Should Anet go back to their roots?

[DutchRiders.2871]

So after the latest AMA, we can assume that 6-8 months end-game content droughts are to be expected going forward. The raid and fractal team have merged so more developers can be put on other teams, hence we can expect in best case scenario 2 interesting bosses per 6 months, and at worse we can expect 1 fun boss per 8-10 months ( W4). Let this sink in Arenanet is saying they are aiming to release 2 raid bosses per year. We can expect 6-9 months per fractal release, we might get 1 challenge mote fractal per year if we are lucky and in the mean time high tier fractal players are still live testing random instabilities, so yeah any form of record running has been destroyed. For open world the latest rewarding meta's that require some form of coordination have been released with HoT. Our favorite end game fashion items and goals, the Gen 2 legendaries that should have been launched with HoT are still not in game 1 year into PoF.

 

As far as the competitive scene goes, I'm not to familiar but it feels like arenanet is fixing wvw with the alliance update and pvp seems to be mechanically already in a good spot. Basically it is on the neglected community and balance team to make these modes any fun.

 

At this point it feels like raids/pvp/wvw/fractals are just features they can smack on a box and market the game on. Arenanet tries to cater to all players, but is this market position really working out? From my perspective the end game community is just memeing and being negative at this point. I say finish the alliance project, fill out the fractals roster and wrap up the current raid story. But after that arenanet should fully focus on the casual open world community and be clear about their market position. Release good open world content every 3 months, make players log in and buy fancy new mount skins/gemstore items, but lets not kid ourselves and promote/expect replayable and engaging content.

 

I wonder what other players think about this!

[GrubySzymek.1362]

Their roots went to Amazon.

[DutchRiders.2871]

Thats exactly what I mean, the old dungeon team and gw1 guys are pretty much gone. The roots of the people working at the company and the direction they have been taking now seem to be with Living story episodes. Can we say that the assets and knowledge of the company seem to have changed, and would it not be better if they stick with their strenghts?

[Healix.5819]

They need the illusion of a traditional endgame grind, otherwise it goes back to people crying that GW2 has no endgame (raids), no reason to play, etc. They're the minority, but they're vocal and tend to hop around MMOs; a source of bad advertising. GW2's focus has always been the living world. It was never going to have dungeon/raid releases on the scale of other MMOs, especially considering ArenaNet tends to devote resources based on participation.

[Vayne.8563]

There are an awful lot of players who aren't interested in the "end game" listed here and have their own opinion of what end game is/should be. For some people that's legendary crafting or collections,. rather than "interesting" bosses. Even people who like mechanics don't necessarily like raids, since not everyone wants to play with 9 other people, even though this is an MMO.

 

The question is how many people share your view of what is or isn't end game, by percentage. I'm sure if most people were raiding, raids would get a lot more support. At least, it makes sense that it would.

[DutchRiders.2871]

> @"Healix.5819" said:

> They need the illusion of a traditional endgame grind, otherwise it goes back to people crying that GW2 has no endgame (raids), no reason to play, etc. They're the minority, but they're vocal and tend to hop around MMOs; a source of bad advertising. GW2's focus has always been the living world. It was never going to have dungeon/raid releases on the scale of other MMOs, especially considering ArenaNet tends to devote resources based on participation.

 

But now they are just memeing and being negative, is that marketing that much better? Should they not either fully push raids or just drop raids?

 

> @"Vayne.8563" said:

> There are an awful lot of players who aren't interested in the "end game" listed here and have their own opinion of what end game is/should be. For some people that's legendary crafting or collections,. rather than "interesting" bosses. Even people who like mechanics don't necessarily like raids, since not everyone wants to play with 9 other people, even though this is an MMO.

>

> The question is how many people share your view of what is or isn't end game, by percentage. I'm sure if most people were raiding, raids would get a lot more support. At least, it makes sense that it would.

