I love GW2, but the slow development is too apparent.

[Rogue.8235]

On 8/5/2021 at 5:59 PM, gloflop.3510 said:

I checked the financial figures of anet (better said its parent company ncsoft). The revenues fell from 2018 to 2019 by 25%. They remained constant from 2019 to 2020. If we keep in mind that anet does not want to lose money with gw2, they somewhere have to cut costs. A main source of their costs and thus a main area where they can cut costs are the employees. In other words: Anet fired devs. What happens when there are less devs? The amount of new content goes down. The consequence is that less people are playing the game and leaving money with which anet can pay their employees. We are in this downward cycle. The biggest hope is that the new expansion will bring players back and helps funding new devs. Else, it will become pretty dark for the game.

 

On 8/5/2021 at 8:30 PM, gloflop.3510 said:

I believe that this statement from anet was correct and that they fired devs because they shut down the project. However, I assume strongly that they also reduced the number of employees afterwards. This is not only done by firing an employee. It can also be that anet didn't fill an empty position again from someone who left the company.

 

I wanted to point in my earlier comment towards the cycle of less revenue, less employees, less revenue,... This cycle is where I see the biggest problems.

 

 

 

Your analysis is geared towards financial accounting of manufacturing firms.  ArenaNet is in software development.  Your analysis also does not include market and industry analysis, which leads to really bad information (bad data in = bad data out).  You then just started making assumptions.

 

Analyzing the same time period you did:

According to IBISWorld reports, the software development industry fell by 16.7% while the software publishing industry grew by 17.2%  Combine this with the US GDP falling by 3.4% in the same period of time (per U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis), and you see the parent companies rolling back to turtle through a slight recession at the expense of the developers.  This becomes more clear as you see a steady ~2.4% growth in fixed asset investments throughout the time period.  Your seeing a shift of assets at the publishing level, away from development, to maintain positive growth during a recessional bump.  

 

Now let's expand to look at the market level of analysis.  You'll find that during this time period (per Mintel market reports), you'll see a decline in the retention of casual gaming market participation and decreased sales in launches of differentiated products.  Cross referencing this with the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reports of purchasing behavior in the time period, we'll find a varying ~1.2 to 3.7% decrease in durable goods purchasing (report was monthly instead of quarterly, with variations each month).  Further, consumer spending was geared towards  food, services, and energy as we see growths in these areas.  Overall, the PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures price index) showed very little movement.  if at all.  Combine this with decreased corporate expenditures across most industries (3 to 5.8% decrease in wages and salaries paid), we're finding decreased purchasing power of consumers for non-essential consumer goods.  Wrap this back up to the Mintel reports, and it makes more sense.  A large portion of the gaming consumer base is leaving the market (temporarily) while the smaller core of more dedicated gaming consumers remain.  In addition, less money is being spent on new, differentiated products as the consumers stay with what they know (reflected in their purchasing behavior).

 

So let's go back to the originally quoted topic.  NCSoft shifted corporate assets away from ArenaNet to retain some semblance of RoI (return on investment).  NCSoft also shifted development to more traditional titles based on the changes in market participation.  And new projects got cancelled due to this market analysis.  Publishers have large teams of business analysts, and when these teams and the economists are drawing the same conclusions, corporations race to a defensive posture to protect their growth rate.

 

Therefore, ArenaNet got the short end of the stick for what turned out to be a tiny bump of the yearly economic growth rates.  The economy would continue to grow until it just falls dead out of the sky in 2020.  Surprisingly, it's bounced back stupidly quick as we're already seeing pre-COVID growth rates in 2021Q2.

 

 

Anyways, this is the kind of stuff you have to take into account when trying to figure out why ArenaNet does the things it does.  

ArenaNet did not simply get rid of a bunch of employees because "zomg are sales fell a little bit".....

 

 

[marielleberto.3865]

You lost me at "i'd be willing to pay a monthly fee". I'm a grad student, I ain't got money for that! And, as others stated, GW2 is just not as big as other MMO companies out there. 

[codedbykush.2019]

On 8/2/2021 at 3:16 PM, DaniTheHero.6318 said:

Now i don't know if Guild wars 2 simply isn't profitble enough for this slow devolpment or/and is it an issue of management ( I heard plenty of rumors about "woke" politics causing quite a bit of issues from within ANET), but i'm gonna be honest.

