Guild Wars 2

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-road-ahead-for-2015/

I call hax on that screenshot, look at Braham’s hair …

Interesting points (to me): A quarterly big balance update to shake up the meta, raids and the three legendaries unlocking mid November, Wintersday begins Dec 15, and another planned blog after the holiday break (so I guess early Jan?) to tell us about the live release cadence for 2016.

Also some PvP stuff I skimmed.

As long as Toypacalypse works for grouping this year(it didn’t last year but worked in 2013)I am happy.

They did a great job with Halloween this year sans not being able to get core masteries trained. I was so excited they brought Mad King’s Ascent back.

The Quarterly balance thing is really awesome! That will keep the game fresh from a combat standpoint. I love the combat in this game for the most part and keeping it fresh will keep me engaged.

The Legendaries still not being in the game when we were supposed to get them in 2013 is really disappointing. I really wish they would have addressed the lack of HoT earnable weapons, armor and gilders. It’s not making me want to get HoT. You want me to pay $50 for an x-pac but you don’t want to bundle in “an expansion’s worth of skins” in the price? No thanks.

I was thinking there would at least be an epilogue coming for HoT. Maybe they are holding that back as a surprise.

Colin posted this: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-road-ahead-for-2015/

But whatever happened to John Corpening’s list of promises?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Invitational-Statement-from-John-Corpening-game-director-for-World-vs-World/first

Specifically:
As work on Heart of Thorns wraps up, we’ll be treating resolving the remaining core areas in WvW as our #1 live development feature priority
&
you will be hearing more from us about the work in progress.

I know they like bullet points, so here are some:

• I, for one, am beginning to feel somewhat betrayed.
• When everybody else was saying “they’ll never fix anything”, I said, “we have to wait and see”.
• What an idiot I am.

Svarty.8019:

[b]As work on Heart of Thorns wraps up, we’ll be treating resolving the remaining core areas in WvW as our #1 live development feature priority[/b

WHat is this “WvW” you’re talking about? Is it another open world boss you can mindlessly auto attack?

I was surprised to see a ‘Road Ahead’ News Blog. Perhaps, they have changed their policy about sharing information ahead of time, once again. I hope the same thing doesn’t happen as last time, when Colin stated we would see another ‘Road Ahead’ post early in the next year. =(

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I was surprised to see a ‘Road Ahead’ News Blog. Perhaps, they have changed their policy about sharing information ahead of time, once again. I hope the same thing doesn’t happen as last time, when Colin stated we would see another ‘Road Ahead’ post early in the next year. =(

I doubt it. Considering almost everything contained within this blog are things we already knew were coming, and approximately when. With the exception of a couple of things, it’s just rehashing what has been stated in other blogs and on the twitch streams.

I was more ..interested? concerned? about the statement addressing future ‘Road Ahead’ blogs.

I am aware that most of what was in the blog concerning 2015 had already been announced.

Please, please, please make sure that Wintersday xp counts towards Tyrian masteries.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I was more ..interested? concerned? about the statement addressing future ‘Road Ahead’ blogs.

I am aware that most of what was in the blog concerning 2015 had already been announced.

Which was the ‘I doubt it’ comment. Oh I’m sure we’ll probably see more of these types of “the road ahead” blogs, just more concrete dates for things we already know about in decent detail. But I doubt we’ll really see anything like the old road ahead blogs, despite the comment made under the looking ahead to 2016 section. Of course, I’d be tickled pink to be proven wrong.

Svarty.8019:

Colin posted this: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-road-ahead-for-2015/

But whatever happened to John Corpening’s list of promises?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Invitational-Statement-from-John-Corpening-game-director-for-World-vs-World/first

Specifically:
As work on Heart of Thorns wraps up, we’ll be treating resolving the remaining core areas in WvW as our #1 live development feature priority
&
you will be hearing more from us about the work in progress.

I know they like bullet points, so here are some:

• I, for one, am beginning to feel somewhat betrayed.
• When everybody else was saying “they’ll never fix anything”, I said, “we have to wait and see”.
• What an idiot I am.

If it matters:

Otaur.9268:

Just found this from an interview with Colin at MMORPG.com

“That being said, I’d also add one of the goals of Heart of Thorns was to address every major game system to ensure they had all the core components we need for the future of the game. Our goal was to ensure we didn’t really need to tweak any major game system again after this expansion and our focus could be entirely on adding new content, and building on top of – rather than expanding outward systemically. WvW is the one major feature I’d say we didn’t end up accomplishing this goal, the project is so large it didn’t end up fitting into the scope of the expansion and we still have work to do to address core fundamental issues like population balance, rewards, scoring, night capping, etc. As always we don’t discuss features in development until they are far enough along to share meaningful details, so for now we’ll just say WvW is the final big game system on our radar – and we’ve had a lot of great conversations with our players about what they’d love to see from epic large scale PvP combat.” ~Colin Johanson

CJ did address the matter of WvW, elsewhere.

