Guild Wars 2

And GW2 in general.

Thought I’d share:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

It’s a pretty good game, tbh. Some things about it I hate like when devs listen to kitten losers that report anything that moves in-game. Other than that, it’s cool.

Thank you for the link. I found it a nice read.

So, once they finish season one of the living story, they are going to be doing a large feature patch update after a small break. Fascinating. I wonder what will be in it. The one thing I give Anet props for is that they aren’t afraid to change things up a bit. It’s hard to suit the needs of all their players, but they really are trying to find a happy medium.

Like this upcoming patch…

That will include two bosses, one of them a wurm… all dropping blues and greens. Nothing else.

Exciting times we live in.

Soulstar.7812:

Like this upcoming patch…

That will include two bosses, one of them a wurm… all dropping blues and greens. Nothing else.

Exciting times we live in.

They’re talking about something different. We’ll be getting the regular LS updates like we have been for the past year, but they will combining and spacing out the the feature patches into larger updates throughout the year.

Concern: ArenaNet won’t stop banging on about the Living World update plan and so will stick with it even if it’s not working.

Not true. ArenaNet is changing it this year.

The original idea was to have four story teams making a month’s worth of content each, to be released in fortnightly bumps, and whatever mechanical features were ready at that time could be rolled in and included. ‘An online world updated more frequently than any other’ was the dream, but the reality was confusion.

“It’s very distracting to players,” observed Johanson. “It’s almost a muddled message, where we put these releases out and we want them to be excited about the story, to follow the story, and we also want them to be excited about the features that are coming with it. And either one or the other tends to be the thing that people cling onto.” And the other thing, people ignore.

“What we’re going to do this year is we’re actually separating the two of those out.”

All the big mechanical features ArenaNet is working on will be held back for a bumper update presumably in the spring/summer.

“When [Living World Season One] ends [on 4th March], we’re going to take a break for a little bit and then we’re going to do one really big feature patch that is more akin to what people see from some of our [MMO] competitors,” said Johanson, "where they bundle a lot of features together into a really big patch every now and then.

“We’re going to provide that experience and have this huge feature build that has a whole lot of gameplay-changing elements, a lot of quality of life improvements, a lot of features bundled together into one big patch. And that’ll come some time not too far after Season One completes.”

Erukk.1408:

They’re talking about something different. We’ll be getting the regular LS updates like we have been for the past year, but they will combining and spacing out the the feature patches into larger updates throughout the year.

You make it sound like we will be getting multiple feature bundles this year but i really doubt that. The first one will be released between march and june/july. This means that they worked on it for about 1/2 year. The feature bundle after that surely will be released at the end of the year.
I am pretty excited to see what we are going to get, the wording in the interviews was, as always, vague.

Erukk.1408:

Soulstar.7812:

Like this upcoming patch…

That will include two bosses, one of them a wurm… all dropping blues and greens. Nothing else.

Exciting times we live in.

They’re talking about something different. We’ll be getting the regular LS updates like we have been for the past year, but they will combining and spacing out the the feature patches into larger updates throughout the year.

Concern: ArenaNet won’t stop banging on about the Living World update plan and so will stick with it even if it’s not working.

Not true. ArenaNet is changing it this year.

The original idea was to have four story teams making a month’s worth of content each, to be released in fortnightly bumps, and whatever mechanical features were ready at that time could be rolled in and included. ‘An online world updated more frequently than any other’ was the dream, but the reality was confusion.

“It’s very distracting to players,” observed Johanson. “It’s almost a muddled message, where we put these releases out and we want them to be excited about the story, to follow the story, and we also want them to be excited about the features that are coming with it. And either one or the other tends to be the thing that people cling onto.” And the other thing, people ignore.

“What we’re going to do this year is we’re actually separating the two of those out.”

All the big mechanical features ArenaNet is working on will be held back for a bumper update presumably in the spring/summer.

“When [Living World Season One] ends [on 4th March], we’re going to take a break for a little bit and then we’re going to do one really big feature patch that is more akin to what people see from some of our [MMO] competitors,” said Johanson, "where they bundle a lot of features together into a really big patch every now and then.