 

What? Anyway...

 

Blizzard is firing their toxic sexist creepy devs and Anet rehires their OG talent.

 

I love supporting Anet with my gameplay and Gems purchases.

[Pink.9672]

From what I understand, GW2 has settled into the roadmap of content updates every 3 month, which falls in line with the update schedule of FFXIV. As someone who has played FFXIV for years and technically started the day it was launched, I've been around and aware of it since it came into being, even if my main stint of playing didn't start until the Heavensward expansion. Further to that, I have years of FFXI under my belt, a decent meander through WoW back in the days of Burning Crusade (which I think is considered Classic now), and Ultima Online way back in the day.

I think we also have to admit that no MMO is perfect, not in general terms and not in personal terms. And quite frankly, that lack of perfection is completely needed for any MMO to even be successful. Something one person wants won't be what another person wants. Hence, the game attempts to give us a variety of side content and incentives outside of the core story. If every single person agreed on one thing that they wanted, they could dedicate way more resources to that thing, and everyone would be very happy. But that will never happen. Instead, every MMO tries to guess (or takes requests seriously) and creates smaller pieces of different content to appeal to different players within their game. Even if FFXIV is still my favorite game that doesn't mean I can't see its many flaws. And I can even understand that other people see flaws in it that I will never see. This is the same of WoW, GW2, Tera, and all the others that hold some healthy level of popularity. 

 

I will say that GW2 has a very healthy population. MMOs are a niche side of gaming, and due to the usual time investment related to them, people who play MMOs in general will gravitate to one. I've played XI and WoW at the same time (I know, two sub based ones) and you still usually end up spending more time on one than the other. I'm quite new to GW2, but I am good friends with someone who's been around since pre-launch, and loves GW2 above all other games. We've had great conversations about population within the various "big name" MMOs, the strength of retention based on the numbers versus the internet hype trains, and various things around the game in general. Right now, the numbers are on the rise, but they aren't peaking either. And even if there is not massive retention from these new numbers, GW2 still holds a very healthy population in the 1-1.5mil player range.

 

When it comes to bettering the game, a lot of us tend to focus on just getting what we want. And a lot of the time we associate with other players who play or think the same way we do. If I loved PvP (ha) and my friend loved making characters and redoing the 1-80 grind over and over again... we probably wouldn't have the same opinion on what we want out of the game. PvP also seems to be a thing in MMOs that either sucks absolute balls, or is really fun. FFXI and XIV? Yeah, it's in the suck category. That doesn't mean people don't still do it, and some that do genuinely do like it. But it's widely considered to be a lesser factor in the game, and thus it does tend to get lesser priority. There are certain modes more popular than others, and you can tell when they are trying to use feedback versus try something new. But it's still mainly something people do once a day via roulette for the bonus and then ignore it. And that's literally only if they want the gear they can buy for 100% aesthetic reasons. I know my friend did really enjoy PvP back in the day, before Elite specializations came in and everything sort of had to get retooled. But if I heard there was going to be some big PvP update that would do nothing for me. On the other hand, when I heard there was going to be fishing, I was super excited. I love fishing in games. I fish in every game that has it. The only one I haven't enjoyed was WoW's. Within the first couple days of playing GW2, prior to any EoD announcement, I asked if there was fishing in the game. Fishing as an added feature is really cool to me. A lot of people might think that is a stupid feature. But to others, like me, this is wanted. And it just happens that this one part of EoD happens to cater to players with that interest. It's important, just as important as other facets of the game. And even if I don't care about PvP, or most of the Specializations, I am still exceptionally happy that other players, different from me, are potentially getting something to make them happy.

 

Circling back to the release schedule, a lot of other people in the thread have clarified actual length between updates/patches/expansions, and some behind the scenes things. I think all of us can pretty much throw 2020 out the window when it comes to our MMOs. Regardless of what got released, when, and what got cut, I feel like 2020 is just a gimme year for a lot of industries. And even a good half of 2021. So, GW2 came out August 28, 2012. Heart of Thorns came out October 23, 2015. Path of Fire came out September 22, 2017. And End of Dragons is expected to drop in February 2022. So, release, little over 3 years for first expansion, then 2 years for the second, and then End of Dragons is about 4.5 (or 3.5 if we want to be generous with deleting 2020). And, within that time there was also Living World Season 1, 2, 3, 4, and IBS. And people can judge the quantity or quality of each thing as they wish. We are generally to biased to really judge these things individually based on memory because we will value things we liked more highly and devalue things we don't, or even claim them as a wasted addition.

