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I feel particularly bad for Guild Wars 2 Devs / ArenaNet


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"guild wars 2 development will remain unaffected". It doesn't feel that way, it feels like their new, fully focused team is still churning out season 4 sized content, on the same schedule, as if nothing actually changed.... maybe they were telling the truth then. Then they shouldn't have said they had a renewed focus, since it feels about the same.

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For the devs i too feel bad, for tye company i dont really. They havent done a live event since the hot announcement and not only that they also had a 48 hour countdown. They also spoke of expansion stuff in lw and this reveal had nothing of the sort.

Anet over did it with the hype they fostered and now they are being critisized. The announcement had no reason to be a live event with an audience and something like the pof announcement would be more than enough, at most a live reveal on your new place inside the anet hq.

I loved the communication about the lw stuff, im disapaointed by the presentation and the lack of info about anything else.

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@Wakani.1829 said:I for one, just want some proper content.

I get that they're a buissness, and they are in it to make money, but they don't need to put 95% of their content in the cashshop, we need a better ratio, so everything isn't locked away behind a paywall, or as you said, RNG mechanics that are (thankfully) started to get banned in many countries.

GuildWars 1 did amazingly without all this, 7years + and i never ran out of things to do, a month or two in gw2 and you're dry on content, unless you count timegated dailies and what not.

This whole announcement should've happend in a blog post, with a trailer attached. the level of anticipation they created, was, is, and will always be, something gamers connect to MAJOR content drops, or massive overhauls. trying to change our perception of that, NEVER works.

This. It's super disappointing. Tons of the in-game cosmetics are hideous and there is a serious lack of it given the amount of time that has elapsed. Meanwhile in the store you have armour and weapon skins that look so amazing that it looks like they should be legendary tier.

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@Tiviana.2650 said:

@Tiviana.2650 said:Anet was always under company rule since the day ncsoft bought them.

Which is literally before GW1 even came out.

NCsoft is a boogieman people invoke to absolve Anet of poor decision making

Guild Wars is not City of Heroes

Dont be naive , do you not think they answer to ncsoft? If they are blundering everything ncsoft would step in, this isnt anet so much as the bosses telling them they arent getting money to make anything like expansions or lots of new content. Ncsoft has the last word, they okay or not what anet can do. They push for more shop revenue because they dont care about gw2 only what it can earn them.

You cant take a western game and treat it like a Korean one , and from what everyone is saying on glassdoor that is the problem. That ncsoft is clueless about western mmos

I think you are putting the blame of the wrong entity

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@Acheron.4731 said:

@Tiviana.2650 said:Anet was always under company rule since the day ncsoft bought them.

Which is literally before GW1 even came out.

NCsoft is a boogieman people invoke to absolve Anet of poor decision making

Guild Wars is not City of Heroes

Dont be naive , do you not think they answer to ncsoft? If they are blundering everything ncsoft would step in, this isnt anet so much as the bosses telling them they arent getting money to make anything like expansions or lots of new content. Ncsoft has the last word, they okay or not what anet can do. They push for more shop revenue because they dont care about gw2 only what it can earn them.

You cant take a western game and treat it like a Korean one , and from what everyone is saying on glassdoor that is the problem. That ncsoft is clueless about western mmos

I think you are putting the blame of the wrong entity

I dont, i think thats part of the problem. Lots of people that have worked there said the ncsoft west upper corporate management dont know doody about western mmos. So they want things done like an eastern mmo with all the tactics that goes along with it. Thats only part of the problem, i think maybe anet has lost its drive, or maybe work ethic. But as a example you can announce a expansion a year and a half before you even go to alpha, game companies do it all the time. So the takeaway today is there is not going to be an expansion not even in the future. How do you run a game and not have people working on future content everyday? Laying the framework, creating the systems. That should be part of being a game company. Many companies start working on future content 2 years prior to it releasing, or in simple terms they start as soon as an expansion goes live. They could have been creating the expansion from the time pof dropped, thats part of keeping a game going.

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@Tiviana.2650 said:

@Tiviana.2650 said:Anet was always under company rule since the day ncsoft bought them.

Which is literally before GW1 even came out.