Iason Evan.3806:

As long as Toypacalypse works for grouping this year(it didn’t last year but worked in 2013)I am happy.

They did a great job with Halloween this year sans not being able to get core masteries trained. I was so excited they brought Mad King’s Ascent back.

The Quarterly balance thing is really awesome! That will keep the game fresh from a combat standpoint. I love the combat in this game for the most part and keeping it fresh will keep me engaged.

The Legendaries still not being in the game when we were supposed to get them in 2013 is really disappointing. I really wish they would have addressed the lack of HoT earnable weapons, armor and gilders. It’s not making me want to get HoT. You want me to pay $50 for an x-pac but you don’t want to bundle in “an expansion’s worth of skins” in the price? No thanks.

I was thinking there would at least be an epilogue coming for HoT. Maybe they are holding that back as a surprise.

Im guessing alot of the earnables made during that time have been sent to the black lion store.

As you’ll be told at LEAST 100 times over the next 2 years.

These blogs are not promises or meant to be actually what Anet plans to do.

The last “road ahead” blog we had was in 2013 and it told us we were getting a new set of legendary weapons, 500 cooking and jewelcrafting, a new focus on WvW, and exciting new PvP.

Here we are in 2015 and we have a brand new road ahead blog telling us we’ll be getting…

new legendary weapons, a new focus on WvW, and exciting new PvP lol

I hope there’s an equivalent shoulder skin for Wintersday where you’re surrounded by snow in place of bats. Would be great for some cold themed characters. Icy lodestones are an obvious choice for an ingredient as well as some endless tonics and maybe a bell. It just wouldn’t be right if Halloween offered up so much more than Wintersday as far as skins and rare things go.

As for legendaries I’m still sticking with my tiger hammer idea ^_^ They already have roars in the soundfiles and can just copy a tiger arm, make it translucent and part of the legendary’s animations swiping while the player swings the hammer and tiger stripped tiger footprints follow the player. There are other great ideas for a hammer too. Cthulu’s dagger is another great idea, it’ll have black and green jagged metal surrounded by a bright glowing light that transitions back and forth slowly between blacklight and algae. The description would read, “From an unknown deity well beyond dimensions not known to Tyria.”

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I was surprised to see a ‘Road Ahead’ News Blog.

Yeah, I remember the Looking Ahead of 2013. The one with many interesting quotes:

• “We’ll begin regularly adding new skills and traits to the game for each profession to expand your characters and builds!”

• “you will see a specific way to build precursor items on your way to a legendary”

• “you’ll also see new legendary weapons and new types of legendary gear in 2013”

• “We’ll expand all crafting professions to allow them to reach a new milestone: 500 points!”

So I would suggest taking anything ArenaNet says in other “Road Ahead” posts with a grain of salt. Or, more accurately, a sea’s worth of grains of salt.

Good luck

Doing balance updates only once every 3 months is absurd. It’s much, much better to do rapid iteration from week to week, or at least bi-weekly.

Test.8734:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I was surprised to see a ‘Road Ahead’ News Blog.

Yeah, I remember the Looking Ahead of 2013. The one with many interesting quotes:

• “We’ll begin regularly adding new skills and traits to the game for each profession to expand your characters and builds!”

• “you will see a specific way to build precursor items on your way to a legendary”

• “you’ll also see new legendary weapons and new types of legendary gear in 2013”

• “We’ll expand all crafting professions to allow them to reach a new milestone: 500 points!”

So I would suggest taking anything ArenaNet says in other “Road Ahead” posts with a grain of salt. Or, more accurately, a sea’s worth of grains of salt.

Good luck

Come on. As everyone knows, the only thing we are allowed to take as a promise is that SAB will surely return, because they said so. Reminding them of things they said in the past that didn’t happen is unfair, because people shouldn’t be accountable for things they say. /s

And here we go…

Players whining about promises not made not being kept already…

You are the reason why ArenaNet stopped communicating the with “fans” the first time. Stop it.

chemiclord.3978:

And here we go…

Players whining about promises not made not being kept already…

You are the reason why ArenaNet stopped communicating the with “fans” the first time. Stop it.

