably made quite a few mistakes in the past. I seem to remember a healthy WvW community which was pretty big. They ADD VALUE to the game AND to PvE content while sponsoring their own content. Except when you piss them all off and make them leave... Perhaps by adding map that plain doesn't work and not fixing it within 2 months (???) of your expansion after ignoring them for almost 3-4 years. Doing the EXACT SAME to PvP.

You're a VIDEO GAME; very similar to subscription-style products rather than a generic store. A store has stock, and as it sells they buy new. Whatever is bought most, you invest in to sell more. Easy enough. Subscriptions are very different. Say you're selling journals which focus on clickbait. Readers demand more actual journalism; and you add a few actual articles each time. Most of the community is still happy with the clickbait - that's why they were there and how it was. Some of them enjoy the actual articles, some don't, and some mostly read for the few good articles. It takes time for the actual articles to develop and grow. Nobody goes to the store and just picks up the paper for a single article - you need some kind of consistency so your fanbase can grow and develop. But anet did that! They created a relatively healthy raid / fractal scene and they invested quite a significant amount of dev efforts into this; resulting in 5 raid wings, better PvE balance than EVER before and fractal updates. This content IMPROVES the value of all other content, by making the game more alluring and diverse and giving players more freedom to cross over and play as they feel like. And they slowly but surely create a healthy population around it, that grows.

Sound familiar? Probably not. Like WvW? A huge system that must've taken some serious development efforts, only to barely review it in the 5 years of the game being out. It ALREADY took lots of investment. It ALREADY had a population, that would've grown and not left had they given it the attention it required.

Except at some point, they stop. Same for raids. 1 article per journal gives people that read for this something to pick up every paper. 1 article a year won't keep them as stable customers, they leave. That's what happens to raids. Not getting new raids doesnt' mean "nobody is playing the new raid". It also means a LOT less people are playing the OLD raids. And the CM fractals. And less pugs who "might like to raid one day" are getting into raiding; because there's no LFG's. And many players who are into it are telling others to leave, and go elsewhere - because anet shows us we're not important enough to support.

And the result? The result is that the raids we ADDED to the game will be less profitable. Nothing else. Nothing more.

"Anet knows better and makes business decisions". Was stronghold a business decision? I call it a waste of money. Was desert bl a business decision? Was making istan stupidly rewarding compared to anything else in the game a "business decision"? I'm sur the majority of players "want" high rewards in istan... Until they eventually realise the effect it has on the game AND their own gameplay - if ever.

Reasonable cherrypicking indeed. :trollface:Last time I checked, HoT is currently providing us with more content; replayability and has higher activity than PoF. Perhaps supporting your existing content isn't a terrible idea. And again - if anything shows consistency it's that casuals will cry about things being too difficult for them no matter how easy it is. See : current blitz event, which was perfectly fine 4 years ago before all this powercreep. Hahaha.

[Vayne.8563]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Amaranthe.3578 said:

@"Etheri.5406" said:

casually enjoy the open world content

If you ask for any content that isn't exactly this; then you'll get an army of angry casuals telling you how you're a minority; this content isn't good and just a side project and only their open world / living story content matters.

If you say that regardless of that, content is very slow, they'll say you're playing too much or playing through it too quickly.

If you compare to other games or the content cadence we've literally had in the past; they'll deny most of it.

The truth is, anet's content output has drastically reduced.

If you enjoy hardcore or skill-based mmorpg gaming, then yes this is not the right game for you. If you aren't heavily invested into communities or the game, I suggest you find something else. It hasn't and won't get any better.

I understand that gw2 is a casual mmo at heart and ita main target demographic are very casual players.Which is fine since Im very casual myself, but more than 6 month for 3 raid bosses and a fractal per year is something I cant wrap my mind around.The thing is that withiut a "hardcore" community there is no community at all due to the trickle down effect...if there are no hc raiders,there wont be casual raiders since there bo where to progressno casual raiders>no occasion raiders = a very poor pve community

Raids didn't exist in this game for 3.5 years. What boggles my mind is people who thing raids are a thing in this game at all. They're really a side show. Only Anet knows what percentage of the playerbase raids, but I'm guessing it's very very small, because if a fairly large portion of the playerbase did it, they'd come out more off.