 

If we look at FFXIV as a comparison we have release on September 30, 2010. And then that thing bombed harder than Scarlet lost her mind. After a lot of chaos, people stepping down, new people being hired, and an entire new game being made while the broken one was being made slightly less broken, FFXIV A Realm Reborn came out on August 24, 2013--Essentially 3 years to remake the base game. After the game succeeded this time around we get the first expansion of Heavensward on June 23, 2015. Then Stormblood June 20, 2017, Shadowbringers July 2, 2019, and the upcoming Endwalker November 23, 2021. FFXIV has a very standardized format of release. We generally know exactly how things are going to go. Generally we have patches x.1 to x.5, and between those be might see the occasional x.25 or x.56. We know that over the span of the 2 years between expansions we will see three sets of four 8-man raids released. We know we will see, generally seven 8-man Trials that will have Extreme modes that drop a mount with different colors (horses, wolves, birds, dragons, etc). We know we will see three 24-man raids released all with a central theme. We know how many dungeons we will see, how many new sets of gear to expect. We know exactly how to get each set we need, how to most effectively collect gear from weekly lock outs, and how to most effectively farm each part of the progression cycle. It is pretty predictable, and while a subscription based income (plus a cash shop for aesthetics) can guarantee a level of income and staff, I don't think GW2 lacks on those assurances at all.

 

Like I said, GW2 has a healthy player population, and with its lifespan being almost a decade, you can be sure that ANet has the stats on how much money they are bringing in. From what I understand, they even said that based on the money that has come in from the cash shop, they would never need to charge for an expansion to keep the game running. However, charging for the expansion did allow them to dedicate the level of time and detail they wanted to achieve in said expansions and beyond in the Living World side of things. Now, I have only been here on GW2 a month. I'm a little baby sprout of a Sylvari. I haven't experienced everything as it was released. I didn't get to spend hours with you guys in Discord, or Facebook, or on here theory crafting week after week as the living world was updated around us. But, I have played the personal story. I have gotten 100% map completion of Core Tyria. I have detoured to PoF for my first 4 mounts. I have watched about 4.5 hours outlining LW S1 with Scarlet. And I've been playing LW S2. Right now I am very much focusing on the story. I am ignoring WvW, PvP, achievements, side quests, etc. I've played probably 200 hours in a month. Why yes, that is more than my full time job. Would someone who doesn't care about map completion or who doesn't find the success of completing a map find value in what I chose to focus on? No. A lot of people might have jumped to 80 and hyper focused on Ascended or Legendary gear and jumped right into high end Fractals. Again, we all might play differently. And just because someone might be at the same place as me in the story in a smidgen of the time, doesn't mean that the maps and the method of creating the world in GW2 isn't highly valuable.

One thing I think GW2 and FFXIV have in common, very much in common, is that neither game expects to have all your time. So many companies these days want to use this Live Service Model to keep you in their game as long as possible, while also releasing another game every year and somehow wanting you to put all your time there as well. FFXIV gates progression to make sure people don't gear zerg everything in a week. But they do also release those lockouts in a reasonable time and allow people to grind, or... just leave for a bit. Patch drops, pay for a month, finish your main job, unsub for 2, repeat. If you only care about savage raids, you can generally cut that log in requirement by half the patches. FFXIV doesn't even incentivize you to think you have to stay. They literally have said to players it's totally okay to go enjoy other games. And I feel this is very true for GW2 as well. This is a fantastic game, but it doesn't make you feel like if you leave for a month, or a year, that you are going to come back and be in trouble. Heck, with how easy acceptable gear is to get in FFXIV, you can literally miss an entire expansion and be caught up in usually less than a week. GW2 isn't pushy, but that doesn't mean it can't give you thousands of hours of things to do.

