Trying to talk to Anet is like trying to talk to the government and expecting a competent response. The government will never change; hopefully Anet will.
@@NikeDnT Maybe the strategy was not to look like greedy MTX corpos but everyone knew they were gonna do it anyways, so they should have just whole-assed it instead of half-assing it
@@UWV_Taylor the fact that the shop is a crappy experience of lag definitely makes me not want to go there unless something really nice turns up. Tbh the entire interface is terrible AND you can't customise it.
@@UWV_Taylor EoD was a half-assed effort all around. I don't know that not having skins ready to go was in any way out of character for that expansion and I seriously doubt it was any kind of strategy on ANet's part. It was a rush job. It wasn't planned. They literally dropped a story line on its head and devoted all resources to banging out an xpac. That's why it had unfinished maps and missing features everywhere you look. It sucks, but that's ANet. They never seem to have the resources they need and they change direction like most people change their underwear.
Anet and the community is like a group of loud tight friends in a restaurant laughing on their own jokes thinking everyone in the restaurant think they are funny and cool.
raid, but without the bullshit is what it should be called No useless stand in this circle 30+ times. No escort mission. No dumbass jumping puzzle in the middle of the raid for no reason. Just the fight with the mechanics of that fight.
>Put story at a forefront of their game >For an entire expansion's story, just copy an old Bioware game, but replace everything that made its plot good with twitter politics
Regarding the contrast between marketing and the actual game. Ever since GW2's launch to me it felt like there were 2 groups within Anet fighting over control of the company. The GW1 remnants that wanted to make a great game (and they did) and the new people hired/promoted under Mike O'Brien who aren't interested in gaming and want to turn GW2 into Tumblr/Twitter. While the old devs made the game the other group was in charge of marketing, monetization, writing, community management and basically everything else. That's how we ended up with 2 different target audiences fighting over what the game should be, meanwhile the actual devs keep getting pushed out and it shows. However I think there are 2 things Anet could do to solve many of GW2's problems (even without touching the underlying problems within the company). First would be a new GW2 manifesto. Make it clear that GW2 isn't just for one group of people, go over which gamemode fits which type of MMO player and try to sell them on it. Right now Anet is too afraid to define what GW2 is because they treat the game as a single monolith, which causes them to send mixed signals or dodge the subject altogether. We need something official that we can point to if people have questions about what this game is. Second, buff the personal story's difficulty. A lot. Even the low level instances. This ties into your point about difficulty settings, but I'd approach it from the other end. They need to bring people up to a level where they can reach 80 and not get completely overwhelmed by the first minor challenge they face. I know that's probably controversial, but right now leveling is extremely boring and doesn't teach new players how to play the game. Let casuals have fun in the open world but force people to learn mechanics, get gear, look up builds if they want to do the story. And if they can't then make them form groups to beat it. As a result they're either going to learn the game or be forced to socialize (perhaps even join a guild), both of those would improve the quality of the community in more ways than one. That's kind of how they did it with GW1, people still get stuck on normal mode missions to this day. Alternatively rework story mode dungeons to be the hard solo content that teaches mechanics and integrate it into the personal story/leveling process. They need to condition new players to enjoy a challenge and be satisfied when they overcome it, that's how you end up with a playerbase that wants to do hard endgame content at max level. You can't suddenly start doing that at 80 out of nowhere, by then it's already too late. Just look at how HoT broke the casuals, but you know what? At least they still remember the Pocket Raptors. They made memories by encountering a challenge. On the other hand none of 1-80 is memorable, and that's a huge problem too.
You're never going to make someone who doesn't want to do group stuff do group stuff. And pocket raptors aren't a challenge they are just overtuned. Making something hard isn't just buffing their health and then giving them ungodly amounts of damage. That's just a lazy way to do "challenge". Provide actual mechanics instead of a zergfest. And it's been about 8 years since I have played and I remember every single zone from 1-80. Lol. So I haven't even looked at the new maps because nostalgia makes me want to do all of the old naps again.😂 I guess you can't win them all.
I remember when Living Story was first announced: An added content of game play with story that was only available for a limited time for players to engage on. Flame & Frost, Secret of Southsun, Scarlet's War, etc. I only managed to take part in the story only partially, so when seeing characters like Canach, Braham, and all these other characters in the Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire, it was obvious I missed something. And, unfortunately, that something can't be revisited, which establishes that FOMO state of mind and regret.
I think you left out one of the biggest offenders: the pricing model of the Living World. It's absolutely within the category of them having the anal fixation of naming things differently but these should have been called "DLC adventures" or something very early on and made their presence known. I've had multiple friends give GW2 a shot, buying the "complete edition" of the game and then feeling like they've been ripped off when I told them that they need to pay ~$60 more for the Living Story (which includes the best mounts and maps). Starting from season 3 onwards so that I can forgive S1 and S2 as growing pains, everything else ought to have been advertised as a DLC adventure or even an "annual pass" that other MMOs are doing that includes each episode of the Living World. Hell, they could have even offered a deep discount for players who were actively playing at the time of their release because God knows how much money they burned by offering this content for free. Ultimately the way they handled the seasonal content in between expansions is probably one of the biggest mistakes I've seen any MMO ever make.
What's crazy is it's essentially the exact opposite of something like Destiny. Instead of charging veterans money to access the latest content, they charge new players to access old content. That's nice if your a veteran but it doesn't really make any sense. Your asking for money from the side of your playerbase LEAST willing to give it.
Definitely agree on Anet trying to be different for the sake of being different. I think they did this with the EoD specializations and it really didn't work out well. I remember their lore writer explaining how she went for a "traditional mage" background for Catalyst, and then they gave it a hammer with a ridiculous mixture of melee and 600 yard skills 🤷
Imagine if GW2 mounts had a fraction of the customization options the mount from Dragonflight does. Not only could they retain players by offering smaller cosmetics as rewards for completing content, but they'd also have a ton more to market on the gem store.
What drives me crazy about their desire to be unlike other mmos is the lack of official roles within endgame content. Even though the alacrity + quickness meta is being pushed by Anet (quickness deadeye???), there is still no official dungeon finder tool where you can queue up as these roles, or at the very least mark yourself/others as a role within the squad. And since there is no mention of this role system throughout the new player experience, it makes endgame content FEEL gatekept and harder to get into.
This,new player like me basically fall into a trap of build that doesnt work well on end game content ( condi herald ) since it requires certain build,now i am farming all over again for full ascended gear just to meet the criteria ( power/quickness )
@@Yaeshi u cannot stat swap ascended gear, unless you use an expensive and sometimes only craftable insignia or whatever and shove it into mystic forge. Only legendaries are actually stat swappable. And people burn out and quit over crafting only 1 of those.
@@crimsonpotemkin that would be me,if i ever craft one legendary probably is the momment i quit the game,too much time gating on crafting material/achievements needed,its basically a second job,you have to clock in everyday
Anet's biggest mistake was the taxi cab ad. In all seriousness they lost a huge amount of people during LS1, when people began to think anet had no clue what they were doing with the game.. I myself quit somewhere mid LS1 and didn't return until I heard HoT was coming out.
Hard agree on nearly everything. GW2 built a pvp game and marketed it to pve casuals. They refused to make expacs when their game desperately needed them. They killed the holy trinity only to bring it right back. They locked all the fun mounts behind tedious grinds, while charging $$$ for any mount skin. They embrace fashion wars, but for years the only new looks were in the cash shop. Anet constantly shoots themselves in the foot.
The old saying of "a pissup in a brewery" comes to mind. It's just really hard to fail when you have such a strong foundation like the gw2 combat system.
10 years later it's still kept alive by nothing but the dynamic and fun combat system. The rest of the game ranges from okay and fine to staggeringly incompetent.
I'm pretty much 100% with you on the first part of the video... I also think it's difficult to have a different reading when you've played the game for eleven years. Especially the reluctancy when it comes to expansions, as if it was pure anguish to make them. Yeah, they don't really seem to learn when it comes to certain things. Easy to say as a customer I guess
Great video. Although I think the biggest mistake Anet in it's entire development was not doing a proper beta test for vanilla and HoT. I remember hearing awhile back they thought of doing a beta test early in development but decided against that in favor of a last beta test that was essentially just a preview. If they had tested the game properly, imo they could have known people would find the classes and stats too confusing at first, that their launch dungeons were bad, or even that their personal story system wouldn't work out. And I know that many people like HoT, but the only remaining players GW2 has are those that liked it, or haven't played it yet. I know a number of people that quit the game entirely and never came back because of HoT. It should have been properly tested. Another big mistake I think, was/is not being mod friendly. I think being mod friendly is by far the most underrated reason WoW became a success. GW2 interface isn't bad, but there's so many improvements and customization I would like to have. I would mind have some extra buttons on the side of my screen for toys and items like WoW has, I would like an achievement window that prioritizes showing me achievements of the zone I'm in, and I would like a more crafting UI that shows me the entire progress of legendarys so I don't have to have a million wiki tabs open.
On the subject of bad comunication, let's have a thought about how stupidly obscure it is to even "know" how to get legendary weapons. Or even to know that THERE ARE legendary weapons vin the game. Arenanet sure love their secrets ... perhaps a bit too much.
As a new player going through LWS4 I am shocked that they gave all that away for nothing. I was expecting to burn through it in no time but there's more content there than I expected. With a bit more polish and a different marketing strategy they could of made of ton of money from that content.
Man, the bit with the naming conventions for fractals and strikes hit so fucking hard. That has got to be one of the most egregiously stupid things they did. So unnecessary. They literally went out of their way to come up with something less intuitive.
I honestly have never seen any video that I agreed with. The ice brood saga announcement is almost the worst decision they have ever made. There were so many players that left gw2 from that announcement I wish there were numbers for.
Most of them left due to the story being cut short because of EoD ._. DRM was a slap in the face for most of us who wanted a better ending for Primordus.
Raid Easy Mode in GW2 is as simple as halving HP on enemies, permanent all boons like in the Golem and instant res on death per player. They can put that together in a day's work if they weren't too busy re writing the lore to make it all about themselves.
I wonder if the reason for the griffon being hidden is because it was tight to the Sunspears. That said, the griffon should interact with updrafts. The skyscale was a mistake, but leylines should affect it somehow.