No, I think that it’s entirely fair and maybe even a good thing to remind people of this. Let’s keep expectations low, so that the backlash doesn’t happen again.

chemiclord.3978:

And here we go…

Players whining about promises not made not being kept already…

You are the reason why ArenaNet stopped communicating the with “fans” the first time. Stop it.

Oooh, how poor of them.
Why people have to criticize while they could sweet talk, no?

/inb4 infraction for being rude/hateful

I read nothing of story or the LS (still not fond of having to wait for the latter)
The other things are big and certainly exciting, but HoT left a sour taste and I wish there would be a bit more on that matter.

I remember when I purchased the Nightfall collectors edition for GW1. Among other goodies was a DVD with a “Making of…” short movie showing the development process which mentioned that the next expansion would be primarily PvP focused. They wanted a PvE/PvP/PvE/PvP order and focus to their expansion content.

Then EotN dropped.

Yeah…I don’t believe a thing this company says now. When it comes to Anet the proof is in the pudding, as many pre-purchasers of HoT have now found.

/end tangent

Of course, Anet also included a disclaimer in their original road ahead saying everything was subject to change, but no one comments on that. When they made that blog, they weren’t making the expansion. Once they were making an expansion of course everything changed. No they should give us all the new good stuff for free, after the fan base demaned an expansion and then have nothing for the expansion.

The public has a short, short memory.

“We’ve reached a point where these will come bundled together in larger, less frequent updates”. Way to premature. Many people still experience regular game-crashes.

They are focusing too much on keeping on the schedule instead of delaying that a week or so, so they can first get things realty fixed.

I have a feeling it has to do with the Pro League Open Qualifier. They might have contracts about this already, but in reality the Pro Leagues should be even more reason to delay the schedule and fix things first. How will the public react if the best team loses because one of their members crashed? Some might not even be able to qualify because some of their members have a lot of these crashes.

I really like all the announcements here and can’t wait for them to come, don’t get me wrong. I just think it’s not smart to do that while the game is still so extremely unstable for many players.

Devata.6589:

“We’ve reached a point where these will come bundled together in larger, less frequent updates”. Way to premature. Many people still experience regular game-crashes.

They are focusing too much on keeping on the schedule instead of delaying that a week or so, so they can first get things realty fixed.

I have a feeling it has to do with the Pro League Open Qualifier. They might have contracts about this already, but in reality the Pro Leagues should be even more reason to delay the schedule and fix things first. How will the public react if the best team loses because one of their members crashed? Some might not even be able to qualify because some of their members have a lot of these crashes.

I really like all the announcements here and can’t wait for them to come, don’t get me wrong. I just think it’s not smart to do that while the game is still so extremely unstable for many players.

I’m 100% sure the people working on the crashes are very different from the people making the PvP leagues, or the raids for that matter. Other teams creating more content isn’t going to stop the people from working on the crashing. They’re simply different people.

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

“We’ve reached a point where these will come bundled together in larger, less frequent updates”. Way to premature. Many people still experience regular game-crashes.

They are focusing too much on keeping on the schedule instead of delaying that a week or so, so they can first get things realty fixed.

I have a feeling it has to do with the Pro League Open Qualifier. They might have contracts about this already, but in reality the Pro Leagues should be even more reason to delay the schedule and fix things first. How will the public react if the best team loses because one of their members crashed? Some might not even be able to qualify because some of their members have a lot of these crashes.

I really like all the announcements here and can’t wait for them to come, don’t get me wrong. I just think it’s not smart to do that while the game is still so extremely unstable for many players.

I’m 100% sure the people working on the crashes are very different from the people making the PvP leagues, or the raids for that matter. Other teams creating more content isn’t going to stop the people from working on the crashing. They’re simply different people.

Yeah, I know that. I did not say I expected the bug-fixes would stop coming in because the focus would move away from that.

Not sure where you got that idea from.

I just say that I think it’s better to have the bugs / crashes solved before putting in new content and possibly even adding in new / more bugs with the new content.

It’s frustrating to do MKS and the game crashes, but it’s even more frustrating when that happens in an important PvP match or during a raid.

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

“We’ve reached a point where these will come bundled together in larger, less frequent updates”. Way to premature. Many people still experience regular game-crashes.

They are focusing too much on keeping on the schedule instead of delaying that a week or so, so they can first get things realty fixed.

I have a feeling it has to do with the Pro League Open Qualifier. They might have contracts about this already, but in reality the Pro Leagues should be even more reason to delay the schedule and fix things first. How will the public react if the best team loses because one of their members crashed? Some might not even be able to qualify because some of their members have a lot of these crashes.