With GW2 allowing for the conversion of Gold to Gems, the game might not have the built in gear grind of XIV or WoW, but it certainly has the gear grind of aesthetics. You want a certain outfit, skin, or mount off the shop? No problem. You can farm the gold, buy the gems, and be ready to go when the glorious piece comes back around. Grind for an infusion that makes you look cool. Get the best legendary pieces you want just to say you did it. Complete all the achievements. Complete all the masteries. Collect all the dyes. Play another character to 80. Spend hours getting all the golds on the beetle races (I have a problem). Just because some of us might not want to do any of that (and you really don't have to) doesn't mean that the content itself doesn't exist. And I think that's where a lot of the feeling of lacking comes from. A lot of it is not an actual lacking, but a lacking of what we as individuals might want to see more. The vast majority of MMOs do have extended periods of downtime, because they need to allow for the people that can play the game maybe 3 hours a week to be able to play the game without getting super overwhelmed, as well as give the players that can treat the game like a full time job enough things to do. But, to do the later, that needs to be a lot of different smaller things. I have seen a lot of people complaining that EoD isn't even an expansion, just a LW episode "with fishing". I don't think I have to repeat that fishing actually is exciting to some people. But even if it wasn't, all that we've received was a sneak peek and the understanding we're getting a new specialization for each class and new legendaries. Why anyone thinks that's all they are going to do is beyond me. There is obviously going to be more information released, and not just the mini-hype train of releases for said specializations. We're going to see more maps, more story, and more things to do in those maps.

I also wouldn't be surprised if a lot of us don't really take into account the true complexity of a lot of things. Mounts in GW2 are amazingly complex. Their unique movement, their animations, their utility, their character. And that's all before the plethora of skins. FFXIV has a lot of mounts, but really, they are 1 mount with a zillion skins. A lot of the animations are kinda clunky. They all run the same speed, fly the same speed, and swim the same speed. None of them have unique talents outside carrying multiple people (sometimes). And thus all the terrain surrounding mounts in FFXIV can also be treated the same. The attention to detail alone that had to go into going back to Core Tyria and figuring out all the ways you had to basically invisible wall people from going places they shouldn't after allowing mounts and gliding back there would have been intense. Creating maps always considering the modes of travel after the mounts were released is a lot more complicated than "they run on land only until they complete the story and collect all the air currents. Then they fly everywhere." Like, literally. We all fly in FFXIV. Don't have to sustain flight or maintain height. Just straight up fly everywhere. Don't matter if the mount is a giant tortoise or a winged dragon. Will GW2 release a map that requires a griffin or a skyscale even though both a fairly intensive/expensive? Or will they always consider an alternate route that you can manage with Raptor/Springer/Swimmer/Jackal? Likely the latter, which means all maps have to take those 4 into consideration even if the overall intention for the map might be more flying based.

So, does GW2 actually have that slow of a release schedule? No. Not based on the type of MMO it is, and how much they allow for players to do other things while also enjoying their game. Based on another current MMO doing well in today's market, they are actually quite similar.

Is any of this due to GW2 not having enough money? No. They do plenty well enough with their cash shop method. If they didn't, they wouldn't still be here 9 years later. If the model didn't work 2, 4, 6, 8 years ago they wouldn't keep using it. It's not about the money. It's about the game they want to make based on the staffing they want to have, in conjuncture with predicted profits. If they hired 100 more people onto the GW2 team, paying them even the bare minimum, would the content they produced actually increase player spending? Cause GW2 isn't really about retention. The game is free. You can retain people for free. But are they buying the cash shop items, the expansion, and the LWs? By that same logic, would spending even 100k on advertising bring in enough new people, willing to spend that much money on the game? What is cost effective for them? Hell, that friend I mentioned who loves this game? He took a break, and then talking about MMOs in Discord got him going again. I decided to join in and grabbed the Ultimate pack basically right away. Then we got another person in the Discord into it. Then another, and another. I'm pretty sure we have about 6 people all playing the game now just because of that one player's love of it. Word of mouth is exceptionally powerful. And we gamers are the ones that generally have gamer friends. If we can bring in our gamer friends for free, why would ANet both with advertising? Advertising doesn't inherently mean your get the return you want, or even need. Yes, targeting the right methods and doing the right collabs would probably have some impact. The only question is whether it would be enough to be worth it. And if it's even something they want. Not every game has aspirations to be excessively popular. That might seems unreasonable, but massive booms do often mean unsustainable expansion. Having a solid, healthy player base that is maintained through the content provided by your solid team of developers, without needing to hire and fire people like a kamikaze roller coaster, is way safer and good for everyone in the company for a long term project. And just because the company might receive an increase in players, that doesn't equate to retention or spending. Companies are not going to hire until they have well documented proof of a need. It's much easier to let people go to save money than it is to hire people for a theoretical future profit that might not come.