 

This is exactly what im bringing up though, I suggest dropping raids if you are just gonna release them once every 6-9 months because there are not enough players. Make no mistake I full clear multiple times a week. But I also enjoy LS releases and I recon gandara could have been way better if the raid team was working on that for example. If legendary crafting is your thing, does it not sadden you we still not have gen 2 legendaries completed?

[Vayne.8563]

> @"DutchRiders.2871" said:

> > @"Healix.5819" said:

> > They need the illusion of a traditional endgame grind, otherwise it goes back to people crying that GW2 has no endgame (raids), no reason to play, etc. They're the minority, but they're vocal and tend to hop around MMOs; a source of bad advertising. GW2's focus has always been the living world. It was never going to have dungeon/raid releases on the scale of other MMOs, especially considering ArenaNet tends to devote resources based on participation.

>

> But now they are just memeing and being negative, is that marketing that much better? Should they not either fully push raids or just drop raids?

>

> > @"Vayne.8563" said:

> > There are an awful lot of players who aren't interested in the "end game" listed here and have their own opinion of what end game is/should be. For some people that's legendary crafting or collections,. rather than "interesting" bosses. Even people who like mechanics don't necessarily like raids, since not everyone wants to play with 9 other people, even though this is an MMO.

> >

> > The question is how many people share your view of what is or isn't end game, by percentage. I'm sure if most people were raiding, raids would get a lot more support. At least, it makes sense that it would.

>

> This is exactly what im bringing up though, I suggest dropping raids if you are just gonna release them once every 6-9 months because there are not enough players. Make no mistake I full clear multiple times a week. But I also enjoy LS releases and I recon gandara could have been way better if the raid team was working on that for example. If legendary crafting is your thing, does it not sadden you we still not have gen 2 legendaries completed?

 

Well, the argument could be made that some people enjoy raids AND living story, and you'd be taking it away from those people. I was never in favor of adding raids in the first place, but taking them out now would likely be a mistake. The outcry would be bad publicity. It would be better to make it clear that raids aren't going to be released that quickly and they're not expecting raids to be the be all end all end game of Guild Wars 2. That it's a single activity out of many and meant to supplement the meat of the game, rather than be a separate game in and of itself.

[DutchRiders.2871]

WHen I say drop raids, I mean not making new ones after this story line of raids. So I think we are on the same page?

 

[Rauderi.8706]

You're never going to get raiders and content locusts to stop complaining. That's just a fact of MMOs, there will never be enough content or "difficult" content to make them happy.

But, MMOs have to cater to as wide a population as possible or risk a lingering death. So, there needs to be "elite" group content and PvP for the Aces and Killers to feel good about.

So, they're stuck with needing to develop WvW, PvP, Raids, *and* open world content.

 

Though, I'll be honest, the map-explore-meta thing is getting kinda old. Stories are too short, and I wonder if that would be better if we *reused* maps instead of carving out new sections. Don't get me wrong, ANet produces a baffling amount of real estate per iteration than any other MMO I've run across, but several things need balancing to make it feel more rewarding/fun.

[DutchRiders.2871]

> @"Rauderi.8706" said:

> You're never going to get raiders and content locusts to stop complaining. That's just a fact of MMOs, there will never be enough content or "difficult" content to make them happy.

> But, MMOs have to cater to as wide a population as possible or risk a lingering death. So, there needs to be "elite" group content and PvP for the Aces and Killers to feel good about.

> So, they're stuck with needing to develop WvW, PvP, Raids, *and* open world content.

>

> Though, I'll be honest, the map-explore-meta thing is getting kinda old. Stories are too short, and I wonder if that would be better if we *reused* maps instead of carving out new sections. Don't get me wrong, ANet produces a baffling amount of real estate per iteration than any other MMO I've run across, but several things need balancing to make it feel more rewarding/fun.

 

There is a difference between them whining for nothing, and them only getting 2 raid bosses per 6-10 months right? I think it is not unreasonable for raiders to be unsatisfied with the amount of content they getting and I would hope we could reach a consensus on what should be reasonable if anet keeps developing raids.

