Guild Wars 2

Mike O’Brien, in the “Message from the Game Director” shows that how much he and his team understand the importance of customer feedback and iterative design when it comes to shiny new content. I am encouraged by the statements he makes and can see the vision he outlines clearly manifest in each new update.

But it still falls a little short in an important area for me. New content and game systems are important. They keep the game fresh and alive. But they are only half of the GW2 equation.

Where the Anet team fails to deliver, imo, is in support of existing, successful game content. While the newest zone/fractal/etc feels exciting, things like guild halls, holiday events, guild missions, etc feel more and more outdated and, often abandoned.

And it is the existing elements – especially those that were obvious successes (eg, guild missions) – that keep communities engaged in the game in between the big new shiny drops.

So if Anet is listening – kudos to a job well done on things like Siren’s Call or the new fractal – but please don’t let the shiny new thing overshadow the need to continually updated and support older systems.

As a few glaring examples -

• when HOT launched, the last game director talked about how he really looked forward to what the guild team could do in the HOT zones as it pertained to guild missions (https://youtu.be/W1WBYEfJVb4?t=337). That was the last time it was even mentioned by Anet. Now, even the existing missions (races and prisoner 1141 bounty particularly) are bugged (and have been for more than a year now).

• shortly after HOT, in response to criticism of the small PVP area in guild halls, the guild team said they were working on an instanced areas for the guild halls that would be bigger and more accommodating to guild groups looking to have fun in a dedicated pvp arena

• holidays (wintersday, halloween, SAB, etc) are now on a copy/paste loop from year to year, even though the community has responded well to pretty much everything new added to them – and some (like queens gauntlet and the sanctum) seem to have been forgotten completely.

TL;DR:

The point here is – yes, the new stuff is important, but so is the old stuff. Please dedicate some resources to updating and keeping things like guild missions, guild halls, holidays, etc fresh and fun. It really would go a long way to addressing complacency and attrition between major updates.

Holidays in MMOs are meant to be a breather in content drip for the devs. Minimum changes so normal development can continue.

Holiday events are also to allow the devs and the rest of the people in the office time to take time off to be with THEIR families during the holidays too which why they don’t change much in any MMO that I have played over the last 20 some add years.

Maybe if they didn’t take this approach they’d have more time for the old stuff..

“We now develop new content and features with a default assumption that they won’t ship, and then if they turn out great, we proactively decide to ship them.”

Sounds like they probably waste an incredible amount of time developing hit or miss stuff, instead of going for the hit stuff. Not much time to spruce up old stuff unless it’s on the side.

Why did you have to remind me of queen’s gauntlent >.< i was a newb when the event was on and i never managed to defeat the last boss for the blazing light title :’(. If i could get a rematch ever again that would be great