Guild Wars 2

Title: Where is the ‘Content you would normally / traditionally see in an expansion’? time is up.

This question is maybe even more for the people who have been defending the LS expansion approach as it is for Anet. But is at the same time also directed towards Anet.

Somewhere around half a year after GW2’s release I noticed GW2 was turning into a cash0shop focus and it was also then that Anet stated about the then just started LS “If we do this right there will never be an expansion” also explaining that the content we would normally see being released with an expansion would then be spread out using the Living story in stead of being released as expansion. However when that did git a lot of negative feedback they said that expansions where of the table, there where working on content and had not yes decides how to release it (wat is an impossible statement but I will come back to that later).

While I personally did think Anet would be able to release it that way my main reason to be against it was because it would mean that in stead of focusing on an expansion every year to earn there income they would need to focus on the cash-shop to earn income with a negative effect to the game. Pretty much exactly as we have seen over the last 1,5 year.

However every-time if this discussion came up and people complained about how the LS was not delivering the content we could expect from an expansion Anet’s response was they had things in the background and the people on the forum defending it said it was unfair to ask that from Anet.. We needed to give them more time, maybe the next patch would bring it, they had already made progress bla bla and other games also took much longer to release an expansion. While for me that was irrelevant (I wanted a B2P game, they need to release expansions sooner, those other games are P2P of F2P games) it was at least relevant for people who just had complains about the lack of the content and it was brought up a lot by people defending it.

We got the release dates of expansions of those other games thrown in our face. What was somewhere between 1,5 year and 2 years. In fact of all the bigger more successful mmo’s out there WoW seemed to take the longest (I know many people here dislike the WoW comparison but be satisfied with knowing it’s a negative reference as they took the longest). They took 2 years, 1 month and 24 days to release the first expansion.

You know when GW2 was released? 2 years, 1 month and 25 days ago. So here I am. I (and many with me) waited for over 1,5 year just ask the ‘defenders’ asked us to do and where is it??

Looking at what the LS did bring us we for sure got something of it. It’s hard to really hang a number to it in percentages but it is for sure less then 50% of what you would normally see an a expansion.

And before somebody tells me to again wait for the next part of this LS season to see what they add and so they might still include enough content. No the waiting time for that is over, ‘we’ waited at long and us has been asked. All the those excuses of ‘look at other games’ have become invalid as from now. And even if they would add everything missing is those upcoming patches (so about 10 more maps, an new race or profession, one more dungeon, and at lease one completely new feature like guild-halls or mounts or factions or something like that) that they would still not have been able to spread out the content we would normally see in an expansion over that period but would have still released most in one bunch. While the spreading out was exactly what was the hole point of the expansion.

Then to Anet the question. Does that then now mean we move away from this Living story Approach and back to traditional expansions? Like you said “If we do this right there will be no expansion” but we can now conclude you failed at that attempt. So then it’s time to move back to expansions and then please focus on them, back to the real B2P model. We waited long enough, gave you the appropriate time (in fact much longer because it this was to be a true B2P game we would have seen an expansions much sooner and had the second one by now). Now it’s your turn to make things right.

And about the “we are working on stuff in the background but are still looking at how to release it”. Considering that time-travel is not possible irl that statement does not even make sense if it comes to the LS vs Expansions approach. The idea with the LS was to release the content spread out over the period in stead of all at one bunch. So that means then everything being worked on also needs to get released overtime. It would be impossible to at this moment decide “we are going to release it using the LS” because then you would have to travel back in time to release it considering the time-period we would normally see for content we usually see in an expansion has passed.

People pay $40 for a console game, then consider it descent if they get 40 hours of gameplay out of it.

People pay $40 for Guild Wars 2, and after spending thousands of hours in the game, they complain about lack of content.

I don’t even.

Yes, more content would be nice. Yes, not removing content would be nice. Yes, other MMOs love to recolor older content, change some numbers and pretend it’s new content. No, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t need any of that.

Players ask for a new continent, players get a new continent, players complain about having to explore a new continent. Let’s take this moderately, shall we?

Yeah, I’m in the same boat, Rangelost.
I mean, I wish there’d be more stuff coming. I feel that the dev speed is glacial at best. For everything, content, bug fixes, class changes, WvW, everything.

That being said, GW2 is among the most efficient gaming hours I’ve ever had, with the single cost vs ongoing playtime. Paid ~50€ in the gem store since launch and paid 50€ for the game, giving me 2500 hours played for 100€ so far. Yeah.

Rangelost.4857:

People pay $40 for a console game, then consider it descent if they get 40 hours of gameplay out of it.

People pay $40 for Guild Wars 2, and after spending thousands of hours in the game, they complain about lack of content.

I don’t even.

Yes, more content would be nice. Yes, not removing content would be nice. Yes, other MMOs love to recolor older content, change some numbers and pretend it’s new content. No, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t need any of that.

