Your thoughts on GW2 putting full focus to open world as most played content

[Cristalyan.5728]

> @"Trise.2865" said:

> > @"SexyMofo.8923" said:

> > > @"mercury ranique.2170" said:

> > > Arenanet has always put focus on many kinds of content

> >

> > When you put the majority of the staff on side projects, I wouldn’t consider that as always focus on content.

> >

> >

>

> Oh? You know what those projects were? and that they didn't contain content?

 

In January 2019 a Game Director left ANet. When questioned, ANet refused to give any detail regarding how many Game Directors are active on the Comapny.

With the last events (lay-offs) another Game Director left ANet. Again, no word from ANet of how many Game Directors are still with the Company.

 

From these two facts it is very safe to assume that at least **two** side projects were games. Having already Game Directors assigned. What we don't know is how many other games are still on work (despite all the statements that ANet is working on GW2 now). Why this question? Because we still have no answer to the question of how many Game Directors ANet has now.

 

And being other games, with different Game Directors, it is obvious that these projects contained content. But not for GW2. And, from the GW2 players point of view this is equivalent with "no content".

 

[trev.1045]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> > @"The Ace.9105" said:

> > What are your thoughts on Anet putting their full focus on open world and stopping developing raids etc. for open world events cause open world is the most played content?

> >

> > You think they are on the right track or if they are disconnected from the community and looking only statistics?

> >

> > Personally I think that focusing on open world content cause it's the most played content in the game is just statistic value of players who have nothing better to do in the game. They have done their daily fractals and weekly raids and when they want to play the game more the only thing that's left is open world farming that Anet recently nerfed cause it impacts the gemstore.

> >

> > Unless the focusing on open world content brings us some kind of separate 10-man instances where you clear the map and get completion from it like vanquish in gw1 the full on focus is just disconnection from the community.

>

> Focusing all on the area that most people play most of the time would be "disconnecting from the community and looking only at statistics."

>

> ****

> I don't think that any of us have any clear idea what drives profits or costs for the game, what would please most of us the most, or inspire important fractions of us enough. I think it's worth stating our preferences, it's worth letting ANet know when we like (or do not like) features or stories.

>

> By far the biggest mistake ANet could make would be paying too much attention to our second guessing. They've been successful making games for over 10 years; I think we need to trust that they know their business. (And if they don't, there's absolutely nothing any of us could say or do that would turn things around for them.)

 

I love open world, i am a bit confused though, i decided to have a nose around crystal desert- and it was completely empty? i did pretty much every event i saw solo in the end .... are they all in a tiny part of the zone that i dont know of or is it semi abandoned?

 

The only max level area that seems fairly busy (that i have found so far) is silverwastes

 

And its odd because i saw lots of people around whilst levelling...

 

I guess my question is...are we sure most people are doing open world?

[Trise.2865]

> @"Cristalyan.5728" said:

> In January 2019 a Game Director left ANet. When questioned, ANet refused to give any detail regarding how many Game Directors are active on the Comapny.

> With the last events (lay-offs) another Game Director left ANet. Again, no word from ANet of how many Game Directors are still with the Company.

>

> From these two facts it is very safe to assume that at least **two** side projects were games.

 

Why? Just because someone is a Game Director doesn't mean everything they do is game-related, nor does their leaving the company imply any association with other projects *at all*, merely that they were either considered expendable, or they chose to leave. This has nothing to do with what any of them were working on.

 

>Having already Game Directors assigned. What we don't know is how many other games are still on work (despite all the statements that ANet is working on GW2 now). Why this question? Because we still have no answer to the question of how many Game Directors ANet has now.

>

> And being other games, with different Game Directors, it is obvious that these projects contained content. But not for GW2. And, from the GW2 players point of view this is equivalent with "no content".

>

 

Again, you're assuming the side projects A: are other games, and B: have nothing to do with Guild Wars, based solely on the fact that they were labeled "side projects", and the fact they were cancelled. Even if that were true, It is a poor game designer indeed that can't utilize work done, regardless of a project's completion. Just look at Guild Wars 2 itself as an example: how many man-hours did they spend on Guild Wars: Utopia before it was cancelled?

 

But no. Everything is terrible, the world is ending, skies are falling, etc., etc... spare me the diatribe, I've heard it already.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"trev.1045" said:

> i decided to have a nose around crystal desert- and it was completely empty?

Probably it wasn't "completely empty;" it's just a big map.

 

> i did pretty much every event i saw solo in the end .... are they all in a tiny part of the zone that i dont know of or is it semi abandoned?

