Discussion Thread: ArenaNet News of 21 February 2019 [Merged]

[Tekoneiric.6817]

I definitely feel for to folks being laid off. Having been through layoffs myself I know how rough it can be. I hope they are able to quickly transition into new opportunities to avoid the stress of protracted unemployment.

One way ANet could save money is using something I suggested in the past. When they build new PvE maps set up content paths on them so that they can be shared with raid content. Have them released as a raid first but instanced down to just the raid path plus use environmental effects to limit the greater view of the maps. Once the maps are opened to PvE they would be from the time frame that they are post raid but raids could still happen in the past time frame via the aerodrome. This would save time and money on developing new maps and new raids could happen more frequently.

I've also felt for awhile that there is a number of ways they can improve the player experience in GW2. A PC and mobile friendly web based interface tied into the game so that you can manage your account, buy and sell, chat, etc. It would be even better if it was rolled into a game based social media platform style interface so players can communicate in a more with other players without having to go to many different social media platforms plus they could share achievements with friends. It would bring in many new players plus retain players who rarely play.

[Grim West.3194]

Sucks for the ANET devs. They are some of the best around imo.

Looks like Mobile is killing PC gaming. Garbage.

[Bloodstealer.5978]

Hate to say I told ya so, but I said back in the Jahai Bluffs LS update thread regarding the sigil of nullification malarkey that something didn't feel right . Then that was quickly followed up by the push to monetise sigils/runes, extractors and BL Salvage kits (add in the change of use to already purchased items .. copper, silver feds).It seemed to me to be a concerted effort this last 6 months to try and push as many gem sales as possible, combined with what seemed to me to be out of the blue strangely messy almost disorganised promo's with the likes of KFT and more recently Razer beetle racing (did anyone ever win, did anyone get a newsletter??). These kind of things in my experience tended to happen when the company was on the brink of a major change of fortune, perhaps even maintenance mode, but I have felt there has been a dark cloud building for some time now and I guess it just burstI guess added to the fact that the latest WvW update seemingly hasn't gone down well and no Alliance update anywhere in sight, that will be a prime "not gunna happen" project maybe now.

It's a real shame if this really is happening, GW1, GW2 have been awesome MMO's but I guess the signs have been there if we look beyond the surface just a tad and some of the decisions of late might of hurt more than they healed.. I know I have closed my wallet for the last 6moinths for that very reasoning, but that said I genuinely hope those affected by this news, fall on their feet and become part of another big thing soon cos they deserve that at the very least.

[Asum.4960]

Anet tried to develop other projects, which hasn't been going well, while taking company resources away from the money maker GW2, and NCSoft told them to sack them and focus on GW2.

Stop acting like the sky is falling, or that there were secret ploys to deceive the GW2 community.This is a pretty common occurrence in this industry, and unless they announce cancellation of future content (which they have done the opposite of), it will be fine.

[Malediktus.9250]

@Asum.4960 said:Anet tried to develop other projects, which hasn't been going well, while taking company resources away from the money maker GW2, and NCSoft told them to sack them and focus on GW2.

Stop acting like the sky is falling, or that there were secret ploys to deceive the GW2 community.This is a pretty common occurrence in this industry, and unless they announce cancellation of future content (which they have done the opposite of), it will be fine.

At best GW2 will keep the current amount of resources, the devs from the cancelled projects get fired.

[MHaastrup.6978]

@Malediktus.9250 said:

@Asum.4960 said:Anet tried to develop other projects, which hasn't been going well, while taking company resources away from the money maker GW2, and NCSoft told them to sack them and focus on GW2.

Stop acting like the sky is falling, or that there were secret ploys to deceive the GW2 community.This is a pretty common occurrence in this industry, and unless they announce cancellation of future content (which they have done the opposite of), it will be fine.

At best GW2 will keep the current amount of resources, the devs from the cancelled projects get fired.

Some might get to stay around. Either through nepotism (it's everywhere, I'm not singling out Anet) or because they are exceptionally good.

[Puma.3645]

yes, when u log on and the core game is just forgotten and only for leveling players, and we are stuck with only a few active maps every 3 months to play in, makes the game feel very hollow.

