Legendary armor is... Locked for some people.

[Nephalem.8921]

17 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Will you quit if they never make another raid?

I will and already kinda did. Maybe i come back if cm strikes work. A lot of the community active guilds are dying or died already.

LN kinda died recently and qT died years ago when they swapped to ff14. If sc dies there would be just dT left for pve guides.

You make it look so simple while it is an incredible complex problem. Whales are paying the bills and not your average player. Those whales pay thousands of euros or dollars and make up the biggest contributor in micropayment games.

Raiders and pvp'er are usually the most engaged. Without those there wont be guides or anything so the game looks dead from the outside even if it has an active playerbase which will result in no new players. Your average open world player does not read reddit, forum or discord and might just log in once a week to do story. Such players cant keep the game alive either and they are usually the least invested and would drop the game first.

Having raids or high level pvp is just free marketing because people will stream it. Almost nobody watches somebody doing mundane open world stuff.

And if you compare gw2 to other successful games the "casual only" way is clearly not working.

[Astralporing.1957]

3 hours ago, yann.1946 said:

Well not exactly. Legendaries where always designed i such a way that the mayority will never get them, even though they theorecticly could. And i would argue the same is true for the envoy set.

There's a difference. In case of wespons, it's just a decision about whether get the legendary or not. Most people will not get one, due to its cost, but the possibility will always be open to them. In fact, many will arrive at a point where getting a legendary will be just making decision to make one, without anything else involved - because they will already have all that is necessary to make them - either in form of materials, or in form of gold to buy those. I remember that making one of the legendaries i have took me like 15 minutes from making a decision to obtaining one. I just decided while skin browsing that rodgort would be perfect for the look of my flame-themed character, realized i have everything needed, including the precursor (which i could have bought, it would not have increased the overall price that much, Rodgort precursor is cheap), then i went and forged it.

 

In case of armor however, there's way more stuff involved.Such a decision as above will generally be available only to veteran raiders. Most players will have to start from the very beginning, because their normal gameplay will not offer them neither the initial collections for precursors, nor LIs for the actual legendary. Average PvE player will never be in the situation whether making that set will be just a decision of spending their wealth or not.

 

3 hours ago, yann.1946 said:

The big difference being that they dont feel like they can get it. 

Yes, that's the difference between those. Weapons are within the realm of possibility for an average player. Armor generally is not - it requires specifically farming for it, for a very long time (and that's even if we ignore the question of how easy or hard the farm itself would be).

 

3 hours ago, yann.1946 said:

Well your stance might have, but what you said did not. Lots of "your" corrections where you adding things you did not say earlier.

But those things were only clarifications, they did not change anything i said before. At best it might have changed your understanding of what i said before.

 

3 hours ago, yann.1946 said:

the easiest example was you saying that mode locked categories where a problem, then after being confronted with the skyscale example saying mode locked usable/ desirable rewards. 

Both are true. Mode locked categories are a problem, but we generally speak of it only when that ends preventing us from obtaining something. For example, raid-locking envoy is absolutely no problem for raiders, because it does not affect them at all.

 

In this case the difference between legendary armor and skyscale is that content-locking skyscales affect only a very, very small amount of people (to the point where you are literally the first person i have ever heard mentioning it - and it does not seem like you actually care about it at all), while content-locking legendary armor affects majority of the populace.

 

3 hours ago, yann.1946 said:

Well then the majority of players are wrong. For all intents and purposes its hot armour. Do you have to do  raids (yes,theyre part of hot.) but do you have to do general hot. Also yes, and probably way more.

You saying they're wrong does not change that Envoy is and will be treated as raid armor. Also, no, the non-raid effort is almost inconsequential compared to the raid one.

 

If you disagree, then i guess you should also consider Aurora and Vision to not be LS trinkets, but general GW2 ones due to them both including Gift of Battle.

[Haishao.6851]

48 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Raiders and pvp'er are usually the most engaged.

 

That explain why they're always the first to quit.

 

 

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

11 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Give me an animating skin for PvP or WvW and I'll be fine.

Looks like PvP armor animates to me.

Looks like the WvW armor animates to me.

If you want to go further still, both WvW and PvP legendary armor have subtle, constant animations, better dye channels (The colors actually aren't washed out by the effects.  You can actually dye the effects on some pieces), and a sleeker look for medium (no magical trenchcoat on weapon draw).

[Infusion.7149]

25 minutes ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

Looks like PvP armor animates to me.