NCsoft is a boogieman people invoke to absolve Anet of poor decision making

Guild Wars is not City of Heroes

Dont be naive , do you not think they answer to ncsoft? If they are blundering everything ncsoft would step in, this isnt anet so much as the bosses telling them they arent getting money to make anything like expansions or lots of new content. Ncsoft has the last word, they okay or not what anet can do. They push for more shop revenue because they dont care about gw2 only what it can earn them.

You cant take a western game and treat it like a Korean one , and from what everyone is saying on glassdoor that is the problem. That ncsoft is clueless about western mmos

I think you are putting the blame of the wrong entity

I dont, i think thats part of the problem. Lots of people that have worked there said the ncsoft west upper corporate management dont know doody about western mmos. So they want things done like an eastern mmo with all the tactics that goes along with it. Thats only part of the problem, i think maybe anet has lost its drive, or maybe work ethic. But as a example you can announce a expansion a year and a half before you even go to alpha, game companies do it all the time. So the takeaway today is there is not going to be an expansion not even in the future. How do you run a game and not have people working on future content everyday? Laying the framework, creating the systems. That should be part of being a game company. Many companies start working on future content 2 years prior to it releasing, or in simple terms they start as soon as an expansion goes live. They could have been creating the expansion from the time pof dropped, thats part of keeping a game going.

I totally agree with this post. ANET has lost their magic and NCSOFT certainly isn't helping them get it back.I see what you are saying now.Hopefully i didn't butcher it by summarizing :/

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@TexZero.7910 said:I was raised on a policy of your reap what you sow.So while you can feel sorry for the devs and i can get behind that, i cannot feel sorry for ANet as a whole.

Even more so after the announcement. It showcased the worst side of ANet, the inability to learn from their previous failure. Instead they turned to marketing and asked them how to reframe it. So now we have Saga's instead of Story and yet nothing changed. Even the Dev on stage wanted to try and say they have 4 teams now, as if to say they didn't have 4 teams back when Mike O'Brien had to apologize to the community 2 years ago.

When did we ever get an apology that wasn't a passive-aggressive swipe at the community intended to put us in our place for even daring to complain about something we paid good money for?

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@Tiviana.2650 said:

@Tiviana.2650 said:Anet was always under company rule since the day ncsoft bought them.

Which is literally before GW1 even came out.

NCsoft is a boogieman people invoke to absolve Anet of poor decision making

Guild Wars is not City of Heroes

Dont be naive , do you not think they answer to ncsoft? If they are blundering everything ncsoft would step in, this isnt anet so much as the bosses telling them they arent getting money to make anything like expansions or lots of new content. Ncsoft has the last word, they okay or not what anet can do. They push for more shop revenue because they dont care about gw2 only what it can earn them.

You cant take a western game and treat it like a Korean one , and from what everyone is saying on glassdoor that is the problem. That ncsoft is clueless about western mmos

See here's the thing, gems shop shenanagins and actual play content are not mutually exclusive.

Art assets like a glider or weapons take minimal effort to make. It's so easy people do this for Bethesda games in their free time in mods. It's even easier in GW2 because people will go nuts for basic stuff like shared inventory slots.

Both ESO and Warframe have just as onerous cash shops and they manage to be able to give people what they want.

Again, you're blaming NCsoft for decisions as though Anet has no agency at all. NCsoft didn't run GW1 into the ground and they had 0 effect on Anet when they were self publishing.

If NCsoft had such an iron grip on Anet, they never would have let them go semi independent in the first place.

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@Substance E.4852 said:

@Tiviana.2650 said:Anet was always under company rule since the day ncsoft bought them.

Which is literally before GW1 even came out.

NCsoft is a boogieman people invoke to absolve Anet of poor decision making

Guild Wars is not City of Heroes

Dont be naive , do you not think they answer to ncsoft? If they are blundering everything ncsoft would step in, this isnt anet so much as the bosses telling them they arent getting money to make anything like expansions or lots of new content. Ncsoft has the last word, they okay or not what anet can do. They push for more shop revenue because they dont care about gw2 only what it can earn them.

You cant take a western game and treat it like a Korean one , and from what everyone is saying on glassdoor that is the problem. That ncsoft is clueless about western mmos

See here's the thing, gems shop shenanagins and actual play content are not mutually exclusive.

Art assets like a glider or weapons take minimal effort to make. It's so easy people do this for Bethesda games in their free time in mods. It's even easier in GW2 because people will go nuts for basic stuff like shared inventory slots.