Some (dis)honorable mentions: - Adding to point 2: LW pricing/distribution. Not a big deal for the likes of me, who would at least log in every so often to flag my account whenever LW episodes were released. Compare that to a friend of mine who tried to get back into the game a few months before EoD and wanted to "do everything"...which led to seeing the price of LWS2-4 plus IBS (perfect acronym btw) being nearly as much as a whole ass new expansion - Irrelevant now, but I remember just a couple months into the game when ascended gear was announced and I personally stopped playing the game for a year or two (missing out on LWS1 as a result) since we were told "no gear grind!" only to see another gear quality above exotic introduced within 3ish months of launch - No mount skins for doing cool/difficult content. WoW and FF14 rewards raiders with mounts, titles, all sorts of stuff for doing the most difficult content in those respective games. Sure, one can get legendary armor, but that's months of clearing raids (afaik, I've only raided in the other 2 games mentioned). Could've breathed some new life into raiding in GW2 if they dangled some unique mount skins out there, but I guess that would be undermining the milking of whales - The lack of role/class definition, from an official POV: Far as I've ever been able to tell, all the various designations for roles in pve for this game have boiled down to thing developed by the community rather than their ancient damage/support/control model...which I guess kinda still fits, but it's bordering on square peg going into round hole at this point. - Removing the inspect feature; I thought I had hallucinated this being a thing in GW2 but asked another member of my ultimate raid team in XIV (who also plays GW2 a lot) and turns out I didn't. Yeah, sure, it may lead to a group rejecting someone because they joined into a support slot but they're rocking berserker gear or such, but cmon...not to mention it makes figuring out what sort of armor skins folks are using for Fashion Wars all the more annoying Good vid; honest critique without being too pessimistic
@@kingjakewolf5348 wasn't at launch. May have been added a year-ish into the game's lifespan but was quickly removed because people would use it to see if you were running optimal stats/specs (ie berserker gear)
It should because it's not a traditional MMO that requires people to constantly group up to have fun. GW1 was a co-op. Why anyone thought this would be different is beyond me.
Re. skill expression vs casuals: I guess GW2 works best for people like me i.e. those who like to see their skill grow with time but dislike being pressured to grow their skill or knowledge of the game, the players who like to explore at their own pace. I liked HoT open world's increased difficulty (which is still very much in casual range) and I like WvW but I still run a suboptimal build - I know it and I improve it from time to time but I like the fact I can still enjoy most of the game. I think the problem is such players while probably being a significant part of the overall MMO playerbase are not identified as a separate group - they aren't exactly casuals as with time they accumulate significant skill and progression and value it but they are also not hardcore players.
Anets intention or expectation was that people would use dungeons and crafting to gear up in exotics and then go play wvw as the final destination of end game.
NO! THE Biggest mistake, is disappearing the mouse cursor when right click to rotate screen, in the midst of most noises visual effects of all the skills and skins. Thank you for using Yolo Mouse cursor in the video!
Damn, as a new player getting into the game and hearing all this and reading the comments and that there is alot of gatekeeping for raids and trials kinds puts me off and pushes me away from the game sadly.
There is nothing wrong with the game, this is a video about business not issues with the fun of the game. Additionally, there is no gate keeping. Anybody who is willing to be a team player is welcome in raids.
@@NikeonaBike i mean im not new to mmos ofc people want to raid and do fractals or whatever is the name with players that understand the mechanics and stuff so it will be hard getting into party for it, or so have i heard i cant speak from experience since im only lvl 42 but thats what ppl told me
@@UmbralScythe most people who say that gatekeeping is a problem are the type of bad players who want to excuse why *they* dont raid without admitting they are bad. Fact is, there are training discords where you can learn very easily if you're interested. The people who complain about gate keeping are bad players who dont put in an y effort to get into raiding and pretend to be gatekept in order to soothe their egos from admitting they just arent cut out for it.
All valid points from different angles, I have been playing for 10 years on and off and i still dont have max masteries still have no legendary armor, still have shitton of stuff to do, from my perspective there biggest mistakes were money gateing living world not optimising the game performance, abandoning PVP scene, shitty new player experience, a lot of secret stuff no one know about! Some of the things mentioned would make the game worse, for example skyscale and bettle or any legendary or ascended armor or some exclusive skins or titles gated behind collections, if you remove thous grinds game becomes boring, in my eyes GW2 is efficiently game with materials and anything you are doing in the game, you have to be dedicated to get something, if you remove that we have no reason to do anything in the game except PVP which is pretty much dead, so they are falling back hard on the grind and efficiency game!
MMOs are always hinging on very delicate scales; the ultra casual people will get mad that they never have time to grind out anything while it's relevant/new if you add a lot of insanely long grinds, but on the other hand if you add nearly no grinds for anything then the hardcore will complain that they "have nothing to do anymore" and end up spending less time in the game. Normally it is better to have a bit of both short term and long term goals as a player, which in my opinion GW2 has succeded at having, otherwise I myself would not have played for almost as long as I have, though I'm already at the point where everything that's left for me to finish in GW2 requires a lot of grind to do, so I only do dailies and log out until I have more time to burn into those grinds. Here's hoping that their new pacing for content releases ("Mini expansions") will be consistent and interesting enough that it holds the current audience until they figure out something as groundbreaking as mounts, or just restart GW3's development.
Its impossible to suggest that making skyscale easier to get would make the game worse when Anet's biggest competitor just released an expansion that did exactly that and it was a huge hit.
@@NikeonaBike yeah ofc it was hit they "inovated" on something that was not changed since TBC. But honestly I did enjoy skyscale grind, same way I enjoyed crafting first ascended gear before it dropped everywhere, same way as I enjoyed crafting my first legos, it felt no different, because I understood that is there formula and at the end of the day no one forced me so I enjoyed it. I think that main thing I would change is the grinds availability, because currently nothing is achievable without the wiki, it like extension of the game
Listening to Gorrik for 10 weeks talking about thin air was banger content. See you in the tunnel, do not forget to refresh air filters. Gyala Delve is the best map ever! ... ..... .... ..... ........... .... (Good video)
I would enjoy it if this ends up a 12 part series or something. I'm sure there is plenty more to think about lmao. Was a good video. I actually agree with everything presented.
Wow has been around for 20 plus years It's also a totally different type of MMO and you have to pay for content there too lol. I spent hundreds of dollars on expansions for a while I remember.
I actually agree with you on almost every one of the points you made. The one thing I disagree with is the opinion on the mounts, while I get your point and it's a good one. My thought is that Anet was banking on the whales buying skins from the gemstore for the skyscale and the beetle and that's why they didn't lock them behind an expansion. In my opinion this is an okay approach but to your point the skins should've been available in the gemstore day one of those mounts being added for free. So I guess I half disagree with you on that one or maybe I agree with you on all counts.
This is a really good video Nike! Even though I've long departed from this game I'm always holding out hope for Tyria's future. (Heard you say msq, been doing any ffxiv?) Honestly I'm just coped that a Gw3 will happen
To me, the biggest problem of Anet's handling of GW2 is their poor marketing. Everything else you mentioned becomes less problematic with better marketing. But the best marketing comes from understanding what you have and the customers your selling it to.
fuck no, if you market this game perfectly then all you get is people setting their expectations high, joining this game, getting a fuck you on every corner and moving on to better games.
You have mentioned the griffon before and good job really getting down to the detail on the issue, then Skyscale idea with EoD really made me smile. Personally i dont mind if anet used that mount to push EoD. Maybe even introduce another eay to get the skyscale. Only thing is it may upset people that are looking for something completely new but its something so good yeah why not include + fishing skiffs etc. You would then maybe need to add at least 1 new feature for the skyscale and not another sak lol. Maps would be built more vertical too which i like but also a controversial topic. GG
I agree with all of this. Marketing is probably the biggest issue though. My friends haven't heard of it, except through me. And trying to describe it makes it sound like another MMO but with dodge rolls and cool mounts. Dungeons are dead, and I still haven't gotten into raids, strikes, FOTM, etc. For a game that feels so unique to play, it doesn't really have anything unique about it to describe to anyone. They have to actually sit down and play it, but the start of the game doesn't do enough to introduce new players on how much fun the game can be. On another note, and maybe not a mistake but more of a preference, is that they've completely changed the stats distribution mechanic from what it used to be. I get it was for balancing purposes, but it was so cool in the old days to choose which stats to apply my points to when I leveled up. It was years ago and can't remember if it was actually a good mechanic, but I remember it was "fun." Now, stats are locked onto armor that you need to either craft or spend tons of gold on at the TP. Not only that, but so many stats are just useless depending on if you do a power/condi/support build and you get punished if you focus on just one or spread it out. For example, to solely focus on condi, the power stats on your weapons don't do much, and there's enemies that are immune to some condition as well as some objects. It's powerful if you can survive long enough to build it up, but in order to make it powerful, you need to sacrifice toughness, vitality and healing power, lowering survivability. Power build face the same sacrifice of survivability, but can do more immediate damage off the start and don't face enemies that are immune to damage (as often.) Support builds are great in a group, and in theory should be great for survivability in solo content, but you sacrifice strike/condi damage. So many bosses in PvE have time limits on them, and to solo them is rough because if you aren't putting out high enough damage, you aren't beating it within the time limit. Sure, you survived the whole 10 minutes without dying (unlike the power/condi builds which have no vit/tough/heal) but you also didn't kill the boss. Lol. I know there are highly skilled players who don't see this as a problem, but more casual or average skilled players could find this frustrating. Having stats locked into armor isn't great. I wish you could just redistribute it at will (without needing to grind for HOURS for legendary armor/weapons.) I know this will never change, and it's just a vent. But the point is that the new point system is somewhat limiting, invalidates certain stats or punishing you for not having certain ones, and it's just simply not as much fun as it used to be. But I'm still logging in everyday and finding other ways to have fun. No one may even agree with me, and that's alright, too. Lol.
Yup, I will never understand this stupid decision to make griffon and scyscale so stupidly hard to get. Both those mounts could be incredible selling point but now...they are not. Simply because - I bet - many people that are interested by those mounts will give up the moment they'll see how hard is to get them. Seriously, I love flying on griffon so much this is my main reason why I can't move from GW2 to any other mmo I like because I miss it momentarily. And yet...whenever someone asks me about starting game for this amazing griffon I always yapping about I am stunned because it's hard to recommend GW2 for those interested mostly in griffon (or skyscale) while they would need to play for 100+ hours to get it without boosting and skipping content.
EOD could have sported an Underwater Meta siege against the WATER DRAGON But no. They didn't improve or engineer resources into revolutionizing that combat style and that ship has sailed 😅
People looking at EoD's launch if it launched with the skyscale and beetle: "Wow these are genre re-defining, look how awesome these are! I can't wait to try them out!" People looking at actual EoD's launch: "Fishing? Wait, Guild Wars 2 doesn't already have fishing? That's like a staple of mmos, why is this the third expansion's major feature?"