Players ask for a new continent, players get a new continent, players complain about having to explore a new continent. Let’s take this moderately, shall we?

Many are asking for expansions. So they don’t pay $40,- and ten expect content to be keep coming in for free (keep playing for ever). They expect to pay another $40 for new content. That was the hole point don’t you think.

And yes an expansion usually has a lot of the same type on content with other colors while usually one really new thing is added. I even mentioned that.

Carighan.6758:

Yeah, I’m in the same boat, Rangelost.
I mean, I wish there’d be more stuff coming. I feel that the dev speed is glacial at best. For everything, content, bug fixes, class changes, WvW, everything.

That being said, GW2 is among the most efficient gaming hours I’ve ever had, with the single cost vs ongoing playtime. Paid ~50€ in the gem store since launch and paid 50€ for the game, giving me 2500 hours played for 100€ so far. Yeah.

And thats great. But I rather had paid another €50 for an expansion or twice for a second expansion by now. This it not about expecting things for free.

Rangelost.4857:

People pay $40 for a console game, then consider it descent if they get 40 hours of gameplay out of it.

People pay $40 for Guild Wars 2, and after spending thousands of hours in the game, they complain about lack of content.

I don’t even.

Yes, more content would be nice. Yes, not removing content would be nice. Yes, other MMOs love to recolor older content, change some numbers and pretend it’s new content. No, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t need any of that.

Players ask for a new continent, players get a new continent, players complain about having to explore a new continent. Let’s take this moderately, shall we?

This is an MMO and expansion is expected, NAY, required to keep people interested.

ANet didn’t just make GW2 and think “whaylpe gaiz, hope we got 40 hours of content here” and their poor excuse for content simply does not work, as proven by the communities distaste for LS miniscule updates. Oh and when did we get a new continent? I don’t think that words means what you think it means there buddy.

Other games expansions are adding a billion times more than what GW2 has. GW2 progress stopped the moment it was released and a main feature of the franchise was adamantly ignored (pvp).

I spent $300+ in GW because it was a satisfying game and I felt they deserved the cash, I’ve spent $60 in GW2, and that was just base price.

GW2 is more like playing the TP / gem shop and the rest of the game is there but ignored. They treat this like it’s F2P korean grind #38940237423 and honestly it does feel like it.

Rangelost.4857:

People pay $40 for a console game, then consider it descent if they get 40 hours of gameplay out of it.

People pay $40 for Guild Wars 2, and after spending thousands of hours in the game, they complain about lack of content.

I don’t even.

Yes, more content would be nice. Yes, not removing content would be nice. Yes, other MMOs love to recolor older content, change some numbers and pretend it’s new content. No, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t need any of that.

Players ask for a new continent, players get a new continent, players complain about having to explore a new continent. Let’s take this moderately, shall we?

Eh? It probably was 60$, but whatever. Wtf you’re bragging about anyway? Your point is, let’s play 40 hours and leave GW2 for good? Or what? Yes, more content would be nice. No, GW2 doesn’t need any of that. Where’s logic in this? People complain about exploring new continent. What? Let’s take it moderately, shall we? Shall we? 2+ years is not moderate enough for you, is it? Are you a special one?

Devata.6589:

And thats great. But I rather had paid another €50 for an expansion or twice for a second expansion by now. This it not about expecting things for free.

Of course, but if you look at their dev speed, they couldn’t create expansions. I mean ,consider that they’d have brought out two expansions so far, package everything they’ve done so far, new skills, changes, story, events into two expansion packs. That’s what you’d get. That’s… tiny. And if you want to pay 50€ for such a pack, fair enough.
But to me that’d be the polar opposite of what GW2 was so far, a super-high-value experience. That price level would be more akin to horse armour DLC in Skyrim. :P

Seems a lot of players haven’t played other MMOs then clearly GW2 is lacking a lot of content. I would say it is not even a quarter of content other companies release with an expansion.

Many forget that other MMOs release content without expansion from time to time. This content is on par with the whole content GW2 released so far. So where is our expansion?

Game do not need an expansion IMO, what they need is to tune LS to bring the same as expansions over time, some TP souvenirs would cover the price.

Yeah, we gave two years now, it’s time to stop this attempt, it didn’t work.

Carighan.6758:

Devata.6589:

And thats great. But I rather had paid another €50 for an expansion or twice for a second expansion by now. This it not about expecting things for free.

Of course, but if you look at their dev speed, they couldn’t create expansions. I mean ,consider that they’d have brought out two expansions so far, package everything they’ve done so far, new skills, changes, story, events into two expansion packs. That’s what you’d get. That’s… tiny. And if you want to pay 50€ for such a pack, fair enough.
But to me that’d be the polar opposite of what GW2 was so far, a super-high-value experience. That price level would be more akin to horse armour DLC in Skyrim. :P

I think you underestimate the amount of work that go’s into these LS things. They might not add much from a content perspective but look for example to the Toxic Alliance LS. Kessex Hillls got edited what.. 4 times? There was an instance added that acted much like a dungeon. And during the LS we did see many small instances that all required a lot of work. All the voice overs that had to be done. It really was a lot of work. It just was not very efficient to deliver content.

