Future of PvE in Guild Wars 2. How do I see it

[Nephalem.8921]

@CptAurellian.9537 said:According to efficiency, just 20% have reached flvl 100, more than 40% haven't even completed T1, and so on. When we look to dungeons, just 25% have completed all Arah paths at least once and the other dungeons do not look so much better.

How many of these accounts are just alt accounts used to get daily login rewards though.

[maddoctor.2738]

To those wondering about Freezie completion, I got some data from gw2efficiency but it's old. Unfortunately there was an API purge since then, so all the data is missing now. Also I didn't get the data at the end of Wintersday, but December 20, 2018, a little bit before the mid point through Wintersday (launched December 11, 2018, ended January 2, 2019)

But in any case here is a comparison from that specific date:Hall of Chains: 9.5% / 6.6% (first boss / last boss) - November 28th, 2017Mythwright Gambit: 7.3% / 4.3% (first boss / last boss) - September 18, 2018Freezie: 10.8% / 7.6% (finished / snowball achievement) - December 10, 2018

So yeah in 9 days more people killed Freezie, than players killed the Soulless Horror in Wing 5 in an entire year. Who knows if Freezie was permanent the completion rate might've been even higher. The question is if that percentage justifies the addition of new content. Only one way to find out, wait for Strikes and see how they play. They can't cancel them now anyway.

[JpDelano.2580]

I think they are on the right page. World Boss hunts are the way to go.

[Shadow Chaser.1948]

@"Xar.6279" said:I may be wrong of course, but IMO it looks like GW2 PvE is going back to it's roots atm. So it will be accessible to everyone again. Gw2 is not raiding mmo and it looks like it won't be. It's too late for it tbh. "Strike missions" will be surely really fun for many GW2 PvErs.

When players will get bored of "strike missions" someday, then Arena Net will again come up with something new. It's their idea on doing pve in Guild Wars 2. It was always like that. You never know what's next. They definitely like to improvise. Abandon old projects. And focus on doing brand new things.

i have feeling that strike mission will open up path to legendary armor for many.

[Vinceman.4572]

@JpDelano.2580 said:I think they are on the right page. World Boss hunts are the way to go.

Nice sarcasm here.

[kasoki.5180]

@CptAurellian.9537 said:

@kasoki.5180 said:

@CptAurellian.9537 said:I expect exactly nothing from those ominous strike missions. They'll most likely be faceroll easy and still be abandoned within a rather short timeframe, because most open world players simply aren't interested in

any

instanced group content. We've had enough examples for that.

Apart from that, The One To Rule already mentioned the important stuff with regard to the rest of currently neglected PvE content. Of course, the devs may decide that niches aren't worth catering to. However, in that case they shouldn't be surprised if those niche populations (and that will be a good chunk of the total player base) decide to move elsewhere.

Many people who play fractals dont do raids. Also alot of people did winter quasi raid. What you have said simply isn't true.

Anecdotal stories don't say much, where's your hard data? I do not deny that fractals may be played by more people than raids (they probably are), but that group does not appear very large. According to efficiency, just 20% have reached flvl 100, more than 40% haven't even completed T1, and so on. When we look to dungeons, just 25% have completed all Arah paths at least once and the other dungeons do not look so much better. And all of that still does not yield any indication whether people play that stuff repeatedly. Quite a few probably don't.

So please, provide some data that would convincingly indicate that there is a large audience for doing instanced content repeatedly. I don't see it in the current data.

You have provided data yourself just now. Compare these percentages with what we know about raids. As you yourself have admitted, more people probably do fractals than they do raids.

Also, GW2efficiency is far from a good source for data. It is the best we have, but that doesn't make it necessarily good.Also your interpretation of these data seems a bit off. I am not sure what exactly are you trying to say with this numbers. For example, people not having completed all Arah paths doesn't mean they are not doing dungeons. People can do dungeons every day all day and never complete all three paths of Arah or any other dungeon. Sure, you can assume that these kinds of people are not committed players, or that those kind of players probably wont do strikes, but that's just making a hypothesis that goes beyond this "hard data"

And still, even if you take those 20% of T4 fractals, you are still at better numbers than raids. So it comes down to having something or nothing in the end.