And, finally...any lack of things to do have to be weighed on actual things available versus things of interest. Just because I might not like 40% of the content doesn't mean that content isn't there. And just because I will never do maybe 20% of the available content ever, that doesn't mean it shouldn't exist for those people who highly value it. Objective appraisal of content is likely going to be impossible, for all of us. But it is important to understand that just because we might not value something, someone else out there will. And we should try to be happy for them as well. That doesn't mean we can't voice our dislikes and likes. That is always valuable. But it would be beneficial to see the value and investment in content, even if it is not our own value or investment.

[gloflop.3510]

@Rogue.8235 and @Pink.9672

We had different perspectives on the financial problem. Let me quickly comment on them. I took an accounting perspective for manufacturing as well as for service firms. So, also a game developer as well as a game distributor are covered. My data originates from the consolidated NCSoft financial statement. I was there before not clear on purpose. So, it is the revenue which NCSoft including its subsidiary makes with gw2 excluding potential inter-corporation bookings. Also, I took the comparison between 2018 and 2019. 2020 is a special year. My guess is that the gaming revenues in general went up but I did not check the data. Using an index across all products would be in my eyes problematic since the interests of people changed drastically as a consequence of the pandemic. Imagine there is a lockdown and you are not permitted to leave your home. Suddenly activities which you can do from home like playing MMOs becomes more important. As I said, I did not check the data. It is just a guess. It is anyway unimportant for the point which I would like to make.

 

Your focus has been on the return on investment (RoI). This is a measure which you typically calculate before an investment is done. So, in the case of gw2, before you start programming the game or before you start working on an expansion. It is highly unusual to do it before each year or each quarter starts. There you are rather adjusting so that you would get the desired profit stream. This adjustments are which I was talking about. One planned with revenues of $100 but only gets revenues of $75. One wants to keep the profit (or the RoI) constant. Result is that the costs need to be cut. Cutting costs in gw2 means in such dimensions that employees need to leave. Less employees means less people working on content. Less people working on content means lower quality of the content or less of it. It is hereby unimportant whether the decline in revenues was known before the year started or it became known afterwards. So, having a department which predicts the revenues for the next year precisely is unimportant. It only means that the number of employees is decreased before the year started rather then afterwards. Yes, I am simplifying and it is a lot more complex. For non-buisness experts, it is probably difficult enough what I already wrote.

 

You can find multiple indicators for what I explained above. Maybe easiest is to look at the last LS, the champions. They took an existing map (no new map creation needed), added rather simple enemies (no new mechanics need to be developed), and served it to us. I was a bit late with the story. I never saw a full map doing my story instances although anyone could join. I see it as a signal for how the community thinks about the instances. They dislike them heavily. I have been playing the game for above 8 years now. I can tell you that a lot changed. This includes the behaviour from anet and thei employees. Do you see them writing here in the forum? It used to happen occasionally in the past. Anet tried to keep their patch-cycle constant but what you get in the patches decreased. The only increase was in the skins at the trading post. This is another signal for anet's attempt to increase their revenue (or in this case: Decrease the drop in revenue).

 

Let me add something personal: I try to analyze the situation rationally. I tried to give an answer to the question why one gets the impression that the development is slow. I am hoping that I am wrong and that the development is in fact like speedy gonzales. My brain just tells me that my hopes are pointless.

Edited August 17, 2021 by gloflop.3510

[Rogue.8235]

I want to start by stating that I do not doubt your expertise in accounting.  I also want to point out that accounting looks at what was done while finance looks at what has yet to be.  Executive-level decision making must account for both (arguable if this is actually done in practice for any given firm).  

I also want to point out that what you surmise may be true, if given the presumption that executive-level decision making completely ignored principles of finance and strategic norms for software industries (which produce intangible goods).  Moreover, such a presumption does have, in itself, a continuum of of minor mistakes to downright stupid.  

I'm presenting the ideas of what ought to be done with the presumption that executives actually do what ought to be done based on sound financial decision making.  Arguable if they actually do.