Absolutely true... but it is easy to see that these were mistakes now from a history stand point. Maybe back then these moves were seen as smart marketing decisions... well they prove wrong, so hope they dont do the same mistakes more than a couple of times!
ofcourse hindsight is 20/20 and its easy for me to say, i admit that. im not even saying I would have known better. for example, i was also against raids having an easy mode at the time so I would have messed that up too.
You make some really excellent points. Skyscale really should have been an expansion feature mount. The only upside to it being a LS mount is: they'll sell more LS episodes to new players. But I know those LS unlocks are daunting to those new players. Buy this to enjoy the game! No! Buy the expansion, not the add-ons. I truly hope this team learns from the past and nails it in the next expansion. EoD was an amazing start but can we get better? Here's hoping!
"A-net's insistance on being different for the sake of being different". Well that sums it up, there's nothing to add. Plus, I hated the time when they wouldn't communicate anymore. People left or got fired, forums were full of suggestions, constructive critism. Players kept streaming and doing videos and A-net was....completely silent. But hey, at least there's this cool and wonderful partner-programm -.-
Based and doompilled. Skyscale is pretty dog design though, being too good as an universal mount for nearly everything. Being what it is, it probably kills potential for several different types of mounts we could get, but are now powercrept by Skyscale.
Or why use boons and conditions instead of buffs/debuffs? Or why is gearing so convoluted? Why is it 10-20 times more expensive to gear a support char in contrast to a power DPS char? Make Celestial as cheap as berserk, make gear drops more meaningful and frequent, and it would be way easier for new players. RN I recommend all my friends to boost just for the celestial gear. Many don't want to and give up on max level because they lack direction or can't really play they support char because they can't afford the gear.
i always wandered why the went this direction, since beta i loved core game and hoped they expanded on the dungeons, later on raids, instead they stack over system after system leaving a trail of dead implementations, the most egregious i feel is the story system, vanilla personal story was very respectful of you caring or having any interest in hearing what they have to say with a special scene for dialogs and with a SKIP button, imagine that, modern story telling is "stay a while and listen" most uninteresting characters and plots being unable to skip even on your third time i quit EoD after the second map, Soto is a lot more interesting but still makes you stand and listen w/e the writers though was interesting is a pita, what could and what is this game is two worlds apart
I think the real problem is people who come from traditional mmos. They think gw2 should be just like the mmo they enjoy, but it wasn't meant to be. They should just go back to their traditional MMOs and stop complaining about a game that was never meant for them anyways.
ArenaNet boasted about the new instance content model that would save them development time by reusing story encounters for Strike Missions. Me: "Didn't yall already do that with Living World Season 1 and Fractals? You took nearly a decade to relearn an old lesson?"
I think you might be resting a bit much on the "ArenaNet marketed to the wrong people and thereby got a bad community" argument. Yes, their marketing early on was pretty bad, but industry experience has shown that PvP as endgame (and, yes, WvW is PvP) just doesn't work for MMO-style games. Guild Wars 1 had to move towards a PvE endgame. Fury went full PvP and died so badly it took the developer with it. Guild Wars 2, predictably, repeated the GW1 experience and had to move towards having a PvE endgame.
I stopped playing Gw2 after What lies Beneath.Fmo this game is soulles and after 10 years of mismanagement game turn into Frankenstein. This game become so casualized for snowflake meta train lovers fundamental consepts of mmorpg is forgotten and butchered. Loot is meaningless.Who invented that unidentified loot bags i hope u fired.If you are stat base player at lvl 80 get ascended items and u done.U complete to item progression.After that u can start legendary for sake of multiroling.But unlike other mmorpg nobody gonna look at you and say "Wow how did you get this items dude so cool".Nope bc first legendary progression is nothing but boring grind achivements and material dump.And when u complete this chore quests and complete to item I dont feel excitement.I feel relief. Second as appearence many of legendaries just shiny sticks with shinier effects.They throw away animations.Because if you want good designed weapons and costumes ofc you gonna bust ur credit card. In this point GW2 cant race with other popular mmorpgs.This mmorpgs management progressed like Disney Star Wars sequals.Every time they change to roadmap they disfigure to game more.All I see a soulles mismatch of ideas and barbie dress up game.
I could talk for a lifetime about the things GW2 does wrong. The things you listed wouldn't even be the top of my list. Wouldn't even make the first page. At least in terms of "making the game bigger". How about Living world seasons costing more (if you buy them together, because there's a sale on all of them at the same time) with a 40% discount than any of the expansions? And yet all the best content is in those living world seasons. If that doesn't fuck over new players or just make people leave, I don't know what will. It's very nice that the people that have been grinding this game out for years got them for free, but they have so much gold they don't even need the free handout. Why were the living world seasons packaged together with the expansions? To fleece people, of course. The game marketed itself (and so did the playerbase) as the real, the original dragonflight, the one that did it correctly. Ha. Very funny. Until anyone actually decides to go unlock the memory hole that's specifically created for forgetting the tedious horrific grind to get flying in this game. Any sane player just looks at what's required and goes "fuck that" and goes to WoW, because at least they had the decency to give you a flying mount with the expansion, which had an entire map built around flying. Here you get a "fuck you collection, grind, collection, grind" 8 times in a row. In content that you pay money for. Dear lord the monetisation in this game is on par with a fucking gacha skinnerbox game. Want bag space? Gems. But guess what, one character at a time. Want equipment slots? Gems. But guess what... The only good thing about this game is the combat. Everything around it, such as the progression, the masteries, the specialisation unlocks, the legendaries, the mounts that people actually want (like who gives a shit about the fish and the kangaroo) is either tedious, boring, awful or designed to turn people away in sheer disgust. And the list never ends.
I agree with you on the ''Original Dragonflight'' point, I currently play WoW and I can attest that DragonFlight is a million times better than farming Skyscale, they just give you the fucking dragon and voilà, you fly around all over the fucking place and they even made a much better system to upgrade skills. Acquiring Skyscale is not intuitive or ''player friendly'' and anyone who enters the game will discover this and possibly leave the game if that is one of the goals of that player. Sure, you get the feeling of achievement when you get the mount...but holy shit...they shouldn't have advertised it like it was easy...
Anet has taken so many Ls. I remember pre HoT they didnt even update the black lion store with anything new for what seemed like over 5 months. They were hyping HoT with all the marketing but didnt put anything in the store for so long lol. Also, I stopped playing for a year before PoF and played other games and when I came back I was like "WTF theres a new expansion?!" I literally didnt see any marketing outside the game for that expansion and I dont live under a rock, nothing popped up in my youtube about the game having an expac out and I didnt get any adverts for it.
I agree with them, but most of them are symptoms of much bigger problem - downwards spiral of no content. There are little content, because there are fewer players. There are fewer players because there is no new content. You can satisfy all groups of players from most casual ones to the competitive ones as long as there is constant stream of content on all those levels. GW2's content is supposed to be 'evergreen', but that does not mean it does not require maintenance. Yet, old content is outpowercrept and even new one is incredibly bugged and never fixed. You'd think they focus on new content then, if not revising the old one. After all, new content is louder and better marketing. But then the big announcement is 2 bosses a year on 2 difficulties and 1 dungeon on 2 difficulties as well... If anything it is anti-marketing to anyone.
I agree with you about the mounts, it was a huge mistake to keep the Griffon, Skyscale, and Beetle as relatively inaccessible to the general public, and to not market them harder. If all three mounts were easy to acquire, players could get to end game content more quickly, and Anet would make more profit selling mount skins. Everybody wins.
Very good points. The skyscale collection was so horrid it took me like a year? (obvious breaks cause collection was annoying af xD...) Actually had breaks from GW2 to play WoW and well... wow has better pve, wow has better pvp, gw2 has better ...combat system :D
I've left Gw2 for wow...and...idk about better PvP, but i agree on better PvE content only. Cause at currencies manegement for exemple...Wow sucks, no account wide currencies is just freaking anoying and that's a piece of PvE
I respectfully disagree with almost everything you said. As for an "e-sport" aspect - Anet isn't the problem here, people are. The community itself. And largely, with no fault of their own. The carebear vs elitist conflict is, in my opinion, unavoidable. Some people will want to chase that another 1k of dps, while others will just want to chill. The only thing a developer can do, is to try to please both sides, which Anet, in my opinion, has been doing pretty well, actually. Honestly, if not the marketing you mentioned, I would have never got interested in the game in the first place. And we all know, that dummies like me, whether you like it or not, are the majority - and you obviously need some population on the servers. And beeing different thing - another great advantage of GW2! Why would you want every MMOs to have: dungeons - raids - mythic+ etc. GW2 beeing different maybe doesn't help it to lure many WOW players (which, from what I see on TH-cam recently, is also not entirely true), but it sure helps to maintain a stable and awsome community.
I've never played a game before gw2 that made me actually want to throw hands with the developers. I've played hundreds upon hundreds, but this is the first time in my life that I've felt this angered by design choices. Like how about this shit. As part of one of the skyscale collections, one of many, you need to do a dozen jumping puzzles. One of them is located in a special location that you can only access via a portal. A portal that isn't even easy to see, it's translucent, transparent and is camouflaged against the terrain. It lasts a couple of minutes upon spawning. The only way to open said portal is via killing a keeper, which spawn once every 20 minutes. There's no way to tell where, because there are 4 locations. There's no notification and they are not marked on the map. The keeper dies in 2 seconds to anyone, it's super weak. So if any rando just goes and kills it within a second, you can't even tell. So at any point in time, there could have spawned a keeper and could have been killed within 2 seconds and unless you're at the right place, as if you would even know where that place is if you've never done it before, then you're just fucked. And that's before you even get in the portal. That's just one of the jumping puzzles, don't even get me started on the ones with "stages" and "stage hazzards". Why is this shit a part of the skyscale collection to begin with?
As a new player i must say i am enjoying the game but it is a pain and very offputing in some ways, as u said the whole living world having "must have endgame" needed ressources like mounts and asceneded gear is so dumb, i just bought the expansions and find out i need to get some living world shit to grind 1000 different map currencies to get gear and mounts like what. Its by far the most offputing annoying thing to have to spend more and not only that but look at the wiki every 2 seconds to know wtf ur doing or what ur doing it for, the loot is also just dumb, just give silver bag drops no trophies and random ass collection items idk wtf i have to do with. I understand mmorpgs are always going to be hard to get into but i played albion and destiny and had far less issues than w this game so far. Also the fact the stories are linked to much needed engame equippment (like POF mounts) is ok but its not ok that i have to do the story to get them, they should be a quest or something within those maps, cuz rn unless u want to go through idk 300h of story and buy all living world to experience the story in order u have to skip and get spoiled, and lets be honest most ppl will jump to POF to have fucking mounts xd.