[Aplethoraof.2643]

I wouldn't worry too much about the game. Anet has what it needs to do the job, still. Layoffs are pretty common (sadly) at the level that Anet is, and while it isn't good for anyone (it really does damage workplace morale) it likely won't impact GW2.

NCSoft having a tighter grip on Anet might be good or bad, depending on if NCSoft is willing to be a decent producer (it has been in the past).

Regardless, I have every confidence Anet and GW2 will be fine. It is a big company, and I'm sure this isn't the only layoff it has endured. This one just happened to get an exposé from a gaming journalist website.

Keep up the good work, Anet. I know this is never a pleasant time in the business cycle, but I know you'll pull through as you always do.

[Jimbru.6014]

@"Puma.3645" said:yes, when u log on and the core game is just forgotten and only for leveling players, and we are stuck with only a few active maps every 3 months to play in, makes the game feel very hollow.

And those old maps have hardly been touched since HoT. It's been almost five years in Tyrian time since Mordy died. Why hasn't Fort Salma been rebuilt by now? Why haven't the Charr burned the leftover Mordrem out of the Iron Marches already? Why haven't the bandits in Brisban finished building that bridge to that mystery gate that they've been working on since RELEASE!? Even if the basic events and such meant for leveling through the core story don't change, the game world should remain in the game "present" at least with every expansion. Major failure on ANet's part for not keeping up and updating old areas properly.

[kmfart.7480]

Its not a shocker, I think alot of ppl have been expecting this for atleast 3-4 months. Good to see predictions still work as intended, but still sad about it.But we all can see Gw2 has in recent years really started to show its age, especially when you take a look at newer titles in the genre, not much to stop that from happening, hopefully anet have been busy creating an updated engine in the works.But, from the game perspective of stuff, Anet have "indirectly" been telling players/customers to go play other stuff since almost everything worth doing is pretty much timegated these days, this does have a tendancy to drive ppl more offline and that drives big numbers down.

[Zephyra.4709]

Disturbing to hear. Hopefully things turn around for the better. I'm sad but also not surprised regarding the state of the gaming industry in the past decade, especially these past few years.

[Behellagh.1468]

It bugs me when executives in Korea latch onto the "next big thing" and if it succeeds focus on it exclusively. In 2018 a bit over half of NCSOFT's revenue was from mobile. While GW2 is still performing fine IMO, still over 60% of NA+EU revenue at roughly 80 Billion Won, it's still 3rd of the 5 reported games with Lineage and B&S beating it in revenue (150 and 120 Billion Won respectively). And don't you forget that this is NCSOFT's command, they still own ArenaNet even though ArenaNet tries to stand apart.

B&S in NA+EU is most of the revenue (sub 40%) and that's a game that only needs localization, not much coding for the translation. In theory this is a cheaper than a full game studio. And it sounds like NCSOFT is looking at "merging and streamlining" the localization and QA between this group and ANet. I'm guessing we'll know a lot more tomorrow.

[Ashantara.8731]

@alcopaul.2156 said:it's almost certain that desktop gaming is becoming legacy gaming already (you have to be confined in a room and have a dedicated internet connection).

That's the best part about it! You can relax and focus on the game instead of being on the road and distracted. I don't understand this trend. When you are outdoors, there are more important things to focus on than your stupid phone. WTH?

@"Paolino.8320" said:The gaming industry makes me sad. ANet employees deserve more than this.

Read the full article here: https://kotaku.com/guild-wars-2-developer-arenanet-plans-for-mass-layoffs-1832799804

Sad news. I hope there won't be too many people who will be let go and feel for the ones that will be.

I also wonder what "projects" were in the making that got cancelled...

[Eramonster.2718]

Well here's another version or update on the news but we will most probably never know the real situation.

https://www.pcgamer.com/guild-wars-studio-arenanet-will-reportedly-undergo-layoffs/

Wish they could just move all the staff to focus into GW2. Win win situation.