Based on seeing how much work must have gone into to LS I am pretty sure that if in stead of the LS 90% of there attention would have gone into creating an expansion I am sure they could have released an expansion after a year or maybe 1,5 years for the first expansion (because the first half year they would also have to spend more time on fixing things and adding festivals and so on, but on average one a year).

Those expansions would then maybe be a little smaller then what we might know from a games like WoW but it would for sure have been possible to add much more then what we have so far and would be able to be much more in line with what people expected.

Aeolus.3615:

Game do not need an expansion IMO, what they need is to tune LS to bring the same as expansions over time, some TP souvenirs would cover the price.

Well I think they should simply because the LS approach means they need to focus on the cash-shop what is not good for the game. However that was not the point of this thread.

The point was that they did have had the time to do exactly what you say and that time it now over. By now we should then have had that content. The excuse you give here is what we get from people for over 1,5 year now. And usually that did come with the notion that other games also did take about 2 years to release the expansions.

Anet did got the time to do this and that time is over now. We should have gotten that content by now. In an expansion (as I prefer) or in the LS. The time to tune has long passed.

We (the complainers) can not be accuses anymore of not waiting long enough and Anet can not be excused anymore for needing more time to release or tune. Waiting is over. ‘We’ did what we have been asked (waiting) it’s Anet who failed to deliver. And ‘we’ did warn for that early enough.

So, Guild Wars 2 must compete with WoW as far as timelines go? A game has failed (in whatever sense you choose) if it doesn’t adhere to WoW’s timeline? Lol.

Guild Wars 2 will release what it will release on their own schedule, I dare say, and not because some other game did whatever in so many days.

Personally, I hope they choose to release all content through the LS or Feature packs, rather than a ‘traditional’ expansion. But, neither you nor I know what is to come. You may get your wish…I may get mine. /shrug

Rangelost.4857:

People pay $40 for a console game, then consider it descent if they get 40 hours of gameplay out of it.

People pay $40 for Guild Wars 2, and after spending thousands of hours in the game, they complain about lack of content.

I don’t even.

Yes, more content would be nice. Yes, not removing content would be nice. Yes, other MMOs love to recolor older content, change some numbers and pretend it’s new content. No, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t need any of that.

Players ask for a new continent, players get a new continent, players complain about having to explore a new continent. Let’s take this moderately, shall we?

Are you for real? seriously? We did NOT get a new continent. Dry Top as currently released is at best half a map – being extremely generous. I would suggest that its actual 25-30% of a map. Southsun is an island group and again is not a continent.

May I ask how old are you? Do you not know that an expansion requires the introduction of a playable race with a integrated back story that includes the existing playable races as significant actors in its plot line(s).

Additionally it must include but not limited to: A new fighting profession, a major additional game mechanic, a new dungeon in addition to what has been release in the Living Story process thus far. And it would of course include a few completely new maps and may also include access to previously locked maps as well as perhaps enhancements of some existing ones.

And who said that an expansion would be free content? I would expect to pay a reasonable one-off payment in exchange for this upgraded content.

Since that is what an expansion is.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

So, Guild Wars 2 must compete with WoW as far as timelines go? A game has failed (in whatever sense you choose) if it doesn’t adhere to WoW’s timeline? Lol.

Guild Wars 2 will release what it will release on their own schedule, I dare say, and not because some other game did whatever in so many days.

Personally, I hope they choose to release all content through the LS or Feature packs, rather than a ‘traditional’ expansion. But, neither you nor I know what is to come. You may get your wish…I may get mine. /shrug

No not on WoW’s timeline. But on an average Time-line to expect that type of content. WoW was simply one of the slowest. It was Anet who said we would get the same content as we would expect in an expansion only the way of delivery was different. Well what most people expect of an expansion is an x amount of content in an y amount of time.
There is an everage that is pretty much based on what other games do. The average is smaller as WoW’s release for it’s first expansion. WoW was simply the slowest and it was us who where ask by the defenders on these forums to be fair to Anet and give them the same amount of time as other games took (what on average is lower then WoW’s!).

Well we did.. we gave that time and ever looked ad took the maximum of what was the standard (maximum as in WoW was the longest).

Anet sure does everything on there time-line and that is then way to slow. It’s deliver under what the market does if it comes to this.

Why should Anet cater towards veteran players? I would say that new players spend more money in the gem store. I played since head start and I have all character slots, bank and bag expansions and other gem store items i need. Even if I would be willing to pay as much for an expansion as a new player is for the box game, the potential of me dropping additional money on the gem store is far less than than the one of new players.