 

If you see value in an elite group , you need to keep them somewhat satisfied. Otherwise you are just gonna get the bad press and negative attitude that you are seeing now within the raid community. And on twitch and among content creators the traditional end game community is very vocal. Like to what extent do you think they should be getting new raid bosses? Personally I think 2 raid wings per year , consisting of 3+ hard bosses with repeatable CMs could satisfy the appetite of regular statics.

 

I fully agree that we could use some more polished end game type of meta events and LS could use some rethinking.

[Blaeys.3102]

GW2 has a bit of an identity/brand issue right now. At one point, the game was an amazing community focused experience in which players and guilds came together in world PVE and WvW to tackle challenges together. Fractals and 5 player pvp matches offered smaller group experiences without feeling like they detracted from the spirit of the game.

 

That game is still there, but in their effort to cater to the more hardcore audience with raids, it is less evident - and definitely less polished - than it was a few years ago. I agree that a change is needed - and that it probably should include diminishing the role raids play in the game.

 

Anet has developed the best large group/community focused game ever made, imo (MMO or otherwise). They should accept that crown and own that game category by focusing more effort into that area. Re-implement the guild activity team and use guilds as cornerstones to implement more complex and interesting content into the open world for everyone (not just guilds - they would only serve as the organized core). Pare back on raid development and focus on delivering higher quality open world and WvW content. Keep fractals and pvp as the small group experience, but make those teams secondary to the larger effort (and, of course, making sure there is always a way more casual players can enjoy those content areas) - again, owning that community focused MMO brand.

 

Watering down their brand likely resulted in short term gains as new hard core players tried the game out, but - long term - trying to segment the game into different parts for different kinds of players will only hurt their marketing and sales. It's branding 101.

[Danikat.8537]

This probably seems like a stupid question but for those of us who don't have much experience with other MMOs: What's a normal raid/dungeon release schedule?

 

My other MMO currently releases about 3 short dungeons and 1 raid per year. But people are forever complaining that they don't release content quickly enough either, so I'm not sure if it's just that I've picked 2 games which are very slow to release 'end game' content. (It's not unlikely since I'm very much a casual player who prefers story content so I'm going to try and pick games with good stories over lots of raids/dungeons.)

 

My understanding is that what keeps the hardcore dungeon/raid crowd busy in that game isn't the rate of releases but the fact that you need to do each one several times (potentially hundreds of times if you're unlucky) to try and get the right drops. And many of them seem to hate that - I've seen people post about finally getting the item they wanted and then declaring that they are never, ever going to play that dungeon ever again because they're so sick of seeing it. Which doesn't seem like great game design to me even if that person spent hundreds of hours in that dungeon.

 

I suspect this might be another situation where people just need to accept that GW2 is different and they can't play it the same way they're used to playing other games. It's a very, very casual game, even in the 'end game' content (case in point: the dungeon and raid token system, which means you always know the maximum number of runs you'll need to get the items you want). I doubt Anet ever intended people to be able to spend every night of every week raiding or even doing a mix of raids and Fractals like hardcore players do in other games. If you want to play this game every single day you're almost certainly going to have to do a mix of content, probably all of it - story, map completion, raids, Fractals, WvW, PvP and anything else I've missed. If not then you're going to run out of stuff to do and will need to take breaks until new stuff is released.

 

Personally I don't see that as a bad thing, but then like I said I'm a casual player, I like knowing I don't need to log in every day or even every week and I can take a break if I want to.

[perilisk.1874]

Maybe they could save some effort if occasionally, in LS, the raid and open world and story all use the same map? Open world meta could have even have dumbed-down but mechanically similar versions of the raid bosses, to help with training people on mechanics. I wonder if there's any technical issue that prevents it?

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"DutchRiders.2871" said:

> There is a difference between them whining for nothing, and them only getting 2 raid bosses per 6-10 months right?

In a raid-heavy game, perhaps. GW2 is not that thype of game however.

 

> I think it is not unreasonable for raiders to be unsatisfied with the amount of content they getting

Or maybe it's even more unreasonable to expect more in a game like gw2.