Um WvW carried the game for the first years as in this was what players stuck too and stayed in. I am uncertain if you forgot about it or if you simply did not play wvw, but it was very player driven for many years with hopes on that Anet should pick it up at some point and realise what a gem they where sitting on. So Anet abandoned WvW, the players didn't. Because of not much updates in PvE people played WvW as their maingame where we raided, gvg and all that shit and everythign was player driven. It was costly as fuck to play it back then since you had to take the gold from your own pockets to upgrade keeps and towers. And the only loot you got was lootbags. Nothing else, and certainly not even close to what it is today. But even here so long ago the wvw comunity voiced their sugestions about selling siege skins, tower/keep skins, abillity to choose what npc guards your tower/keep, dolly skins well all that shit was voiced numerous of times to give them suggestions on how to gain money from WvW players. It was to death ears and still is for some reason. Yeah we have mounts with mount skins now, but still no way for us to get siege skins, structure skins or options for Anet to gain more. BUT as my first point, WvW was GW2 for the first at least 2 years. It all changed later on and moved toweard what WvW and Pve is today, but back then WvW was the only thing you could put in hours up on hours in every day.
@@NikeonaBike The one where you talked about the carebear rejecting WvW. There was a wvw coumunity and always have been. Might be i missunderstood your words and in that case i guess i am sorry for the missunderstanding if this is not what you meant.
@@uniquename111 yes the ultra casual carebears did reject wvw. just because a wvw community existed isnt the point. the carebears rejected dungeons too, and there was a vibrant dungeon community. but the overwhelming majority of the casual gamers rejected all the end game.
@@NikeonaBike What i mean is the powerlevel of the classes and the lack of adjustments in the content. Classes got stronger by default and dont require class specific buffs to function anymore. So now they are only reliant on boons, which makes the overall dps higher, too. Its not like those tempest/weaver days where they could do 50k dps but required 3 classes running lower dps/sacrificing utility and using bufffood that forced you to keep moving in order to do this. Also defensive supports getting stronger also. Sure they kind of try to balance new content around this insanity but like 95%+ of the games content is currently not built around this powerlevel.
@@anbujackson3306 personally I dont worry much about it because there is always skill expression no matter what, and power creep has enabled more people to get into end game content which is a good thing.
I goddamn love you dude. Good stuff, I want to get back into gw2 but can’t seem to do it. 5k hours and lots more I could do but I got little to nothing left. They want to keep gw2 rolling but I hope for more.
Many good points. Disagree about griffon and casuals though. griffon being an secret extra added to the feeling of PoF being a deep xpac that you were really getting your money's worth. As for casuals, I hate to burst anybody's bubble, but demographically MMOs are for divorce's and dads and that's been the reality on the ground for many years. That's also how money is MADE, not lost. Sorry not sorry.
Griffon being a secret mount created some excitement *within the community* for a day or two after launch as the mystery was discovered. It did NOTHING to sell copies of the expac to anybody outside the community. It didn't contribute to making the game bigger at all, when it could have made the game much bigger if the expansion had been designed around it.
@@NikeonaBike Agree to disagree. Marketing griffon suffers under the same point you made about nomenclature. What the fuck is a "strike mission"? ....what the fuck is a "Griffon"? Will it ask me riddles? Why do I care? ....for marketing, it's better to be concise and just say, "Awesome mounts that you can improve on." ...and they did that. But - I hear you. "Awesome mounts and one that can FLY" could have been a cool detail for marketing, but again, the greater point was expressed. And I totally agree about saving Skyscale and Beetle for another Xpac. Very cool idea. Oh well.
@@swanofnutella4734 everyone knows what a griffon is, its a standard mythological and fantasy creature the same way everyone knows what a goblin is. It strikes me that perhaps youre just not cut out for a career in advertising if you cant figure out how an MMO studio couldn't come up with a way to advertise "we made the best mount in MMO history."
@@NikeonaBike No. I don't buy that "every one knows what a griffon is." Hence my inferred point about potential confusion with any other, potentially terrestrial, chimera. Even if I DID assume the premise everyone knows what a griffon is, that doesn't mean that anyone would instantly associate it with "killer flying mount". As far as concisely marketing the idea you're attempting to convey here, I sorry to report both of our advertizing career's are in trouble.
"A good player can do 10 times as good as a bad player". I am a bad player with 3000 hours of played time. I find it impossible to break the game and figure out how to play optimally. And I don't feel like it's entirely my fault. I do get the optimal traits runes and gear but when it comes to figuring out "rotation" this game is just... not good. 1000 hours ago I was starting to slowly resent this game for it.
you arent supposed to figure it out on your own. no single person is supposed to be able to out-think crowdsourced solutions. No rotation ever got invented by one person. Its intended for you to look at the work of others and learn it, or even improve upon if you have a good idea.
@@NikeonaBike That is so bad. I have no intention of memorizing those 60 step rotations you can find on websites. It's such trash gameplay. In other MMOs that get trash talked about how many different skills and icons they have compared to GW2 it's possible for every player to figure it out on their own.
@@Bramandin you only have to memorize rotations if you absolutely care about min maxing. Otherwise you can memorize a 5-7 skill skill priority list and get 75% of the way there which is better than almost every random pug anyway. also not every rotation is 60 step, at least half of them are simple loops.
Anet is the king of hiring incompetent marketing stuff and making bad decisions. Hell they are exactly the kind of company thats more concerned with hiring 50/50 male/female...oh wait I forgot the LGBTQABCDEFG staff than the staff with actual knowledge and understanding of marketing and industry. And cheesy gay marriage dialogue is more important than good story. Can they hire cool artists and modelers and let them go loose on skins - yes - but do they - hell no. Most new skins r boring AF or are sad reworks of existing ones... ahemCatOutfit....ahem....pardon me while I couch up a fur ball of recycled elements
Your idea on nomenclature is dumb. Tyria is not azeroth or hydaelyn. Does everyone in books use the same words to describe magic? No, variety is a good thing.
yeah cool, come to my italian restaurant for a plate of oozamagul with a nice vintage blimapilz to pair with it, and a home baked gimagoot for dessert. What? You don't want to eat at my italian restaurant because you don't know what any of the foods on the menu are?
THis is exactly why I rarely collect mounts they take so much work. I only have like 4 or 5 and one of them is the turtle which is dope IMO. But that took like a month or two for me. Especially the Skyscale is a prime example so much work to get it. Haven't collected it or even worked on the collection or a lot of the mounts in the game. I wish it was free log in and claim. I know some people may say otherwise or that's not a good idea but I like the blizzard approach give out your best or epic mount to everyone. I also just tend to play WvW, and grind strikes, and grind dungeons so my time in game is not even working on collecting mounts most or all the time.
For me the single biggest mistake was making 5 different starting areas and races with full voice acting for no good reason at all. If they just made 1 or 2 we would have had so much more endgame at the very start of the game and they could have soled the other 3-4 as expansion content making them even more money, the same is true for underwater combat. Also what the fuck is the point of Norn existing at all.
i agree, i say this all the time. creating 5 starter areas instead of 1 means we got 4 fewer end game areas. Creating 5 early game storylines means the story was about 1/3rd as long as it could have been. Think of all the unfinished stuff at launch like the zhaitan fight, that could have been finished and fully realized by having, for example, no playable asura.
Trying to talk to Anet is like trying to talk to the government and expecting a competent response. The government will never change; hopefully Anet will.
Anet's biggest mistakes were you and me
dont sell yourself short
Preston for community manager.
omg Brazil ! i miss you
What about me 🤔
@@Sindrener det finns ingen Sindrener
Not only did EoD launch without turtle skins, they also launched without skiff, fishing rod and jade bot skins.
its impossible for them to strike while the iron is hot
@@NikeDnT Maybe the strategy was not to look like greedy MTX corpos but everyone knew they were gonna do it anyways, so they should have just whole-assed it instead of half-assing it
@@NikeDnT You mean to RAID while the Iron is hot , amiright ?
@@UWV_Taylor the fact that the shop is a crappy experience of lag definitely makes me not want to go there unless something really nice turns up. Tbh the entire interface is terrible AND you can't customise it.
@@UWV_Taylor EoD was a half-assed effort all around. I don't know that not having skins ready to go was in any way out of character for that expansion and I seriously doubt it was any kind of strategy on ANet's part. It was a rush job. It wasn't planned. They literally dropped a story line on its head and devoted all resources to banging out an xpac. That's why it had unfinished maps and missing features everywhere you look.
It sucks, but that's ANet. They never seem to have the resources they need and they change direction like most people change their underwear.
Anet and the community is like a group of loud tight friends in a restaurant laughing on their own jokes thinking everyone in the restaurant think they are funny and cool.
And the 250g for griffon its crazy
lol
ANET as a business has 18 points in INT and exactly zero points in WIS.
Not saying I agree, but I laughed hard. Good stuff.
sadly most of the OG crew has left ArenaNet which kinda sucks D:
2:36 PVE endgame ....WvW?!?!? I love PVP content, but WvW is NOT pve endgame content.
it was intended to be.
I play GW2 and I still don't know what a strike mission is 😂
raid, but without the bullshit is what it should be called
No useless stand in this circle 30+ times. No escort mission. No dumbass jumping puzzle in the middle of the raid for no reason.
Just the fight with the mechanics of that fight.
>Put story at a forefront of their game
>For an entire expansion's story, just copy an old Bioware game, but replace everything that made its plot good with twitter politics
Regarding the contrast between marketing and the actual game. Ever since GW2's launch to me it felt like there were 2 groups within Anet fighting over control of the company. The GW1 remnants that wanted to make a great game (and they did) and the new people hired/promoted under Mike O'Brien who aren't interested in gaming and want to turn GW2 into Tumblr/Twitter. While the old devs made the game the other group was in charge of marketing, monetization, writing, community management and basically everything else. That's how we ended up with 2 different target audiences fighting over what the game should be, meanwhile the actual devs keep getting pushed out and it shows.
However I think there are 2 things Anet could do to solve many of GW2's problems (even without touching the underlying problems within the company).
