First of all, let me make it clear that this an OPINION thread. I have no data to back this up except a few facts here and there, and actual proof of this theory is extremely difficult, if not completely impossible to obtain.
Let’s see the facts:
Some unknown amount of people are being very vocal about the change in pace for class release
AGS is not handling the distribution of LA very well overall (Argos fiasco, express/feiton pass mess, orange flavored shangra cloud situation, etc…)
AGS failed with New World (there’s no better way to say it, they simply failed)
KR MMOs struggle to succeed in the west (the reason why I dare not speculate)
SG succeeded with LA in JP and RU and although it’s noteworthy, these are very distinct audiences compared to America (continent) and EU as a whole
Ok, theory time:
AGS has a say in what will come to the west and how, but SG has the final word. AGS is not looking very good lately after all the miscommunication that occurred, the whole bot problem, etc… AGS goes to KR to discuss new roadmap. SG thinks that because they got it right in RU and JP, they know how to handle western audience. AGS tries to argue (or maybe they just stayed silent), SG holds their stance and here we are.
Thing is, why would SG want to not just say ‘screw it’ and throw everything on the table so they have less version difference to deal with?
I’d assume it’s a matter of who has pull in the relationship. AGS started with a lot of pull and SGR listened for logical (but wrong) reasons.
Then all this has happened and now SGR has basically unlimited power within the legal boundaries of the agreement made between SGR and AGS.
But as you said, part of why SGR went with so many of AGS’s bad suggestions is that they legitimately don’t know how to do it themselves. They only know that AGS’s way (and advice) isn’t working well, so it’s reasonable for them to say ‘We are trying it our way for a while.’
The results that’ll come out of it aren’t going to be great based on what we know so far, but well…
I think you are right here. At launch they said they wanted to do a class every 2-3 months. They also dont seem to have made any changes to the legendary skin boxes which the west will hate. The only things i would say is the game was not a success at launch in jp and its been struggling in both jp and ru for a while.
As to why KMMOs dont do well in the west i think is because the west is generally always behind on content and arent really catered to at all, the devs like to do things their way and dont budge much for a different mindset. This works for some people its why they tend to keep pretty consistent small player bases.
With the greatest respect, what a silly theory. When have you ever heard of a developer dictating to the publisher? That’s not really how that relationship works.
The likely scenario is that AGS saw a massive discrepancy between Glaivier and Destroyer adoption and sales. Unfortunately, they’re probably not factoring in (a) an Express Event and Power Pass for Glaivier, but not Destroyer, (b) a mount included in the Glaivier pack, but not the Destroyer pack, (c) Glaivier was highly requested by the community, and (d) Destroyer was released at the same time as new & time consuming pinnacle content.
I imagine they are going to launch each new class with some sort of Express Event and/or Power Pass from now on, which they’re probably hesitant to hand out every month. Terrible decision, of course, but incompetence seems to be the modus operandi.
How do you know about deals between multi million companies in the game industry? How do you believe this relationship works? What’s the evidence you have to make this claim?
This is probably right and also Destroyer isn’t a popular class too though on top of the RMTs going untouched a lot of people RMTing without a penny going to them lol. Which is why they already want people to use shop more often by adding Casino skin boxxes.
Though Destroyer just proves that you can’t really use a class as content to generate money since most people don’t like slow class to even bother create one. Might’ve worked with a more popular class like Artist.
Why he said that is because ags has said they only handle marketing, localization and servers. sgr handles everything else ags doesnt own the IP so they cant do anything without sgr saying so.
destroyer isnt played because people dont want to play it the same thing will happen with arcana people are just gonna use the passes and events on other classes.