This game, in PvE, has always been centered around the open world and it's why most of us are here (in my opinion). Those who focus on raids think the open world is boring. I don't and never have. But I don't particularly enjoy raiding.

Actually you can get a pretty good idea about the percentage of people who raid. Few weeks ago a friend of mine did some digging in GW2Efficiency, comparing specific data from the statistics on the site with statements from GW2 devs. The numbers from gw2eff were a pretty good match on all criteria he checked, so we concluded the site can be regarded as a representative for the community as a whole.

So having that in mind, you just check the unlock statistics for e.g.

Fire Extinguisher

achievement which is awarded for killing Sabetha. So no, it's not a very very small percentage. A lot of people have progressed this far.

Wait a second. You don't think people who raid are not more likely to use Guild Wars 2 efficiency?

Casuals are less likely to raid and use Guild Wars 2 efficiency than most people in my opinion. Only a tiny tiny percentage of my casual guild uses gw2-efficiency. Most don't even know it exists. Everyone who raids in my guild, I can guarantee you, uses it. Not that many raid, but of the 400 or so people in my guild, the 10-15 who actually raid, all use GW 2 efficiency.

This assumption that gw2 efficiency somehow represents a microcosm of the playerbase is, in my mind, not supportable.

I forgot the specific, but I did seem a very solid conclusion. I was surprised as well. The numbers also suggested surprisingly high percentage of the overall playerbase using efficiency. So even worst-case scenarios where all raiders used efficiency ended up with numbers like 10% raiders. Which is still not "very very small". It's a considerable part of the community, especially since this was a very conservative estimate.

10% is very small,. because there are only 162,000 accounts on GW2 efficiency. If that's a significant portion of the community I'd be very surprised. And if most of the people on there are more dedicated, thus more likely to raid, then that 10% would be less than 10%. I'm simply saying using efficiency as a baseline is likely to be misleading, certainly that's my take on it.

The number on efficiency is (almost) 20%. 10% is the most conservative estimate we came up with, accounting for people not using the site. So again, no, it's not very small. You're right to question external data sources and to be wary of skewed data. But it was accounted for in this case.

With anything like this, there's a margin of error, often unreported. If the margin of error is 4%, your 10% could be 6%.

At any rate, not buying it, sorry.

[Vayne.8563]

@Etheri.5406 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Etheri.5406 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Amaranthe.3578 said:

@Etheri.5406 said:

casually enjoy the open world content

If you ask for any content that isn't exactly this; then you'll get an army of angry casuals telling you how you're a minority; this content isn't good and just a side project and only their open world / living story content matters.

If you say that regardless of that, content is very slow, they'll say you're playing too much or playing through it too quickly.

If you compare to other games or the content cadence we've literally had in the past; they'll deny most of it.

The truth is, anet's content output has drastically reduced.

If you enjoy hardcore or skill-based mmorpg gaming, then yes this is not the right game for you. If you aren't heavily invested into communities or the game, I suggest you find something else. It hasn't and won't get any better.

I understand that gw2 is a casual mmo at heart and ita main target demographic are very casual players.Which is fine since Im very casual myself, but more than 6 month for 3 raid bosses and a fractal per year is something I cant wrap my mind around.The thing is that withiut a "hardcore" community there is no community at all due to the trickle down effect...if there are no hc raiders,there wont be casual raiders since there bo where to progressno casual raiders>no occasion raiders = a very poor pve community

Raids didn't exist in this game for 3.5 years. What boggles my mind is people who thing raids are a thing in this game at all. They're really a side show. Only Anet knows what percentage of the playerbase raids, but I'm guessing it's very very small, because if a fairly large portion of the playerbase did it, they'd come out more off.

This game, in PvE, has always been centered around the open world and it's why most of us are here (in my opinion). Those who focus on raids think the open world is boring. I don't and never have. But I don't particularly enjoy raiding.