Both ESO and Warframe have just as onerous cash shops and they manage to be able to give people what they want.

Again, you're blaming NCsoft for decisions as though Anet has no agency at all. NCsoft didn't run GW1 into the ground and they had 0 effect on Anet when they were self publishing.

If NCsoft had such an iron grip on Anet, they never would have let them go semi independent in the first place.

You dont think the boss company pushes them to mtx the game? To focus on selling? Are you serious, its obvious that things have changed, going back to the start of the 2000 gem mount skin kerfuffle when people were outraged they introduced that. Its clear that they focus on mtx and loot boxes more prominently now than before, that is pushing from corporate. People that have worked for ncsoft will tell you that they are pushing for that at the expense of the games.

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@"Roquen.5406" said:Why do you feel bad for a business? They are here to make money while doing something they are "passionate" about. They do that by providing a product that their customers enjoy. When their customers no longer enjoy said product, they spend less time with the product and in this case eventually leave. It's just business, right? If they choose not to learn from past mistakes and they keep bleeding customers and in turn lose money, that is on them. And I think that's the big issue here, they really don't practice what they preach. They say they listen but the things they keep releasing and "promising" are not what the players, content creators, partners, and the community as a whole...are asking for. For whatever reason it seems that they keep missing the mark.

Now you can say, "well you don't know how difficult it is" or "go develop your own game and then you'll see". But I don't need to know or do either of those things to understand that a product should deliver on what it promises. A job should be done well no matter what it is. I don't need to know how to build a spaceship to understand that a spaceship blowing up in orbit is a bad thing.

The thing that is most frustrating to ME is that people ask the players to be "grateful" for what they get. People too often settle for less. The onus should be on Anet to provide a product that really fires on all cylinders. Remember, if we don't like the game we leave and find one that better suits our needs. But if their game shuts down or ceases to be profitable, they lose their jobs. You can look at the recent lay-offs that happened and yes you can have empathy for them but remember the truth is that the lay-offs happened in large part of Anet's own doing. They released expansions and siphoned off a good portion of their core teams to work on side projects. So you leave a skeleton team to do the work of a much larger team and then you wonder what happened when things blow up in your face? Would you expect any different from your job?

It's fine to branch out and work on new projects, maybe a new IP, maybe GW3, maybe GWMobile or whatever other project(s) they may have been working on. But you shouldn't do so at the expense of your bread and butter. Especially if you are telling everyone it's your passion project, yet you keep neglecting it. It seems to me a lot like mismanagement of their product as a whole and until they fix that or whatever issues keep plaguing them, these things will come up time and time again.

They don't give us episodes for free because they are nice, they do it because it's sustainable for them. A large majority of people wouldn't pay for content every 4 months that provides them with 2 hours of LS and then achievements/a few items to grind for. But they will keep coming back to game that they can drop in and out of casually. Anet knows this and so their money comes from initial Box Sales + the Cash Shop. If they knew they could charge for each episode and retain their player-base, they would.

I had no expectations for this announcement because of Anet's track record but for whatever reason they decided to hype up an event as if some big new news was coming. But then they announced something that the players have already known, along with some other vague things, and merchandise. Of course the player-base is going to be frustrated.

If Anet needed to do this for their for their morale, then fine, that's great. But don't say this was what the players have been asking for because if that's what they truly believe, then they haven't actually been listening.

Preach it, brother

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@Substance E.4852 said:

@Tiviana.2650 said:Anet was always under company rule since the day ncsoft bought them.

Which is literally before GW1 even came out.

NCsoft is a boogieman people invoke to absolve Anet of poor decision making

Guild Wars is not City of Heroes

ANet didn't decide to sack and move people around mid development of certain things to start failed projects. It was NCSoft, who were trying to be Blizzard with stuff like MxM when they know they can't compete.

Calling NCSoft a boogieman is far too much of a compliment when they themselves killed off GW2's development by killing their resources.

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Me too, especially considering there's still a lot of AMAZING stuff in their announcement. They're kinda to blame for the backlash on that (or maybe NCSoft is), but the community is too - good lesson for life that's difficult to follow, but don't overhype yourself when you don't have the details.

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The only thing that bothers me is that they did not announce new elite specifications, if they had announced that, I would be very happy at this time. I'm glad we will visit Far Shiverpeaks and Jormag will be the villain though. But I feel emptiness knowing that my Necromancer won't get a longbow or sword.