Also, "Closing the Loop" has 20% players completed at gw2efficiency while "Beyond the Vale" has completion of 30%. Meaning thata) data is collected at different points in time, that is, on different population, which means that any comparison is faulty from the start (note that SO was released 2 years after SV)b) population that does T4 fractals and that which does raids do not necessarily overlap , which means that using PvE population of one mode to predict potential trends on future PvE mode is, again, purely speculative at best

For some of the more comparable data:(SO was released in July of 2017, raids that fall into that period are Halls of Chains and Bastion of the Penitent)

Bastion of the Penitent (february 2017):

• "Breaking in" has completion of 23%. Which does go in favour of the notion that populations might overlap
• "Free at last" has completion of 14%

Shattered Observatory fractal (july 2017)

• "Closing the Loop" has completion of 20%

Halls of Chain(november 2017)

• "What's Death May Never Die" has completion of 7%

You can draw all kinds of hypothesis and "conclusions" for this data. But the core issue is that gw2efficiency is faulty for two main reasons: 1) It doesn't mark the time period of the collected data, making it hard to compare data from different game modes, or even within the same game mode.b)Not all players submit their data to GW2Efficiency

[JpDelano.2580]

@Vinceman.4572 said:

@JpDelano.2580 said:I think they are on the right page. World Boss hunts are the way to go.

Nice sarcasm here.

Not really. theyre fast, no need to organize, learn teamwork, practice builds, get some loot. or go to raid and listen to timmy pimple face critique your build and how you play because he wasnt paying attention to what was shooting at him, instead he was complaing why your build stinks.

anyway, theres some sarcasm

[Vinceman.4572]

@JpDelano.2580 said:learn teamwork

Press 1 for doing damage and F for rezzing players standing in AoEs without caring and dying.

practice builds

What to practice?

get some loot

1 rare item + 1g from Tequatl. Yeah, that's quality loot. Thanks!

or go to raid and listen to timmy pimple face critique your build and how you play because he wasnt paying attention to what was shooting at him, instead he was complaing why your build stinks.

It's obvious that you've never raided in this game.

[JpDelano.2580]

it seems obvious your timmy pimple face

[maddoctor.2738]

@kasoki.5180 said:1) It doesn't mark the time period of the collected data, making it hard to compare data from different game modes, or even within the same game mode.

Fractal participation is very hard to quantify, more than Raids, because all you can use for the majority of Fractals is the fractal level as very few have achievements that show completion. And fractal level is fundamentally flawed because it counts since gw2eff was released. You can't compare the percentage of players that finished Hall of Chains with the percentage of players that have above a specific fractal level, because players had 5+ years to increase those fractal levels, while far less to beat Hall of Chains, the the overall population has changed over the course of time. When I use gw2eff data I always use points of reference, so as to get relative percentages, these points are the completion rates for the living world episodes. They give us an indication of the active population at the time. As I said above, most fractals don't have such tracking achievements, so tracking fractal completion is rather hard.

b)Not all players submit their data to GW2Efficiency

True, but my research shows that about 80% of the game's population above 35k AP does have a GW2eff account. Which means the top achievers do use it. Also, I estimate about 15% to be at the 3k+ AP mark, which is a rather considerable number of players too. Obviously not all, but a not-insignificant number at the higher levels of play.

[Cyninja.2954]

@JpDelano.2580 said:it seems obvious your timmy pimple face

Wait, are you complaining about other people being toxic, while being unbelievably toxic yourself? The irony.

[Xar.6279]

@Nephalem.8921 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Xar.6279 said:

@Linken.6345 said:Looks like it will be worse then I thought its not 10 man..... up to 10 man so anything bettwen 1 and 10 is on the table.

Strike Missions—Tackle these challenging boss encounters in a group of up to ten players, either as a pre-formed squad or in a public mode anyone can join.

Lowmans confirmed

U didnt want content to scale on player count for lowmans to be possible, these are supposed to be entry points into raiding, if you can less than 10 man them very easily then they arent doing that.

Spvp is quite dead aswell

Ye, pvp scene kind of died in 2017. Because teamq was deleted from the game.But actually, right now pvp is way more alive than raiding scene for sure :D We also know what to expect (swiss, 2v2, 3v3)While raiders knows nothing. And most of them already left gw2.

[Nephalem.8921]

Oh the 1 fractal every 6 month cadence slowed down aswell. Sirens reef released 8 month ago and a new one wasn't announced so we are close to 10-11month for the new one if we ever get one.

[JpDelano.2580]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@JpDelano.2580 said:it seems obvious your timmy pimple face

Wait, are you complaining about other people being toxic, while being unbelievably toxic yourself? The irony.

wow, omg, like totally tubular.

[The one to Rule.2593]

@JpDelano.2580 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@JpDelano.2580 said:it seems obvious your timmy pimple face

Wait, are you complaining about other people being toxic, while being unbelievably toxic yourself? The irony.

wow, omg, like totally tubular.