Looks like the WvW armor animates to me.

If you want to go further still, both WvW and PvP legendary armor have subtle, constant animations, better dye channels (The colors actually aren't washed out by the effects.  You can actually dye the effects on some pieces), and a sleeker look for medium (no magical trenchcoat on weapon draw).

You can't dye the aura effect on WVW armors , only the tendrils. However they are animated even if they aren't legendary (that's a separate topic altogether) and light armor boots only has one dye channel (some of the pieces have 2 dye channels but the most widely seen ones are 4 dye channel or 3 at least).

 

If you don't believe me you can verify this by previewing the armors and then previewing shadow abyss dye on all pieces.

 

Anyhow that is completely tangential to the topic which is there are 3 "modes" and all 3 "modes" have armor available.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[mindcircus.1506]

1 hour ago, Haishao.6851 said:

 

That explain why they're always the first to quit.

 

 

Actually the first to quit are the players who don't make it past level 30 and these outnumber the whiners on both sides of this debate considerably.

[Astralporing.1957]

36 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Anyhow that is completely tangential to the topic which is there are 3 "modes" and all 3 "modes" have armor available.

But only two of those modes have armor directed at all players of said mode. PvE does not. It's armor actually excludes most players of said mode.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Astralporing.1957

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

Looks like PvP armor animates to me.

Looks like the WvW armor animates to me.

If you want to go further still, both WvW and PvP legendary armor have subtle, constant animations, better dye channels (The colors actually aren't washed out by the effects.  You can actually dye the effects on some pieces), and a sleeker look for medium (no magical trenchcoat on weapon draw).

Let me know when they animate when I go into battle, k? Thanks.

[Vayne.8563]

9 hours ago, Chrysaliss.8720 said:

Legendary armor is not locked for anyone. Every player has the exact same opportunity to do the exact same thing, to get the exact same reward. If you are not willing to put in the work to get the reward. Then clearly you do not want the legendary armor enough.

 

The real problem in this thread is that people do not want equality of opportunity. They want equality of outcome. And that is really really bad idea.

I put more effort into this game than any raider, albeit a different type of effort.  I've made all but 3 legendary weapons, 2 legendary backpieces, 2 legendaries accessories and I really don't enjoy raiding. It's not something you can pick up, do for five minutes and get back to. If I want that armor I have to force myself into hours of not enjoy the game. I would get the armor and be so frustrated I would then leave the game.

You seem to think that having that specific armor locked behind the least popular content is a good idea. It's like me opening a restaurant and saying you can get the best dessert but only if you eat this really horrible liver we cook. It's not brilliant salesmanship.

Calling anyone with over  41k achievement points lazy is not really on. Why do people make these assumptions? I didnt' sign on to this game to raid, and I don't want to be "encouraged" to raid to get the only skin that animates when you go into battle in the game.

I've put more time and energy into this game than anyone you like know. Doesn't change the fact that I don't enjoy raiding and making me raid to get that reward is silly. It would be different if I were in some minority were everyone liked raiding but me but that's not the case.

[Astralporing.1957]

10 hours ago, Chrysaliss.8720 said:

The real problem in this thread is that people do not want equality of opportunity. They want equality of outcome. And that is really really bad idea.

Just so you know, you might have had a point if you were talking about equality of opportunity in context of access to raids. In case of access to legendary armor however, that equality of opportunity does not exist, because we're restricting access to legendary armor by completely arbitrary criteria that favours specific in-game social subgroups. I know that it might seem like a very subtle distinction, almost unnoticeable on first look, but in reality it is very major one.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Astralporing.1957

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

32 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

There's a difference. In case of wespons, it's just a decision about whether get the legendary or not. Most people will not get one, due to its cost, but the possibility will always be open to them. In fact, many will arrive at a point where getting a legendary will be just making decision to make one, without anything else involved - because they will already have all that is necessary to make them - either in form of materials, or in form of gold to buy those. I remember that making one of the legendaries i have took me like 15 minutes from making a decision to obtaining one. I just decided while skin browsing that rodgort would be perfect for the look of my flame-themed character, realized i have everything needed, including the precursor (which i could have bought, it would not have increased the overall price that much, Rodgort precursor is cheap), then i went and forged it.