 

> and I would hope we could reach a consensus on what should be reasonable if anet keeps developing raids.

I sincerely doubt so. Raiders will always want more. I don't know of a single MMO when at least some part of raiding community would not complain about raid releases, no matter how fast they were.

 

> If you see value in an elite group , you need to keep them somewhat satisfied.

I'd expect them to be somewhat satisfied by the mere fact we do have raids in game now. If they aren't... well, they likely won't be satisfied with some slight increases to release cadence either, not unless GW2 turns in a "proper" raid game where most of the resources are dedicated to that type of content. And perhaps not even then.

 

> Otherwise you are just gonna get the bad press and negative attitude that you are seeing now within the raid community.

Actually, that's only a small part of the community. If you haven't noticed, theres quite a number of players that didn't even get through w5 yet. And that bad press? It has a really minor effect. Seriously, one Lone Peon video had probably a much greater (albeit probably a short-term one, but we'll see that) impact on the game popularity than all the raider community together.

 

> And on twitch and among content creators the traditional end game community is very vocal.

Not that many people are listening. Or care.

 

> Like to what extent do you think they should be getting new raid bosses? Personally I think 2 raid wings per year , consisting of 3+ hard bosses with repeatable CMs could satisfy the appetite of regular statics.

I'd say that 1 wing per 9 months, that on length and difficulty will average somewhere around wings 1-3 (with wing 4 and 5 being the outliers), with non-repeatable CMs is likely what you will get. And personally i don't see a reason why that should be a ground for major complains. Quite the opposite, that's actually a really good schedule for something that _is_ a niche content. Compared to what PvP (you know, that other endgame mode) is getting, that's a staggering amount of resources and content.

 

 

[Rauderi.8706]

> @"DutchRiders.2871" said:

> There is a difference between them whining for nothing, and them only getting 2 raid bosses per 6-10 months right? I think it is not unreasonable for raiders to be unsatisfied with the amount of content they getting and I would hope we could reach a consensus on what should be reasonable if anet keeps developing raids.

>

> If you see value in an elite group , you need to keep them somewhat satisfied. Otherwise you are just gonna get the bad press and negative attitude that you are seeing now within the raid community. And on twitch and among content creators the traditional end game community is very vocal. Like to what extent do you think they should be getting new raid bosses? Personally I think 2 raid wings per year , consisting of 3+ hard bosses with repeatable CMs could satisfy the appetite of regular statics.

>

> I fully agree that we could use some more polished end game type of meta events and LS could use some rethinking.

 

Heh, if I were the raiding type, I'd be torqued about the pace of releases. So there's some justification. But the whinging started even before ANet tried to cater to that vocal minority. In any MMO, I doubt raiding breaks 5% participation, and ANet's rate was pretty stellar around 10-11%, so far as I recall. But that's still a *large* swath of the playerbase that either cares but can't participate because of the raider-imposed social wall or don't care at all and stick to other modes (open world, PvP, WvW). So it's a huge production for not much gain, especially when one considers that for any exploration map or raid, a number of the most vigorous "I'm bored" criers will chew up the content in a week and leave with more "there's no endgame."

 

So, in a sense, yeah, perhaps ANet should shift gears again, but they can't afford to, specifically because of the malcontent. And with a history of misused content, it would take a huge shift from the top to make improvements to cater to everyone (more challenge modes, training raids, new fractals, more PvP modes, new WvW maps, etc). But right now, every three months is "new map, maybe new 5/10-man content" and that's about it.

[mindcircus.1506]

> @"DutchRiders.2871" said:

> From my perspective the end game community is just memeing and being negative at this point.

 

Just like every "end game community" in every MMO ever developed you mean?

 

 

[Gemnaid.4219]

> @"Kheldorn.5123" said:

> Their roots went to Amazon.

 

We followed them to their shitty servers.

 

 

[starlinvf.1358]

> @"Rauderi.8706" said:

> You're never going to get raiders and content locusts to stop complaining. That's just a fact of MMOs, there will never be enough content or "difficult" content to make them happy.