[Ashantara.8731]

@"Jimbru.6014" said:ANet has never learned one of the fundamentals of MMOs: never abandon your old core content. You can't just make content, throw it online, patch it into a semi-usable state, and then forget it to move on to the next thing, which has been ANet's pattern for a long time now. You have to keep polishing the game to keep the proper first impressions and retain the image with people that you actually care about fixing problems. There are bugs, broken events, and so forth throughout Central Tyria that have been with us since the early days of the game. That is the content that is supposed to hook in new players. To leave it in such a mess is utterly inexcusable.

For example, yesterday and today, I was pushing yet another toon through Brisban Wildlands. In the process, I encountered no less than four events that were bugged and frozen up, and stayed that way for hours. Put yourself in the place of a new player encountering that kind of mess -- they're probably thinking "What the heck? Why am I playing this crappy game?" Not a good first impression at all. You have to keep polishing old content, you have to keep fixing bugs, you have to update the technical backend and functionality to support modern hardware. Otherwise, you might as well not even bother having the game online at all.

Well said. :+1:

[DeceiverX.8361]

@Jimbru.6014 said:

@"Puma.3645" said:yes, when u log on and the core game is just forgotten and only for leveling players, and we are stuck with only a few active maps every 3 months to play in, makes the game feel very hollow.

And those old maps have hardly been touched since HoT. It's been almost five years in Tyrian time since Mordy died. Why hasn't Fort Salma been rebuilt by now? Why haven't the Charr burned the leftover Mordrem out of the Iron Marches already? Why haven't the bandits in Brisban finished building that bridge to that mystery gate that they've been working on since RELEASE!? Even if the basic events and such meant for leveling through the core story don't change, the game world should remain in the game "present" at least with every expansion. Major failure on ANet's part for not keeping up and updating old areas properly.

The sad irony is there were a bunch of very vocal people screaming for new maps instead of revisiting old content.Same is said for the PvP content - instead of critical reworks to old skills and traits that suck, we just got elite specs. The old bad builds are still bad, and the old good ones just got phased out via powercreep.

The thing about MMOs is that new content doesn't need to be constant and world-shatteringly big in scope. It just needs to be well-designed with replayability, that culminates in one thing: Fun. JP kind of alludes to the former, and while I'm very much against most of what she says (she literally blames male managers/developers for ANet's failures in part of her posts), I think the claim that ANet is focusing too much on large-scale/breadth-focused development is quite valid based on the content we've seen over the past several years.

Big scope is nice and all because we're in an MMO with lots of people running around, but it's not a requirement, and like a tree, it can't survive and grow if its roots do not stay anchored and grow with it. I reference Runescape as a great example of this; its pre-update servers where people lost years' worth of playtime with un-updated graphics and few gameplay patches and updates compared to its "main" game are more popular from playercount numbers than the main game. The experience an quality of content + the community is the bare minimum needed for an MMO. And honestly, we're really not there.

I've worked in MMO administration before - and I'll say it forward that our company went under due to mismanagement above my head - and to be honest, I'm seeing the same subtle signs from ANet that we were in during our late stages of the company beginning to reach the point of no return.

400 people at ANet is admittedly a very large number, especially given their existing infrastructure for the game, so if their side-projects are scrapped it's only somewhat understandable jobs come with them. It sucks, and having been laid off in an area with limited opportunity geographically before, I feel for anyone affected.

I'd like to hope this begins to act as a bit of a wake-up call for management, though, as to put the important things back into focus, because we've strayed very far from the original idea of what GW2 was supposed to be, and some of the very early criticisms about company bloat from inside sources dating as far back as 2013 have demonstrably come true.