So, all the work ANet was pouring into legendary collections is just moot?  There's a laundry list of tasks you have to do for the first  3 gen2 legendary weapons that culminates into making the precursor.  This was also applied to all gen1 legendary precursors as well. This design decision was intentional.  They only dropped it so they could release the Gen2 weapons faster and in tandem with the LW releases for season 3 and onwards, but they still take a massive amount of materials to craft the gen2 precursors.  ANet had the intention of adding stories to all the legendary weapons but failed to do so due to management crunch and content delivery making it unsustainable for their team.

 

Quote

In case of armor however, there's way more stuff involved.Such a decision as above will generally be available only to veteran raiders. Most players will have to start from the very beginning, because their normal gameplay will not offer them neither the initial collections for precursors, nor LIs for the actual legendary. Average PvE player will never be in the situation whether making that set will be just a decision of spending their wealth or not.

Yeah, PvP is way more involved as well, you have to do tournaments and gain ranks, but you also still don't have to win.  WvW is, arguably, the one where you could potentially put forth the least effort and still acquire it. (You only need rank 3 participation and you could just lurk on an outnumbered map to get all your tickets.)

Looking at the materials you need, the first collection for raids is a mix between getting unique items from raids and then doing HoT metas.  The second is also about the same, but requires wing some odd things to be done in wing 4.  You then have to gather 150 or 750 LI to make the rest. at 25 LI a week (Assuming you convert LD into LI and are getting full clears), that's 6 weeks for the first, 12 weeks for the second + 3rd, or a total  of 30 weeks and that's only due to the time-gate that is raids reset.  Even if you only manage to get half of those clears a week (Which is standard for a static squad of average skill or pug raids or raid trainings via discord), that's still only  12 weeks for the first set.  In the  time you'll be spending in raids (A maximum of 20 hours if you're super determined to get all the clears and are still new),  You'll be spending a lot less time in raids and more time crafting things f or provisioner tokens, gathering materials (each piece requires a stack of t5 and 100 t6 materials like totems/blood along with 5/5/5 reclaimed metal, chak eggs, and auric ingots respectively.  Have fun farming Volatile magic and HoT metas.)

WvW  armor takes 9k tickets per set.  At 365 tickets a week (Which is a bit over 24 weeks per set) has very similar material requirements when it comes to totems/blood, but also requires you to spend, at minimum (If silver rank and averaging 7 pips 5 minutes) 20 hours on the map to get through diamond once.  If you're a lower rank, have fun  dealing with this taking substantially longer to do, up to, and including it being basically a full time job if you want WvW  legendary armor as quickly as possible.

For PvP, I didn't do the maths on pvp, but someone on the Wiki did. :https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Legendary_armor#PvP_armor_set
 

• 6330 PvP pips earned over 3 seasons: To finish as fast as possible, the player must complete 3 seasons of the non-repeatable PvP League reward chests. At any time during these 3 seasons, they must also complete the final repeatable Byzantium reward chest 24 times to accumulate the rest of the https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Ascended_Shard_of_Glory.png/20px-Ascended_Shard_of_Glory.png required.
  This path requires the most PvP games to be played, because the higher tiered reward chests that are repeated via this pathway provide less https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Ascended_Shard_of_Glory.png/20px-Ascended_Shard_of_Glory.png per pip than the lower tiered ones, which can be repeated by playing over a greater number of seasons.
• 6030 PvP pips earned over 9 seasons: To finish without completing the repeatable Byzantium reward chest at all, the player must complete all of the non-repeatable PvP League reward chests 9 times.
• 5440 PvP pips earned over 16 seasons: To finish with the fewest number of PvP games played, the player must not complete all of the non-repeatable PvP League reward chests in a single season. Instead, they should stop each season after completing the Persimmon chest. This is because the lower tiers of reward chest provide more https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Ascended_Shard_of_Glory.png/20px-Ascended_Shard_of_Glory.png per pip earned than the higher tiers.
  
  All-in-all, raids require you to spend very little time in the specific game mode as compared to PvP and WvW with WvW requiring you to spend the most.
   

  Quote

  Yes, that's the difference between those. Weapons are within the realm of possibility for an average player. Armor generally is not - it requires specifically farming for it, for a very long time (and that's even if we ignore the question of how easy or hard the farm itself would be).

  Is it though?  Legendary items are expensive.  They're a huge task of either gold farming or map farming to acquire things. You still need to do map completion when crafting gen1 and, the world record for fastest completion of the Core Tyria map is still about 10 hours or such and that's with optimal events and paths.  My personal best is still 30 hours from character creation (Hitting yes)  to the Gates of Orr.  You still need the gift of battle, you still need 200 spirit shards and 77 clovers.  All of this is a huge time investment for your average casual player.  Sure, you could, in theory, get it in casual ways by doing content you want to play, but that also doesn't change the facts that you shoudl be able to get friends together to try for raids.
  