There are a lot of maps now, so unless there's something driving people to be in a specific map, it's hard to tell just how popular any give map is.

 

> The only max level area that seems fairly busy (that i have found so far) is silverwastes

Silverwastes is relatively compact, it has a very high density of events and for both those reasons, it is a popular choice for increasing one's wealth. There aren't any maps that are as popular, because they all attract different people for different reasons.

 

> And its odd because i saw lots of people around whilst levelling...

If you're L15, there aren't that many maps that are safe to play in.

 

> I guess my question is...are we sure most people are doing open world?

It's hard to get good numbers on how popular anything is, given that ANet doesn't publicly release any data.

 

There are any number of proxies, though, mostly via GW2 Efficiency's stat pages. Although registered users aren't a random sample of GW2 players, we can reasonably guess that they represent a similar cross-section of preferences across the main modes: PvE, sPvP, WvW. It's likely that raiders & fractalers are overrepresented, and that newbies to the game are underrepped. Still, it's a decent place to start.

 

* "Scion & Champion" is an achievement needed to reach Thunderhead Peaks (for completing the first part of LS4.5) and over 30% of GW2 Efficiency's accounts have done that.

* "The Fire Djinn Extinguished" is awarded for finishing the most recent raid and under 5% of accounts have that.

* "Always Land on Your Feet" is awarded after obtaining the WarClaw and falling to your death in WvW (i.e. it's trivially earned by anyone in WvW). Under 10% have it.

* "Djinn's Dominion" was added to unranked PvP in late 2018 and has associated achievements completed by under 3% of players.

 

None of that is sufficient to estimate true ratios or absolute numbers, but it does demonstrate that "obvious" PvE achievements are getting completed more quickly than the obvious ones for other modes, by a large margin.

 

tl;dr I think it's safe to conclude that far more people participate in open world PvE than anything else.

 

[Solvar.7953]

I can't speak for overall numbers, but when Daily Kills for Pvp comes up, I often do that, and looking at the open PvP maps, sorted by number of players, often the total number of players on such maps is <50 (oftentimes, <10). And one would think that daily kills would skew that number higher.

At the same time, I can go to almost any PvE map and find more players than that doing stuff on that map. I don't know how many folks are doing the PvP tournaments.

I do think it is hard for GW2s PvP to compete with other games whose entire focus is PvP. It is hard for me to imagine that they get too many players who say "I want to do a PvP type game, and you know what, I think I'll do that in GW2".

However, I also recognize that every MMO needs some sort of PvP, simply because there will be discussions like 'I think my character can take out your character'. So having some form of it is fine. Its just less clear how much effort they should spend on it.

It wouldn't surprise me if this was some of the original decision to stop doing dungeon work. They might have looked at numbers and found only a tiny percentage of players were playing dungeons.

Number of people doing fractals is less clear - I often see a group of people hanging around the entrance, and it is harder to see how many are actually playing it. But most fractals are also smaller scale than dungeons, so resources needed is likely less.

 

[Garkus.2183]

take all the 'they's out of your post and insert 'me's pls

[Westenev.5289]

I mean, I do like the feeling of exploring living story maps for the first time (and maybe even experiencing some of the more complex content with friends)... but I digress, I seldom have a reason to return to these (open world) maps, like I might have done with a less complex map like the Silverwastes several years ago.

 

I really wouldn't mind a PvP or Guild related "living world" update - I think putting Living World on hold for six months would be worth it if we had to sacrifice a living world team to do it.

[Amaranthe.3578]

Raids were always a dumb addition. Especially since they are barely supporting them anyways.

They should focus on open world and Fractals. Actually deliver new fractals in a humane pace.

[Asum.4960]

As much as I love new maps and stories, I just don't see a point in running around in them after the initial exploration/map completion, neither am I interested in brainless gold farms or zerg events where individual contribution and game mechanics don't really matter, after the initial experience of them.

 

Without Fractal CM's and Raids and to some extend WvW and PvP, there just isn't anything that could keep my interest for an extended amount of time, as nothing in open world requires any investment or understanding and interaction with, of the mechanics in the game. Which is a shame, since they are great.

 

In the original Guild Wars, the "open world" in form of it's mission instances tended to be a lot more difficult, especially after offering features like hard mode.

The fact that they were also all coop on top of being challenging at times meant there was a reason to come together and form communities, as well as to engage with the game mechanics, and to create and adapt builds to overcome challenges.