Devata.6589:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

I’ll just leave this here.

The screenshot that_shaman released on April 1?

I don’t know who that is or when he posted the image, nor do I care.

The whole reason I posted the image was to bring hopes into peoples hearts….. to have them imagine the joy and fun a new race would bring….

and to answer the question with “NEW RACES! New races is content we normally see in an expansion!”

Not poop on their hopes and dreams by labeling it as fraudulent and a fake.

Of course its a fake.

We all know we have no tengu race to play…. but that doesn’t mean we can’t dream.

Nicholas S Lin.6187:

Rangelost.4857:

People pay $40 for a console game, then consider it descent if they get 40 hours of gameplay out of it.

People pay $40 for Guild Wars 2, and after spending thousands of hours in the game, they complain about lack of content.

I don’t even.

Yes, more content would be nice. Yes, not removing content would be nice. Yes, other MMOs love to recolor older content, change some numbers and pretend it’s new content. No, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t need any of that.

Players ask for a new continent, players get a new continent, players complain about having to explore a new continent. Let’s take this moderately, shall we?

Are you for real? seriously? We did NOT get a new continent. Dry Top as currently released is at best half a map – being extremely generous. I would suggest that its actual 25-30% of a map. Southsun is an island group and again is not a continent.

May I ask how old are you? Do you not know that an expansion requires the introduction of a playable race with a integrated back story that includes the existing playable races as significant actors in its plot line(s).

Additionally it must include but not limited to: A new fighting profession, a major additional game mechanic, a new dungeon in addition to what has been release in the Living Story process thus far. And it would of course include a few completely new maps and may also include access to previously locked maps as well as perhaps enhancements of some existing ones.

And who said that an expansion would be free content? I would expect to pay a reasonable one-off payment in exchange for this upgraded content.

Since that is what an expansion is.

I think he did try to say that if people would get a new continent they would complain about having to explore it.

I disagree that an expansion would need to have a new playable race (or any one specific thing for that matter). While it’s one of the most common things to see and what I would like to see I don’t think it’s not that specific. Lets say they added a lot of other things but of everything we would expect looking also at other games (so then we would expect a new race or profession) but would not add that single thing I would still be fine with it.

It should however be something in those lines.

The big problem is they simply far undelivered to what to expect in general from the marked.

Wanze.8410:

Why should Anet cater towards veteran players? I would say that new players spend more money in the gem store. I played since head start and I have all character slots, bank and bag expansions and other gem store items i need. Even if I would be willing to pay as much for an expansion as a new player is for the box game, the potential of me dropping additional money on the gem store is far less than than the one of new players.

Because new incoming players will become lower eventually.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Devata.6589:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

I’ll just leave this here.

The screenshot that_shaman released on April 1?

I don’t know who that is or when he posted the image, nor do I care.

The whole reason I posted the image was to bring hopes into peoples hearts….. to have them imagine the joy and fun a new race would bring….

and to answer the question with “NEW RACES! New races is content we normally see in an expansion!”

Not poop on their hopes and dreams by labeling it as fraudulent and a fake.

Of course its a fake.

We all know we have no tengu race to play…. but that doesn’t mean we can’t dream.

It would have been nice if that would have been added somewhere between the release of the game and now. That for sure but sadly that hasn’t happened.

I was not completely sure why you posted it, thats why I commented that. Anyway, thats clear now

Well I doubt Anet are sitting on content just for fun. If they havent released the big stuff its because its not ready and its not ready not because they’re just procrastinating but because it takes more then the time they had to dedicate to it so far.

Devata if Anet didnt do the Living Story and did an expansion instead with the same amount of people the amount of content they did would be exactly the same amount of content we got and considering the general consensus is LS didnt deliver nowhere close enough content to what people expect from an expansion then we either would have gotten a very sub par expansion or we still wouldnt have our expansion 2 years 1 month 25 days later.

Kexxeks hills was essentially edited once where are you getting the 4 times from? I hope you’re not counting small things like when they deforested a single forest there. I mean even the full edit itself it would have taken less work then creating a full map from scratch. Even if we consider the edited maps to take as much work a screating a new map from scratch that would only have yielded 2 maps for the expansion. at the end of the day living story or expansion doesnt make a difference in terms of development speed. if instead of doing LS the same team did an expansion based on your statement that LS so far is about 50% of what you’d expect in an expansion would mean ti would have take over 4 years.

That being said I dont think any of this matters at all because at the end of the day we know the living story team has always been made of approximately 20 people and we know there are over 350 people working at arenanet so if they’re working on an expansion the Living story would not have a big impact on the expansion time line since the bulk of employees are free to work on it.

Galen Grey.4709:

Well I doubt Anet are sitting on content just for fun. If they havent released the big stuff its because its not ready and its not ready not because they’re just procrastinating but because it takes more then the time they had to dedicate to it so far.