“We’re going to provide that experience and have this huge feature build that has a whole lot of gameplay-changing elements, a lot of quality of life improvements, a lot of features bundled together into one big patch. And that’ll come some time not too far after Season One completes.”

You know we heard this before.
We heard talk about 300 plus people being on the payroll and “secret projects” they been working on November… promises promises promises. Where are we now? Still talking about projects, and mind-blowing content?

The only thing more empty is the hype from all the white knights, who continue to jump and down over small content.

Just for once I wish this empty hype would actually benefit the community. I hope one of these white-knights puts their money where their mouth is and offer to pay gold if there is no new continent map or something expansion-worthy. Quite frankly I don’t think they would do it, I don’t think any hype-monkey would bet solid cash that A-Net would churn out something worthy.

kokiman.2364:

Erukk.1408:

They’re talking about something different. We’ll be getting the regular LS updates like we have been for the past year, but they will combining and spacing out the the feature patches into larger updates throughout the year.

You make it sound like we will be getting multiple feature bundles this year but i really doubt that. The first one will be released between march and june/july. This means that they worked on it for about 1/2 year. The feature bundle after that surely will be released at the end of the year.
I am pretty excited to see what we are going to get, the wording in the interviews was, as always, vague.

From the wording, I thinking we might get maybe 2 or 3 feature updates a year. Depending on their definition of a “short break”, which I’m hoping is only a month or two, the first one might be in either April or May… hopefully. If there is only 2 a year, that would give them until either November or December for the next one.

For 3 updates a year, they would probably have to put one towards the end of summer vacation. There is a lot of player activity then, and if they put it at the end of August; they can attach it to the anniversary patch. The last one would be in December, to go along with Christmas break and Wintersday.

Of course, like you said, the wording is always vague on these matters. I would lean more towards two, to be on the safe side. It doesn’t hurt to hope for three though.

Soulstar.7812:

Erukk.1408:

Soulstar.7812:

Like this upcoming patch…

That will include two bosses, one of them a wurm… all dropping blues and greens. Nothing else.

Exciting times we live in.

They’re talking about something different. We’ll be getting the regular LS updates like we have been for the past year, but they will combining and spacing out the the feature patches into larger updates throughout the year.

Concern: ArenaNet won’t stop banging on about the Living World update plan and so will stick with it even if it’s not working.

Not true. ArenaNet is changing it this year.

The original idea was to have four story teams making a month’s worth of content each, to be released in fortnightly bumps, and whatever mechanical features were ready at that time could be rolled in and included. ‘An online world updated more frequently than any other’ was the dream, but the reality was confusion.

“It’s very distracting to players,” observed Johanson. “It’s almost a muddled message, where we put these releases out and we want them to be excited about the story, to follow the story, and we also want them to be excited about the features that are coming with it. And either one or the other tends to be the thing that people cling onto.” And the other thing, people ignore.

“What we’re going to do this year is we’re actually separating the two of those out.”

All the big mechanical features ArenaNet is working on will be held back for a bumper update presumably in the spring/summer.

“When [Living World Season One] ends [on 4th March], we’re going to take a break for a little bit and then we’re going to do one really big feature patch that is more akin to what people see from some of our [MMO] competitors,” said Johanson, "where they bundle a lot of features together into a really big patch every now and then.

“We’re going to provide that experience and have this huge feature build that has a whole lot of gameplay-changing elements, a lot of quality of life improvements, a lot of features bundled together into one big patch. And that’ll come some time not too far after Season One completes.”

You know we heard this before.
We heard talk about 300 plus people being on the payroll and “secret projects” they been working on November… promises promises promises. Where are we now? Still talking about projects, and mind-blowing content?

The only thing more empty is the hype from all the white knights, who continue to jump and down over small content.

Just for once I wish this empty hype would actually benefit the community. I hope one of these white-knights puts their money where their mouth is and offer to pay gold if there is no new continent map or something expansion-worthy. Quite frankly I don’t think they would do it, I don’t think any hype-monkey would bet solid cash that A-Net would churn out something worthy.

I’ll take that bet.