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@Astrolicus.3716 said:The only thing that bothers me is that they did not announce new elite specifications, if they had announced that, I would be very happy at this time. I'm glad we will visit Far Shiverpeaks and Jormag will be the villain though. But I feel emptiness knowing that my Necromancer won't get a longbow or sword.

Speak for yourself necromancers should have gotten hammer as 2h condi damage melee weapon.

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@plushiesoda.8150 said:

They are not making any more expansions so they felt the need to rebrand LS (saga) and present it the way they would an xpac. A pretty standard, if not tired, marketing ploy.

While I agree that the presentation was........ meh, personally I feel that it actually is the other way around.

In mmorgs an 'expansion' is just a term coined by greed in order to give a temporary boost to the player base .

And while they might have done a poor job on it so far, there's nothing (besides laziness/greed) stopping anet from releasing 'expansion-like' content into a living world season as originally intended when the game first came out.

Speculating a little here, but apparently Core-HoT was intended to be living world season 3, however it was released as an expansion due NCsoft's greed, what happened? Over 9 months without content in order to release it as a bundle (what most of us know as an 'expansion') milking 50$ of the player base in the process

Sadly greedy companies like Activision and EA have pushed this 'DLC/expansion/season pass' mentality into 'gamers' for content that easily could be released for 'free', specially more in a game like gw2 where a huge part of it's income comes from microtransactions.

IF ONLY LIVING WORLD RELEASES WERE SHCHEDULED WITHIN 3 MONTHS OF EACH OTHER, COUPLED WITH
  • Proper testing
    - don't want to spoil story content? fine with me! lock it until release day, but please make a public test server at least a couple of weeks prior in order to give feedback on class modifications, map/features/glitches, etc, is that really too much to ask? but no... they rather make us download hundreds of MB worth of updates, disable features/traits for weeks after every patch instead, right?
  • A different weapon/armor skin for each game mode (WvW/PvP/Raid/Fractal/Open World), non-locked behind a mindless grind.
    - I'm not asking them to gift them away for free, just an enjoyable way to obtain it shouldn't be too much to ask, revisiting old jumping puzzles I'm tired of repeating over and over, farming 500g worth of mats and nodes that take weeks to complete are a little bit away from 'an enjoyable way to obtain it' in my book
  • A proper PvE balance patch
    - I'm tired of repeating this, but in any PVE game mode, boss, scenario every DPS should be within 5% of each other, regardless of how tanky it is, how handy a side-utility they could slot or how squishy they are, every healer should be able to provide the same healing output/boons.

    (sidenote: Individual boons like spotter/banners have to go once and for all, that said every single boon any class might be able to provide should affect 10 players within range by default.)
  • A Proper PvP/WvW balance patch unaffected by PvE or different game modes
    - balance is a meme at this point, for real, making traits/skills useless is laziness, not balance, is it that hard to revisit previous iterations and think a little about how it would affect the class overall before trashing an overperforming trait/skill?
  • A tied new PvP season/new raid wing/new fractal.
    - It is way more professional to bundle this kind of thing into a big patch, instead of releasing them whenever they feel like it without any kind of transparency or communication whatsoever. Who was the genius who thought that balancing classes mid-season was a good thing?
  • A small review on previous content.
    - Our game is always evolving and that's a good thing, tying modifications like chairs, map meta rewards, itemization, (much needed) UI improvements into a living world release would make it feel more like a proper patch filled with content and features, something that I believe could reduce this kind of backlash. They could just focus on a couple of features of this kind with every chapter in order to create a 'proper planing-feel-alike' instead of this random mess we currently have

There wouldn't be any need for expansions. What's more! I would rather pay 1000 gems for feature-rich living world chapters instead of a whole expansion.

Id rather pay for expansions tbh. Shadowbrongers is everything right with expansions.

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@plushiesoda.8150 said:

@zealex.9410 said:Can lw bundle a 5 or 6 epusodes worth of maps and story and release them all in one go with brand new features, elite specs etc?

5 or 6 episodes worth of maps and story per chapter without milking 50 bucks out of their player base every couple of months in the process would probably be pointless from any developer's point of view, that's what makes an episode a 'chapter' after all.