 

With that out of the way,

 

1 hour ago, gloflop.3510 said:

Your focus has been on the return on investment (RoI). This is a measure which you typically calculate before an investment is done. So, in the case of gw2, before you start programming the game or before you start working on an expansion. It is highly unusual to do it before each year or each quarter starts. There you are rather adjusting so that you would get the desired profit stream.

 

RoI is the benchmark that must be exceeded in every strategic decision by a company.  Failure to surpass this benchmark leads to cascades of negative financial consequences because, in short, financial experts (read that as speculators🤷‍♂️  in the world of finance) will want to shift financial assets to firms that meet or beat that target RoI (read that as speculators think u iz dum and failing).  NCSoft isn't a small business, it's a major corporation that is involved in the world of corporate finance.

 

While you are correct in that RoI is not the concern of day-to-day operations of middle management and lower, it is always present at the upper- and executive-level.  This is because of time value money.  Essentially, money must always be growing by at least the benchmark or it is no good because people will put that money where it does grow.

 

1 hour ago, gloflop.3510 said:

This adjustments are which I was talking about. One planned with revenues of $100 but only gets revenues of $75. One wants to keep the profit (or the RoI) constant. Result is that the costs need to be cut. Cutting costs in gw2 means in such dimensions that employees need to leave. Less employees means less people working on content. Less people working on content means lower quality of the content or less of it. It is hereby unimportant whether the decline in revenues was known before the year started or it became known afterwards. So, having a department which predicts the revenues for the next year precisely is unimportant. It only means that the number of employees is decreased before the year started rather then afterwards. Yes, I am simplifying and it is a lot more complex. For non-buisness experts, it is probably difficult enough what I already wrote.

 

This is the manufacturing-based mindset, which works for tangible goods.  This may also be what NCSoft was thinking, but that would be a grievous error.  With intangible goods, perceived value is more important than the physical value of an object.  Cutting staff is a clear sign of failing in the software development industry.  This is why you see companies like Google and Amazon continuously expanding their arsenal of intellectual property and acquisitions.  It is all about increasing the perceived value of the firm.  This is extremely important because it plays heavily into the the corporate finance section I discussed above.  

 

In the corporate world, finance is what drives business more than the contribution margin of widgets.  This is the level where tens of millions of dollars is the kiddie pool.    NCSoft is at this level with its market cap of $16.8 billion (I know, market cap is the lazy metric, but it's good enough for the scope of a forum post).

 

So at the executive level of software development and software publishing, dips in profit need to be mitigated by increasing perceived value.  That NCSoft absolutely did the exact opposite of this is an indication of the larger context of the macro-economy.  Reducing staff in the tech industry is what you do when you're desperate to hold on to your share value.  Alternative reasons is a poison pill to prevent hostile takeover (no such indication here), or the executive-level decision making was just that plain idiotic (debatable).  My assumption was that sound corporate financial principles were followed specific to the industry NCSoft participates in.  Again, it can be argued that this is a skritt of an assumption.

 

Anyways, I'm just pointing out that the knee-jerk reaction of reducing staff in response to a quarterly, semi-annually, or annual dip in net profit doesn't normally happen in software and tech-based industries.  I just wanted to point out that there was something bigger going on that could have led to this decision, and the benefit of hindsight indicates that a recession was forming but turned out to be nothing.  At the time, NCSoft could have thought differently and was in a slight to moderate panic.

 

1 hour ago, gloflop.3510 said:

You can find multiple indicators for what I explained above. Maybe easiest is to look at the last LS, the champions. They took an existing map (no new map creation needed), added rather simple enemies (no new mechanics need to be developed), and served it to us. I was a bit late with the story. I never saw a full map doing my story instances although anyone could join. I see it as a signal for how the community thinks about the instances. They dislike them heavily. I have been playing the game for above 8 years now. I can tell you that a lot changed. This includes the behaviour from anet and thei employees. Do you see them writing here in the forum? It used to happen occasionally in the past. Anet tried to keep their patch-cycle constant but what you get in the patches decreased. The only increase was in the skins at the trading post. This is another signal for anet's attempt to increase their revenue (or in this case: Decrease the drop in revenue).

 

 

This is mid level operations in the context of what I was discussing.   

However, there is also a factor of corporate impositions via policies  onto subsidiaries.  Subsidiaries must obey the parent company, and the level of micromanagement varies from corporation to corporation.  