Actually you can get a pretty good idea about the percentage of people who raid. Few weeks ago a friend of mine did some digging in GW2Efficiency, comparing specific data from the statistics on the site with statements from GW2 devs. The numbers from gw2eff were a pretty good match on all criteria he checked, so we concluded the site can be regarded as a representative for the community as a whole.

So having that in mind, you just check the unlock statistics for e.g.

Fire Extinguisher

achievement which is awarded for killing Sabetha. So no, it's not a very very small percentage. A lot of people have progressed this far.

Wait a second. You don't think people who raid are not more likely to use Guild Wars 2 efficiency?

Casuals are less likely to raid and use Guild Wars 2 efficiency than most people in my opinion. Only a tiny tiny percentage of my casual guild uses gw2-efficiency. Most don't even know it exists. Everyone who raids in my guild, I can guarantee you, uses it. Not that many raid, but of the 400 or so people in my guild, the 10-15 who actually raid, all use GW 2 efficiency.

This assumption that gw2 efficiency somehow represents a microcosm of the playerbase is, in my mind, not supportable.

And here we have it again."We are the majority, and there is no reason to further support any minorities". The same attitude that results in alienating plenty of other players. Funny, a game so focussed on equality and playing how you like being so constant aggresive regarding any gameplay that isn't their prefered more. Funny, coming from a community that considers itself the friendliest of all mmorpgs.

Yet you can't discuss WvW without being told the game is about PvE. You can't discuss PvP without being told it's toxic and anet should let it die. And that has been the case for what, 5 years? You can't ask for raid content without being told they're a side project. Meanwhile not one of them have seen content in half a year or more.

You know what's a waste of effort? Producing something requiring a lot of effort which isn't enjoyed, used or worthwhile. Like producing strondhold or guildhalls and letting them die completely. Like guildmissions and letting them die, too. Or perhaps desert bl. Or producing constant new living story maps or meta's which are barely played because their issues aren't fixed or their rewards aren't balanced - by which I mean istan gives better loot so why bother.

Do you think anet is in a better or worse state by losing major fractions its entire WvW / PvP / hardcore PvE / ... communities? I'll assume you enjoy it - it further makes you the majority! Yay! It proves you were right - PvE is more popular and you're an even bigger majority! Now surely we should only make content that we enjoy; right? Except it makes playing WvW - ESPECIALLY for players who just wanna jump in and enjoy it - worse. It makes raids - again especially for those who just wanna jump in and learn occasionally - worse. It makes PvP drastically more unfair and worse, too. Bye bye trickle-down economics because there's not enough players to trickle down from. Bye revenue from the dedicated players who enjoyed this. Byebye to a lot of the user created content, tools, publicity, ... I remember GvG's getting 1-2k+ viewers. Where'd those players go? Oh wait, they were a minority too.

And as these populations decline compared to the vast majority of casual players with hugely different expectations, they also further alienate themselves. No suprise, considering you'll bash them for being a minority if they so much as mention anything other than "oh we love living story updates".

Being a majority doesn't imply you should ignore the minorities. Alienating them with this copy-pasta argument made a 100 times doesn't fix our concerns, just further helps fuel more disagreement within the population. It also doesn't help anet create value from their development efforts, it effectively throws away many of their efforts. If we maintain the content well enough to support these players; this doesn't just lead to value from this new content. It also increases the amount old content is replayed and promoted. Content which is already paid for.

This is simply putting words into my mouth. I never said any of the stuff you're attributing to me. Maybe you need to look at the context of what I said and who I said it to.

A WoW player who comes to this game from a game largely centered on raids is amazed at how rarely raids came out. I point out to this person that since launch, we went 3.5 years without a single raid, and probably not that many people do raids. You wouldn't have to support raiders at all if you didn't actually add them to the game..but Anet did. So now they're in the game.

I'm certain if they were more popular, Anet would spend more time on them, because this is logical. This is how business works. When I ran a computer store, we had a PC section and a mac section. The mac section didn't get much business, so we didn't put many resources into it. That's a business decision.