Found the target audience anet was seeking with their 3 months of nothing 2 hours of gameplay style updates.

[Vayne.8563]

@zealex.9410 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:To be fair the reason open world content can be completed by pressing 1 on your keyboard is because there tons of players and bosses rarely scale well, plus reviving others in a big blob is very easy. Finally in meta events even if you die, you can either stay dead and get your rewards, or port to a waypoint and run back.

Strikes are 10-man content, so I really doubt they will require zero thought process. Reviving won't be as easy, a dead person out of 10 can lead to failures (rather than one dead out of 50), there should be no waypoints either. So a lot of the things that make the open world really easy won't be present. Have you ever fought the Wyvern Matriarch in Verdant Brink with 5 people? Or Axemaster? There are many bosses in the game that are actually somewhat challenging to fight and you can't beat them while watching Netflix, it's the huge number of players that allow you to do so and the other mechanics that exist in the open world. Take them all out and there is a chance of having good content that can be fun and engaging (not challenging, but engaging, big difference)

I've seen the blood-crazed wyvern in VB fail numerous times even with 10 people.

He didnt say it was imposible or challenging, he just said a good bit more engaging.

Engaging to who though. What's engaging to one guy is not engaging to others. Running into a fight to fail over and over again that you don't have time to learn because you don't want to look up a video is not really engaging to a lot of people. Just the way it is. It may well be engaging to him. A lot of people have a negative experience in a fight and never go back. That was half of HOT's problem all up.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@"The one to Rule.2593" said:that's not a good thing. games die without a more hardcore endgame scene. Even at release there were dungeons which were the only content i found enjoyable as it was the only thing that required any thought about skills and positioning other than pressing 1 while watching netflix. Anet has allowed those communities in every game mode to stagnate. No one is going to stick with a game that releases " press 1 to win" maps every 3 months.

Strikes won't fix any of their problems. People will play them until they realize they will get 1 blue as a reward then never touch again.

I've stuck with them this long even through rough patches as I had hope but now i just feel as if anet doesn't care about my wants and needs as a player anymore. I'm just tired of defending them.

Emphasis mine. This is my concern, too. This is one of the two reasons why bounties failed in PoF. In theory, they would provide challenging and unpredictable champion fights. But in practice, they're largely ignored because the effort of beating champions isn't worth the rewards, nor the hassle of dealing with the boards. Ultimately the only reason why people do the champions is for collections.

The biggest problem with making content that isn't "press 1 to win" is that players don't play it. I'll reference pre-nerf Serpent's Ire, which failed regularly and was so difficult that everybody who completed it vowed to never do it again. This impossible task that people failed to do was spread out evenly and use their CC skills. Apparently, that is "hard." Hell, pre-reward buff Maws of Torment was nearly impossible to do, too. It only takes one person in each lane, and yet every time I'd get 5-10 people crowding my tag and nobody in the other lanes. Everything would upscale, fail, and then they'd never try again in spite of refusing to follow my instructions.

I can understand trying to nudge players into harder content. But, at a certain point, Anet has to make the game for the players they have, not the players they don't. It is really easy to be bad at this game, so if Anet doesn't make content assuming most players are incompetent, then all of those players will go away.

[Vinceman.4572]

@"JpDelano.2580" said:it seems obvious your timmy pimple face

Hehe, see, for people like you I just wish the game would die faster than it already is because people like you don't deserve such a game with a great combat system. You don't respect it and you aren't able to value it.The problem for Arenanet is: If you chase a significant player base of the game and they already did that with lots of PvP & WvW and in their latest stage PvE players who like challenging content what's left? I tell you those who still play are the ones farming & grinding legendary weapons in open world maps and Mr. & Mrs. After-Work-Hours here and there who just hop into the game from time to time their schedule will allow playing. That my friend isn't enough to stop the downward spiral and you will experience the next layoff wave soon. The fairy tale of the overall happy & satisfied "casual" that belongs to the overwhelming, tremendous majority and with the most impact on the game can no longer be maintained. That is not the mirror image of the veteran being more than 3-7 years into the game. Those people are financially strong and if you don't serve them some interesting stuff they'll leave for sure. And I don't mean Anet need to serve raids, they need to serve everything at the moment and they can't or at least aren't doing it which is a catastrophe.