[crepuscular.9047]

@Kylden Ar.3724 said:

@crepuscular.9047 said:

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:I wonder....if the game was in danger of going down, would players be more accepting of a subscription-model?Would that 'save' Guild Wars2 and/or ArenaNet?

subscription is pretty much dead... even WoW is shifting part of the business model through WoW Tokens to sustain their player numbers, because they know that people in this time and age are reluctant to pay for subscriptions

 

 

what i've seen with a few other games i had played in the past is there are two different special currencies, the ones you can get free in game will cost more to get the same item from the shop

what anet could possibly do is copying the model by introducing an alternative gem that can only be purchased with real money; lets just call it 'bounded gems', and the current gems lets call it 'unbounded gems'bounded gems can be traded into gold like unbounded gems, but you get more gold, BUT you cannot convert gold back to bounded gems, only into unbounded gemsbounded gems can purchase items from gems store at the current gem cost; the cost to buy gem store items through unbounded gems would be higher compared to bounded gems

now the tricky bit is monitoring the conversion rate of unbound gems and gold, it needs to take the amount of liquid gold in the economy into account just like central banks with their monetary policies, not just by buyer vs seller, which was the model they took from GW1's material trading

it would be a complex formula

Or, and this might sound crazy, but maybe we never should have been able to do Gold to Gems, and they should make it one way only and Gems come from cold hard cash. Cause of the gem store things I have on my account, less than 1/4 was paid for by buying gems with cash. The rest was converted.

They should prob stop letting us convert gold to Gems, and make the Gems to Gold conversion a fixed rate. There is already too much liquid gold in this game. As much as John Smith was a meme, he did know how to balance the math on everything but leather. They clearly don't now, the game economy is crashing, everything is cheap but things made with time-gates as the only thing not cheap now is our TIME.

I actually would disagree, to be able to convert gold to gem and buy things from gem store is an extremely attractive business model to generate new players

the problem are the cashed up long term players. i.e. i believe only one of MightTeapot's stream he bought something like 400 BL keys with gold, that's 33,600 gems, worth of USD$420 :scream:

 

 

@Tanner Blackfeather.6509 said:

@Kylden Ar.3724 said:

@crepuscular.9047 said:

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:I wonder....if the game was in danger of going down, would players be more accepting of a subscription-model?Would that 'save' Guild Wars2 and/or ArenaNet?

subscription is pretty much dead... even WoW is shifting part of the business model through WoW Tokens to sustain their player numbers, because they know that people in this time and age are reluctant to pay for subscriptions

 

 

what i've seen with a few other games i had played in the past is there are two different special currencies, the ones you can get free in game will cost more to get the same item from the shop

what anet could possibly do is copying the model by introducing an alternative gem that can only be purchased with real money; lets just call it 'bounded gems', and the current gems lets call it 'unbounded gems'bounded gems can be traded into gold like unbounded gems, but you get more gold, BUT you cannot convert gold back to bounded gems, only into unbounded gemsbounded gems can purchase items from gems store at the current gem cost; the cost to buy gem store items through unbounded gems would be higher compared to bounded gems

now the tricky bit is monitoring the conversion rate of unbound gems and gold, it needs to take the amount of liquid gold in the economy into account just like central banks with their monetary policies, not just by buyer vs seller, which was the model they took from GW1's material trading

it would be a complex formula

Or, and this might sound crazy, but maybe we never should have been able to do Gold to Gems, and they should make it one way only and Gems come from cold hard cash. Cause of the gem store things I have on my account, less than 1/4 was paid for by buying gems with cash. The rest was converted.

This is a fundamentally flawed reasoning.

Let's run a hypothetical situation:Say I've bought

no

gems with cash, but exchanged gold enough to spend 8500 gems over time. At face value, that looks like over $100 "lost" to Anet, right? But:1) With no Gold>Gem, would I have spent as much? Highly unlikely. I doubt anyone solidly in the Gold>Gem side of the exchange would have spent money for even half as much. But let's say I'd have spent $50 over the same time.2) Those gems actually come from people

buying them with cash

, and on top of thatthe

some are lost in the exchange!

. Those 8500 gems were in truth bought as 10000 gems by someone, or $120.

The idea of a Gem>Gold

without

its counterpart would mean that it would be a gold

faucet

rather than as currently a

drain

. GW2 has managed to avoid rampant inflation,

thanks to large scale drains like the Currency Exchange and the TP fees

! That would go out the window! Super inflation with only real way for a new player to afford stuff being buying gold for cash?