  In fact, using myself as an example, in 2 years of just farming materials and casual raids with friends (we'd kill dhuum in one pull then struggle on escort for an hour as an example), I had basically everything I needed for the armor except for chak eggs and auric ingots and those last two items are mostly my fault for not farming those when I was doing everything else.  What's stopping someone from getting 9 chill friends to go and smash the content together?
   

  Quote

  Both are true. Mode locked categories are a problem, but we generally speak of it only when that ends preventing us from obtaining something. For example, raid-locking envoy is absolutely no problem for raiders, because it does not affect them at all.

  So, why is there no issue with PvP and WvW rewards that are exclusive to those game modes, come faster when you play with a competent group or have experience (That won't want you if you're unwilling to learn/unable to play at certain times)?  Why isn't there an outcry on how legendary WvW armor requires 24 weeks per set and can't be obtained via playing EotM, or how pvp armor requires ranked play and not custom matches?  Why is it just the armor that requires a bit of raiding and not the other two sets that require you to live in the game mode?  Where's the outrage about Coalescence?  It's literally a legendary ring "locked" behind raids much like the armor and the only other alternative is WvW.
   

  Quote

  You saying they're wrong does not change that Envoy is and will be treated as raid armor. Also, no, the non-raid effort is almost inconsequential compared to the raid one.

  
  If you disagree, then i guess you should also consider Aurora and Vision to not be LS trinkets, but general GW2 ones due to them both including Gift of Battle.

    There's a surprising amount of PvE tied to envoy armor.  Yes it's all HoT PvE content, but that's also the expansions wings 1-4 come with.  If we want to be accurate, this is less "Raid" armor and more "HoT" armor because it requires you to do every bit of content that came with Heart of Thorns, much like how Aurora, Vision, and Coalescence all require you to do all the content in LWS3, LWS4, and PoF & PoF raids respectively. 

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

But only two of those modes have armor directed at all players of said mode. PvE does not. It's armor actually excludes most players of said mode.

*one

WvW is just participation.  You don't need to join a squad, form a group, etc.  You just ened to do something on the map to get to t3 participation then once every 10 minutes do another thing.

PvP requires people to play in tournaments and Ranked matches.  Unranked and custom matches are played by a larger majority.

[Infusion.7149]

You can't even get into ranked until your rank 20 in PVP by the way (you can't get the ascended shards of glory from unranked or custom arena). It's more hard gated in that sense than raiding, just like how Ad Infinitum (fractal backpiece) is more hard gated unless you have someone to open 95 for you (and whatever other scales you need) or how Warbringer needs 350 WvW rank.

[Zalavaaris.5329]

10 hours ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

Also, not to offend raiders, but repeating the same content over and over again in exactly the same way with the same build in order to optimise rewards over the course of at least 22 weeks isn't my idea of a good time, and certainly doesn't stimulate my imagination.

It doesn't prove skill, just a unique single-mindedness and an ability to derive enjoyment from something long after most people would have gotten bored and gone off to play something more interesting.

 

I think that's my problem with instanced content in GW2 in general; the simple immutability of it. That rewards are tied to doing these static challenges an uncomfortable amount of times is just a further slap in the face.

At least Destiny 2's raids let you get the Exotic weapon rewards in just one successful run.

I actually agree, the raids shouldn't just be easily repeatable bosses 25 times a week for 3 months. I'd much rather do VERY hard content (which currently doesn't exist) for a month and call it good. Good point!

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

18 minutes ago, Zalavaaris.5329 said:

I actually agree, the raids shouldn't just be easily repeatable bosses 25 times a week for 3 months. I'd much rather do VERY hard content (which currently doesn't exist) for a month and call it good. Good point!

Content that requires coordination of combo fields and mechanical/situation awareness would be pretty awesome.   I was always disappointed how boons went from this thing you get  from combo fields and some personal skills to something most professions put out without thinking.

[Zalavaaris.5329]

8 minutes ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

Content that requires coordination of combo fields and mechanical/situation awareness would be pretty awesome.   I was always disappointed how boons went from this thing you get  from combo fields and some personal skills to something most professions put out without thinking.