If raids actually drove more people to this game, if harder content was what the bulk of the population was after, Heart of Thorns would have been more successful than it was. But it wasn't well accepted by the player base, so much so that Anet had to go back in and make changes to it. My guess is that it's not a priority because it's not giving Anet enough business to be a priority. A business has to put it's resources into what makes it money.

I'm not saying Anet should or shouldn't. I'm talking about the reality of a business investing in it's own best interest, or where it perceives it's own best interest to be. You've never seen me say they shouldn't put resources into WvW. I'm simply explaining to a raider who's amazed by the lack of support that raids get that this playerbase was casual as hell for years before the first raid ever got introduced, and that's why it's not supported.

I'd call that a reasonable assessment.

Here we go again.

Let's take that HoT example. You talk about going back to it and fixing things, as if it's a bad thing. Players said it was not succesful and they had to revise many mistakes they made - that is true. Yet HoT content is currently more active than PoF content outside of istan. It's almost as if the issue wasn't just the difficulty, but the HUGE AMOUNT OF ISSUES HoT had on release. You know, forcing EVERYONE ingame to play HoT maps for specializations; a LOT of bugs; huge mastery grind which was often required to explore the maps; low rewards; ...kitten, WvW was LITERALLY lagging out every 2 hours on a timer for months... and you say "oh no they had to revise content". What the kitten are you on about? I remember they went and "fixed" ORR because it was too difficult for some players who complained. Not initial design; just carebears looking for their place crying if something kills them.

And yet - even the revision for PvE was long before any other revisions and heavily focussed on casuals I'd say HoT overall was a very succesful expansion; would you not? That's why WvW is my example - they had a large community asking for fixes and changes and they got a grand big nothing. Not a "casual pve drought" they qq'd about for years. No, far worse which ended up killing most of the community. And you know what any complaints here received? Yeah but, PvE is clearly the focus of this game.

The argument that we should neglect parts of the game; of anets product, because it's not played by the majority of players is absurd. Especially if their metrics are based on the fact that EVERYONE in the game is forced to play living story. I remember certain anet devs saying "Everyone in WvW really enjoys PvE". Yeah that really pissed some people off. One; they really don't. Two; they were literally forced to go PvE to play the expansion content... Are you suprised the numbers add up this way?

If anet does what you ask, it's a business decision based on numbers they know better. If anet doesnt' do what you ask, it's a mistake. Meanwhile there's plenty of things which are CLEARLY mistakes by anet; showing they do make mistakes and their data and business sense might not be as accurate as you're pretending.

I'm glad you like to compare to simplistic examples; now lets look at things more nuanced. Playerbase is currently predominantly casual. Probably because development has been... insanely heavily focussed on that; and probably made quite a few mistakes in the past. I seem to remember a healthy WvW community which was pretty big. They ADD VALUE to the game AND to PvE content while sponsoring their own content. Except when you kitten them all off and make them leave... Perhaps by adding map that plain doesn't work and not fixing it within 2 months (???) of your expansion after ignoring them for almost 3-4 years. Doing the EXACT SAME to PvP.

You're a VIDEO GAME; very similar to subscription-style products rather than a generic store. A store has stock, and as it sells they buy new. Whatever is bought most, you invest in to sell more. Easy enough. Subscriptions are very different. Say you're selling journals which focus on clickbait. Readers demand more actual journalism; and you add a few actual articles each time. Most of the community is still happy with the clickbait - that's why they were there and how it was. Some of them enjoy the actual articles, some don't, and some mostly read for the few good articles. It takes time for the actual articles to develop and grow. Nobody goes to the store and just picks up the paper for a single article - you need some kind of consistency so your fanbase can grow and develop. But anet did that! They created a relatively healthy raid / fractal scene and they invested quite a significant amount of dev efforts into this; resulting in 5 raid wings, better PvE balance than EVER before and fractal updates. This content IMPROVES the value of all other content, by making the game more alluring and diverse and giving players more freedom to cross over and play as they feel like. And they slowly but surely create a healthy population around it, that grows.