That

would drive new players away like the plague!

well... not exactly... anet began the store with a baseline of how much a gem should be worth years agoanet have an infinite inventory of gem allows for player to trade in their gold, as more players trade in their gold the cost of gem goes up

if you use gold to buy gems, then sell it back, you are pretty much making a loss of around 30%, http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

by the pattern on spidy, my feeling is the algorithms only takes into the account of gold to gem activities, irrespective of players trading in gems for gold

[RDarken.2495]

@"Jimbru.6014" said:ANet has never learned one of the fundamentals of MMOs: never abandon your old core content. You can't just make content, throw it online, patch it into a semi-usable state, and then forget it to move on to the next thing, which has been ANet's pattern for a long time now. You have to keep polishing the game to keep the proper first impressions and retain the image with people that you actually care about fixing problems. There are bugs, broken events, and so forth throughout Central Tyria that have been with us since the early days of the game. That is the content that is supposed to hook in new players. To leave it in such a mess is utterly inexcusable.

For example, yesterday and today, I was pushing yet another toon through Brisban Wildlands. In the process, I encountered no less than four events that were bugged and frozen up, and stayed that way for hours. Put yourself in the place of a new player encountering that kind of mess -- they're probably thinking "What the heck? Why am I playing this crappy game?" Not a good first impression at all. You have to keep polishing old content, you have to keep fixing bugs, you have to update the technical backend and functionality to support modern hardware. Otherwise, you might as well not even bother having the game online at all.

Unfortunately, I agree with this. I love Guild Wars as an IP, but ANet's design philosophy seems to be: Make something new, then abandon it and make something new. Over and over and over. That, coupled with their lack of communication, seems to have the game in a pretty poor spot. I know people like to say that the community is the reason for the lack of communication, but - imo - ANet has a pretty bad track record of breaking promises. Instead of saying "Our current plan is X," they speak in absolutes, then change their mind - THAT is why players get mad.

Didn't they say after the PoF announcement that they wanted to churn out expansions more quickly? Then recently announced no expansion after S4; S5 would kick right off.

I WANT this game to be successful and run for years and years, but it just seems to me that it has been mismanaged in a way and it's sad. I read their earnings report last week, so I'm not too surprised to hear this news, but I am bummed out. I hope anyone affected can find work quickly.

[AshkyLicious.4729]

If anything this will do good for GW2. This forces anet to put 200% focus on GW2 instead of scattering the focus on other projects that in the end got cancelled.

GW2 is a great game with many flaws. It still has alot of potential to become better.

The game needs a updated engine so badly now, and its been in need of that for a very long time. It needs better planning for all its game-modes. More meaningful updates that makes the game shine and that makes people want to buy and login into this game everyday.

Really pisses me off how anet has been neglecting GW2 for other projects. You need to always make sure that the main project in the company is stable and doing well, and resources are prioritized for the main project. Hopefully anet as a company has learned something from this.

They have reached their low, so the only thing they can do now is to climb up again and try making better choices.

[Haishao.6851]

My friend will most definitely lose his job since he was working on one of those unannounced projects.He will know next week if he keeps his job, but there's good chance he wont. He said it was fun while it lasted, because even if he get to stay, the company will never be the same.I imagine the moral will be very low for a while at anet.It's very sad.

[Ashantara.8731]