I mean every GW2 player that studied anything related to business and management (and not only those) would declare their performance at PAX as a desaster or at least as an amateurish attempt to convince players to stay in the game which failed horribly. Reddit is mean, of course but it's also THE platform for players to express their feelings, wishes and needs. When a subreddit like the one of GW2 goes crazy like this nobody on earth can tell me that we're in a good spot and Strike missions will lead us to stable GW2 times.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:The biggest problem with making content that isn't "press 1 to win" is that players don't play it.

This is true only for content that lacks any kind of meaningful rewards. The "casuals" that want to press 1 to win content will obviously find the best content of that type in terms of gold and go farm it till it's nerfed or their fingers bleed. Meanwhile the rest of the game that was supposed to be "for the majority" rots without any players. If all Arenanet gave the open world was first Istan and then Dragonfall, there wouldn't be much of a difference. Their time and resources would've been better spent elsewhere for the other maps as this "casual majority" doesn't care about anything other than their gold income.

[Pirindolo.9427]

@"Xar.6279" said:I may be wrong of course, but IMO it looks like GW2 PvE is going back to it's roots atm. So it will be accessible to everyone again. Gw2 is not raiding mmo and it looks like it won't be. It's too late for it tbh. "Strike missions" will be surely really fun for many GW2 PvErs.

When players will get bored of "strike missions" someday, then Arena Net will again come up with something new. It's their idea on doing pve in Guild Wars 2. It was always like that. You never know what's next. They definitely like to improvise. Abandon old projects. And focus on doing brand new things.

To my eyes, the only difference between Strike Missions and present day Bounty missions is that the Strike missions have a cap of 10 people.

[JpDelano.2580]

@Vinceman.4572 said:

@"JpDelano.2580" said:it seems obvious your timmy pimple face

Hehe, see, for people like you I just wish the game would die faster than it already is because people like you don't deserve such a game with a great combat system. You don't respect it and you aren't able to value it.The problem for Arenanet is: If you chase a significant player base of the game and they already did that with lots of PvP & WvW and in their latest stage PvE players who like challenging content what's left? I tell you those who still play are the ones farming & grinding legendary weapons in open world maps and Mr. & Mrs. After-Work-Hours here and there who just hop into the game from time to time their schedule will allow playing. That my friend isn't enough to stop the downward spiral and you will experience the next layoff wave soon. The fairy tale of the overall happy & satisfied "casual" that belongs to the overwhelming, tremendous majority and with the most impact on the game can no longer be maintained. That is not the mirror image of the veteran being more than 3-7 years into the game. Those people are financially strong and if you don't serve them some interesting stuff they'll leave for sure. And I don't mean Anet need to serve raids, they need to serve everything at the moment and they can't or at least aren't doing it which is a catastrophe.

I mean every GW2 player that studied anything related to business and management (and not only those) would declare their performance at PAX as a desaster or at least as an amateurish attempt to convince players to stay in the game which failed horribly. Reddit is mean, of course but it's also THE platform for players to express their feelings, wishes and needs. When a subreddit like the one of GW2 goes crazy like this nobody on earth can tell me that we're in a good spot and Strike missions will lead us to stable GW2 times.

or maybe you could understand that human beings hiding behind computers will usually have a different conversation when you meet them. I can almost tell you 90 percent of the people really dont like timmy the pimple face, even though he thinks they do. For me, i like to enjoy the game and not deal with headaches such as yourself. which is why strike will be helpful to me by the way, and i also think thats why Anet put them in because they know timmy the pimple face also and they want to keep players. Ive played the game for 2 months, and i can assure you timmy isnt the answer.

[Vinceman.4572]

@"JpDelano.2580" said:or maybe you could understand that human beings hiding behind computers will usually have a different conversation when you meet them. I can almost tell you 90 percent of the people really dont like timmy the pimple face, even though he thinks they do. For me, i like to enjoy the game and not deal with headaches such as yourself. which is why strike will be helpful to me by the way, and i also think thats why Anet put them in because they know timmy the pimple face also and they want to keep players. Ive played the game for 2 months, and i can assure you timmy isnt the answer.

Timmy was never playing the 95% of content in the game on a regular basis, had and has his 5% niche. But even if others dip their nose into the same content they could and still can avoid Timmy without having too much of a hassle. Timmy is rare and not the standard in GW2 end content.The problem is that you are mixing Timmy with Johnny. Let Timmy be toxic but Johnny isn't. They share the same interest but Johnny just wants to have engaging fun in a video game he likes very much. Johnny hates it to press 1 (and sometimes F to rezz careless players) and be successful with it. He can accept it to a certain point and is present in other game modes as well. When Johnny plays niche content nothing drastically changes but the issue that he doesn't want to meet the same players like in open world because this specific niche content isn't made for low- or non-effort. The niche is a niche and it's fine that it exists because Johnny can find like-minded players - sure, sometimes he meets Timmy but it mostly doesn't end well for Timmy - and the rest of the crowd can have fun outside of that niche content. Both groups can co-exist, even Timmy can have his place unless he pushes it too hard resulting in a ban.

