This first half of your sentence about posts carries a very small influence, the last part is ENORMOUS: a decrease in actual revenue is key.
I personally think the developers a trying to improve things behind the scenes with 3.05. But we still haven’t seen Sirrians all important post “Preview of upcoming GW changes”
I believe people are contributing their ‘Dear John’ letters because they believe that a community of people who like a game so much that they would spend their precious time and lives on a forum like this that they would like to know why a member of their community is leaving.
Secondly, if I were to leave a note like this, it is with the sincere hope that the devs figure out a change they made is causing a massive hemorrhage of players. Consider that for every one player that writes a letter like this there might be ten other players who just outright quit and never visited the forums in the first place.
I feel like these letters help let us know the barometer of player contentedness and I feel like NO ONE likes Guild Wars. Even the people in my guild who “love” it are complaining about having to do the same long-ass battles over and over again because there is no incentive to make the defence anything but the most RNG grief-laden wall ever.
Point taken, but based on my rough estimate of X1 active players to forum posters its more like thousands to one.
Hi Vangor,
I see you’re actively becoming the foil to these themed threads.
Because the devs regularly hang out in the forums, I believe my type of complaining posts and these types of ‘I’m leaving for good’ posts are all about trying to communicate dissatisfaction in the hopes that the devs/community would be eager to engage the change.
I know that’s certainly my intent when I craft a post complaining about GW or RNG or similar.
I’ve made my points a dozen different ways, and so have you.
So let me ask - I complain with the hopes I get rewarded with alterations to the content of the game. Why do you constantly defend? Do you hope the devs will reward you with a ‘well done my good and faithful servant’ and grant you a million gems?
OP,
I wish you the best of luck, at this point I’m also hanging on by a thread. I will probably continue to do Guild Wars for another couple weeks, if at that time there is no notice of changes or actual changes I may be leaving the game as well.
I’m a VIP 5, have supported GoW in the past, but ever since the changes made have been aimed more towards griefing the players with Coin Flip RNG dynamics instead of the “strategy” based game I was playing before it. I have stopped donating. I have been pretty vocal about the issues with Devour and other cheese mechanics, yet even though I know of 10+ people whom have quit personally from this game from these matters and know of at least 30 more still currently playing but dislike where the game is going. Dev’s seem to not address these issues.
I sincerely hope the Dev’s figure out something quick about this. I really enjoy the premise of the game, but the direction of the game is moving to a more hardcore version and I enjoyed the very casual aspect of it long ago. I have been that hardcore gamer in the past, I’m over level 1200 in this game so I have put in ample amounts of hours. I just don’t like to feel forced to play 6 days a week.
Anyone else have the issue: Hey “wife/hubby” I’m sorry but I need to spend the next hour+ doing my guild wars battles, I hope you don’t mind. This has cause some frustration in my household which was never there before. Yes I have options of not playing it, but that option requires me to change guild mates, potentially lose legendary tasks and other valuable and important things in the game. Plus it still doesn’t address the issues with the META and coin flip defenses.
I hope you find a game that you enjoy, and I wish you the best of luck in your future. Sorry to see another supporter of the game leave. Have fun!
Vangor,
At times I agree with you and other times I disagree with you. That does not mean that either of our opinions are of less importance.
What works/worked for me may not work for you, and sometimes you spout off what appears to be hate when you disagree with someone. Please try to understand the other person from their perspective.
Not everyone plays 500 battles each week like you. Can you imagine if a person only has time to play 20 battles a week but fully enjoys those 20 battles and now they are potentially forced to play 6 days and 30 games. Could you see how this would change their experience?
Do you know what its like to only get 1 hour of spare time for gaming a day? Can you relate to those type of players?
Now I do understand your side that if you are the super active 200+ matches per week, hardcore fan of the extreme challenge and do not mind the Coin Flip mechanics. I can see why you wouldn’t want the game made less stressful.
Please think about the good of the game, for every person like you in a game, there are typically 100s of casuals. Not always because they want to be casual, but simply because they don’t have enough time to be anything but casual.
Not trying to rip into you, I’m trying to help you understand other peoples viewpoints. Open your eyes and please try to understand.
This sums up my feelings pretty well.
Noone that played only 20 battles a week is now in a position that requires this person to suddenly play everyday.
Vangor may have reacted too harshly to this goodbye post, i agree, but please don’t derail yet another thread with those made up scenarios noone is really in.
There are enough threads going on, that center around that line or arguing, just keep it there please.
There’s been a very tangible loss of mid to late game players and its much to do with guild wars both directly and indirectly. Each week guilds struggle more and more to keep their rosters filled at requirements that are fairly modest for their standing and accomplishments.
The metas…yes, pushed to the front of any topic because the overwhelming prevalence in ranked PvP and GW and the players perceived lack of choice. Hence the backlash of players in the 1 troop defense thread, and burnout in GW. The blame is assigned to the devs instead of the player base, which I have disagreement with. Its a complete farce that there is only three defense teams viable consisting of 12 cards. But it is an intermittent issue as ai changes will change with unity, balance changes, metas will change, and will in all likelihood cause more players to leave the game as well given they will not graciously accept the additional challenge to the game at current rewards.
