World Restructuring / Alliances

[subversiontwo.7501]

@Zexanima.7851 said:

@subversiontwo.7501 said:

@Zexanima.7851 said:Cynicism aside, it'll probably save you a lot of frustration just to play the game expecting absolutely nothing to be released for it ever again.Would you really play the game then?I mean, I am frustrated my posts should show as much, but I am trying to be constructive, I criticize where it is due and try to be levelheaded when it's needed. If I expected nothing I would obviously be quiet but I also wouldn't be playing this game.

There are lots of games that don't change but people still play them. If the core mechanics are good things like updates are just nice to haves.I'd say that is an argument that suffers from two needed modifications even if I can understand where you are comming from. The first is that what most people considers no changes when they look at them from the outside are games that still involve some changes. Like, WvW could be such a thing. It is a sandbox, there is a perpetuality to it. It can require very few changes and keep going for a long time if it is healthy. However, no changes is a stretch and even single player games that are never changing the way they are intended to be played are still getting updates. Problems in a backlog tend to get fixed and problems tend to appear over time even in finished single player products that no one thinks are being changed.

The second bit is that it's without question that this game is not one of those games or in a state where something like that could keep it healthy. The devil is in the details there. I'm not referring to how systems and balance recently have picked up momentum in how they have degraded over time. I'm suggesting that this game mode has never fully been there even if it is a sandbox and certainly has managed to stay afloat on very little attention. The mode was seemingly unfinished at release and the scoring system was identified as a problem already in 2012. So not only is the current state of the mode perhaps not as healthy as it once has been, but it has also always been a mode where scoring, queuing, meeting and matching has never been so healthy that it has needed so little upkeep that it can appear as no change.

To tie that to a context:

People would obviously still play WvW too but it would never grow. If 3 people come in on a sunday and explore the map and that transpires with different people most sundays then people play the mode. Yet the mode isn't really played. That's perhaps the most important difference, that those who still in 2020 talk about systems improvements to WvW do that from a perspective that the mode has never fulfilled its potential and until there are better products on the market then WvW has a chance to recouperate to old population- and mood levels or even grow past them. It's not that hard to make us happy: Fix the things set out to be fixed (scoring, queuing, meeting and matching). Then the mode is in a position to grow. A lofty ambition and hope but not illogical as that slice of the market is still very much open for grabs with alot of WvW-type players sitting in older games (eg., EVE), games with inferior WvW-equivalents (WoW, FFXIV, BDO, ESO, AA et. al.), reminisce about dead games (WAR, DaoC, GW1) or pin their hopes to unreleased games still (CU, CF, NW et. al.). Simply appealing to present-day competition could be lucrative enough since large scale- or open-ish world PvP is faltering in all of those games for different reasons. None of those games handles such gameplay as well as the dead or ancient (in EVE's case) games did. That is your market and that market is in the millions. That market slice may be smaller than raids, moba or survival shooters (that are in the 10's or 100's of millions) but competition in that market slice is incredibly low so as long as you don't fall over yourself you can claim the main share of it and be attractive to every player with that taste.

Just look at the resurgence of RPG's. There is a quite vibrant market for both CRPG's and ARPG's at the moment even if none of those markets appeal to the 100's of millions or see the revenues that some of the worst MTX examples can boast about. Yet, there are quite alot of developers getting in on the Diablo and Baldur's gate slices at present instead of looking at slaying the dragons of the FPS-like RPGs that attracts the 100's of millions in the mainstream.

Did the Witcher sell better than Divinity? Will Cyberpunk sell better than BG3? Sure, but Divinity is still an excellent set of games and Larian is a thriving studio. If Anet was a smarter studio or NCsoft a smarter publisher they too would look at what they do well themselves instead of failing at slaying dragons. They would also stop fooling/echoing themselves to believe that they excel at things that they do not. That's why their commitment to PoF-oriented content post PoF has not lead to much growth because the problem of turning your MMO into a CRPG is that you get the revenue profile of a CRPG and also pit yourself to compete with those RPG's.

A pretty interesting discussion on GW2 Reddit is the whole Saga vs. Expansion thing and while pakaging may not be all that important, it becomes important if your Saga delivers no MMO features (eg., classes/specs) or if you put all those eggs in one basket and then do not look to capitalize from that basket (putting gems and gold sinks on WvW unlocks rather than LS unlocks makes zero sense if you primarily cater to LS players), then it makes absolutely no sense to make a Saga and it doesn't even make sense to make an MMO. They don't even need expansions then, they should simply make other games - and once they do, the illusion of where their strengths lie will likely be shattered. It's much easier to be an MMO with a good story than a CRPG with a good story, if you catch my drift. In fact, being an MMO with a good story could be a market niche, but that hinges on not forgetting that you are an MMO first and foremost. The story can not overshadow your massively cooperative and competetive gameplay.

I'm getting a deja vu making these arugments, but hey, it still needs to be said. WvW still has potential and is still a smart move on paper.