Devata if Anet didnt do the Living Story and did an expansion instead with the same amount of people the amount of content they did would be exactly the same amount of content we got and considering the general consensus is LS didnt deliver nowhere close enough content to what people expect from an expansion then we either would have gotten a very sub par expansion or we still wouldnt have our expansion 2 years 1 month 25 days later.

Kexxeks hills was essentially edited once where are you getting the 4 times from? I hope you’re not counting small things like when they deforested a single forest there. I mean even the full edit itself it would have taken less work then creating a full map from scratch. Even if we consider the edited maps to take as much work a screating a new map from scratch that would only have yielded 2 maps for the expansion. at the end of the day living story or expansion doesnt make a difference in terms of development speed. if instead of doing LS the same team did an expansion based on your statement that LS so far is about 50% of what you’d expect in an expansion would mean ti would have take over 4 years.

That being said I dont think any of this matters at all because at the end of the day we know the living story team has always been made of approximately 20 people and we know there are over 350 people working at arenanet so if they’re working on an expansion the Living story would not have a big impact on the expansion time line since the bulk of employees are free to work on it.

It could be true that it’s simply not fished but that does not changes much. If it take them more then 2 years to build 75%? of an expansion and that is then all done around the same time or just one big junk of content (what is unlikely) then it does mean they are not able to release the content over time as what they said they would do with the LS. So if it can only be developed with big junks then again the expansion would make more sense and the LKS does not work. The hole idea of the LS was to release all the content slowly over time.

Not really true. If they focused on an expansion we could have had more content by now. The LS just takes a lot of development time away that does not result in really repayable content in the game as we expect from expansions. Like I did show with the Toxic alliance expansion. For it to work in a LS way they had to update the maps multiple times. But thats all additional work that does not result in really any new content for us. That time could also have gone into changing 3 existing maps a little as part of an expansion (as an example). Now they ended up with 1 changed map.

And yes I yes I count the building process. Can’t remember it exactly but I think it started with the chopping down of the tree’s (not a big thing and was only used to added up on but still) and then we did see half a tower I think? Then the complete tower and then the destroyed tower as it is now.

All the work that go’s into the story telling could also have gone into events and npc’s in new maps. A story then you now see once vs those maps and NPC’s you then see all the time.

In the end indeed we know the story about 20 vs 350 people and then it comes back to the not being able to travel back in time. If they are still working on all that stuff in the background they can not release it in a LS way because they would then already need to have done that. If they are still working on those things then they are not able to deliver it in small pieces. What I find hard to believe btw. Some things take longer as other things but much should have been completed by now. The problem they might have is that if that when they release a new race that would normally come with a new bunch of maps but releasing that all at once would go against the LS approach. So maybe that even more so proves the LS approach is not working?

And if they where to release an expansion once a year I would also not have a problem with having a smaller expansion, then a bigger one, then a smaller one. I don’t expect every year to get an expansion the size of what we see in a game like WoW.

Devata.6589:

I think you underestimate the amount of work that go’s into these LS things. They might not add much from a content perspective but look for example to the Toxic Alliance LS. Kessex Hillls got edited what.. 4 times? There was an instance added that acted much like a dungeon. And during the LS we did see many small instances that all required a lot of work. All the voice overs that had to be done. It really was a lot of work. It just was not very efficient to deliver content.

Hrm, not sure I agree.
I mean yes, it’s a lot of work. But if this much work – and most importantly, this many dev-hours – are needed to produce one set of LS changes over I think 6 weeks in total, then maybe your approach to development needs rethinking.

You should not need this much time for it, you got to streamline the process somehow. Whether you’re doing biweekly patches or large yearly~biyearly expansions. Either way you need to find a way to efficiently create content as a developer (mind you, I am one, just not for ANet :P ).

And yes you’re absolutely right, it is a ton of work. But that should be an obstacle solved years ago as part of the process optimization.

for starters its unlikely they’ve been working on an expansion since day one. as with any mmo launch time is pretty high maintenance to get everything working well but even if they did. Would it be that bad if it takes them say 3 years to get a full fledged expansion done with new continents (cantha ), new zones, new race / professions, new dungeons etc.. and they fill the in-between with Living story, holiday releases and SAB? Wouldnt that still better then getting an expansion every year that contain 1/3 of the continent or something ?

honestly the replayability argument is really that valid from what I am seeing. I still remember how people were in pitchforks over LS season 1 being temporary cause you know they wanted to replay it when ever they feel like it. Anet complied and made season 2 permanent even though that meant we lost the awesome idea of a really evolving open world. Did that really give what people said they wanted? doesnt honestly seem so I still see people complain how the living story is nothing more then 2hrs of content or less every 2 weeks (guess they dont plan to replay any of it even though now they can). Perhaps more telling is how people are reacting to this halloween arguably one of the most popular content updates ever. Dont know seems people are more unhappy that its unchanged from last year then happy they finally get to play it again even though not only it gives a shot at the old rewards that are super requested but also introduces some really nifty things you can get with not much effort. Seems to me its more the case people like the idea that their content is access more then they’re really interested in replaying it. Bases on that was LS season 1 really wasted content? cost really seems like it was exactly the same amount of content people would have consumed if it were permanent based on what their feedback is. (speaking in general)

Kesseks hills had 2 minor updates and only 1 major update. IF I had to bet the collective work that went into those updates (excluding the tower here of course) wouldnt have been enough to create a single full map from scatch.