First would be a new GW2 manifesto. Make it clear that GW2 isn't just for one group of people, go over which gamemode fits which type of MMO player and try to sell them on it. Right now Anet is too afraid to define what GW2 is because they treat the game as a single monolith, which causes them to send mixed signals or dodge the subject altogether. We need something official that we can point to if people have questions about what this game is.
Second, buff the personal story's difficulty. A lot. Even the low level instances. This ties into your point about difficulty settings, but I'd approach it from the other end. They need to bring people up to a level where they can reach 80 and not get completely overwhelmed by the first minor challenge they face.
I know that's probably controversial, but right now leveling is extremely boring and doesn't teach new players how to play the game. Let casuals have fun in the open world but force people to learn mechanics, get gear, look up builds if they want to do the story. And if they can't then make them form groups to beat it. As a result they're either going to learn the game or be forced to socialize (perhaps even join a guild), both of those would improve the quality of the community in more ways than one. That's kind of how they did it with GW1, people still get stuck on normal mode missions to this day. Alternatively rework story mode dungeons to be the hard solo content that teaches mechanics and integrate it into the personal story/leveling process.
They need to condition new players to enjoy a challenge and be satisfied when they overcome it, that's how you end up with a playerbase that wants to do hard endgame content at max level. You can't suddenly start doing that at 80 out of nowhere, by then it's already too late. Just look at how HoT broke the casuals, but you know what? At least they still remember the Pocket Raptors. They made memories by encountering a challenge. On the other hand none of 1-80 is memorable, and that's a huge problem too.
You're never going to make someone who doesn't want to do group stuff do group stuff. And pocket raptors aren't a challenge they are just overtuned. Making something hard isn't just buffing their health and then giving them ungodly amounts of damage. That's just a lazy way to do "challenge". Provide actual mechanics instead of a zergfest.
And it's been about 8 years since I have played and I remember every single zone from 1-80. Lol. So I haven't even looked at the new maps because nostalgia makes me want to do all of the old naps again.😂 I guess you can't win them all.
@@vidya2144 🤡🤡
ANET'S BIGGEST GW2 MISTAKE is not learning from it each and every goddamn time.
I remember when Living Story was first announced: An added content of game play with story that was only available for a limited time for players to engage on. Flame & Frost, Secret of Southsun, Scarlet's War, etc. I only managed to take part in the story only partially, so when seeing characters like Canach, Braham, and all these other characters in the Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire, it was obvious I missed something. And, unfortunately, that something can't be revisited, which establishes that FOMO state of mind and regret.
It can now. Anet added Season 1 to the story journal.
@@nagennif Did it also include The Lost Shores to fight the Ancient Karka? I don't see that in the update description.
The real fascination I have is that GW2 survived despite it's highly questionable leadership
People love the IP and the combat system is really fun. Those are probably up there for reasons.
I think you left out one of the biggest offenders: the pricing model of the Living World.
It's absolutely within the category of them having the anal fixation of naming things differently but these should have been called "DLC adventures" or something very early on and made their presence known. I've had multiple friends give GW2 a shot, buying the "complete edition" of the game and then feeling like they've been ripped off when I told them that they need to pay ~$60 more for the Living Story (which includes the best mounts and maps).
Starting from season 3 onwards so that I can forgive S1 and S2 as growing pains, everything else ought to have been advertised as a DLC adventure or even an "annual pass" that other MMOs are doing that includes each episode of the Living World. Hell, they could have even offered a deep discount for players who were actively playing at the time of their release because God knows how much money they burned by offering this content for free. Ultimately the way they handled the seasonal content in between expansions is probably one of the biggest mistakes I've seen any MMO ever make.
What's crazy is it's essentially the exact opposite of something like Destiny. Instead of charging veterans money to access the latest content, they charge new players to access old content. That's nice if your a veteran but it doesn't really make any sense. Your asking for money from the side of your playerbase LEAST willing to give it.
Definitely agree on Anet trying to be different for the sake of being different. I think they did this with the EoD specializations and it really didn't work out well. I remember their lore writer explaining how she went for a "traditional mage" background for Catalyst, and then they gave it a hammer with a ridiculous mixture of melee and 600 yard skills 🤷
Imagine if GW2 mounts had a fraction of the customization options the mount from Dragonflight does.
Not only could they retain players by offering smaller cosmetics as rewards for completing content, but they'd also have a ton more to market on the gem store.
Haven't played in 8 years what would u recommend for a dps main. Warr, Rev, ranger or guardian?
What drives me crazy about their desire to be unlike other mmos is the lack of official roles within endgame content. Even though the alacrity + quickness meta is being pushed by Anet (quickness deadeye???), there is still no official dungeon finder tool where you can queue up as these roles, or at the very least mark yourself/others as a role within the squad. And since there is no mention of this role system throughout the new player experience, it makes endgame content FEEL gatekept and harder to get into.
This,new player like me basically fall into a trap of build that doesnt work well on end game content ( condi herald ) since it requires certain build,now i am farming all over again for full ascended gear just to meet the criteria ( power/quickness )
@@joyboy6067 u can stat swap asc gear, if u didnt know, to save some time
@@Yaeshi u cannot stat swap ascended gear, unless you use an expensive and sometimes only craftable insignia or whatever and shove it into mystic forge. Only legendaries are actually stat swappable. And people burn out and quit over crafting only 1 of those.
@@Yaeshi yes i figure out about stat swap through mistyc forge,but it still farming for mats too,and i need to change some exotic gear
@@crimsonpotemkin that would be me,if i ever craft one legendary probably is the momment i quit the game,too much time gating on crafting material/achievements needed,its basically a second job,you have to clock in everyday
Anet's biggest mistake was the taxi cab ad.
In all seriousness they lost a huge amount of people during LS1, when people began to think anet had no clue what they were doing with the game.. I myself quit somewhere mid LS1 and didn't return until I heard HoT was coming out.
Hard agree on nearly everything. GW2 built a pvp game and marketed it to pve casuals. They refused to make expacs when their game desperately needed them. They killed the holy trinity only to bring it right back. They locked all the fun mounts behind tedious grinds, while charging $$$ for any mount skin. They embrace fashion wars, but for years the only new looks were in the cash shop. Anet constantly shoots themselves in the foot.
Lmao this is not a pvp game. 😂 That's the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.
"They refused to make expacs when their game desperately needed them". A damn irony the first Expac, Heart of Thorns was a banger.
@@Fizzypopizationthe gw2 combat system was designed with pvp in mind from the beginning
If I could describe Anet's development of GW2 in one word, it would be: Flailing. It is a miracle that this game managed so poorly is still alive.
Yeah, GW2 is alive despite Anet's best efforts to snuff it out.
Yea for a past years this game is on low budget mode for me.
The old saying of "a pissup in a brewery" comes to mind. It's just really hard to fail when you have such a strong foundation like the gw2 combat system.
It's carried by whales who spend 5k a month even when the development is dead
10 years later it's still kept alive by nothing but the dynamic and fun combat system.
The rest of the game ranges from okay and fine to staggeringly incompetent.
I'm pretty much 100% with you on the first part of the video... I also think it's difficult to have a different reading when you've played the game for eleven years. Especially the reluctancy when it comes to expansions, as if it was pure anguish to make them. Yeah, they don't really seem to learn when it comes to certain things. Easy to say as a customer I guess
As a die hard GW2 fan, I had to break away from the game. ANET's stewardship of the game made me lost faith.
Great video. Although I think the biggest mistake Anet in it's entire development was not doing a proper beta test for vanilla and HoT. I remember hearing awhile back they thought of doing a beta test early in development but decided against that in favor of a last beta test that was essentially just a preview. If they had tested the game properly, imo they could have known people would find the classes and stats too confusing at first, that their launch dungeons were bad, or even that their personal story system wouldn't work out.
And I know that many people like HoT, but the only remaining players GW2 has are those that liked it, or haven't played it yet. I know a number of people that quit the game entirely and never came back because of HoT. It should have been properly tested.
Another big mistake I think, was/is not being mod friendly. I think being mod friendly is by far the most underrated reason WoW became a success. GW2 interface isn't bad, but there's so many improvements and customization I would like to have. I would mind have some extra buttons on the side of my screen for toys and items like WoW has, I would like an achievement window that prioritizes showing me achievements of the zone I'm in, and I would like a more crafting UI that shows me the entire progress of legendarys so I don't have to have a million wiki tabs open.
good points, interesting topic, thank you!
I really enjoy your content. Mirrored some thoughts I've had for a while!
On the subject of bad comunication, let's have a thought about how stupidly obscure it is to even "know" how to get legendary weapons. Or even to know that THERE ARE legendary weapons vin the game. Arenanet sure love their secrets ... perhaps a bit too much.
Anet has no idea how to make money. Bad marketing and bad monetization. The game itself is good but definitely in need of better management.
As a new player going through LWS4 I am shocked that they gave all that away for nothing. I was expecting to burn through it in no time but there's more content there than I expected. With a bit more polish and a different marketing strategy they could of made of ton of money from that content.
The line of satirical jaded toxic elitist and genuine disappointment is blurring.
There are no words to describe how much I dislike flying mounts. I had xpacs on launch and I still refuse to learn them to this day.
I wana see how nike market an manage the game..
i dont want to do either, not my job
Man, the bit with the naming conventions for fractals and strikes hit so fucking hard.
That has got to be one of the most egregiously stupid things they did. So unnecessary. They literally went out of their way to come up with something less intuitive.
I honestly have never seen any video that I agreed with. The ice brood saga announcement is almost the worst decision they have ever made. There were so many players that left gw2 from that announcement I wish there were numbers for.
Most of them left due to the story being cut short because of EoD ._. DRM was a slap in the face for most of us who wanted a better ending for Primordus.
but its a nice topic, to me the biggest mistake is not have a budget to create update content and ads
Raid Easy Mode in GW2 is as simple as halving HP on enemies, permanent all boons like in the Golem and instant res on death per player.
They can put that together in a day's work if they weren't too busy re writing the lore to make it all about themselves.
Not a bad idea actually.
I feel as the failure can be summed up in one word. Taxi
Common Nike W
Real talk with no lube. I respect that. I'll never understand why Anet choose to not market their fucking game.
I wonder if the reason for the griffon being hidden is because it was tight to the Sunspears.
That said, the griffon should interact with updrafts. The skyscale was a mistake, but leylines should affect it somehow.