I honestly think the way that healing and buffing works limits the mechanical complexity that raids CAN have. Mythic raiding in WoW for example, it isn't just a stack on tank fest. You actually need to position appropriately, spread out, etc. There's also role specific mechanics for ranged and melee dps to deal with instead of having everyone deal with the same stuff at the same time. I think it's forgivable being as new as they are to designing raids. But in the long run I'd like to see some actual challenge. Even the CMs in this game are just... ok. Most of them you can do on accident and at the end be confused why you got bonus materials. I think Samarog may be my favorite CM because it isn't AS brain dead as some of the others. Hell... even dhuum is just, here comes a train... step off the tracks... oh here it comes again... step off the tracks...

 

Edit: I feel like most of the skill in raids comes into play when you're trying to clear all of it as fast as possible. Less of a question of, do we kill this or not. I'd rather the latter. If there were fights as hard as mythic wow fights there might ACTUALLY be a hard lock for some players just based on the skill gap. 

Edited August 10, 2021 by Zalavaaris.5329

[Obtena.7952]

5 hours ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

I will and already kinda did. Maybe i come back if cm strikes work. A lot of the community active guilds are dying or died already.

LN kinda died recently and qT died years ago when they swapped to ff14. If sc dies there would be just dT left for pve guides.

You make it look so simple while it is an incredible complex problem. Whales are paying the bills and not your average player. Those whales pay thousands of euros or dollars and make up the biggest contributor in micropayment games.

Raiders and pvp'er are usually the most engaged. Without those there wont be guides or anything so the game looks dead from the outside even if it has an active playerbase which will result in no new players. Your average open world player does not read reddit, forum or discord and might just log in once a week to do story. Such players cant keep the game alive either and they are usually the least invested and would drop the game first.

Having raids or high level pvp is just free marketing because people will stream it. Almost nobody watches somebody doing mundane open world stuff.

And if you compare gw2 to other successful games the "casual only" way is clearly not working.

Lots of mis-information in there, too much to bother with. I will say that if the 'casual only' way is not working for GW2, you have some 'splaining to do for how GW2 is still here. The measure of GW2's success isn't in comparing it to other games, so that kind of thinking doesn't make sense. 

 

 

Edited August 10, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Nephalem.8921]

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Lots of mis-information in there, too much to bother with. I will say that if the 'casual only' way is not working for GW2, you have some 'splaining to do for how GW2 is still here. The measure of GW2's success isn't in comparing it to other games, so that kind of thinking doesn't make sense. 

 

 

Mass layoffs are a pretty good indicator for a failing company. Why wouldnt you compare a product to the competition? That makes 0 sense and is the first step to failure. 

Edited August 10, 2021 by Nephalem.8921

[Obtena.7952]

42 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Mass layoffs are a pretty good indicator for a failing company. Why wouldnt you compare a product to the competition? That makes 0 sense and is the first step to failure. 

Maybe ... or maybe not. Not every company that does a mass layoff fails. Some companies fail and never do a mass lay off. Seems like a pretty bad indicator for a failing company if you ask me. 

 

I didn't say you wouldn't compare them. I said you wouldn't compare them to see if GW2 is successful because GW2's success has nothing to do with what other games do. There is no correlation between another companies success and Anet's so comparing those companies for that purpose is actually nonsensical. 

 

You're just saying lots of things you don't know in your post, just to support a narrative you want to believe. 

Edited August 10, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Linken.6345]

4 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I put more effort into this game than any raider, albeit a different type of effort.  I've made all but 3 legendary weapons, 2 legendary backpieces, 2 legendaries accessories and I really don't enjoy raiding. It's not something you can pick up, do for five minutes and get back to. If I want that armor I have to force myself into hours of not enjoy the game. I would get the armor and be so frustrated I would then leave the game.

You seem to think that having that specific armor locked behind the least popular content is a good idea. It's like me opening a restaurant and saying you can get the best dessert but only if you eat this really horrible liver we cook. It's not brilliant salesmanship.

Calling anyone with over  41k achievement points lazy is not really on. Why do people make these assumptions? I didnt' sign on to this game to raid, and I don't want to be "encouraged" to raid to get the only skin that animates when you go into battle in the game.

I've put more time and energy into this game than anyone you like know. Doesn't change the fact that I don't enjoy raiding and making me raid to get that reward is silly. It would be different if I were in some minority were everyone liked raiding but me but that's not the case.

 

To be fair after doing it once the legendary pve armor, I kinda assumed they would release more armors in the future that animated in combat all through black lion chests ofcourse to get people to spend.