The tower as seen from the outside was just one object. a map contains 1000s of different objects that need to be modelled. All the houses that make up a village, all the props in the houses and villages. All the props in the open world (different fences, paveways, trees, plants etc.. ). Kesseks hills LS changes didnt take the work needed to create 4 distinct maps to do not even close!

If it were true you’d be okey with a smaller scope expansion every year why is the living story an issue the scope you’re talking about would be exactly the same no?

As for releasing it with the Living story, why not? What if they’ve been working so far on some 20 zones expanding the area we have so far westward. And 2nd part of season 2 would actually be us the players prepairing to venture that way to face the big bad elder dragon. Conclusion to the Living story season 2 would be us getting access to these 20 full fledge new zones and a new personal story that tackles the actual attack on the dragon itself. (just an example) they couldnt release them little by little because the new personal story would span all zones and instead waited to have it all done and used the living story to get us there.

Rangelost.4857:

People pay $40 for a console game, then consider it descent if they get 40 hours of gameplay out of it.

People pay $40 for Guild Wars 2, and after spending thousands of hours in the game, they complain about lack of content.

I don’t even.

Many people have said they are willing to spend another $40 if they get an expansion worth of content out of it.

Your implication that everyone asking for an expansion is wanting something for nothing doesn’t hold.

Rangelost.4857:

People pay $40 for a console game, then consider it descent if they get 40 hours of gameplay out of it.

People pay $40 for Guild Wars 2, and after spending thousands of hours in the game, they complain about lack of content.

That’s because Guild Wars 2 is aiming to be an MMO, something where 700 hours (the amount of time I’ve played) isn’t much. MMOs are supposed to take thousands of your hours.

Players ask for a new continent, players get a new continent, players complain about having to explore a new continent. Let’s take this moderately, shall we?

We have never got a new continent. We have gotten new zones but that is not a continent. A continent is something like Elona, or Cantha. All of Tyria itself is one continent.

Simzani.4318:

Given the no-work done since launch, i think that most of the 350 people at anet are NPC idling in their studio.

It’s very possible for a group of hardworking people to be very busy and yet turn out a small amount of product if their time is being burnt up by false starts, changes in direction, and lack of coordination.

I have no idea what really goes on behind the scenes at ArenaNet. I’m just pointing out that there are more possibilities than you are assuming with that statement.

1. It takes a lot more time to develop things than you think.
2. A lot of hard work is being wasted because projects are being abandoned before completion due to changes in priorities.
3. A lot of hard work is being wasted because people are working on redundant projects.
4. A lot of hard work is being wasted because a lack of solid vision is allowing too much iteration and not enough completion.
5. A lot of hard work is being wasted because someone in control is demanding certain things that are ultimately low RoI.

There’s any number of possibilities other than “the people at ArenaNet are sitting around playing console games and drinking lattes all day.”

Carighan.6758:

Devata.6589:

I think you underestimate the amount of work that go’s into these LS things. They might not add much from a content perspective but look for example to the Toxic Alliance LS. Kessex Hillls got edited what.. 4 times? There was an instance added that acted much like a dungeon. And during the LS we did see many small instances that all required a lot of work. All the voice overs that had to be done. It really was a lot of work. It just was not very efficient to deliver content.

Hrm, not sure I agree.
I mean yes, it’s a lot of work. But if this much work – and most importantly, this many dev-hours – are needed to produce one set of LS changes over I think 6 weeks in total, then maybe your approach to development needs rethinking.

You should not need this much time for it, you got to streamline the process somehow. Whether you’re doing biweekly patches or large yearly~biyearly expansions. Either way you need to find a way to efficiently create content as a developer (mind you, I am one, just not for ANet :P ).

And yes you’re absolutely right, it is a ton of work. But that should be an obstacle solved years ago as part of the process optimization.

Thats possible and with GW1 they where more efficient it seems. Still simply because of the way the LS works you end up making a lot of things that are important for the story but do not add any relevant content for the player (after having seen the story thing once.. and that is if they don’t skip it because they do not care for the story) so there is always more wasted time.