Just let me know what you consider substantial, a time frame, and I’ll place 400 gems on it

Given TESO’s April 4 launch date, I would not be surprised at all if GW2 got some huge things just before that or even on the same weekend. WoW did it to GW2’s launch, and it seems all the MMO companies juggle their announcements until they know when someone else is doing something big so they can work to hold interest in their own product.

“A short break” could be a mere two weeks. Wrap up Scarlet in early March, give us a giant features patch in late March, and try to keep us from flocking to TESO never to return. (I intend to try out TESO and perhaps split my time with it, but fully expect GW2 to remain my prime game experience).

Donari.5237:

(I intend to try out TESO and perhaps split my time with it, but fully expect GW2 to remain my prime game experience).

I did the same thing for WoW the last three months. I went back to do all their MoP content. I maxed out all the fraction reps, completed all the crafting, did all the raids, got most of the tier gear from Org. The only thing I stopped doing was the legendary questline for the cape, since there is no point in doing it that late in the game.

Needless to say, I ran out of things to do, and I got bored very quickly when the only thing left is lving alts. At least with GW2, you get new content to do every couple of weeks. It beats sitting there on your character and thinking, “What else is there to possible do?”. I do freely admit I get that same feeling sometimes on this game, but the LS helps curb that a bit. Not totally, but it helps a great deal.

Depending on reviews, and whether my friends are going to try it as well, I might do the same with TESO. It looks interesting enough to try, even though I’m not really a fan of The Elder Scrolls.

I don’t see the appeal of a feature-only update personally.

We already get bug fixes, balancing and new features added into the living story updates. To me this just means an update with nothing actually new to see.

Erukk.1408:

Donari.5237:

(I intend to try out TESO and perhaps split my time with it, but fully expect GW2 to remain my prime game experience).

I did the same thing for WoW the last three months. I went back to do all their MoP content. I maxed out all the fraction reps, completed all the crafting, did all the raids, got most of the tier gear from Org. The only thing I stopped doing was the legendary questline for the cape, since there is no point in doing it that late in the game.

Needless to say, I ran out of things to do, and I got bored very quickly when the only thing left is lving alts. At least with GW2, you get new content to do every couple of weeks. It beats sitting there on your character and thinking, “What else is there to possible do?”. I do freely admit I get that same feeling sometimes on this game, but the LS helps curb that a bit. Not totally, but it helps a great deal.

Depending on reviews, and whether my friends are going to try it as well, I might do the same with TESO. It looks interesting enough to try, even though I’m not really a fan of The Elder Scrolls.

I don’t really understand how getting content that, if you don’t intend to grind achievements, takes less than 2-3 hours to complete curves long droughts of content, but hey, to each their own I suppose.

I personally would rather take a substantial update every 3-4 months like Blizzard does with WoW, that generally takes the majority of the time between updates (Expansion drought withstanding) to complete over hollow LS updates where the biggest “meat” of the content is grinding repetitive objectives to make your Achievement Point number go higher, but that’s just me.

Danikat.8537:

I don’t see the appeal of a feature-only update personally.

We already get bug fixes, balancing and new features added into the living story updates. To me this just means an update with nothing actually new to see.

That was because we were getting content updates WITH System/Feature updates in 2013. In 2014, that will no longer be the case. Anet seemed to think that the issue people had with the Living Story was that we didn’t like getting both in an update, so instead we’re going to get only content updates now with each LS, and only receive Feature Updates in Feature-specific patches.

We’ll still get bug fixes and what not as they’re needed, but class balances, new features, and the like will only be added during their specific updates once or twice a year, instead of being spread out over the entire year with the Living Story.

All they’re doing is splitting feature and story into separate patches because they think players get confused having both in the same patch (LOL) and that’s why players aren’t taking to the storylines. The total amount of new content (or lack thereof) will still be the same.

kokiman.2364:

Erukk.1408:

They’re talking about something different. We’ll be getting the regular LS updates like we have been for the past year, but they will combining and spacing out the the feature patches into larger updates throughout the year.