Sound familiar? Probably not. Like WvW? A huge system that must've taken some serious development efforts, only to barely review it in the 5 years of the game being out. It ALREADY took lots of investment. It ALREADY had a population, that would've grown and not left had they given it the attention it required.

Except at some point, they stop. Same for raids. 1 article per journal gives people that read for this something to pick up every paper. 1 article a year won't keep them as stable customers, they leave. That's what happens to raids. Not getting new raids doesnt' mean "nobody is playing the new raid". It also means a LOT less people are playing the OLD raids. And the CM fractals. And less pugs who "might like to raid one day" are getting into raiding; because there's no LFG's. And many players who are into it are telling others to leave, and go elsewhere - because anet shows us we're not important enough to support.

And the result? The result is that the raids we ADDED to the game will be less profitable. Nothing else. Nothing more.

"Anet knows better and makes business decisions". Was stronghold a business decision? I call it a waste of money. Was desert bl a business decision? Was making istan stupidly rewarding compared to anything else in the game a "business decision"? I'm sur the majority of players "want" high rewards in istan... Until they eventually realise the effect it has on the game AND their own gameplay - if ever.

Reasonable cherrypicking indeed. :trollface:Last time I checked, HoT is currently providing us with more content; replayability and has higher activity than PoF. Perhaps supporting your existing content isn't a terrible idea. And again - if anything shows consistency it's that casuals will cry about things being too difficult for them no matter how easy it is. See : current blitz event, which was perfectly fine 4 years ago before all this powercreep. Hahaha.

HoT requires people to spend more time in it to get mastery points. People complained about that and didn't like it. It drove people away. Some of those people came back to play PoF. Those people can go into HoT to get those mastery points now, because they now like the game more with some of the changes. You're drawing conclusions based on HOT being busier now. But HoT is also more timer based, and more likely to draw more people to the same point at the same time. Plenty of people playing PoF as well, but the game itself doesn't require people to zerg, so you see it less. It's larger, more spread out zones that don't do the same job of getting big groups together.

Which doesn't mean there are actually more people there, though it looks like it, even to me.

[Draco.9480]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:Raids didn't exist in this game for 3.5 years. What boggles my mind is people who thing raids are a thing in this game at all. They're really a side show. Only Anet knows what percentage of the playerbase raids, but I'm guessing it's very very small, because if a fairly large portion of the playerbase did it, they'd come out more off.

Well it's not like we get much Open World content either, but the majority of the population is playing Open World, yet we get so little of it. And by Open World I mean repeatable open world encounters. Yes we got a new map with Episode 3, but the meta is boring, the map itself lacks reasons to revisit it, other than the achievement grind for the turrets. The bosses and events use old mechanics, and there is nothing new. A Bug in the System was also bad regarding the open world, Sandswept Isles is also barren and lacks players, as much as Domain Kourna does. Daybreak was fine, sure it had the Palawadan meta which wasn't very exciting, but I think Amala was a nice Open World boss. The zone itself had way more things to do including acquiring 2 brand new weapon sets (!!!) something rather unique for a Living World episode.

Always people on Sandswept Isles and frankly I find people in every Season 3 map and every Season 4 map so far. That's because it's not designed to zerg. People seem to think that if you don't have something like Palawadan or Auric Basin, a zone is dead. It's simply not true. A zone is populated and events tend to get done. They're simply done by people who don't want to zerg. There are plenty of us around, but you don't see us all together in one place, so it's easy to assume we're low in numbers.