Galen Grey.4709:

~

Do you think so? To be honest when the game got released (and I was still convinced it was a true B2P game) I figured they where possibly already working on the expansion, and for games that have expansions planned I think thats not uncommon because it helps meaning a expansion that nicely fits with the game if you are already looking into it when designing the original game / previous expansion. Of course it would then have been a very small team that got scaled up later.
With the knowledge of now it’s also unlikely indeed however they might very well have been working on the Southsun Cove stuff. (What was story wise btw still introduced in the most interesting and engaging way, while not yet being part of the LS. Makes you wonder what happed after that)

For me personal yes I rather have that expansion every year in stead of once every 3 years. If that then only means that is how they generate there income and so we can get rid of 90% of the cash-shop putting that sort of things in a fun way in the game and not having this game being so much of an currency grind as it is now.

The temporary content complain was mainly so you would not have to play against the clock (before it as removed again) and new players would not miss out on a lot. Playability was only interesting for a few things like the Molten dungeon that later god added to fractals (without rewards.. one of the things that made it so interesting and fun). The whole LS is told in a story more like a single player story so that does not lent itself very well for re-playability. Now I also can’t say the first season was so much more engaging. The most engaging like I just said was still the Southsun Cove release. That worked also pretty solid. The story was temporary but the content (the map and everything in it) was mainly permanent. However they where not able to do something like that again it seems.

About the Halloween. Last Halloween was already less popular as first year so content-wise there would be less complains if Anet put in some stuff of the first Halloween (like the dungeon) and reward wise there is also not a very engaging way to get anything. Buy tickets for the weapons or grind some candy to get a change to win a skin from first Halloween. That is all not very engaging, just yet another grind.
If Anet designed it so people would still have engaging ways to earn any of those rewards (for example a scavenger hunt or a rare drop form that dungeon) people would also be more happy with it. I don’t think it has much to do with the fact that it is the same content, it’s more that it’s the same content of the lesses of the two and there are not really engaging ways to earn any rewards people might still want other then grind.

I never said it would be enough to create a new map but at the very least it would be enough to change the look of two existing maps or get part of a new map done.

“Conclusion to the Living story season 2 would be us getting access to these 20 full fledge new zones” Why not? Because that would go in against the idea of the LS. Sure they can do that. But if they release 75% of the expansion like content in one bulk the hole idea of the LS (releasing it over time) would not hold up and releasing it as an expansion would make more sense.
And the living story approach means they need to earn money with the cash-shop not with expansion sales with all negative effects that has for the game.

Perhaps my first post wasn’t very clear.

Firstly, players spent about $40 for Guild Wars 2, and are not subjected to a monthly subscription fee. They are not forced to continue playing the game once they have completed it (or parts of it they are interested in). Nowhere in “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game” is it written that these types of games are meant to provide an infinite amount of repetitive content.

Yes, locking content behind a paywall is a viable option. Original Guild Wars players are well accustomed to that, but this generally means you’re stuck with an unliving, static world, which Guild Wars 2 revolutionized.

In all MMORPGs I’ve previously played (which is over a dozen, including some big ugly titles discussed in this thread), expansions go as follow:

A new continent is introduced, so unhealthily eager players rush through as quickly as possible. Not two weeks later, they’re back on the forums complaining about lack of content.

A new race or class is introduced, so they make an alt. It doesn’t take long before they realize it hasn’t added much to the game aside from more class imbalance, and more map to explore per character, and they’re back on the forums complaining about that too.

New dungeons are introduced, so they play through them. Again. And again. And once they’re tired of forcing themselves to grind the same dungeon over and over and have all the items they can possibly get, they’re back on the forums…

You get the idea.

I do agree that Guild Wars 2 has gone through some extremely questionable decisions over the past year, but I sincerely misunderstand the sudden requirement some players have of an expansion.

Guild Wars 2 is without a doubt the most beautiful, detailed, complete, and advanced MMORPG I’ve heard of to this day, and it’s even story-driven. It has its flaws, sure, and there’s tons of things I’d love to see improved or expanded upon, but I sincerely doubt an expansion is what we’re looking for.

If all the temporary content was brought back permanently, we would have a fairly large amount of additional content by now. Unfortunately, that’s not the direction Guild Wars 2 has gone to. What we should ask for is a change of direction.

Besides, we still have quite a few Elder Dragons to defeat. You don’t honestly think they’re all going to roam around Kryta and Orr, do you?

Rangelost.4857:

Nowhere in “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game” is it written that these types of games are meant to provide an infinite amount of repetitive content.

And yet that is what both the MMO consumer base expect and what developers perpetuate via game design. MMO’s are not intended to grab people for a short time like many other games. They are designed to milk players over lengthy periods. The best part of GW2 is that it is possible to play it as a finite game, or an infinite game so long as one is content with what it offers.

For people like the OP, however, GW2 falls short in terms of the perpetual refresh of rewards for playing that MMO audiences expect.