Rewards are a huge issue as with scaled time spent in game and guild progression players are penalized and have to work progressively harder and put in more time for the same payouts. Its ridiculous… The main point of contention for most people I’ve interacted with is the reward system not metas. There is no reason for a platform to force planned obsolescence towards a player base that is the backbone of their community socially and financially, but that’s what were seeing. That I will lay at the feet of the team.
I think the real problem with these letters, per @Vangor, is that it’s used as a tool to say the exact some stuff that’s already captured in a couple dozen other threads. Nothing new is being said. We get it, you don’t like GW. That’s been said, A LOT. So just say goodbye and go. If you want to complain about GW then do so in the appropriate place (I.e., those threads).
A million gems would be nice…
Personally, I wouldn’t say what I’m doing is “defending” the devs so much as trying to prevent the forums from being a place that’s totally overwhelmed by the same complaints about Guild Wars over and over and over and over.
I just don’t think beating a dead horse does anything except make the forums a place I don’t want to hang out in.
Do you see the Dev’s actively trying to address these issues or discussing the frustrations with the users?
I bet the discussion of these issues with devs on the forums about the problems might reduce the amount of constant new threads about the same problems. Until dev’s address these issues, those new threads will likely never come to a halt. The more threads we get about it, the issue just gets more and more compounded.
If I were a dev of this game, I would be a little worried about this. Something that spent 6 months of dev time and only a minority portion (<50%) of the player base actually loves it and the meta that it has caused.
Additionally the 1 troop defense change that has caused additional frustrations was fixed without thought of how it would affect those lower players that are near the 4k-5k team range and now they are facing end game teams in pvp which are mostly unbeatable to them.
Please link me to this conclusive statistical study, i’d really like to read that one myself.
The 1 troop defense fix resulting in unbeatable teams for lower level players is bad indeed, but it is an unintentional sideeffect not something the Devs deliberately wanted in the game. But yeah it seems something like that should be fixed far quicker.
As for the communication part, i don’t need Devs holding my hand on these forums to talk me through hard times, i much more want them to sit on their machines fixing stuff and implementing improvements.
Now i don’t claim to be knowing what the Devs do instead of being present here and talking to us, they might as well sit on some beach drinking margaritas, but if they actually do work on the problems, i prefer that much to them wasting time reacting on every single tantrum on the forums.
Gouki,
If you had paying customers complaining to you about your product, would you not want to talk with them about it to try to solve the issues before more follow suit?
Of the 50 players I know in the game, guildies and friends of other guilds, about 8 of them actually enjoy it. I did guess at the < 50% as the actual number is probably much lower than 50%. When GW first started this number of people enjoying it was much higher > 50%, but as each week goes on and its basically just the same thing as the previous week (same fights over and over) this enthusiasm/love of GW has started to fall off quickly. The longer this issue goes without being addressed the lower this % has fallen. 10+ of my personal friends whom aren’t on the forums have straight up quit because of the cheesy devour mechanics alone. Your world may have different % of people whom like it, my world is the opposite of yours.
But they do, it may not be enough to satisfy you, but they did state their intentions, and already made several adaptions in reaction to valid criticism and they already announced further fixes to battle Famine and Devour meta as well. What else are they supposed to waste time on here instead of actually coding fixes?
React to every single OMFG AI IS SKYNET AND WANTS TO DESTROY US ALL!!!11 post? Or to the many no more 1TD, robbing me of my freedom to play the game the way i want threads? Reacting to every i quit cause reason post?
I am not saying there are no valid criticisms, and maybe a bit more information flow would be appropriate but the Devs can’t waste their time by reacting to every single the tantrum fueled rant or on every new thread opened by someone raging over an issue the Devs already gave information on before.
But it is these threads that get the hype and bury the valid and reasonable criticisms in puddles of wild ramblings making it hard for the Devs to sort through it all and react to the right ones…
Anyways weekend calls, hope you all have a great one, i am out.
Good, I thought you were only a troll on my post. I guess you didn’t lie when you said you were (in)famous.
I’m firmly in the camp that GW has done considerably more harm to the game in terms of player retention and player enjoyment than any gains it may have garnered.
I agree. The question is how much damage? What are the developers going to do to rectify the underlying issues? I believe a crucial part of the GW issues steams from the Defend meta. The problem was always there in the game like a large bonfire but GW took it and let it spread to the entire forest.
Pre-GW setting up a grief defense was counter-productive. If I set my defend to be something godawful annoying then people would skip me while doing PVP in favor of a more interesting fight. As such I would get fewer invades and get less glory. So many would set a “strong” defend, but not annoying.
Then comes GW and suddenly it is in my best interest to set a defend that is as annoying and gimicky as possible, because if I can make you lose a troop your guild gets fewer points which just might let my guild get more gems, or move up a bracket! And since GW defaults to your PVP defend at the start of the week, it is easier to just set one griefer defend and use it for both.
And just like that the collaborative nature of GoW gives way to the “For me to win you must lose!” mindset. And THAT is the greatest damage you can do to a fun, social, low-stress casual game.