@"DeceiverX.8361" said:! > The sad irony is there were a bunch of very vocal people screaming for new maps instead of revisiting old content.! > Same is said for the PvP content - instead of critical reworks to old skills and traits that suck, we just got elite specs. The old bad builds are still bad, and the old good ones just got phased out via powercreep.! >! > The thing about MMOs is that new content doesn't need to be constant and world-shatteringly big in scope. It just needs to be well-designed with replayability, that culminates in one thing: Fun. JP kind of alludes to the former, and while I'm very much against most of what she says (she literally blames male managers/developers for ANet's failures in part of her posts), I think the claim that ANet is focusing too much on large-scale/breadth-focused development is quite valid based on the content we've seen over the past several years.! >! > Big scope is nice and all because we're in an MMO with lots of people running around, but it's not a requirement, and like a tree, it can't survive and grow if its roots do not stay anchored and grow with it. I reference Runescape as a great example of this; its pre-update servers where people lost years' worth of playtime with un-updated graphics and few gameplay patches and updates compared to its "main" game are more popular from playercount numbers than the main game. The experience an quality of content + the community is the bare minimum needed for an MMO. And honestly, we're really not there.! >! > I've worked in MMO administration before - and I'll say it forward that our company went under due to mismanagement above my head - and to be honest, I'm seeing the same subtle signs from ANet that we were in during our late stages of the company beginning to reach the point of no return.! >! > 400 people at ANet is admittedly a very large number, especially given their existing infrastructure for the game, so if their side-projects are scrapped it's only somewhat understandable jobs come with them. It sucks, and having been laid off in an area with limited opportunity geographically before, I feel for anyone affected.! >! > I'd like to hope this begins to act as a bit of a wake-up call for management, though, as to put the important things back into focus, because we've strayed very far from the original idea of what GW2 was supposed to be, and some of the very early criticisms about company bloat from inside sources dating as far back as 2013 have demonstrably come true.

Thank you for the insight. This made for a very interesting read. I had never thought about it that way, but it is true: if old content had a better replayability and was fun to replay, maybe with special events every now and then spicing things up, there really would be no need for constant new content - especially when that new content disappoints in one regard or another and just continues on with what is flawed about the game.

[Tekoneiric.6817]

@"Jimbru.6014" said:ANet has never learned one of the fundamentals of MMOs: never abandon your old core content. You can't just make content, throw it online, patch it into a semi-usable state, and then forget it to move on to the next thing, which has been ANet's pattern for a long time now. You have to keep polishing the game to keep the proper first impressions and retain the image with people that you actually care about fixing problems. There are bugs, broken events, and so forth throughout Central Tyria that have been with us since the early days of the game. That is the content that is supposed to hook in new players. To leave it in such a mess is utterly inexcusable.

For example, yesterday and today, I was pushing yet another toon through Brisban Wildlands. In the process, I encountered no less than four events that were bugged and frozen up, and stayed that way for hours. Put yourself in the place of a new player encountering that kind of mess -- they're probably thinking "What the heck? Why am I playing this crappy game?" Not a good first impression at all. You have to keep polishing old content, you have to keep fixing bugs, you have to update the technical backend and functionality to support modern hardware. Otherwise, you might as well not even bother having the game online at all.

This is definitely one of my issues with the game. Old content should be easy to fix and update since it already exists. To me it seem they aren't very efficient in their content creation. They make to much content that is one off; never to be updated or reused again. A good example is the Sealed Cavern in the Silverwastes. It's only there for LWS2 then nothing. When they introduced the roller beetle they could have made the entry to the cavern so that a roller beetle could open it and any players enter for the duration of an event inside the cavern.

There is plenty of maps that could use refreshed content that wouldn't take that many resources to update. I suggested a meta/world boss for Timerline Falls awhile back involving the Krait.

[Cyninja.2954]

The article has been updated:

"We can confirm that due to the cancellation of unannounced projects, ArenaNet will make staff reductions," the statement reads. "This is part of a larger organizational restructuring within NCSOFT in the west, but the Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 game services will not be affected, nor is any upcoming game content canceled."

While I am still very much hoping everything works out well for each employee, this could be a refocusing on the core GW2 branch.

This also contradicts (if all applies as stated) quite a few of this threads 'I told you so" statements. If applicable, this move only reinforces the approach: stick with what is making you money.

[Eramonster.2718]

While I am still very much hoping everything works out well for each employee, this could be a refocusing on the core GW2 branch.Hoping for this as well. Who knows, some of the employees might be directly or indirectly contributed to GW2. I know its too good to be true for them to retain the employees. Relocate/focus them to Gw2 (hopefully) or whatever that's making profit. Anyway going to drop this here, always sad to hear such topic happening. Just hoping the number won't be big and all the best for everyone.

[Bristingr.5034]

@Xar.6279 said:And as we can see casuals can't support this game enough. Even mount skins didnt make enough money.

Well, duh. Why would we pay $20 for a silly skin? I can buy a whole new game on Steam or a console store for that price. Their gem store prices are stupidly expensive.