 

Guild Wars 2's open world being reduced to pressing F on nodes, nuking mobs in half a second, or holding down 1 in laggy Meta event zergs, due to lack of challenge, as well as story missions being a completely free ride means it's play once and forget for me, as it barely qualifies as gameplay.

Never once did I consistently fail in Open World or Story content and had to stop and engage with the mechanics, asking myself what to do different to beat it.

The fact that you can even nuke big story bads with a decent build/rotation before you even see the mechanics that are supposed to challenge you (but also fail to do so if you deliberately hold back every 25% HP, just to check if they do anything before nuking them into oblivion) is a shame.

 

If they were to exclusively focus on that type of content they either would have to massively reduce power creep while drastically increasing the difficulty in open world and story missions (as well as offering even harder and repeatable coop versions of them with meaningful rewards), or the game would probably lose my interest very quickly as main game, even after being with this franchise for almost 14 years.

 

I guess it comes down to if they want me to keep playing daily, or for a day every 3-4 months, if I don't forget to keep up with it after a while.

 

As it is now, CM's, Raids and WvW are the only types content in this game, even after being critical of some of them myself before trying them, that made me want to form or be a part of communities to overcome that content with together, and to keep doing so at a regular basis.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Thank goodness everyone's not the same, and the game has something for everyone.

[Haishao.6851]

I think the main focus of a MMO should always be on its persistent Open World. Small group instanced content is not Massively Multiplayer and while they do have their use and I think that a few instanced content can be interesting, most of a MMO content should be open world. That's the reason this genre exist.

 

[ancientoak.4258]

A game without story? Would leave immediately. And there is already so much open world content. Woud rather have the core game got some update/revamp, and new stories also happening in existing areas, instead of endless new maps.

[Vayne.8563]

> @"trev.1045" said:

> > @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> > > @"The Ace.9105" said:

> > > What are your thoughts on Anet putting their full focus on open world and stopping developing raids etc. for open world events cause open world is the most played content?

> > >

> > > You think they are on the right track or if they are disconnected from the community and looking only statistics?

> > >

> > > Personally I think that focusing on open world content cause it's the most played content in the game is just statistic value of players who have nothing better to do in the game. They have done their daily fractals and weekly raids and when they want to play the game more the only thing that's left is open world farming that Anet recently nerfed cause it impacts the gemstore.

> > >

> > > Unless the focusing on open world content brings us some kind of separate 10-man instances where you clear the map and get completion from it like vanquish in gw1 the full on focus is just disconnection from the community.

> >

> > Focusing all on the area that most people play most of the time would be "disconnecting from the community and looking only at statistics."

> >

> > ****

> > I don't think that any of us have any clear idea what drives profits or costs for the game, what would please most of us the most, or inspire important fractions of us enough. I think it's worth stating our preferences, it's worth letting ANet know when we like (or do not like) features or stories.

> >

> > By far the biggest mistake ANet could make would be paying too much attention to our second guessing. They've been successful making games for over 10 years; I think we need to trust that they know their business. (And if they don't, there's absolutely nothing any of us could say or do that would turn things around for them.)

>

> I love open world, i am a bit confused though, i decided to have a nose around crystal desert- and it was completely empty? i did pretty much every event i saw solo in the end .... are they all in a tiny part of the zone that i dont know of or is it semi abandoned?

>

> The only max level area that seems fairly busy (that i have found so far) is silverwastes

>

> And its odd because i saw lots of people around whilst levelling...

>

> I guess my question is...are we sure most people are doing open world?

 

I'm sure. Doesn't mean I'm right, but I'm sure. That's because open world doesn't mean random events in Crystal Oasis. Open world is driven largely by timers and big group events. If you use the LFG tool in the game you'll find hero point trains and bounty trains relatively frequently in POF, but PoF wasn't designed to zerg.

 

There are big events in PoF, but those are also very big zones. I promise you're not alone in them. The trick is, if you run into a bigger event that requires people, to tag up (even with a mentor tag) and shout it out in map chat, and people will come. Same for hero points.

 

They're obviously in the zone, or they wouldn't hear me when I called it out.

 

For even bigger events, you tag, shout in map chat and use LFG.

 

I play in POF a reasonable percentage of the time, and there are plenty of people there...but they're scattered and doing smaller things that you can solo. Yet somehow the deadhouse still gets done regularly, even though it's a group event. Same with other other group events. I did the judges the other day,. and the warhound meta in Vabbi. You tag, you advertise and you build a group.

 

Let's also not forget there are often more than one version of each of the maps, and LFG is how you can get to a more active map. If you're on a US server and you want to see how it works, hit me up in game and I can prove it to you.

