Guild Wars 2

First off, this is not a complaint threat. I am seeking information or clarification, not seeking to complain about the slowness. This is just something ive been wondering, but

I can perfectly well get that armour takes a really long time to design. But how come it seems to take so much dramatically longer than it used to? Guild wars 2 launched with, what, 30+ armour sets for every race? With 8 more dungeon sets following very soon after, and not even counting the gemstore sets. Yet an expansion that recieved almost exclusive attention for the better part of a year has… two? We havent even seen any gemstore ones since – only outfits, which are somehow alot easier to make. And while i do appreciate outfits, something more to mix and match would really be nice.

Why is it that everything recently seems to take alot of dev effort that they cant afford to keep up, while everything seems… still slower than what was done at launch and in season 1?
And thats not even mentioning that there seems to be fairly little QA effort put into assuring these armour sets dont have any clipping issues etc.

First, there are 3 light, 3 medium and 4 heavy armor
- bladed (light, medium, heavy)
- leystone (l,m,h)
- mistward (h)
- Precursor (l,m,h)

Thing with armor designs, as i understand it, the more diverse, the harder to make, like a lot of sets in season 1 are rather similar (thus can be nicely combined) and it takes not much time to make those.
For Example,
Heavy armor: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Human_male_heavy_armor
Chain = Worn Chain close to Millitia, Scale, Splint and tempered scale
Dark Templa is close to Studded Plate and Armageddon as well as Draconic

if you take your time and lay those pictures over each other you see how similiar the models are,
now later armors, those added with season 2 and the expansion get more and more “complex” and don’t look similar at all, so it takes time

(carapace and luminiescent for example, took probably a long time each since they are not at all similar in any aspect)

On a side note, all gemstore armors are incredible complex compared to “normal” armor.

most of the outfits could very easily be broken up into sections,
(though i suspect they already are in sections)
all they’d really need to make are thumbnails and text.

past excuses were things like “clipping issues” which fails because there are plenty of current armours that clip, its not a big deal,
“we don’t want to allow classes to wear armour that looks like a different weight class.” which fails because of outfits like Royal Guard and Monk which already let classes wear an unlikely armour set.

more armours, less outfits!!!! its been requested so many times.

Griffin.5379:

First, there are 3 light, 3 medium and 4 heavy armor
- bladed (light, medium, heavy)
- leystone (l,m,h)
- mistward (h)
- Precursor (l,m,h)

Thing with armor designs, as i understand it, the more diverse, the harder to make, like a lot of sets in season 1 are rather similar (thus can be nicely combined) and it takes not much time to make those.
For Example,
Heavy armor: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Human_male_heavy_armor
Chain = Worn Chain close to Millitia, Scale, Splint and tempered scale
Dark Templa is close to Studded Plate and Armageddon as well as Draconic

if you take your time and lay those pictures over each other you see how similiar the models are,
now later armors, those added with season 2 and the expansion get more and more “complex” and don’t look similar at all, so it takes time

(carapace and luminiescent for example, took probably a long time each since they are not at all similar in any aspect)

On a side note, all gemstore armors are incredible complex compared to “normal” armor.

That is a good point – though honestly, i wouldnt mind a few more basic armours.
I will say that the precursor armours kindof dont count as HoT to me since its again been almost a full year since HoT came out and the precursor armor has only been here for a few months.
And, well, at launch every weight class had those armours.

I do understand the similarity though and how that could definitely benefit the ease of making them, but still… given the long time it takes now it seems.. somehow particularly slow compared to before.
LS updates too. I understand they want to put quality in everything, but how were they able to put out the Nightmare Tower, Flame and Frost, Dragon Bash, the Attack on LA, the Marionette encounter, the Breachmaker fight, and all that with two-weeks period before when now in three-months periods we’ve barely got a few hours of playtime.
Admitted, i can very much recognise how Bloodstone Fen wouldve taken a whole lot of work and can definitely see how it took alot of time. Im just a bit disappointed at the lack of content depth compared to the massive, event-filled LA attack, complete with ruined city, broken buildings, objects distributed everywhere, etc.

Spyritdragon.6048:

LS updates too. I understand they want to put quality in everything, but how were they able to put out the Nightmare Tower, Flame and Frost, Dragon Bash, the Attack on LA, the Marionette encounter, the Breachmaker fight, and all that with two-weeks period before when now in three-months periods we’ve barely got a few hours of playtime.

People forget that during LS1 and LS2, they generally weren’t working on an expansion. Then they switched over to the expansion, and we got the long drought between LS2 and HoT. Currently, they’re trying to avoid either extreme, with some people working on LS3 and some people working on Expansion 2.

Griffin.5379:

(carapace and luminiescent for example, took probably a long time each since they are not at all similar in any aspect)

A minor correction here, I think you must have made a typo and meant some other comparison. Luminescent is exactly like Carapace in design, as it is Carapace with an overlaid blue glow. All they did was add an effect.