You make it sound like we will be getting multiple feature bundles this year but i really doubt that. The first one will be released between march and june/july. This means that they worked on it for about 1/2 year. The feature bundle after that surely will be released at the end of the year.
I am pretty excited to see what we are going to get, the wording in the interviews was, as always, vague.

And to be tight lipped about what we can expect is foolish because we all know what game lies on the horizon in the near future. Players need some insight on whats to come and incentive to stay otherwise they’ll find another venue to be entertained.

JBDanger.2603:

kokiman.2364:

Erukk.1408:

They’re talking about something different. We’ll be getting the regular LS updates like we have been for the past year, but they will combining and spacing out the the feature patches into larger updates throughout the year.

You make it sound like we will be getting multiple feature bundles this year but i really doubt that. The first one will be released between march and june/july. This means that they worked on it for about 1/2 year. The feature bundle after that surely will be released at the end of the year.
I am pretty excited to see what we are going to get, the wording in the interviews was, as always, vague.

And to be tight lipped about what we can expect is foolish because we all know what game lies on the horizon in the near future. Players need some insight on whats to come and incentive to stay otherwise they’ll find another venue to be entertained.

Right, because content is undisputably more enjoyable when you know everything that is to come. Please give us spoilers for this chapter just as you have done for every other, heaven forbid we actually find ourselves surprised for once, we might enjoy it…

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

JBDanger.2603:

kokiman.2364:

Erukk.1408:

They’re talking about something different. We’ll be getting the regular LS updates like we have been for the past year, but they will combining and spacing out the the feature patches into larger updates throughout the year.

You make it sound like we will be getting multiple feature bundles this year but i really doubt that. The first one will be released between march and june/july. This means that they worked on it for about 1/2 year. The feature bundle after that surely will be released at the end of the year.
I am pretty excited to see what we are going to get, the wording in the interviews was, as always, vague.

And to be tight lipped about what we can expect is foolish because we all know what game lies on the horizon in the near future. Players need some insight on whats to come and incentive to stay otherwise they’ll find another venue to be entertained.

Right, because content is undisputably more enjoyable when you know everything that is to come. Please give us spoilers for this chapter just as you have done for every other, heaven forbid we actually find ourselves surprised for once, we might enjoy it…

With their track record of adding content, if they don’t give any details at all, then a lot of people will make the assumption of nothing decent is coming in the near future and go elsewhere. You can buy into their to their stringing us along bull kitten, but many of us see right through it and with big titles being released, there will be far less to jump through Arenanets hoops.

JBDanger.2603:

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

JBDanger.2603:

kokiman.2364:

Erukk.1408:

They’re talking about something different. We’ll be getting the regular LS updates like we have been for the past year, but they will combining and spacing out the the feature patches into larger updates throughout the year.

You make it sound like we will be getting multiple feature bundles this year but i really doubt that. The first one will be released between march and june/july. This means that they worked on it for about 1/2 year. The feature bundle after that surely will be released at the end of the year.
I am pretty excited to see what we are going to get, the wording in the interviews was, as always, vague.

And to be tight lipped about what we can expect is foolish because we all know what game lies on the horizon in the near future. Players need some insight on whats to come and incentive to stay otherwise they’ll find another venue to be entertained.

Right, because content is undisputably more enjoyable when you know everything that is to come. Please give us spoilers for this chapter just as you have done for every other, heaven forbid we actually find ourselves surprised for once, we might enjoy it…

With their track record of adding content, if they don’t give any details at all, then a lot of people will make the assumption of nothing decent is coming in the near future and go elsewhere. You can buy into their to their stringing us along bull kitten, but many of us see right through it and with big titles being released, there will be far less to jump through Arenanets hoops.

haha, Arena Net doesn’t make you do anything; GW2 is free to play. But I for one find the lack of information -given their track record, of hyping us up with big talk and then not meeting the bill – as refreshing. If anything the change in marketing may very well be parallel with a change in quality. Thus far all of the content that they have bragged of, has been weak and stagnant at best, so who is to say leaving us in the dark doesn’t foreshadow a masterpiece? At the very least, content is naturally more enjoyable when you don’t see it coming, and even if it turns out to be crap, at least we wont get our hopes up.