I really like all the announcements here and can’t wait for them to come, don’t get me wrong. I just think it’s not smart to do that while the game is still so extremely unstable for many players.

I’m 100% sure the people working on the crashes are very different from the people making the PvP leagues, or the raids for that matter. Other teams creating more content isn’t going to stop the people from working on the crashing. They’re simply different people.

Yeah, I know that. I did not say I expected the bug-fixes would stop coming in because the focus would move away from that.

Not sure where you got that idea from.

I just say that I think it’s better to have the bugs / crashes solved before putting in new content and possibly even adding in new / more bugs with the new content.

It’s frustrating to do MKS and the game crashes, but it’s even more frustrating when that happens in an important PvP match or during a raid.

So if it takes the months to track down all the problems, you think we should not have raids before then? Or leagues.

Because people wouldn’t be up in arms about that.

Realistically they really have no choice but to add the content.

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

“We’ve reached a point where these will come bundled together in larger, less frequent updates”. Way to premature. Many people still experience regular game-crashes.

They are focusing too much on keeping on the schedule instead of delaying that a week or so, so they can first get things realty fixed.

I have a feeling it has to do with the Pro League Open Qualifier. They might have contracts about this already, but in reality the Pro Leagues should be even more reason to delay the schedule and fix things first. How will the public react if the best team loses because one of their members crashed? Some might not even be able to qualify because some of their members have a lot of these crashes.

I really like all the announcements here and can’t wait for them to come, don’t get me wrong. I just think it’s not smart to do that while the game is still so extremely unstable for many players.

I’m 100% sure the people working on the crashes are very different from the people making the PvP leagues, or the raids for that matter. Other teams creating more content isn’t going to stop the people from working on the crashing. They’re simply different people.

Yeah, I know that. I did not say I expected the bug-fixes would stop coming in because the focus would move away from that.

Not sure where you got that idea from.

I just say that I think it’s better to have the bugs / crashes solved before putting in new content and possibly even adding in new / more bugs with the new content.

It’s frustrating to do MKS and the game crashes, but it’s even more frustrating when that happens in an important PvP match or during a raid.

So if it takes the months to track down all the problems, you think we should not have raids before then? Or leagues.

Because people wouldn’t be up in arms about that.

Realistically they really have no choice but to add the content.

If this takes months there is a way bigger issue.

No, if they take 1 extra week, one should hope they would have also fixed much of those crashes, especially if all effort go’s into that what is possible because you have an extra week.

The other teams can use that time to add in those functionality’s on their “if we have time over” list (A famous list all dev’s have but almost never come around doing) and to make sure there are less bugs in the new content.

That would likely give a better end result then when they introduce new content that for sure will also introduce new bugs that add to the bile of bugs they still needed to fix (like those crashes) and will take away from the enjoyment of that new content.

Hey, I am ALL for holding a company’s feet to the fire when they say, “We promise to do [X] by [Y]” and then for one reason or another renege. I’m not sure what precisely was said pertaining to WvW, for example, but if they said, “You WILL have a solution to the population imbalances and exploits by the launch of HoT”… then yeah, fans should let ArenaNet have it.

(I highly doubt that’s what was said, but if it was… yep, give ’em hell.)

These sorts of road maps AREN’T promises, though, and we as fans need to approach them as nothing more than statements of intent if we want these companies to be willing to keep lines of communication open. Fans ALSO have a responsibility in open discourse, no matter how much we try to divorce ourselves from that responsibility.

Stuff like the start of this thread is NOT keeping our end of the bargain.

chemiclord.3978:

These sorts of road maps AREN’T promises, though, and we as fans need to approach them as nothing more than statements of intent if we want these companies to be willing to keep lines of communication open.

It would help if they worded them that way, but they don’t.

Yes, it’s marketing speak to sound more positive, but it’s not honest. They need more “The current plan is …” and “We’re looking into making changes to …” and less “We’re adding this …” or “You can expect changes to …”

chemiclord.3978:

Stuff like the start of this thread is NOT keeping our end of the bargain.

Wait, what? I linked the blog and said I found some of its contents interesting. I never said “look what ANet is 100% going to do!”

Vayne.8563:

The public has a short, short memory.

Depends on the subject matter. Sometimes the public has a long memory. They don’t like it when that happens, either.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Vayne.8563:

The public has a short, short memory.

Depends on the subject matter. Sometimes the public has a long memory. They don’t like it when that happens, either.

I still remember the manifesto.