> But, MMOs have to cater to as wide a population as possible or risk a lingering death. So, there needs to be "elite" group content and PvP for the Aces and Killers to feel good about.

> So, they're stuck with needing to develop WvW, PvP, Raids, *and* open world content.

>

> Though, I'll be honest, the map-explore-meta thing is getting kinda old. Stories are too short, and I wonder if that would be better if we *reused* maps instead of carving out new sections. Don't get me wrong, ANet produces a baffling amount of real estate per iteration than any other MMO I've run across, but several things need balancing to make it feel more rewarding/fun.

 

Reusing the maps comes with a lot of problems too..... especially in the form of continuity. You can see the Remanents of LS1 in the Lvl 15 zones, and their related "difficulty" in relevance to the lead up to Heart of Thorns. There was even a major game wide story event with the Mordem invasion, but since those mobs were designed to compete against Lvl 80 characters, with complete builds, all the low level players in the region were dodging a massive mine field to which they had no idea of what was going on, and no way to contribute, or even participate in, without getting wreaked in 1 or 2 hits. 2 changes could had made that event epic for lower level players, but it would had only been obvious in hindsight, and required more design/development time then that team had to make it happen. I also heavily suspected it was their B team leading that project, given most of their main teams were deep into closing out Heart of Thorns for Launch.

 

Then theres LS2 itself, taking place mostly on 2 maps, where each had to be segmented out over 2+ months to increase its life span. After being on those maps for so long, most didn't want to go back for several months, until the memories of farming a small area for weeks on end faded. Then theres the battle to keep maps relevant via farming, but suffers from players ONLY focusing on the most lucrative zones. Given how generous this game is with rewards in general, some of the demands I've been seeing on the forums makes me wonder about psychological disorders, and how the Games industry keeps having to feed into it to function now.

 

Theres also a problem of the pre-planning required to Forward Proof a map for new mechanics. LS maps are used to developed new Tech for future releases, but not all of them make it past that first implementation. HOT abilities required a lot of node placements on the maps, and transit lanes planned out way in advance. But PoF is more Freeform with the Mounts, which means have to explicit design obstacles to stop them. The Griffon even exists to break this limitation as a Massive QOL boost for players who intend to do map complete, or transit "around" major obstacles. If they had to plan this from the start, it'd have to be years in advance (given their development speed), and could NOT afford to change part way without having to redo a lot of previous work.

Modern MMOs benefit more from an active feedback loop with the player base- but their too reactive to be useful for a project thats more then 4 months, without embedding them into the development process itself. A bunch of Indie games managed to pull this off; but Anet sits in this band of being too small to rapidly shift resources around, and the project too big to plan only a month or two at a time.

 

The big root of so many issues within Anet is only barely having enough of the key resources to keep the pacing they currently have. They also seem to have a decent amount of artists, but not enough of everything else to take full advantage of it. This is at least partially evidenced the fact that the maps are typically physically complete in every release, but large pockets of the map go completely unutilized, and Events tend to have the biggest feeling gaining momentum, and suddenly falling off for no apparent reason.

[ProtoGunner.4953]

I just wonder what them takes so long to make instanced content. Other companies - even much smaller ones - do it much faster. Just _what_ does take so long? I admit visually and presentation wise it is top notch. Other companies usually don't achieve this kind of level (only WoW imo).

[maddoctor.2738]

> @"ProtoGunner.4953" said:

> I just wonder what them takes so long to make instanced content. Other companies - even much smaller ones - do it much faster. Just _what_ does take so long? I admit visually and presentation wise it is top notch. Other companies usually don't achieve this kind of level (only WoW imo).

 

It takes them so long because they have too few developers working on instanced content. Just like they have too few developers working on PVP and WVW. The most recent release and the lack of substance of it, tells us that they have too few developers working on open world content as well. Judging by the very fast release pace of gem store items we can deduce (without any certainty of course) that the majority of their developers are skin/texture artists making gem store items.