The indicators you talk about are definitely geared towards traditional manufacturing firms.  It's definitely the wrong thing to do for software development, but Korean corporations tend to be conservative in their decision making.  

If a developer decreases the perceived value of their software, it will gain the reputation of being subpar.  There is no way out of that hole outside of full-on re branding.  This is another reason why perceived value is so important.  Once you diminish the value of your software platform, it is next to impossible to convince people it's not crappy.

 

To think ArenaNet did this on a whim based solely on temporary dips in revenue, which is absolutely and completely normal in any research and development based firm, is to imply that these basic, rudimentary principles of strategic decisions are either unknown or completely ignored by ArenaNet.  That doesn't seem like a fair assumption.

 

I'm of the mindset that this is the continuing consequence of an executive-level decision from the parent, corporate publisher that ArenaNet has to deal with because they got screwed in a bad decision not of their own making.  This is based on my analysis in the context of the time frame, industry, economies (macro and micro), parent-subsidiary contractual relationships in the tech industry, corporate level finance knowledge, and the fact that it is confirmed to be an NCSoft decision to lay-off ArenaNet employees.

 

2 hours ago, gloflop.3510 said:

Let me add something personal: I try to analyze the situation rationally. I tried to give an answer to the question why one gets the impression that the development is slow. I am hoping that I am wrong and that the development is in fact like speedy gonzales. My brain just tells me that my hopes are pointless.

 

I'm attempting to induce some level of rationalization as well.  Ultimately, I think the general background of these kinds of threads is an emotionally-induced response rather than a well-reasoned response.  

 

I'd say, between the two of us, there is some light shed as to why there might be some sort of reduced value of late, be it time to produce or value of assets created.  Ultimately, it is up to the ones reading our posts to decide what they think, if they want to continue with emotional responses or take a critical eye to the posts to formulate a reasoned opinion.

[Glacial.9516]

On 8/2/2021 at 3:16 AM, DaniTheHero.6318 said:

Other games, ones i don't enjoy, or some enjoy far less, get frequent updates, FF14 gets updated weekly, with major updates every month or so.

I'm surprised you mention FF14 as it's one of the other primary games I play and I consider its content release rate to be very comparable to GW2s, with the primary difference being that GW2 front loads their content with a new map for each LS Chapter and FF14 has smaller monthly-ish patches accompanying each 'major' patch listed below. I was curious so I looked up the releases/patch notes pages of each respectively and listed them below:

FF14's release schedule:

Spoiler

(Taken from FF14's consolegameswiki page)

2.1 - 17th Dec 2013

2.2 - 27th Mar 2014

2.3 - 8th Jul 2014

2.4 - 28th Oct 2014

2.5 - 20th Jan 2015

3.0 - 30th June 2015 (Expansion)

3.1 - 10th Nov 2015

3.2 - 23rd Feb 2016

3.3 - 7th Jun 2016

3.4 - 27th Sept 2016

3.5 - 17th Jan 2017

4.0 - 20th Jun 2017 (Expansion)

4.1 - 10th Oct 2017

4.2 - 30th Jan 2018

4.3 - 22nd May 2018

4.4 - 18th Sept 2018

4.5 - 8th Jan 2019

5.0 - 2nd Jul 2019 (Expansion)

5.1 - 29th Oct 2019

5.2 - 18th Feb 2020

5.3 - 11th Aug 2020

5.4 - 8th Dec 2020

5.5 - 13th Apr 2021

6.0 - 23rd Nov 2021 (Expansion)

 

 

GW2 release dates (This is a bit trickier early on since LS1 and 2 are so different from the updated release schedule.):

Spoiler

(Taken from GW2's wiki)

LS Season 1 - Roughly monthly updates between Oct 22nd 2012 through May 20th 2014.

