Guild Wars 2

I don’t mean no disrespect when I say: I’m disappointed with the quality of the latest content.

There are honest statements from developers who mention that there was not enough time or there were not enough ressources to do this and that and I respect that. Anet’s credo was “when it’s done” and I certainly can’t feel it here, a lot of things feel rushed to me.

• generic non-rewarding rewards from npc-vendors after a challenging (to coordinate) pre-event chain (Karka-queen).
• very bland Meta-Event with a boss-battle which shows no sign of originality (throwing eggs to reduce a shield isn’t that interesting really)
• using the same 3d-model for a boss which was used quite often on the island – it’s like just fighting a bigger version of a veteran with more health.
• the lack of cutscenes (in the first part of the Last Stand Event) which ties in with…
• a mess of storytelling. How many people are aware who Canach is and what he has done?

I feel this all could have been much more. From what I’ve got from user posts people expected:

• new armor skins OR at least something rewarding from the new vendors. People don’t want to buy anything from them, look how the price of Karkashells dropped http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/37897
• A Meta-Event which would be on par with the planed reworking of the world-bosses to be much more interesting
• A new creature which uses the tentacle / sclerite-theme (and probably much bigger – like the fractals-metaboss)
• an evolution of the cutscenes from Flame and Frost. It was a good start last month and people seemed to love it
• I didn’t expect the lack of storytelling at all.

I certainly can see that the team spent a lot of thought into this, since they improved on some aspects from Flame and Frost.

• the achievement-rewards were really customer-friendly. You didn’t have to play PvP to get the backbags. You didn’t have to do every achievement. This is really a step forward in the direction of the new daily-achievements
• the hated RNG-boxes now drop in the open world too. (still, people hate RNG because the droprates are simply too bad) A step forward indeed. The +200% Magicfind is helping here too. The intention was a good one but in the end RNG was still a letdown imho.
• permanent content. This is what we wanted. Thanks for listening, really appreciate! People who made a break find more content to do instead of standing disappointed and leaving soon after.
• a new scavenger-hunt. Seriously, we love that stuff. Everything that rewards people for exploring the beautiful world is a good thing. This should get much more attention really, since dynamic events are the core of the game and spread all over the world – but a lot of them never seen by anyone because there’s no incentive to explore. No real rewards other than the nice scenery for high level players.
• challenging enemies & events. I know karka and those drakes aren’t new. Still they haven’t been nerved and are as challenging as they’ve been. People really learn to fight those beasts which is a good thing. The events where Karka take over the camps are great, the waves feel quite threatening most of the time and it’s not a no-brainer. I’d love to see events in that difficulty in the future too. More chains would be nice though – telling a story.
• an interesting mini-boss. Canach received quite a lot of criticism but when you look at the comparison: in Flame and Frost we got Cragstead where you’d have to defeat wave after wave of enemies which was kind of boring. Now instead you had a new mechanic which had to be learned. This is a wonderful thing.
• a new mini-game. I loved it because there was a learning-curve which was imho nicely paced. I was quite bad in the beginning but when I got the hang of it I was quite successful dodging five other people and evading those big Karkas.

You see, there are quite a lot of improvements which proves that the team is at it with heart and they want to design the best content they can. I really wonder how much more this content could have been if they’d had more time and ressources. Sure, if you ask people how often they want new things they’d say more often rather than once a month… but in the end it’s the result that counts.

My suggestion: give people more mid/long-term activities – things that need a bit of time-investment so that the time to the next content-patch doesn’t seem so long. Once a month would be quite enough if the result is better content.

examples:

• hard-mode events: you speak to the nearest heart vendor to unlock a hard-mode for events: your character get’s scaled down to a specific level and you have to survive the existing event without being killed. Add small bonus-objectives for the hardmode-player, like killing x enemies of type y or not letting any npc die. Reward with zone-specific skins.
• random expeditions: to guide people to the start of events they might have missed. Hearts are one kind of guide, this would be a new direction without adding a lot of new content (it’s already there but unseen by most): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/expeditions-to-world-events/first#post2109070
• new content in your home instance which keeps players busy: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Living-Story-enhances-the-home-instance/first#post2056809
• even more incentives to do events: do 15 unique events in a zone in a week to get a zone-token. (kind of a weekly zone- achievement): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/incentive-for-open-world-events-zone-weekly/first#post2057231
• new kinds of rewards and bonus objectives for events: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Event-variations-reward-ideas/first#post2022192
• dungeon secrets which reward exploring: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/flameandfrost/on-randomness-of-drops/first#post1967620
• open world collectible sets: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/collectible-gonna-get-them-all-effect/first#post1970563
• incentives to do each single one of the jumping puzzles in the game. Non generic. Like a specific weapon-set token you get after you’ve completed all of the JPs. Then choose one weapon from a new set. Make it reset after one completion so that you can get another token after the first round. So someone who wants, for example, the new skin for his dual daggers would have to do each JP in the game twice. Once for each weapon.
• Guild mission signifiers. Guild missions are great, however hard to find ongoing ones. Make those easier to find: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Guild-Missions-signifier-NPC/first#post2134172
• some solo-progression ideas: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/hybrid-of-Guild-Missions-and-Solo-progression/first#post1929686

in short: there can be a lot of new activities without having to create a lot of new content. Just use the existing stuff and make it more accessible and/or add bonus-objectives with new specific rewards. In the end it’s the rewards that make most people come back. For proof see how many grind the Legendaries, which is a very tedious activity. People do it anyway.

Just add new skins for all big activities and people will enjoy them much more, since it makes those activities more meaningful. Skins for completing long-term achievements, skins for completion of Jumping Puzzles, skins for finding a specific number of events in a zone, skins, skins, skins. Or even better: new kinds of rewards like new bags (which for example have colored slots so that they can be easier spotted in the combined-bag) or unlock a new kind of progression (like collecting environmental weapons for permanent use). People want to feel rewarded, especially in mmos.

I’m with those who would prefer less but more developed content.

New stuff every week or two weeks; yet poorly storycrafted and full of recycled mechanics – that’s not ideal.

We now know ArenaNet can code at a pace to give us lots of new content every two weeks. But they can’t write and proofread good stories at that pace (No in game idea who Canach was, why we fought him, or how we found him, and until last night it looked like we were in a pro-slavery plotline…), and they’re not able to create new dynamic fight mechanics at this pace.

- That is not to their discredit. There is a -REASON- the industry is mostly slower in releases than this. Quality matters.

Give us quality over quantity.

Awesome posts, Marcus. I might add some suggestions if I find time but you sum up everything so nicely there really isnt anything important to add.

Anet, take those posts to heart when working on the next chapters and the general direction of the game.

Thanks Mastruq, I’d be happy to see some suggestions from you.

Anet released a lore-related video yesterday and it’s comments and number of people (less than 2600) who have watched it is quite telling https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WDe0griKlFI

I don’t like that stuff like that is considered supplementary since the info in the game is easily missed in the latest content. It should be ingame for everyone to experience, not only for 0.09% of the playerbase.