I am surprised by the 9 months figure, given how much armor shipped at launch and in subsequent gem shop releases. Perhaps it was a huge focus of original development but they aren’t willing to allocate as many resources to it now. Even so it feels like they had more than enough time to include more sets with HoT, so the lack of new pretty things to mix-and-match continues to disappoint. (It doesn’t help that I don’t really care for most of the bladed or ley-stone pieces; while they show a lot of care and attention to detail, I can’t really see any of my alts willing to suffer wearing armor covered in blades more likely to lacerate the wearer, or big rough edged clunky rock slabs).

Guild Wars 2 spent YEARS in dedicated development. You can get a lot more work done before a game launches than after.

Or find some way to do quests/collections for the armor sets in the gem store.

I don’t know why but a lot of people tend to over look :

• Guild Ornate Armor
• Triumphant Armor and Triumphant Hero counterpart

Are they that obscure to not counted?

Also if you compare the game at launch and the expansion at launch, the vanilla game has a lot of cosmetic assets at the expense of little to no endgame content at all. The outrage at the time when people reached level 80 and had nothing else to do but a handful of dungeons and the new WvW mode to keep their interest was very apparent. I remember it very well as I’ve lost quite a few friends burnt out during the long build up of season 1.

[quote=6285630;Donari.5237:]

Donari.5237:

Griffin.5379:

(carapace and luminiescent for example, took probably a long time each since they are not at all similar in any aspect)

A minor correction here, I think you must have made a typo and meant some other comparison. Luminescent is exactly like Carapace in design, as it is Carapace with an overlaid blue glow. All they did was add an effect.

He meant in comparison to the other armor he mentioned in that post.

That makes sense, Djinn. That was my error in interpretation.

What I don’t understand is the fact that F2P games put out armor sets all the time with no issues. I can’t speak for all F2P mmo’s, but Rift, Lineage, and Runes of magic have put out multiple armor sets in less than a couple months.

And then (I can’t remember who said it), one of the devs says that armor takes up to 8 months to develope and that it’s extremely expensive. It just doesn’t add up unless they’re lacking the people to do it.

Iris Ng.9845:

I don’t know why but a lot of people tend to over look :

• Guild Ornate Armor
• Triumphant Armor and Triumphant Hero counterpart

Are they that obscure to not counted?

Also if you compare the game at launch and the expansion at launch, the vanilla game has a lot of cosmetic assets at the expense of little to no endgame content at all. The outrage at the time when people reached level 80 and had nothing else to do but a handful of dungeons and the new WvW mode to keep their interest was very apparent. I remember it very well as I’ve lost quite a few friends burnt out during the long build up of season 1.

The programmers that specialize in developing cosmetic items are obviously not the same as the ones that design endgame content. The fact that they are designing less armors has nothing to do with endgame, and it likely has to do with the gem store.

You are right about ornate guild and triumphant armor though, they are armor sets that are usually not mentioned. However, even if you include those, HoT has not had even a fourth of the armors of the base game. I’m not expecting the same amount as the base game in an expansion, just a fourth.

Ganathar.4956:

Iris Ng.9845:

I don’t know why but a lot of people tend to over look :

• Guild Ornate Armor
• Triumphant Armor and Triumphant Hero counterpart

Are they that obscure to not counted?

Also if you compare the game at launch and the expansion at launch, the vanilla game has a lot of cosmetic assets at the expense of little to no endgame content at all. The outrage at the time when people reached level 80 and had nothing else to do but a handful of dungeons and the new WvW mode to keep their interest was very apparent. I remember it very well as I’ve lost quite a few friends burnt out during the long build up of season 1.

The programmers that specialize in developing cosmetic items are obviously not the same as the ones that design endgame content. The fact that they are designing less armors has nothing to do with endgame, and it likely has to do with the gem store.

You are right about ornate guild and triumphant armor though, they are armor sets that are usually not mentioned. However, even if you include those, HoT has not had even a fourth of the armors of the base game. I’m not expecting the same amount as the base game in an expansion, just a fourth.

I’m not working for ANET nor in a game industry so I can’t really tell what sorts of work a graphic designers for a game company do. But today I learned that Lena Chappelle, before becoming the in-house music composer, was a QA, a character designer, a game content developer and everything in between. So unless an Anet confirms about their armor making process, I’m just drawing a strawman argument as much as everyone else here does. No offense though.

Donari.5237:

Griffin.5379:

(carapace and luminiescent for example, took probably a long time each since they are not at all similar in any aspect)

A minor correction here, I think you must have made a typo and meant some other comparison. Luminescent is exactly like Carapace in design, as it is Carapace with an overlaid blue glow. All they did was add an effect.

Imagine a “sarcastic” smile behind that sentence ^^