Some (dis)honorable mentions:
- Adding to point 2: LW pricing/distribution. Not a big deal for the likes of me, who would at least log in every so often to flag my account whenever LW episodes were released. Compare that to a friend of mine who tried to get back into the game a few months before EoD and wanted to "do everything"...which led to seeing the price of LWS2-4 plus IBS (perfect acronym btw) being nearly as much as a whole ass new expansion
- Irrelevant now, but I remember just a couple months into the game when ascended gear was announced and I personally stopped playing the game for a year or two (missing out on LWS1 as a result) since we were told "no gear grind!" only to see another gear quality above exotic introduced within 3ish months of launch
- No mount skins for doing cool/difficult content. WoW and FF14 rewards raiders with mounts, titles, all sorts of stuff for doing the most difficult content in those respective games. Sure, one can get legendary armor, but that's months of clearing raids (afaik, I've only raided in the other 2 games mentioned). Could've breathed some new life into raiding in GW2 if they dangled some unique mount skins out there, but I guess that would be undermining the milking of whales
- The lack of role/class definition, from an official POV: Far as I've ever been able to tell, all the various designations for roles in pve for this game have boiled down to thing developed by the community rather than their ancient damage/support/control model...which I guess kinda still fits, but it's bordering on square peg going into round hole at this point.
- Removing the inspect feature; I thought I had hallucinated this being a thing in GW2 but asked another member of my ultimate raid team in XIV (who also plays GW2 a lot) and turns out I didn't. Yeah, sure, it may lead to a group rejecting someone because they joined into a support slot but they're rocking berserker gear or such, but cmon...not to mention it makes figuring out what sort of armor skins folks are using for Fashion Wars all the more annoying
Good vid; honest critique without being too pessimistic
wait wait, we had a inspect feature in launch? that's wild
@@kingjakewolf5348 wasn't at launch. May have been added a year-ish into the game's lifespan but was quickly removed because people would use it to see if you were running optimal stats/specs (ie berserker gear)
@@Kazgrel that is really tragic if it is true :c
Cannot agree more, I like casual games but this community is just too casual for me. It feels like playing single player game most of the time.
It should because it's not a traditional MMO that requires people to constantly group up to have fun. GW1 was a co-op. Why anyone thought this would be different is beyond me.
Re. skill expression vs casuals: I guess GW2 works best for people like me i.e. those who like to see their skill grow with time but dislike being pressured to grow their skill or knowledge of the game, the players who like to explore at their own pace. I liked HoT open world's increased difficulty (which is still very much in casual range) and I like WvW but I still run a suboptimal build - I know it and I improve it from time to time but I like the fact I can still enjoy most of the game. I think the problem is such players while probably being a significant part of the overall MMO playerbase are not identified as a separate group - they aren't exactly casuals as with time they accumulate significant skill and progression and value it but they are also not hardcore players.
Wait how was WvW ever PvE endgame?
Anets intention or expectation was that people would use dungeons and crafting to gear up in exotics and then go play wvw as the final destination of end game.
You speak truth, shoe man
NO! THE Biggest mistake, is disappearing the mouse cursor when right click to rotate screen, in the midst of most noises visual effects of all the skills and skins.
Thank you for using Yolo Mouse cursor in the video!
Damn, as a new player getting into the game and hearing all this and reading the comments and that there is alot of gatekeeping for raids and trials kinds puts me off and pushes me away from the game sadly.
There is nothing wrong with the game, this is a video about business not issues with the fun of the game. Additionally, there is no gate keeping. Anybody who is willing to be a team player is welcome in raids.
@@NikeonaBike i mean im not new to mmos ofc people want to raid and do fractals or whatever is the name with players that understand the mechanics and stuff so it will be hard getting into party for it, or so have i heard i cant speak from experience since im only lvl 42 but thats what ppl told me
@@UmbralScythe most people who say that gatekeeping is a problem are the type of bad players who want to excuse why *they* dont raid without admitting they are bad. Fact is, there are training discords where you can learn very easily if you're interested. The people who complain about gate keeping are bad players who dont put in an y effort to get into raiding and pretend to be gatekept in order to soothe their egos from admitting they just arent cut out for it.
All valid points from different angles, I have been playing for 10 years on and off and i still dont have max masteries still have no legendary armor, still have shitton of stuff to do, from my perspective there biggest mistakes were money gateing living world not optimising the game performance, abandoning PVP scene, shitty new player experience, a lot of secret stuff no one know about!
Some of the things mentioned would make the game worse, for example skyscale and bettle or any legendary or ascended armor or some exclusive skins or titles gated behind collections, if you remove thous grinds game becomes boring, in my eyes GW2 is efficiently game with materials and anything you are doing in the game, you have to be dedicated to get something, if you remove that we have no reason to do anything in the game except PVP which is pretty much dead, so they are falling back hard on the grind and efficiency game!
MMOs are always hinging on very delicate scales; the ultra casual people will get mad that they never have time to grind out anything while it's relevant/new if you add a lot of insanely long grinds, but on the other hand if you add nearly no grinds for anything then the hardcore will complain that they "have nothing to do anymore" and end up spending less time in the game.
Normally it is better to have a bit of both short term and long term goals as a player, which in my opinion GW2 has succeded at having, otherwise I myself would not have played for almost as long as I have, though I'm already at the point where everything that's left for me to finish in GW2 requires a lot of grind to do, so I only do dailies and log out until I have more time to burn into those grinds.
Here's hoping that their new pacing for content releases ("Mini expansions") will be consistent and interesting enough that it holds the current audience until they figure out something as groundbreaking as mounts, or just restart GW3's development.
Its impossible to suggest that making skyscale easier to get would make the game worse when Anet's biggest competitor just released an expansion that did exactly that and it was a huge hit.
@@NikeonaBike yeah ofc it was hit they "inovated" on something that was not changed since TBC. But honestly I did enjoy skyscale grind, same way I enjoyed crafting first ascended gear before it dropped everywhere, same way as I enjoyed crafting my first legos, it felt no different, because I understood that is there formula and at the end of the day no one forced me so I enjoyed it. I think that main thing I would change is the grinds availability, because currently nothing is achievable without the wiki, it like extension of the game
I am surprised legendary armor or alliances did not make it into the video LUL
those were mostly inconsequential from a pure business perspective
@@NikeDnT 1 year twice every year xddTree
Listening to Gorrik for 10 weeks talking about thin air was banger content.
See you in the tunnel, do not forget to refresh air filters.
Gyala Delve is the best map ever!
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(Good video)
I really hope anet watches this video, this is so much true
Holy based nike, I think you summed it up perfectly
I would enjoy it if this ends up a 12 part series or something. I'm sure there is plenty more to think about lmao. Was a good video. I actually agree with everything presented.
there is a lot more
This doesn't even cover 0.5% of the total sum of issues this game has.
@@crimsonpotemkin true but this is a video about business decisions not design and development choices or limitations.
Would be nice if they actually gave out content. I went back to wow for a month and the content comparison is night and day.
Wow has been around for 20 plus years It's also a totally different type of MMO and you have to pay for content there too lol. I spent hundreds of dollars on expansions for a while I remember.
@@Fizzypopization The content for a single patch is night and day compared to a patch Anet puts out. Its not even close.
I actually agree with you on almost every one of the points you made. The one thing I disagree with is the opinion on the mounts, while I get your point and it's a good one. My thought is that Anet was banking on the whales buying skins from the gemstore for the skyscale and the beetle and that's why they didn't lock them behind an expansion. In my opinion this is an okay approach but to your point the skins should've been available in the gemstore day one of those mounts being added for free. So I guess I half disagree with you on that one or maybe I agree with you on all counts.
This is a really good video Nike!
Even though I've long departed from this game I'm always holding out hope for Tyria's future. (Heard you say msq, been doing any ffxiv?)
Honestly I'm just coped that a Gw3 will happen
No final fantasy its just a useful abbreviation
This is so on point
To me, the biggest problem of Anet's handling of GW2 is their poor marketing. Everything else you mentioned becomes less problematic with better marketing. But the best marketing comes from understanding what you have and the customers your selling it to.
fuck no, if you market this game perfectly then all you get is people setting their expectations high, joining this game, getting a fuck you on every corner and moving on to better games.
@@crimsonpotemkin What do you mean by 'fu on every corner'? Is that a community thing, or something to do with the game specifically?
@@misterbrady100 overselling the game will come to bite the dev in the ass in the end.
You have mentioned the griffon before and good job really getting down to the detail on the issue, then Skyscale idea with EoD really made me smile. Personally i dont mind if anet used that mount to push EoD. Maybe even introduce another eay to get the skyscale. Only thing is it may upset people that are looking for something completely new but its something so good yeah why not include + fishing skiffs etc. You would then maybe need to add at least 1 new feature for the skyscale and not another sak lol. Maps would be built more vertical too which i like but also a controversial topic. GG
Perhaps harsh words, but true words nonetheless. Hopefully Anet learns from this video to make gw2 more successfull
I agree with all of this. Marketing is probably the biggest issue though. My friends haven't heard of it, except through me. And trying to describe it makes it sound like another MMO but with dodge rolls and cool mounts. Dungeons are dead, and I still haven't gotten into raids, strikes, FOTM, etc. For a game that feels so unique to play, it doesn't really have anything unique about it to describe to anyone. They have to actually sit down and play it, but the start of the game doesn't do enough to introduce new players on how much fun the game can be.
On another note, and maybe not a mistake but more of a preference, is that they've completely changed the stats distribution mechanic from what it used to be. I get it was for balancing purposes, but it was so cool in the old days to choose which stats to apply my points to when I leveled up. It was years ago and can't remember if it was actually a good mechanic, but I remember it was "fun." Now, stats are locked onto armor that you need to either craft or spend tons of gold on at the TP. Not only that, but so many stats are just useless depending on if you do a power/condi/support build and you get punished if you focus on just one or spread it out.
For example, to solely focus on condi, the power stats on your weapons don't do much, and there's enemies that are immune to some condition as well as some objects. It's powerful if you can survive long enough to build it up, but in order to make it powerful, you need to sacrifice toughness, vitality and healing power, lowering survivability.
Power build face the same sacrifice of survivability, but can do more immediate damage off the start and don't face enemies that are immune to damage (as often.)
Support builds are great in a group, and in theory should be great for survivability in solo content, but you sacrifice strike/condi damage. So many bosses in PvE have time limits on them, and to solo them is rough because if you aren't putting out high enough damage, you aren't beating it within the time limit. Sure, you survived the whole 10 minutes without dying (unlike the power/condi builds which have no vit/tough/heal) but you also didn't kill the boss. Lol.
I know there are highly skilled players who don't see this as a problem, but more casual or average skilled players could find this frustrating. Having stats locked into armor isn't great. I wish you could just redistribute it at will (without needing to grind for HOURS for legendary armor/weapons.)