LS2 Ep1 - July 1st 2014 (Dry Top released)

LS2 Ep2 - July 15th 2014

LS2 Ep3 - July 29th 2014

LS2 Ep4 - Aug 12th 2014

LS2 Ep5 - Nov 4th 2014 (Silverwastes released)

LS2 Ep6 - Nov 18th 2014

LS2 Ep7 - Dec 2nd 2014

LS2 Ep8 - Jan 13th 2015

HoT - Oct 23rd 2015 (Expansion)

LS3 Ep1 - Jul 26th 2016

LS3 Ep2 - Sept 20th 2016

LS3 Ep3 - Nov 21st 2016

LS3 Ep4 - Feb 8th 2017

LS3 Ep5 - May 2nd 2017

LS3 Ep6 - July 25th 2017

PoF - Sept 22nd 2017 (Expansion)

LS4 Ep1 - Nov 28th 2017

LS4 Ep2 - Mar 6th 2018

LS4 Ep3 - June 26th 2018

LS4 Ep4 - Sept 18th 2018

LS4 Ep5 - Jan 8th 2019

LS4 Ep6 - May 14th 2019

Icebrood Prologue - Sept 17th 2019

Ice Ep1 - Nov 19th 2019

Ice Ep2 - Jan 28th 2020

Ice Visions - Mar 17th 2020

Ice Ep3 - May 26th 2020

Ice Ep4 - July 28th 2020

Ice Champions Ch1 - Nov 17th 2020

Ice Champ Ch2 - Jan 19th 2021

Ice Champ Ch3 - Mar 9th 2021

Ice Champ Ch4 - April 27th 2021

EoD - Feb 2022 (Expansion)

 

 

Edited August 18, 2021 by Glacial.9516

[voltaicbore.8012]

On 8/2/2021 at 3:07 AM, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

 

It may sound stupid but I'm not even sure if I want Gw2 to "thrive". 

 

If that means we get all the Wow Andy's and Hype Timmy's. 

 

I have seen what it did to FF14. Yes it got a boost but this won't stay up long because it's different from Wow. 

 

Either FF14 changes to apeal to Wow players or it will be down again in 6 months to the level it had before. 

 

Anet should advertise what makes Gw2 different from other mmos. (like the brilliant mounts and gear system) 

 

But we as a player also need to realize that what Gw2 offers is not what most MMO players want. 

 

A gear treadmill with a golden carrot on a stick in front of them that they can chase forever. (Wow in a nutshell.)

 

I feel exactly the same way.

 

On one level, GW2 just isn't ready for the kind of attention burst FFXIV is getting now. There are some fundamental differences to how this game works (LFG doesn't port you to destination from anywhere in game, etc) that aren't well explained, and boosting is an even worse idea in GW2 than it is in many other games.

 

On the other hand, I'm not sure we even want that kind of attention. I do want new players to learn about this game and fall in love with it, but I'd prefer that it happen without an oversized risk of a generally negative reception. For instance, I think a Steam launch with the game the way it is now would be terrible. I'm sure we'd find a decent number of new people devoted to the game, but I think that would be outweighed by the game being misunderstood and widely panned just for being too different from the typical tab-target, holy trinity mmo. 

[Faridah.8431]

On 8/12/2021 at 11:42 AM, marielleberto.3865 said:

You lost me at "i'd be willing to pay a monthly fee". I'm a grad student, I ain't got money for that! And, as others stated, GW2 is just not as big as other MMO companies out there. 

It's also completely antithetical to their whole schtick ever since Guild Wars came out in 2005 when presumably they were even smaller than they are now. The big selling point then as it is now is "no subscription".

 

As for "slow development", that's just a sad result of the studio having large ambitions at the start and failing to figure out how to realize them. I mean the first year and a half of fully developed content is just...gone. We've had content droughts as focus shifts, we've also seen clear lack of direction for what to do when they got impacted by lay-offs and other things resulting in the lackluster IBS. I work in an agile shop, but my god we are not that chaotic.

Edited August 18, 2021 by Faridah.8431

[Dante.1763]

7 minutes ago, Faridah.8431 said:

It's also completely antithetical to their whole schtick ever since Guild Wars came out in 2005 when presumably they were even smaller than they are now. The big selling point then as it is now is "no subscription".

 

As for "slow development", that's just a sad result of the studio having large ambitions at the start and failing to figure out how to realize them. I mean the first year and a half of fully developed content is just...gone. We've had content droughts as focus shifts, we've also seen clear lack of direction for what to do when they got impacted by lay-offs and other things resulting in the lackluster IBS. I work in an agile shop, but my god we are not that chaotic.

I sometimes wonder what their internal road maps / plans chart looks like >.>

[Faridah.8431]

8 minutes ago, Dante.1763 said:

I sometimes wonder what their internal road maps / plans chart looks like >.>

Me too.