Guild Wars 2

Seriously another break and more 2nd hand content? Whats up with that.

You finally seem to be getting a grip on how to run the living story then suddenly BREAK!.. you bring it back (after what seemed like a millennium) another great patch, followed by a short story (poor)patch, an average patch and Break….?

Can we just get a vague idea of why these breaks are for? are you suffering money issues and can only afford part time staff?

apologies for the rant but seriously WTFruitcakes

It’s called Christmas, devs needs some vaccation time to spend with their friends and families. Contrary to popular belief, video games don’t create themselves, they need developers. Those developers are human and like all other humans they need some time off from time to time.

I’m looking forward to Snowball Mayhem!

What maddoctor said.
Also, it would be very disapointing if the skipped wintersday (or halloween before that). The holiday events have always been enjoyable imo.
Is it a bit sad that it will be copy paste from last year like Halloween was… yes… with the first and second halloween and wintersday we came to expect variation, but I suppose in GW1 it was also just copy paste each year with only minor additions. So really it is fine.

I wish I had a six week christmas break. Sounds awesome!

Congrats on all people working at ANet, enjoy your 1 1/2 monthes off!

This is a well-earned vacation. From GW2’s starting year until now they’ve shown an incredible ability to come up with new systems, re-work stuff as needed, and deliver a reasonable amount of content in short periods. I still recommend GW2 for all of my friends, and I’m still fond of the idea that ArenaNet has really changed how companies should perceive MMOs in general.

So yeah, I rant regularly but let them enjoy their free time.

Valento.9852:

This is a well-earned vacation. From GW2’s starting year until now they’ve shown an incredible ability to come up with new systems, re-work stuff as needed, and deliver a reasonable amount of content in short periods. I still recommend GW2 for all of my friends, and I’m still fond of the idea that ArenaNet has really changed how companies should perceive MMOs in general.

Second this.
They deserve it, and I’m sure they aren’t taking a month off – Gaile explained it perfectly in a very similar thread; if they put out a huge patch right before break, you’d be complaining that something wasn’t perfect and expect them to come in on Christmas day to fix it.

And of course there’s the fact that these holiday bits are regular, planned events that occur every year and should be no surprise to anyone save a brand new player who really should have no reason to complain if they still have the whole existing game ahead of them to play and enjoy. Try to have fun and earn some limited-time loot instead of kitten ing against the machine.

I rant regularly, but sometimes I find those who really exaggerate. =@

Kaiyanwan.8521:

I wish I had a six week christmas break. Sounds awesome!

They actually have to work on that release, they don’t just show up the morning the patch goes live.

Individual devs will only have about a week off, but there’s a 2 week period in the holidays where you just don’t get many things done.

We’ve had 11 Living Story releases this year. I’m not counting regurgitated content such as holiday releases. At two weeks a piece, that’s about 154 days dedicated to a release. This comes out as roughly 42% of the year that we were doing living story content. The rest of the time we were either on break or doing filler content (WvW Tournaments).

1/21/14 thru 2/4/14 → Marionette LS
2/4/14 thru 2/18/14 → EotM
2/18/14 thru 3/4/14 → Escape from LA
3/4/14 thru 3/18/14 → Battle in LA

7/1/14 thru 7/15/14 → Season 2: Episode 1
7/15/14 thru 7/29/14 → Season 2: Episode 2
7/29/14 thru 8/12/14 → Season 2: Episode 3
8/12/14 thru 8/26/14 → Season 2: Episode 4

11/4/14 thru 11/18/14 → Season 2: Episode 5
11/18/14 thru 12/2/14 → Season 2: Episode 6
12/2/14 thru 12/16/14 → Season 2: Episode 7

That’s not bad if you consider that the general consensus is that a year has ~200 days usable for work in it. 75% of them dedicated to LS.

They’re giving us free content worth much more than what we’ve paid for. I just give up.

Carighan.6758:

That’s not bad if you consider that the general consensus is that a year has ~200 days usable for work in it. 75% of them dedicated to LS.

Workable days isn’t relevant. This is about the duration of the releases, not the time spent developing them. Season One also had well over 200 days.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

I wish I had a six week christmas break. Sounds awesome!

Congrats on all people working at ANet, enjoy your 1 1/2 monthes off!

I really hope you are kidding….. So many unrealistic expectations on these forums. If you really think they are not working for 6 weeks you are delusional. No company on Earth gives that much time off for Christmas. Plus there are 2 patch releases between now and mid January. How much more can they do to make people happy….

Tron.3471:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

I wish I had a six week christmas break. Sounds awesome!

Congrats on all people working at ANet, enjoy your 1 1/2 monthes off!

I really hope you are kidding….. So many unrealistic expectations on these forums. If you really think they are not working for 6 weeks you are delusional. No company on Earth gives that much time off for Christmas. Plus there are 2 patch releases between now and mid January. How much more can they do to make people happy….

I bet German companies do… Those guys only work like 4 weeks a year.