I actually like the idea of staggering content and feature/balance patches. At the start of each month, out comes a chunky bit of content similar to what we got for Wintersday. We get to play this content for four weeks, with some stuff remaining and some stuff departing.

Two weeks later, in the middle of the month, we get our feature/balance patch.

Bug fixes can be bundled with either the content patch or the feature/balance patch as required (or pushed through immediately if it’s urgent).

Please, give us a precursor building option :’(

Blade Syphon.4325:

I don’t really understand how getting content that, if you don’t intend to grind achievements, takes less than 2-3 hours to complete curves long droughts of content, but hey, to each their own I suppose.

I personally would rather take a substantial update every 3-4 months like Blizzard does with WoW, that generally takes the majority of the time between updates (Expansion drought withstanding) to complete over hollow LS updates where the biggest “meat” of the content is grinding repetitive objectives to make your Achievement Point number go higher, but that’s just me.

I wouldn’t really say that. The only thing that usually takes anywhere close to 3-4 months to do is a raid’s gear treadmill. The raid itself can be finished in a matter or days or weeks, depending on your raiding party. Any repeated raids, simply for gear, could easily fall under the “repetitive grinding” category, since you already completed it and you are simply there for a random loot drop.

The same usually goes for all other major content in a large patch. A new faction’s storyline and rewards (reputation mounts, armor, weapons, recipes, etc.) is usually behind a timegate, in the form of dailies, which in another repetitive grind in and of itself. It forces the player to either log in everyday to complete the same dailies over and over again, or the player gets the choice to run already completed dungeons for a small amount of rep.

For Guild Wars 2, we get new content every two week, and we can complete it in a matter of hours or days. For WoW, we get new content every 3-4 months, and we can usually complete it in a matter of weeks or a month. It’s basically the same to me. I prefer GW’s model over WoW because of the subscription cost and long wait time between patches.

GW’s LS might be a bit more hallow, but WoW’s patches become just as hallow to me after I finish them. Then, I get to wait through 2 or 3 months for boredom for new content.

Mortifer.2946:

Please, give us a precursor building option :’(

This is the only thing that bothers me.
The precursor “hunt” will be part of the big feature update, that’s for sure, but they surely will not release the precursor hunt together with the new legendary weapon set. Which means that we will have to wait for the feature bundle after that to either get the new legendary weapon set or the legendary trinkets which means that we won’t see legendary armor this year ;_;.

Lord Kuru.3685:

All they’re doing is splitting feature and story into separate patches because they think players get confused having both in the same patch (LOL) and that’s why players aren’t taking to the storylines. The total amount of new content (or lack thereof) will still be the same.

To be fair a lot of people do seem to latch onto one specific part of each patch, usually the biggest or most noticeable part, and insist that’s all we got that month, or even all we ever get. Look at all the “Why is it always festivals?”, “Stop with all the dungeons!”, “LS is just jumping puzzles” type topics for an extreme example.

But this still sounds to me like at best we’re getting the same updates slightly repackaged for idiots, and at worst we’re actually getting less of each. I’m not saying more is automatically better, but I’m not going to count on the quality of the releases jumping up just because they’re in a new format either.

I also think a lot of people are going to be disappointed by the feature patches simply because so many people seem to be interpreting ‘feature only patch’ as “you personally are going to get all the things you have ever asked for, all in one go” which it should be obvious is not the case. For a start the first patch will not include: mounts, precursor crafting, duelling, new legendaries, new regions (that wouldn’t even count as a feature), new personal story, all the bugs in the game fixed in one update, multiple new PvP modes or all weapons available to all professions, but those are all things I’ve seen people assuming will be in the very first feature patch.

JBDanger.2603:

With their track record of adding content, if they don’t give any details at all, then a lot of people will make the assumption of nothing decent is coming in the near future and go elsewhere. You can buy into their to their stringing us along bull kitten, but many of us see right through it and with big titles being released, there will be far less to jump through Arenanets hoops.

Agreed. At the 1.5 year mark and with some significant competition on the horizon I expected a lot more and did not find the news optimistic at all. In fact, it basically said to me, “Have fun playing our competitors, we got nothing!”