I'm relatively sure that's not the case.

yeah i see how many people play the desert maps compared to the jungle. it's a joke. you don't see much activity in desert. minority of people who can't do anything in this game besides doing events in maps going to istan to get extra rewards and destroyed the value of T6 mats and the collection exotic weapons for the elite specs of PoF. jungle is always active. in HoT there were tons of people playing pvp and raids more actively. then the casual players who got used to dungeons which is is lame content got angry cuz they couldn't sync with other people in gameplay and failed hard and gave up. best maps are the jungle which 3 and 4 layers that needed actually thinking how to explore it and not cheese it with mounts in open flat map that anyone can do without thinking. people only in instan for rewards and that's it. they play like zombies and don't really enjoy it. the seasons in PvP are actually are anti competitive cuz it puts randoms with you. at start it was cool till they removed the premade of 5 people which killed it. I don't enjoy playing pvp anymore cuz I've to play with people I don't know and everyone flame and blame each other. can't even form pvp guilds cuz can't choose static pvp teams.

[Vinceman.4572]

Lel, the jungle is active because of 3 meta event or event parts:

1. Wyvern in Verdant Brink for the daily gemstone - nothing else. The hardcore or non-casual community spawns on the platform because they have toons there. Almost no one is doing T4 on VB any more. It's kinda funny everytime you start the fight with the hardcore guys and good dmg and when the "casuals" arrive you need 4 times longer to get the hp-bar down.
2. Chak Gerent - Where people use one way point in Tangled Depths, namely "Ley-Line Confluence Waypoint" to get to the 4 lanes, rarely seen: "shroom up" so people kill the treasure shroom before the meta. Nobody is interested in anything else there. Oh and I forgot, most of the people are about 15-25 minute afk and just reserve their place on the map. Almost all of them are doing nothing till spawn due to a simple reason: There's nothing of important value to do.
3. Battle of Tarir - Right after Gerent the crowd switches over and meet some others that haven't participated in Gerent. Again, one meta fight, nothing else.

Do you know the situation afterwards? The maps are empty as before because there is nothing else left. Increase the rewards on Desolation and Vabbi meta and you'll have the same result for those maps and there will be no difference at all compared to the jungle maps. It's the rewards that bring people together. It has been like that in the past and it'll in the future. Same reason why people play Istan. Hey, even the freaking Silverwastes has a "RIBA" lfg on every hour at the day. You can also count fractals to that. The pure T4 + Recs variant is 20+g every day. Delete that + the need for precursor achievements and the lfg would be emptier than the earth after a nuclear war.

Tbh, the HoT maps are fine, the PoF maps too. When I wasn't interested in legendaries series 2, achievements and maxing out masteries I didn't spend any minute longer in the HoT sector. It's only the metas that bring people back. Hey even speed run guilds are there during night (qT south lane meme)...just because there's a meta and then they leave again.

In no way are the HoT maps better than the PoF maps. It's just about the meta rewards.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Feanor.2358 said:The numbers also suggested surprisingly high percentage of the overall playerbase using efficiency.Remember, that efficiency has somewhere around 160-170k accounts registered, not all of which are active. I certainly hope Anet has much more active accounts than that (especially since at the time after HoT launch, that number was estimated to at least exceed a million).

@Feanor.2358 said:The number on efficiency is (almost) 20%. 10% is the most conservative estimate we came up with, accounting for people not using the site.The number of gw2eff accounts with sabetha kill is ~30k. Using the most pessimistic estimate, it could be as low as 2% of the whole population (probably is higher, because i'm sure there are people with a kill that aren't registered, but personally i'd be surprised if it was as high as 10%).

[Malediktus.9250]

I can agree with @Etheri.5406. He is making a lot of good points and I can admit that despite having him on my ingame blocklist for annoying me in WvW lol.

Only about 1/3rd of the top 1000 AP players use gw2efficiency. And that is probably one of the more dedicated part of the playerbase.

[Feanor.2358]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:The numbers also suggested surprisingly high percentage of the overall playerbase using efficiency.Remember, that efficiency has somewhere around 160-170k accounts registered, not all of which are active. I certainly hope Anet has much more active accounts than that (especially since at the time after HoT launch, that number was estimated to at least exceed a million).

@Feanor.2358 said:The number on efficiency is (almost) 20%. 10% is the most conservative estimate we came up with, accounting for people not using the site.The number of gw2eff accounts with sabetha kill is ~30k. Using the most pessimistic estimate, it could be as low as 2% of the whole population (probably is higher, because i'm sure there are people with a kill that aren't registered, but personally i'd be surprised if it was as high as 10%).