 

Im shocked it never happened all that work to release 3 armor sets and then welp lets never do that again. 

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

13 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Maybe ... or maybe not. Not every company that does a mass layoff fails. Some companies fail and never do a mass lay off. Seems like a pretty bad indicator for a failing company if you ask me. 

 

I didn't say you wouldn't compare them. I said you wouldn't compare them to see if GW2 is successful because GW2's success has nothing to do with what other games do. There is no correlation between another companies success and Anet's so comparing those companies for that purpose is actually nonsensical. 

 

You're just saying lots of things you don't know in your post, just to support a narrative you want to believe. 

They (ANet) admitted that a lot of the layoffs were for side projects and, in a round-about way, told us  (The players) that they weren't focusing 100% of their efforts on GW2.  This is fine, a company needs to expand its ventures, but if you pay attention to how that impacted the game's development, the delays in LW, the constant reshuffling of how content is delivered, the failure to live up to the cadence expectations they set themselves it becomes obvious something was being sacrificed and that something was GW2's content.  Now that new management has been introduced and GW2's got the sole focus of ANet, it's having a flourish of content, a new expac is over the horizon with new ways to utilize old systems and existing content to make instances.  There's also some old events coming back Ala marionette; which seem to be ANet's answer to 50 man raids.

[Vayne.8563]

56 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

 

To be fair after doing it once the legendary pve armor, I kinda assumed they would release more armors in the future that animated in combat all through black lion chests ofcourse to get people to spend.

 

Im shocked it never happened all that work to release 3 armor sets and then welp lets never do that again. 

This is me too.  It's frustrating to me, because I like the concept of armor that changes when I'm in combat and changes back when I'm out of combat, but I dislike raiding enough to ever bother with it.  Sad, really.   The problem is, I'm sure I'm not even close to alone. There are probably more people in my boat than actual raiders, I would think.

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Mass layoffs are a pretty good indicator for a failing company. Why wouldnt you compare a product to the competition? That makes 0 sense and is the first step to failure. 

Well WoW has had mass layoffs, Bioware has had mass layoffs. Neither company is a failing company.  I mean if you think Blizzard is failing, not sure what to tell you.

Mass layoffs are a way of cutting costs. Many games employ extra staff making an expansion and let some go but in the case of Guild Wars 2, it's even less of an issue, because most of the people that were let go, the vast majority, weren't working on Guild Wars 2 but other projects. 

Cost cutting happens all the time in successful companies. It's easy enough to look up.

The WWE has had it's most successful year ever this year, but they're still cutting talent to get costs down.  I don't think anyone thinks they're not successful.

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

They (ANet) admitted that a lot of the layoffs were for side projects and, in a round-about way, told us  (The players) that they weren't focusing 100% of their efforts on GW2.  This is fine, a company needs to expand its ventures, but if you pay attention to how that impacted the game's development, the delays in LW, the constant reshuffling of how content is delivered, the failure to live up to the cadence expectations they set themselves it becomes obvious something was being sacrificed and that something was GW2's content.  Now that new management has been introduced and GW2's got the sole focus of ANet, it's having a flourish of content, a new expac is over the horizon with new ways to utilize old systems and existing content to make instances.  There's also some old events coming back Ala marionette; which seem to be ANet's answer to 50 man raids.

I'm pretty sure Amazon hiring away top stuff (because how could Anet really compete with Amazon?) had as much or more to do with delays as anything else.  Everyone keeps saying these layoffs impacted the game.  Losing multiple game directors and other top devs to amazon had to have a much bigger impact in my opinion.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

11 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I'm pretty sure Amazon hiring away top stuff (because how could Anet really compete with Amazon?) had as much or more to do with delays as anything else.  Everyone keeps saying these layoffs impacted the game.  Losing multiple game directors and other top devs to amazon had to have a much bigger impact in my opinion.

I guess it was your turn to misread what I wrote.

It's nothing to do with the layoffs.  The people who were fired weren't even working on GW2 anymore.  They (ANet) were moving their teams that were originally working on GW2 around to work on side projects.  Side projects that lead nowhere, took focus away from GW2 as the teams working on GW2 were now smaller, and were sinking money instead of making any. NCsoft came along  and put a stop to it all.  The layoffs were a good thing for GW2, not so much the people who got fired, but yes, Amazon poaching members too wasn't exactly helping matters as well.

Edited August 10, 2021 by Sir Alymer.3406