So, stop being so entitled and in this case more toxic than Timmy ever was and let people have their different content in the game. "Your" fun doesn't need to be automatically fun for others. Raids don't hurt you in the slightest from an objective point of you but if you personally feel hurt maybe you should give it a try and find nice mates/guilds/communities showing you the way into raiding. I heard they exist for real.

Last but not least I can guarantee you if those Strike missions will allow people to wear whateverest gear and be successful with builds that makes no sense at all not only hardcore players will lose interest but the majority of the players will because it will be like a boredom of grind fiesta only people who are 24/7 present in Silverwastes can accept. If you really want the game turn even more in this direction go ahead soon you'll be one lonesome warrior in a desert called Tyria.

[JpDelano.2580]

@Vinceman.4572 said:

@"JpDelano.2580" said:or maybe you could understand that human beings hiding behind computers will usually have a different conversation when you meet them. I can almost tell you 90 percent of the people really dont like timmy the pimple face, even though he thinks they do. For me, i like to enjoy the game and not deal with headaches such as yourself. which is why strike will be helpful to me by the way, and i also think thats why Anet put them in because they know timmy the pimple face also and they want to keep players. Ive played the game for 2 months, and i can assure you timmy isnt the answer.

Timmy was never playing the 95% of content in the game on a regular basis, had and has his 5% niche. But even if others dip their nose into the same content they could and still can avoid Timmy without having too much of a hassle. Timmy is rare and not the standard in GW2 end content.The problem is that you are mixing Timmy with Johnny. Let Timmy be toxic but Johnny isn't. They share the same interest but Johnny just wants to have engaging fun in a video game he likes very much. Johnny hates it to press 1 (and sometimes F to rezz careless players) and be successful with it. He can accept it to a certain point and is present in other game modes as well. When Johnny plays niche content nothing drastically changes but the issue that he doesn't want to meet the same players like in open world because this specific niche content isn't made for low- or non-effort. The niche is a niche and it's fine that it exists because Johnny can find like-minded players - sure, sometimes he meets Timmy but it mostly doesn't end well for Timmy - and the rest of the crowd can have fun outside of that niche content. Both groups can co-exist, even Timmy can have his place unless he pushes it too hard resulting in a ban.

So, stop being so entitled and in this case more toxic than Timmy ever was and let people have their different content in the game. "Your" fun doesn't need to be automatically fun for others. Raids don't hurt you in the slightest from an objective point of you but if you personally feel hurt maybe you should give it a try and find nice mates/guilds/communities showing you the way into raiding. I heard they exist for real.

Last but not least I can guarantee you if those Strike missions will allow people to wear whateverest gear and be successful with builds that makes no sense at all not only hardcore players will lose interest but the majority of the players will because it will be like a boredom of grind fiesta only people who are 24/7 present in Silverwastes can accept. If you really want the game turn even more in this direction go ahead soon you'll be one lonesome warrior in a desert called Tyria.

Honestly im going to bail from the conversation, i really dont need a headache. i also dont feel as if i owe any justification on anything i said. also to the valley girl with the toxic irony pointed at me that was brewing in her head for whatever reason.. no clue

[Vinceman.4572]

@JpDelano.2580 said:Honestly im going to bail from the conversation, i really dont need a headache. i also dont feel as if i owe any justification on anything i said. also to the valley girl with the toxic irony pointed at me that was brewing in her head for whatever reason.. no clue

Yeah, reading & understanding for some is hard I can imagine. It's good that you are leaving. We don't need that kind of attitude in here, ty.

[Hyper Cutter.9376]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:The biggest problem with making content that isn't "press 1 to win" is that players don't play it.

This is true only for content that lacks any kind of meaningful rewards. The "casuals" that want to press 1 to win content will obviously find the best content of that type in terms of gold and go farm it till it's nerfed or their fingers bleed. Meanwhile the rest of the game that was supposed to be "for the majority" rots without any players. If all Arenanet gave the open world was first Istan and then Dragonfall, there wouldn't be much of a difference. Their time and resources would've been better spent elsewhere for the other maps as this "casual majority" doesn't care about anything other than their gold income.You say that like the "hardcore" players are any different. Gut raid and fractal rewards and see how many people stick around.