I know this will never change, and it's just a vent. But the point is that the new point system is somewhat limiting, invalidates certain stats or punishing you for not having certain ones, and it's just simply not as much fun as it used to be. But I'm still logging in everyday and finding other ways to have fun.
No one may even agree with me, and that's alright, too. Lol.
Yup, I will never understand this stupid decision to make griffon and scyscale so stupidly hard to get. Both those mounts could be incredible selling point but now...they are not. Simply because - I bet - many people that are interested by those mounts will give up the moment they'll see how hard is to get them.
Seriously, I love flying on griffon so much this is my main reason why I can't move from GW2 to any other mmo I like because I miss it momentarily. And yet...whenever someone asks me about starting game for this amazing griffon I always yapping about I am stunned because it's hard to recommend GW2 for those interested mostly in griffon (or skyscale) while they would need to play for 100+ hours to get it without boosting and skipping content.
EOD could have sported an Underwater Meta siege against the WATER DRAGON
But no. They didn't improve or engineer resources into revolutionizing that combat style and that ship has sailed 😅
so many plotholes in this game ._.
People looking at EoD's launch if it launched with the skyscale and beetle: "Wow these are genre re-defining, look how awesome these are! I can't wait to try them out!"
People looking at actual EoD's launch: "Fishing? Wait, Guild Wars 2 doesn't already have fishing? That's like a staple of mmos, why is this the third expansion's major feature?"
exactly
Absolutely true... but it is easy to see that these were mistakes now from a history stand point. Maybe back then these moves were seen as smart marketing decisions... well they prove wrong, so hope they dont do the same mistakes more than a couple of times!
ofcourse hindsight is 20/20 and its easy for me to say, i admit that. im not even saying I would have known better. for example, i was also against raids having an easy mode at the time so I would have messed that up too.
I think the problem with ANet is they have a habit of abandoning things that work, reinventing the wheel and making the same mistakes in the process.
You make some really excellent points. Skyscale really should have been an expansion feature mount. The only upside to it being a LS mount is: they'll sell more LS episodes to new players. But I know those LS unlocks are daunting to those new players. Buy this to enjoy the game! No! Buy the expansion, not the add-ons. I truly hope this team learns from the past and nails it in the next expansion. EoD was an amazing start but can we get better? Here's hoping!
best gw2 video
"A-net's insistance on being different for the sake of being different". Well that sums it up, there's nothing to add.
Plus, I hated the time when they wouldn't communicate anymore. People left or got fired, forums were full of suggestions, constructive critism. Players kept streaming and doing videos and A-net was....completely silent. But hey, at least there's this cool and wonderful partner-programm -.-
Based and doompilled.
Skyscale is pretty dog design though, being too good as an universal mount for nearly everything. Being what it is, it probably kills potential for several different types of mounts we could get, but are now powercrept by Skyscale.
Or why use boons and conditions instead of buffs/debuffs? Or why is gearing so convoluted? Why is it 10-20 times more expensive to gear a support char in contrast to a power DPS char? Make Celestial as cheap as berserk, make gear drops more meaningful and frequent, and it would be way easier for new players. RN I recommend all my friends to boost just for the celestial gear. Many don't want to and give up on max level because they lack direction or can't really play they support char because they can't afford the gear.
As I often say. Guild wars 2 is not a good game, but it is a fun game.
i always wandered why the went this direction, since beta i loved core game and hoped they expanded on the dungeons, later on raids, instead they stack over system after system leaving a trail of dead implementations, the most egregious i feel is the story system, vanilla personal story was very respectful of you caring or having any interest in hearing what they have to say with a special scene for dialogs and with a SKIP button, imagine that, modern story telling is "stay a while and listen" most uninteresting characters and plots being unable to skip even on your third time i quit EoD after the second map, Soto is a lot more interesting but still makes you stand and listen w/e the writers though was interesting is a pita, what could and what is this game is two worlds apart
I think the real problem is people who come from traditional mmos. They think gw2 should be just like the mmo they enjoy, but it wasn't meant to be. They should just go back to their traditional MMOs and stop complaining about a game that was never meant for them anyways.
Funny you think that applies to me when the only MMO I played before GW2 was GW1. Stop gate keeping.
ArenaNet boasted about the new instance content model that would save them development time by reusing story encounters for Strike Missions.
Me: "Didn't yall already do that with Living World Season 1 and Fractals? You took nearly a decade to relearn an old lesson?"
I think you might be resting a bit much on the "ArenaNet marketed to the wrong people and thereby got a bad community" argument. Yes, their marketing early on was pretty bad, but industry experience has shown that PvP as endgame (and, yes, WvW is PvP) just doesn't work for MMO-style games. Guild Wars 1 had to move towards a PvE endgame. Fury went full PvP and died so badly it took the developer with it. Guild Wars 2, predictably, repeated the GW1 experience and had to move towards having a PvE endgame.
I stopped playing Gw2 after What lies Beneath.Fmo this game is soulles and after 10 years of mismanagement game turn into Frankenstein.
This game become so casualized for snowflake meta train lovers fundamental consepts of mmorpg is forgotten and butchered.
Loot is meaningless.Who invented that unidentified loot bags i hope u fired.If you are stat base player at lvl 80 get ascended items and u done.U complete to item progression.After that u can start legendary for sake of multiroling.But unlike other mmorpg nobody gonna look at you and say "Wow how did you get this items dude so cool".Nope bc first legendary progression is nothing but boring grind achivements and material dump.And when u complete this chore quests and complete to item I dont feel excitement.I feel relief.
Second as appearence many of legendaries just shiny sticks with shinier effects.They throw away animations.Because if you want good designed weapons and costumes ofc you gonna bust ur credit card.
In this point GW2 cant race with other popular mmorpgs.This mmorpgs management progressed like Disney Star Wars sequals.Every time they change to roadmap they disfigure to game more.All I see a soulles mismatch of ideas and barbie dress up game.
harsh, but true.
I could talk for a lifetime about the things GW2 does wrong.
The things you listed wouldn't even be the top of my list. Wouldn't even make the first page. At least in terms of "making the game bigger".
How about Living world seasons costing more (if you buy them together, because there's a sale on all of them at the same time) with a 40% discount than any of the expansions? And yet all the best content is in those living world seasons. If that doesn't fuck over new players or just make people leave, I don't know what will. It's very nice that the people that have been grinding this game out for years got them for free, but they have so much gold they don't even need the free handout. Why were the living world seasons packaged together with the expansions? To fleece people, of course.
The game marketed itself (and so did the playerbase) as the real, the original dragonflight, the one that did it correctly. Ha. Very funny. Until anyone actually decides to go unlock the memory hole that's specifically created for forgetting the tedious horrific grind to get flying in this game. Any sane player just looks at what's required and goes "fuck that" and goes to WoW, because at least they had the decency to give you a flying mount with the expansion, which had an entire map built around flying. Here you get a "fuck you collection, grind, collection, grind" 8 times in a row. In content that you pay money for.
Dear lord the monetisation in this game is on par with a fucking gacha skinnerbox game. Want bag space? Gems. But guess what, one character at a time. Want equipment slots? Gems. But guess what...
The only good thing about this game is the combat. Everything around it, such as the progression, the masteries, the specialisation unlocks, the legendaries, the mounts that people actually want (like who gives a shit about the fish and the kangaroo) is either tedious, boring, awful or designed to turn people away in sheer disgust.
And the list never ends.
I agree with you on the ''Original Dragonflight'' point, I currently play WoW and I can attest that DragonFlight is a million times better than farming Skyscale, they just give you the fucking dragon and voilà, you fly around all over the fucking place and they even made a much better system to upgrade skills. Acquiring Skyscale is not intuitive or ''player friendly'' and anyone who enters the game will discover this and possibly leave the game if that is one of the goals of that player. Sure, you get the feeling of achievement when you get the mount...but holy shit...they shouldn't have advertised it like it was easy...
They should have just hired you to be their revenue strategist in 2009 lol
Hindsight is 20/20. obviously its easy for me to point out these mistakes now.
Anet has taken so many Ls. I remember pre HoT they didnt even update the black lion store with anything new for what seemed like over 5 months. They were hyping HoT with all the marketing but didnt put anything in the store for so long lol.
Also, I stopped playing for a year before PoF and played other games and when I came back I was like "WTF theres a new expansion?!" I literally didnt see any marketing outside the game for that expansion and I dont live under a rock, nothing popped up in my youtube about the game having an expac out and I didnt get any adverts for it.
I agree with them, but most of them are symptoms of much bigger problem - downwards spiral of no content. There are little content, because there are fewer players. There are fewer players because there is no new content. You can satisfy all groups of players from most casual ones to the competitive ones as long as there is constant stream of content on all those levels. GW2's content is supposed to be 'evergreen', but that does not mean it does not require maintenance. Yet, old content is outpowercrept and even new one is incredibly bugged and never fixed. You'd think they focus on new content then, if not revising the old one. After all, new content is louder and better marketing. But then the big announcement is 2 bosses a year on 2 difficulties and 1 dungeon on 2 difficulties as well... If anything it is anti-marketing to anyone.
I agree with you about the mounts, it was a huge mistake to keep the Griffon, Skyscale, and Beetle as relatively inaccessible to the general public, and to not market them harder. If all three mounts were easy to acquire, players could get to end game content more quickly, and Anet would make more profit selling mount skins. Everybody wins.
Very good points. The skyscale collection was so horrid it took me like a year? (obvious breaks cause collection was annoying af xD...)
Actually had breaks from GW2 to play WoW and well... wow has better pve, wow has better pvp, gw2 has better ...combat system :D
It took me a little over a week, but by the end I was deranged. Still am.
I've left Gw2 for wow...and...idk about better PvP, but i agree on better PvE content only. Cause at currencies manegement for exemple...Wow sucks, no account wide currencies is just freaking anoying and that's a piece of PvE
I respectfully disagree with almost everything you said. As for an "e-sport" aspect - Anet isn't the problem here, people are. The community itself. And largely, with no fault of their own. The carebear vs elitist conflict is, in my opinion, unavoidable. Some people will want to chase that another 1k of dps, while others will just want to chill. The only thing a developer can do, is to try to please both sides, which Anet, in my opinion, has been doing pretty well, actually. Honestly, if not the marketing you mentioned, I would have never got interested in the game in the first place. And we all know, that dummies like me, whether you like it or not, are the majority - and you obviously need some population on the servers. And beeing different thing - another great advantage of GW2! Why would you want every MMOs to have: dungeons - raids - mythic+ etc. GW2 beeing different maybe doesn't help it to lure many WOW players (which, from what I see on TH-cam recently, is also not entirely true), but it sure helps to maintain a stable and awsome community.