 

Edit: Other companies might not have as many things on their cash shops. I think instead of comparing how much content other games release compared to Guild Wars 2, we should also compare how many cash shop skins they release. Compare those and we can find out where is the bulk of Guild Wars 2 development going to.

[Brother.1504]

Didn’t the original anet team at one time work for Blizzard? Hope your not suggesting what I think your suggesting. ?

[Durzlla.6295]

> @"ProtoGunner.4953" said:

> I just wonder what them takes so long to make instanced content. Other companies - even much smaller ones - do it much faster. Just _what_ does take so long? I admit visually and presentation wise it is top notch. Other companies usually don't achieve this kind of level (only WoW imo).

 

If I had to guess it’s because ANET to our knowledge has a variety of teams, they have 3 seperate LW teams, they have a PvP team, a WvW team, until recently they had both a fractal and Raid team (now merged), they have the balance team, and they have a team working on expansions.

 

Seeing as how we’re getting a map with every single living world release, where most other games give you ~5-7 maps for an expansion and then never give you a new one until then, I’m willing to bet that most of the devwork is going on the story and map creation rather than the instances content.

 

Which, given what the vast majority of what this player base enjoys and plays, is a very smart move on anets part.

 

Also, I don’t get what everyone is talking about with Anet producing content so slowly, this is a pretty normal pace for raids to come out, the only thing Anet is “slow” on at the moment is for instances 5 mans because most other MMOs typically drop a bundle of them into the game with each expansion, which Anet doesn’t do.

[Zedek.8932]

For some people, the "endgame" is standing in the starter zone and offer help. The amount of "Need help? New to the game? Whisper me" is getting much higher.

I am not interested in endgame as well. During my past 2-month break due to the murdering of my main weapon I un-retired my Lalafell Blackmage, and all that kack called "endgame" in FF14 made me shiver. It was like I had two work schedules: The one from my employer and the one from the game.

 

Nah, no-nonope. I rather shoot Skritt for my leisure than getting stressed over "content droughts".

 

Excelsior.

[Carighan.6758]

> @"DutchRiders.2871" said:

> Thats exactly what I mean, the old dungeon team and gw1 guys are pretty much gone. The roots of the people working at the company and the direction they have been taking now seem to be with Living story episodes. Can we say that the assets and knowledge of the company seem to have changed, and would it not be better if they stick with their strenghts?

 

Pretty much. My "perfect world" GW2 development would be more realistic and cut out the elements they - apparently - cannot sustain anyhow:

 

* To alleviate the brutal LS-development cycle, every 4-6 LS episodes **share** a - hopefully large - map which like Dry Top slowly gets uncovered or like old LS1 episodes slowly changed as the story progresses. Recycles ~all art, can share unique mechanics, easier to tell a single coherent story by reusing characters and locations since it's all in one zone, anyhow.

* PvP and/or WvW are cut. I'd wish they could find a way to make LS pull in some form of effect in WvW and keep that going for what it's worth, but I can't see that happen after how even extremely tame effects such as LS1 mobs appearing in WvW were met with hostility. I mean if they're sustainable keep them, but the void of development seems to indicate that there's no manpower to work on these, anyhow.

* Raids are cut.

* Fractals... I honestly don't know. They seem to be doing alright I guess? Cheaper-to-develop dungeons I guess? With raids cut and the art people freed up from LS a bit it should be possible to fire up a solid cadence here, bringing in new fractals constantly.

[Ashantara.8731]

ANet's _roots_ used to be exciting story-telling (see GW1's plots) and good teamplay content (see GW1 missions and elite instances).

 

The former they seem to finally be getting right in GW2 since PoF (only the personal story up until Claw Islands used to have that quality in GW2).

 

The latter, at least for me, has not yet been achieved; they came close with dungeons, but fractals (except the latest ones) are plain boring, because of complete lack of atmosphere and decent story. As for raids, they are too "elite", and you have to play them frequently to achieve the required tokens to "prove" that you are good at it, and that stinks IMO; also, their story content is pretty meager.