8
Genuinely just three maps and a hub. Fucking hell.
We probably should have known ... that Gyla Delve wasn't an exception but the new normal. I now wish GW2 could have gone gracefully into Maintenance Mode during Icebrood Saga instead of becoming a Walking Dead Parody.
Path of Fire (€29.99) which included Living World Season 4 and Icebrood Saga (if you logged in once in a while) was the last full expansion we got. Now compare this to Secrets of the Obscure (€24.99).
Though I don't think that greed is the main reason why we are getting a lot less bang (content) for the buck today compared to back then. My impression is that the code base has become so fragile that every little change has a high chance of breaking a thousand other things, which makes development (and the cleanup afterwards) very, very expensive.
Here is my take: remember City of Heroes? Has nothing to do with the codebase, I'd say. It's just NCNet now, mate. Like ActiBlizz. It's not a flesh puppt yet, took a while for Blizzard, Bioware and Co as well. But it's not going to get better anymore.
Half a season of Living World over twelve month for almost full price. Fuck me that's grim.
Do you think we would get more content, if we'd paid more? I even doubt that. They simply can't deliver more content and give us rewards instead.
And Amnytas isn't even a complete map. Mabye a quarter of a map cloned 4 times with rmostly recycled events which are disabled whenever the meta runs. The only unique feature of this map is its lag and FPS drop.
We don't pay Anet, we pay NCSoft. NCSoft gives Anet a budget. NCSoft has a history of shutting down perfectly fine MMOs because they're not profitable enough, pretty sure that's what happened to GW2. Except that it's not been shut down, instead it runs on like 25% of its season 4 budget or whatever. So no, we won't get more of we pay more. And yes, the entire "mini expansion" is just recycled and repeated content ad nauseam. I can't see the design loop of "go get glowy orbs with your skyscale" anymore, it happens 25 times per event, acrpss 90% of events.
Pretty sure that's it.
I do not deny that there was a significant shift from player to shareholder focus over time. GW2 started out as a game for players to enjoy (or rather what the devs would enjoy playing. Who remembers the MMO Manifesto?) and largely turned into a revenue engine for shareholders to enjoy. At least they are not triple dipping (box + subscription + cash shop) like ActivisionBlizzard with WoW (or ZeniMax/Bethesda with ESO), and I believe that there are still (a few) people at ArenaNet who are fighting for the players and against 100% shareholder interest.
What I meant is that there is an inherent issue with every system that gets bigger and bigger over time and that is increasing complexity which makes changes/additions harder and harder. Pretty much the only way to battle this is to refactor and/or reimplement parts of the system (or the entire system) once in a while. To me it seems that this has been largely neglected over the past years, though there have been recent announcements that they are doing just that at the moment.
Anyway, how much resources you spend on things that do not immediatley create content/revenue is a management decision and this is where it comes full circle.
My theory is that ArenaNet was fully aware that GW2's complexity was getting out of hand and wanted the existing game to go into Maintenance Mode while creating a new game (GW3 or whatever) from scratch. A plan that was canceled by NCSoft. And now ArenaNet is forced to create as much content/revenue as possible for/from a system which is a royal pain in the ass to make changes to.
I hope that this does not come across as all negative. I still love this game. I'm just sad what it has become or rather where it appears to be heading to. If a Djinn would grant me a wish, it would be Please let GW2 (60/100 MMO Manifesto) go into Maintenance Mode and make GW3 (80/100 MMO Manifesto).
Well. Not much to add to that now, is there. I'd have to start nitpicking to really find anything, so I pretty much agree across the board. All I can add is my personal interest on what really happened at Anet. I wonder if the ship's being run by scabs now or if it's just a valiant last effort to, as you said, against 100% shareholder interest. Did MO tell NCSoft to get fucked and pissed off? Was his departure part of a deal to not completely nuke Anet or the game from orbit, more than NCSoft did with IBS anyway? Considering that MO's hand-picked successor mysteriously vanished, his project got fucking murdered and that we now have a 25€ half-season I feel like things have gotten pretty dirty at some point. Unfair speculation: probably scabs that genuinely think they can do it better and don't mind rule over rubble. But what do I know, my speculations are barely more than fanfic.
Ah well, could've, should've, would've. RIP GW2, it delayed my departure from MMOs for ten years, heh. It'll at least keep being a small part of my breakfast routine.
You know what's the most fascinating thing? How the subreddit does not care in the slightest whatsoever. The same subreddit that threw an absolute rageboner at Mount Adoption Licenses, the 50€ box price of HoT, or Build Templates. But paying 25€ for half a season of LW? Fucking people are actually thrilled. Absolutely bizarre. Guess it's the 2023 gamer crowd, "kids these days" just never learned that games can come without a cash shop? Everyone just gave up and became a consoomer? Fuck me if I know.
Yeah. I cameinto expectation that with all the changes to internal functions, paying more often for a new expansion is the new norm. I mean its kinda obvious, given the extremely short turnaround time between EoD and SoO.
We are in the era of 25$ for 3-5 maps + its story content, and I think itll stay that way till GW2 is unprofitable.
Its going to follow roughly the same expansion cadence that FF14 has (ehich is about every 2 years)
I agree. And just want to point out that paying for a game that has a cash shop doesn't even get mentioned anymore, including you. It's just normal now.
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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