Nice copium take
I've never played a game before gw2 that made me actually want to throw hands with the developers. I've played hundreds upon hundreds, but this is the first time in my life that I've felt this angered by design choices.
Like how about this shit. As part of one of the skyscale collections, one of many, you need to do a dozen jumping puzzles. One of them is located in a special location that you can only access via a portal. A portal that isn't even easy to see, it's translucent, transparent and is camouflaged against the terrain. It lasts a couple of minutes upon spawning. The only way to open said portal is via killing a keeper, which spawn once every 20 minutes. There's no way to tell where, because there are 4 locations. There's no notification and they are not marked on the map. The keeper dies in 2 seconds to anyone, it's super weak. So if any rando just goes and kills it within a second, you can't even tell. So at any point in time, there could have spawned a keeper and could have been killed within 2 seconds and unless you're at the right place, as if you would even know where that place is if you've never done it before, then you're just fucked. And that's before you even get in the portal.
That's just one of the jumping puzzles, don't even get me started on the ones with "stages" and "stage hazzards". Why is this shit a part of the skyscale collection to begin with?
As a new player i must say i am enjoying the game but it is a pain and very offputing in some ways, as u said the whole living world having "must have endgame" needed ressources like mounts and asceneded gear is so dumb, i just bought the expansions and find out i need to get some living world shit to grind 1000 different map currencies to get gear and mounts like what. Its by far the most offputing annoying thing to have to spend more and not only that but look at the wiki every 2 seconds to know wtf ur doing or what ur doing it for, the loot is also just dumb, just give silver bag drops no trophies and random ass collection items idk wtf i have to do with. I understand mmorpgs are always going to be hard to get into but i played albion and destiny and had far less issues than w this game so far. Also the fact the stories are linked to much needed engame equippment (like POF mounts) is ok but its not ok that i have to do the story to get them, they should be a quest or something within those maps, cuz rn unless u want to go through idk 300h of story and buy all living world to experience the story in order u have to skip and get spoiled, and lets be honest most ppl will jump to POF to have fucking mounts xd.
Almost nothing you said is very accurate, so that should be reassuring to you.
Um WvW carried the game for the first years as in this was what players stuck too and stayed in. I am uncertain if you forgot about it or if you simply did not play wvw, but it was very player driven for many years with hopes on that Anet should pick it up at some point and realise what a gem they where sitting on. So Anet abandoned WvW, the players didn't. Because of not much updates in PvE people played WvW as their maingame where we raided, gvg and all that shit and everythign was player driven.
It was costly as fuck to play it back then since you had to take the gold from your own pockets to upgrade keeps and towers. And the only loot you got was lootbags. Nothing else, and certainly not even close to what it is today.
But even here so long ago the wvw comunity voiced their sugestions about selling siege skins, tower/keep skins, abillity to choose what npc guards your tower/keep, dolly skins well all that shit was voiced numerous of times to give them suggestions on how to gain money from WvW players. It was to death ears and still is for some reason. Yeah we have mounts with mount skins now, but still no way for us to get siege skins, structure skins or options for Anet to gain more. BUT as my first point, WvW was GW2 for the first at least 2 years. It all changed later on and moved toweard what WvW and Pve is today, but back then WvW was the only thing you could put in hours up on hours in every day.
What did I say that caused this response. Genuinely curious what quote of mine from this video this is a response to
@@NikeonaBike The one where you talked about the carebear rejecting WvW. There was a wvw coumunity and always have been.
Might be i missunderstood your words and in that case i guess i am sorry for the missunderstanding if this is not what you meant.
@@uniquename111 yes the ultra casual carebears did reject wvw. just because a wvw community existed isnt the point. the carebears rejected dungeons too, and there was a vibrant dungeon community. but the overwhelming majority of the casual gamers rejected all the end game.
I sort of miss balance and powercreep in your video to be honest.
what do you mean?
@@NikeonaBike What i mean is the powerlevel of the classes and the lack of adjustments in the content. Classes got stronger by default and dont require class specific buffs to function anymore. So now they are only reliant on boons, which makes the overall dps higher, too. Its not like those tempest/weaver days where they could do 50k dps but required 3 classes running lower dps/sacrificing utility and using bufffood that forced you to keep moving in order to do this. Also defensive supports getting stronger also.
Sure they kind of try to balance new content around this insanity but like 95%+ of the games content is currently not built around this powerlevel.
@@anbujackson3306 personally I dont worry much about it because there is always skill expression no matter what, and power creep has enabled more people to get into end game content which is a good thing.
@@NikeonaBike Fair enough. I think its bad for the longlivity though but I am probably still just burned out from the game.
I goddamn love you dude. Good stuff, I want to get back into gw2 but can’t seem to do it. 5k hours and lots more I could do but I got little to nothing left. They want to keep gw2 rolling but I hope for more.
Many good points. Disagree about griffon and casuals though. griffon being an secret extra added to the feeling of PoF being a deep xpac that you were really getting your money's worth. As for casuals, I hate to burst anybody's bubble, but demographically MMOs are for divorce's and dads and that's been the reality on the ground for many years. That's also how money is MADE, not lost. Sorry not sorry.
Griffon being a secret mount created some excitement *within the community* for a day or two after launch as the mystery was discovered. It did NOTHING to sell copies of the expac to anybody outside the community. It didn't contribute to making the game bigger at all, when it could have made the game much bigger if the expansion had been designed around it.
@@NikeonaBike Agree to disagree. Marketing griffon suffers under the same point you made about nomenclature. What the fuck is a "strike mission"? ....what the fuck is a "Griffon"? Will it ask me riddles? Why do I care? ....for marketing, it's better to be concise and just say, "Awesome mounts that you can improve on." ...and they did that. But - I hear you. "Awesome mounts and one that can FLY" could have been a cool detail for marketing, but again, the greater point was expressed. And I totally agree about saving Skyscale and Beetle for another Xpac. Very cool idea. Oh well.
@@swanofnutella4734 everyone knows what a griffon is, its a standard mythological and fantasy creature the same way everyone knows what a goblin is. It strikes me that perhaps youre just not cut out for a career in advertising if you cant figure out how an MMO studio couldn't come up with a way to advertise "we made the best mount in MMO history."
@@NikeonaBike No. I don't buy that "every one knows what a griffon is." Hence my inferred point about potential confusion with any other, potentially terrestrial, chimera. Even if I DID assume the premise everyone knows what a griffon is, that doesn't mean that anyone would instantly associate it with "killer flying mount". As far as concisely marketing the idea you're attempting to convey here, I sorry to report both of our advertizing career's are in trouble.
I mean fuck. Look at Griffons in the game. Apparently even Anet doesn't know what a griffon is.
"hack programs like blish" lmao cope and seethe
you know absolutely nothing about me if you think im seething about blish or any other hack program
Anet is consistently inconsistent with quality.
100% agree
its hard to believe you enjoy playing this game lol
i wouldnt care enough to make a video like this if i didnt
"A good player can do 10 times as good as a bad player". I am a bad player with 3000 hours of played time. I find it impossible to break the game and figure out how to play optimally. And I don't feel like it's entirely my fault. I do get the optimal traits runes and gear but when it comes to figuring out "rotation" this game is just... not good. 1000 hours ago I was starting to slowly resent this game for it.
you arent supposed to figure it out on your own. no single person is supposed to be able to out-think crowdsourced solutions. No rotation ever got invented by one person. Its intended for you to look at the work of others and learn it, or even improve upon if you have a good idea.
@@NikeonaBike That is so bad. I have no intention of memorizing those 60 step rotations you can find on websites. It's such trash gameplay.
In other MMOs that get trash talked about how many different skills and icons they have compared to GW2 it's possible for every player to figure it out on their own.
@@Bramandin you only have to memorize rotations if you absolutely care about min maxing. Otherwise you can memorize a 5-7 skill skill priority list and get 75% of the way there which is better than almost every random pug anyway. also not every rotation is 60 step, at least half of them are simple loops.
@@NikeonaBike Ait, I'll give it a try. You convinced me.
Anet is the king of hiring incompetent marketing stuff and making bad decisions. Hell they are exactly the kind of company thats more concerned with hiring 50/50 male/female...oh wait I forgot the LGBTQABCDEFG staff than the staff with actual knowledge and understanding of marketing and industry. And cheesy gay marriage dialogue is more important than good story. Can they hire cool artists and modelers and let them go loose on skins - yes - but do they - hell no. Most new skins r boring AF or are sad reworks of existing ones... ahemCatOutfit....ahem....pardon me while I couch up a fur ball of recycled elements
Your idea on nomenclature is dumb. Tyria is not azeroth or hydaelyn. Does everyone in books use the same words to describe magic? No, variety is a good thing.
yeah cool, come to my italian restaurant for a plate of oozamagul with a nice vintage blimapilz to pair with it, and a home baked gimagoot for dessert. What? You don't want to eat at my italian restaurant because you don't know what any of the foods on the menu are?
THis is exactly why I rarely collect mounts they take so much work. I only have like 4 or 5 and one of them is the turtle which is dope IMO. But that took like a month or two for me. Especially the Skyscale is a prime example so much work to get it. Haven't collected it or even worked on the collection or a lot of the mounts in the game. I wish it was free log in and claim. I know some people may say otherwise or that's not a good idea but I like the blizzard approach give out your best or epic mount to everyone. I also just tend to play WvW, and grind strikes, and grind dungeons so my time in game is not even working on collecting mounts most or all the time.
For me the single biggest mistake was making 5 different starting areas and races with full voice acting for no good reason at all. If they just made 1 or 2 we would have had so much more endgame at the very start of the game and they could have soled the other 3-4 as expansion content making them even more money, the same is true for underwater combat. Also what the fuck is the point of Norn existing at all.
i agree, i say this all the time. creating 5 starter areas instead of 1 means we got 4 fewer end game areas. Creating 5 early game storylines means the story was about 1/3rd as long as it could have been. Think of all the unfinished stuff at launch like the zhaitan fight, that could have been finished and fully realized by having, for example, no playable asura.
@@NikeonaBike Yeah, they should have cut Humans, Charr and Sylvari. Launched with only Norn and Asura then sold rest of the races with expansions.
guuuurl you bitter. we love to see it
Trash can community xD love it!