I have put my dummy back in now, so feel more rational moans coming on.

If you add up all the living story added fro season 2 so far, and played it through you would probably get 3-4 hours of game play released over half a year. In guild wars 1, we didn’t get as much content added as often however we did get 3 expansions, that had 11-20 missions per expansion 15-25 new areas, new classes professions armor weapons, skills… catch my drift? Basically the LS is to keep us coming back for short drip fed content and to prevent player base spikes.

I am not saying the living story approach is a bad idea, hell i love the idea of an evolving and changing world. Id just rather wait the 6 months to 1 year and get something worth me logging in for, because we all know you have to log in once per patch or pay for your LS (That is BS by the way, having to log in to get the “free content” or be charged gems if you don’kittens not free content if it comes with strings attached! But i bet that looks good on a year end report.)

I’m tired of all the same rubbish, I am tiered of getting my hopes up to hear what I think we all want to hear like: Cantha, Elona, new professions, new armor weapons (not Gem store sizzle, a basic in your face money grab move… bad form) and skills, please don’t quote the kitten poor skills we have received as part of the living story, because lets be honest who really uses them over your standard skills.

All in all I am feeling very underwhelmed by a game that I truly love, it feels like the game has become to corporate, more about the money than the actual content added, yes its free but notice how the Gem store gets more updates than the LS!.

And to top it off they have just released news of “daily log in rewards” Again to try and get the year end player base review figures up.

Valento.9852:

This is a well-earned vacation. From GW2’s starting year until now they’ve shown an incredible ability to come up with new systems, re-work stuff as needed, and deliver a reasonable amount of content in short periods. I still recommend GW2 for all of my friends, and I’m still fond of the idea that ArenaNet has really changed how companies should perceive MMOs in general.

So yeah, I rant regularly but let them enjoy their free time.

Did you just come out from under a rock for two years? If by “vacationing” you meant “quitting for a better paying dev job”, or “moving onto a different company because I’m sick of burn out” then yeah they are vacationing. In all seriousness, the OP is right, just like a multitude of OP’s before him: the egregiously long breaks between thin Living Story updates is unacceptable. It points to turmoil across all development levels, starting with upper management. But don’t take my word for it, look it up for yourself. The moderators routinely delete posts which link to this public information, so I will not.

Vix.6730:

Valento.9852:

This is a well-earned vacation. From GW2’s starting year until now they’ve shown an incredible ability to come up with new systems, re-work stuff as needed, and deliver a reasonable amount of content in short periods. I still recommend GW2 for all of my friends, and I’m still fond of the idea that ArenaNet has really changed how companies should perceive MMOs in general.

So yeah, I rant regularly but let them enjoy their free time.

Did you just come out from under a rock for two years? If by “vacationing” you meant “quitting for a better paying dev job”, or “moving onto a different company because I’m sick of burn out” then yeah they are vacationing. In all seriousness, the OP is right, just like a multitude of OP’s before him: the egregiously long breaks between thin Living Story updates is unacceptable. It points to turmoil across all development levels, starting with upper management. But don’t take my word for it, look it up for yourself. The moderators routinely delete posts which link to this public information, so I will not.

Sorry my friend, but you’re just a plain hater who doesn’t understand how development and marketing works altogether. They can take as many breaks as they see fit, their compromise should be only to maintain servers up since you only had to pay an initial $60.00 for the game, which is worth much more than that price.

Liege Tai.8249:

If you add up all the living story added fro season 2 so far, and played it through you would probably get 3-4 hours of game play released over half a year.

I’m sorry, friend, but if you’re blowing through the full content of every release in less than half an hour, you are both an impossibly fast player and doing it wrong.

At this point in time, after two years it just doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
I agree 100% with the OP and the little to no faith I have remaining is dwindling fast.

Themepark MMO’s all need to have content injections, it is the nature of the beast. While I think the plan from Anet was to have regular content LS updates that would satiate the playerbase, it seems that this dribble just isn’t enough for most…it certainly isn’t for me.

If the wintersday is the same as it has been for the last two years, I won’t be playing it, it is pretty pointless.

I really do hope that Anet realizes their issue with content and is making a Xpac as we speak that will be released shortly because I fear for the longevity of this game if that isn’t the case.

Liege Tai.8249:

Seriously another break and more 2nd hand content? Whats up with that.

To make it more funny, i expect to get the next break directly after the final episode.

So break until January -> final episode -> break until march -> feature pack ->
break until June or July -> 4 episodes LS3 -> break until november -> 3 episodes LS3

Beldin.5498:

Liege Tai.8249:

Seriously another break and more 2nd hand content? Whats up with that.

To make it more funny, i expect to get the next break directly after the final episode.

So break until January -> final episode -> break until march -> feature pack ->
break until June or July -> 4 episodes LS3 -> break until november -> 3 episodes LS3

They should start advertise all those breaks they make. It seems to be their main content for the game.