The total number of accounts is irrelevant, it's the monthly active users that count. They will always be much lower.

[Rasta.2371]

GW2's primary problem is that it isn't GW1.

GW1 had the following going for it

Guild HallsBuild TemplatesVery good story, well written, living story much better delivered in Winds of Change, Hearts of the North and War in Kryta.solid dungeons, cool skins and good rewards for dungeons. Skins don't have crazy disco lights.okay farming/quests/ all instanced contenthad incredible pvp in GvG, rock solid arena PvP and Solid tournament HoH pvp. for those who don't know please see this.

Meh skill system, too many skills added and pve only skills started to cause issues especially for pvp.

GW2 Has

muh storymuh competitive pvpmuh dungeonsGood combat systemGreat open world/exploration/jump puzzlesFractal+raidDailies+achievments

why couldn't they just give us the best of both worlds!

[Astralporing.1957]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:The numbers also suggested surprisingly high percentage of the overall playerbase using efficiency.Remember, that efficiency has somewhere around 160-170k accounts registered, not all of which are active. I certainly hope Anet has much more active accounts than that (especially since at the time after HoT launch, that number was estimated to at least exceed a million).

@Feanor.2358 said:The number on efficiency is (almost) 20%. 10% is the most conservative estimate we came up with, accounting for people not using the site.The number of gw2eff accounts with sabetha kill is ~30k. Using the most pessimistic estimate, it could be as low as 2% of the whole population (probably is higher, because i'm sure there are people with a kill that aren't registered, but personally i'd be surprised if it was as high as 10%).

The total number of accounts is irrelevant, it's the monthly active users that count. They will always be much lower.That million i was talking about

was

monthly active users. Total accounts is over 10 mil now.

[Vayne.8563]

@Draco.9480 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:Raids didn't exist in this game for 3.5 years. What boggles my mind is people who thing raids are a thing in this game at all. They're really a side show. Only Anet knows what percentage of the playerbase raids, but I'm guessing it's very very small, because if a fairly large portion of the playerbase did it, they'd come out more off.

Well it's not like we get much Open World content either, but the majority of the population is playing Open World, yet we get so little of it. And by Open World I mean repeatable open world encounters. Yes we got a new map with Episode 3, but the meta is boring, the map itself lacks reasons to revisit it, other than the achievement grind for the turrets. The bosses and events use old mechanics, and there is nothing new. A Bug in the System was also bad regarding the open world, Sandswept Isles is also barren and lacks players, as much as Domain Kourna does. Daybreak was fine, sure it had the Palawadan meta which wasn't very exciting, but I think Amala was a nice Open World boss. The zone itself had way more things to do including acquiring 2 brand new weapon sets (!!!) something rather unique for a Living World episode.

Always people on Sandswept Isles and frankly I find people in every Season 3 map and every Season 4 map so far. That's because it's not designed to zerg. People seem to think that if you don't have something like Palawadan or Auric Basin, a zone is dead. It's simply not true. A zone is populated and events tend to get done. They're simply done by people who don't want to zerg. There are plenty of us around, but you don't see us all together in one place, so it's easy to assume we're low in numbers.

I'm relatively sure that's not the case.

yeah i see how many people play the desert maps compared to the jungle. it's a joke. you don't see much activity in desert. minority of people who can't do anything in this game besides doing events in maps going to istan to get extra rewards and destroyed the value of T6 mats and the collection exotic weapons for the elite specs of PoF. jungle is always active. in HoT there were tons of people playing pvp and raids more actively. then the casual players who got used to dungeons which is is lame content got angry cuz they couldn't sync with other people in gameplay and failed hard and gave up. best maps are the jungle which 3 and 4 layers that needed actually thinking how to explore it and not cheese it with mounts in open flat map that anyone can do without thinking. people only in instan for rewards and that's it. they play like zombies and don't really enjoy it. the seasons in PvP are actually are anti competitive cuz it puts randoms with you. at start it was cool till they removed the premade of 5 people which killed it. I don't enjoy playing pvp anymore cuz I've to play with people I don't know and everyone flame and blame each other. can't even form pvp guilds cuz can't choose static pvp teams.