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"Mea.5491" said:

> > @"kharmin.7683" said:

> > > @"Mea.5491" said:

> > > As an open world player, after the unnecessarily OVERnerfed Istan map....

> > Unnecessarily? Maybe by your preference and many others; however, I don't believe ANet would nerf something if they considered the nerf to be unnecessary. But that's a topic for a different thread.

>

> Yes, unnecessarily. The first nerf was deserved, it put Istan on par with SW. That was fair. But the Amala champ nerf was too much.

And the incoming massive nerf to all PoF/LS4 metas (a sideeffect of the unidentified gear changes) is going to put all those metas way beyond HoT and SW. Which is not only definitely unnecessary, but also a weird decision overall (what developer wants to discourage their players from playing current content, and pushes them to old areas - especially ones that weren't abandoned at all?).

 

[Torolan.5816]

I always saw raids as an unwelcome sideshow and would be glad if they stayed as optional as possible.

 

Sadly the execution of the ls story turns darker and more confusing every turn, and the commander is shown as a dupe over and over again, so i am not even sure I want to have much more ls after initially loving every second of it in season 1.

 

Which leaves only wvw for me, which is nearly the same since years. It reminds me very much of DAOCs RVR, but compared to it, is without any lasting effect and very anonymous, if I were to quit it tomorrow nobody would know that I was even there after a few weeks. Legendary guilds are also just kept alive by propaganda of the mouth, which is very sad.

[mixxed.5862]

Come on, qualifying one raid and a fractal a year as "focus" on Anet's part requires some really heavy mental gymnastics. It's pretty obvious that most of their resources go into their LW content - including a new map each release.

 

> @"The Ace.9105" said:

> Unless the focusing on open world content brings us some kind of separate 10-man instances where you clear the map and get completion from it like vanquish in gw1 the full on focus is just disconnection from the community.

 

I really love that idea! Although I'd prefer 5 man content... With more players your personal contribution just becomes less and less significant.

I don't think it's a case of disconnection from the community. They're just entirely focused on making a laid-back game for their casual playerbase.

 

(edit) I mean look at the people complaining: "You betrayed your manifesto! Why are there exclusive rewards locked behind raids?" When in reality all these people run around in full ascended best-in-slot gear and there's nothing keeping them from getting into raids but their own lack of motivation or interest. All they'd need to do is put in some effort and look for a training guild or ask some friends in game whether they're up for the challenge.

 

> @"Asum.4960" said:

> As much as I love new maps and stories, I just don't see a point in running around in them after the initial exploration/map completion, neither am I interested in brainless gold farms or zerg events where individual contribution and game mechanics don't really matter, after the initial experience of them.

>

> Without Fractal CM's and Raids and to some extend WvW and PvP, there just isn't anything that could keep my interest for an extended amount of time, as nothing in open world requires any investment or understanding and interaction with, of the mechanics in the game. Which is a shame, since they are great.

>

> In the original Guild Wars, the "open world" in form of it's mission instances tended to be a lot more difficult, especially after offering features like hard mode.

> The fact that they were also all coop on top of being challenging at times meant there was a reason to come together and form communities, as well as to engage with the game mechanics, and to create and adapt builds to overcome challenges.

>

> Guild Wars 2's open world being reduced to pressing F on nodes, nuking mobs in half a second, or holding down 1 in laggy Meta event zergs, due to lack of challenge, as well as story missions being a completely free ride means it's play once and forget for me, as it barely qualifies as gameplay.

> Never once did I consistently fail in Open World or Story content and had to stop and engage with the mechanics, asking myself what to do different to beat it.

> The fact that you can even nuke big story bads with a decent build/rotation before you even see the mechanics that are supposed to challenge you (but also fail to do so if you deliberately hold back every 25% HP, just to check if they do anything before nuking them into oblivion) is a shame.

>

> If they were to exclusively focus on that type of content they either would have to massively reduce power creep while drastically increasing the difficulty in open world and story missions (as well as offering even harder and repeatable coop versions of them with meaningful rewards), or the game would probably lose my interest very quickly as main game, even after being with this franchise for almost 14 years.

>

> I guess it comes down to if they want me to keep playing daily, or for a day every 3-4 months, if I don't forget to keep up with it after a while.

>

> As it is now, CM's, Raids and WvW are the only types content in this game, even after being critical of some of them myself before trying them, that made me want to form or be a part of communities to overcome that content with together, and to keep doing so at a regular basis.

 

Amen. :)