But yes they could easily release them with new features, elite specs, etc, In a an even more frequent, balanced, and profitable manner with LW seasons instead of expansion bundles. Add to it the non-exclusion aspect of living world seasons opposed to expansions, as people wouldn't need to buy an expansion to stay competitive on their preferred game mode, those who cannot afford an expansion (30~50$ can be a lot for some people) could still farm gems with gold in order to 'get content', which translates into more profits for arenanet and a less-divided player base, a win-win scenario.

Yes with an expansion we can enjoy lots of content in one go as you clearly stated, however it also means dividing their developing team and resources, which translates into this kind of fiasco in-between, months worth of FoTMs screwing every game mode, features getting delayed years like build templates, UI improvements, engine updates, 1~2 raid wings/fractals per year, PvP seasons that feel more like an experiment and a joke from anet's part. Just a bunch of 800~200gem skins in-between.

I can understand why some people prefer expansions, but I seriously believe gw2 would benefit more from focusing on living world seasons in the long run instead.

In the end it doesn't really matter how the brand it, as It should be a matter of focus. Chances are, that an undivided team focusing into content-filled releases every 3 months or so with a proper roadway per season would feed us with an smoother gameplay experience.

Idk,i like meaty content i can sink my teeth into and not be done after 2 or 3 hours. Free content is decent but its spoon fed and that wont get me excited.

Plus All the other mmos have had expansions and they've been killing it (esp ff14)

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@"Rukario.1695" said:I assume you can understand why at this point, yeah?

  • Backlash after the majority of events, time and time again.
  • Reveal trailers being scrutinized and any positive feedback is cascaded upon by the loud minority.
  • Side-projects cancelled and a large sum of employees either moved or let go.
  • As a result of the last point, likely leading to increasingly stressful conditions and a variety of setbacks / communication issues.
  • Now releasing a previous expansion for free as long as users purchase the newest, as a means to both boost "fence-sitter" purchases and hook players for longer.

When I take those facts into consideration, I can understand some of the current problems.

  • Most exposure is about merch, sales, or BOGO (buy-one-get-one) offers.
  • Partnership promotional codes are only distributed to 0.01% of the amount of users who enter.
  • New store content is immediately injected into loot-box mechanics which is being outlawed in many areas now.
  • The time to develop an expansion would likely be considerably longer, yet this is still something a large majority of users want.
  • Due to the aforementioned, opt-in for Season-based releases; content feels short, dry, and outlived by the community.
  • Game still lacks proper rework of a newer graphic API which two singular developers of a console emulator can implement in a few months.
  • Lack of quality of life UI and function changes which would ease the learning curve for new or returning players, somehow already included in plugins from unrelated Devs.
  • Lack of long-standing goals that do not feel like a chore, or short-term goals that feel rewarding.

Players are now concerned about the longstanding longevity of the game they have played for many years, myself included. I've been here since Guild Wars: Factions was released. I built my desktop (which I'm even using now, but with upgrades,) during the premiere release of Guild Wars 2 in August of 2012 specifically for Guild Wars 2. Binged the game for hundreds of hours and enjoyed it thoroughly; so many fresh experiences.

What it boils down to though is that over-hyping content that is already cut and dry will lead to a lot of backlash, especially if they call off of work, fly, or drive to witness it.

I hope ArenaNet's efforts to push Guild Wars 2 forward continues, but I really hope they consider what the problem actually is at this point:

Transparency, frequent communication, and a plan of action need to be available to your players.

Best of luck.

((And, no, I'm not leaving. But my playtime has severely dwindled due to the circumstances.))

PS: Don't turn this into a "hate on Anet" thread, thanks.

I feel this could of been mitigated had the hype not been amped so hard by the month prior.

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I agree with the OP 100%. I too feel sad for the future of the game and the devs.

I love the game and as a newer player i still have masses to do, and hundreds of hours of content ahead of me..

BUT.. Do i want to invest time and money on a game with an unclear future? If i know that at the end of my journey to clear the content, that an expansion is waiting for me I'd willingly invest the time and even spend some money along the way on gemstore etc.

But this announcement gives me no hope of that and I for one will not put another penny into this game. The merch drive of late is an utterly lauaghable, shameless, desperate attempt to milk money from a loyal fanbase who want real content snd hope, not t-shirts and toys.

I have have no motivation to play at this point, and i know a large percentage of us feel this way.

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