Umm, I'm in the desert, sometimes for hours at a time, and there are always people there. I rock up to a hero point and I have people show up quite often, almost as often as they do in HoT maps. I run into smaller groups as often.

HoT maps are smaller, denser and on timers. There are definitely more people at META events in HOT. If only maps just consisted of metas. Your annecdotal evidence differs from mine Presumably you don't spend time in the desert.

[Obtena.7952]

No one should be surprised that GW2 doens't follow other MMO's standards ... that's why it's successful.

[zealex.9410]

@Amaranthe.3578 said:

@Vinceman.4572 said:@Etheri.5406:Sorry, but calling Cyninja toxic - one of the more helpful & friendlier people here in this subforum at least (I'm only reading and posting here because of too much garbage in the others which also don't interest me as instanced content player) - is just beyond any reasonable mind. Maybe you need a rest - from the game and/or the forums. Your posts are peppered with so much frustration which is not very healthy for the psyche. Just an advice, no offense!

@Amaranthe.3578 said:If they cant deliver a raid wing a fractal every 6 month something is really weird.

The dev team is not that big and my latest information was that fractal & raid team are one single team now. Having only 5-10 people working on all the instanced content seems reasonable for me as measured on the actual releases but I'm not a professional developer so I have no clue about their productivity. I'm not sure but I think we don't have much more info about that.

If the fract/raid team is 5-10 people it makes sense.Didnt realize anet is such a small company.

Arenanet has alot of staff. Compaired to oter developers they arent that small.

Iirc the company had around 400 ppl working for them last or 2 years ago.

[zealex.9410]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Amaranthe.3578 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Amaranthe.3578 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Amaranthe.3578 said:

@"Etheri.5406" said:

casually enjoy the open world content

If you ask for any content that isn't exactly this; then you'll get an army of angry casuals telling you how you're a minority; this content isn't good and just a side project and only their open world / living story content matters.

If you say that regardless of that, content is very slow, they'll say you're playing too much or playing through it too quickly.

If you compare to other games or the content cadence we've literally had in the past; they'll deny most of it.

The truth is, anet's content output has drastically reduced.

If you enjoy hardcore or skill-based mmorpg gaming, then yes this is not the right game for you. If you aren't heavily invested into communities or the game, I suggest you find something else. It hasn't and won't get any better.

I understand that gw2 is a casual mmo at heart and ita main target demographic are very casual players.Which is fine since Im very casual myself, but more than 6 month for 3 raid bosses and a fractal per year is something I cant wrap my mind around.The thing is that withiut a "hardcore" community there is no community at all due to the trickle down effect...if there are no hc raiders,there wont be casual raiders since there bo where to progressno casual raiders>no occasion raiders = a very poor pve community

Raids didn't exist in this game for 3.5 years. What boggles my mind is people who thing raids are a thing in this game at all. They're really a side show. Only Anet knows what percentage of the playerbase raids, but I'm guessing it's very very small, because if a fairly large portion of the playerbase did it, they'd come out more off.

This game, in PvE, has always been centered around the open world and it's why most of us are here (in my opinion). Those who focus on raids think the open world is boring. I don't and never have. But I don't particularly enjoy raiding.

The problem as I see it is that neither raids nor fractals(dungrons have been abandoned long ago) are released with any sensible pace, so if instanced group content is something you enjoy even as a side show(like myself) it just feels like a joke.If the main focus on the game is open-world content and story content it doesnt really show either.

Well it does show, because story content generally comes out every 2-3 months, with a new zone. That shows commitment to open world.

Consider how little story there is in a "LS" episode.

Story content isn't open world. You're still missing the point. Guys like me have plenty to do. Collections are part of open world content, not story INSTANCES.

Consider u can be done with the map in 4 to 5 days. (unless theres a timegated collection)