Rangelost.4857:

People pay $40 for a console game, then consider it descent if they get 40 hours of gameplay out of it.

People pay $40 for Guild Wars 2, and after spending thousands of hours in the game, they complain about lack of content.

I don’t even.

Yes, more content would be nice. Yes, not removing content would be nice. Yes, other MMOs love to recolor older content, change some numbers and pretend it’s new content. No, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t need any of that.

Players ask for a new continent, players get a new continent, players complain about having to explore a new continent. Let’s take this moderately, shall we?

Over simplifying things a tad aren’t we?

oh wow who would of guessed you’d make a b2p expansion thread after that last one lol. Oh geez now there’s some kind of expansion schedule for mmos lol. If one comes it comes, if it doesn’t then it doesn’t. Sitting here ranting trying to put pressure on them to develop an expansion when one prolly isn’t even in the works is only going to end badly. You self-entitled kids are what’s dragging games down. There is nothing that says they have to make an expansion every x amount of years. This is why we get those kittenty copy pasted expansions.

If you like how game y releases their expansion every x amount of years then go play game y.

Btw you do know they don’t pay attention to the forum, even if you are able to get their attention, itll just get turned into a cdi for easier storage

I’m hoping we start seeing bigger releases now that the China release is done. I don’t know how much work it took to get the game released there, but I imagine it took a lot of man power.
I would really like to see the same updates on top of an expansion pack. I would preorder an expansion in a heartbeat.

If you read this recent interview, http://www.tentonhammer.com/editorial/guild-wars-2-preparing-point-no-return , you’ll hear that Anet believes they are improving on the Living Story based on criticism. What I’m hearing is that they believe the experiment with the Living story is not over. Players don’t really have a tendency to think outside of short term gratification and I’m sure Anet understands that. Even so, they press on with this concept in an effort to win over the nay sayers. I too would be interested to know what the failure conditions are for the living story. I’m guessing it would either be a massive failure to maintain a certain level of monetization or player retention. Companies usually are pretty good about hiding that sort of thing, so how well it’s really holding up is anyone’s guess. But, with the announcement that most of the other companies under NCSoft took staff cuts aside from Anet, maybe they aren’t in such dire straits. Gemstore changes notwithstanding.

I see this “2 weeks after rushing through content, back to complaining on forums” myth is still popular and goes around. How do people even come up with that kind of crap.

I do and actually I think somewhere in the first months when asked about an expansion they did flat out saying they’re not working on one but not 100% sure. That being said I cant exclude they were already working on expansion content with the intention of releasing it in the future through the living story hence the statement not working on an expansion. Of course all of it this is purely speculation on my part for I lack the ownership of a crystal ball

different people value different things. The dungeons were cool and I enjoyed them too, marionette was amazing in itself but I love story more so for me every living story release during season 1 was like a cake with cherries and all. Season 2 is like a buffet of sweets That being said while season 2 has much better story telling it feels like it has less world impact than season 1 did and biggest reason for that I feel is the change from temporary content to permanent.

would go against the idea of the LS? not at all. I think the issue here is you’re threating the LS as all there is. The living story can just easily be the thread that binds stuff together. It doesnt have the be everything just like the personal story wasnt everything at launch. actually no need to look outside of the living story itself. Dry Top wasnt created exclusively to service the Living story, in fact only small parts of it service the living story the majority of it was meant as new content for players to enjoy. Why cant that same thing happen on a larger scale?

wasted.6817:

I see this “2 weeks after rushing through content, back to complaining on forums” myth is still popular and goes around. How do people even come up with that kind of crap.

2 weeks is perhaps a little exaggerated although true for some hardcore players. For most people a couple of months is more likely.

there is a website that can help shed some light on this. it allows people to post their average play time:
http://www.howlongtobeat.com/

going for a certain very popular mmo if we take how long people took to finish the main content on average and the fastest times we get:

Expansion 1: 50hrs, 50hrs
Expansion 2: 335hrs, 70hrs
Expansion 3: 176hrs, 11hrs
Expansion 4: 211hrs, 20hrs

Galen Grey.4709:

wasted.6817:

I see this “2 weeks after rushing through content, back to complaining on forums” myth is still popular and goes around. How do people even come up with that kind of crap.

2 weeks is perhaps a little exaggerated although true for some hardcore players. For most people a couple of months is more likely.

This might be true about some people, but it’s a ridiculous overexaggerating when arguments like this are used as a justification for no expansion philosophy. This “expansion, lack of content” topic was around for how long now? A year and a half? Those are not your mythical players who burn through content and go on complaining, those are tired veteran players mostly. The image you’re tying to create, those people, would rush through and just move on, if that’s their thing, they do not post on forums for years.

I dont think anyone is saying lets not have a no expansion ever. Its more along the lines of an expansion alone wouldnt solve content problems because it would most likely result in a huge gaps of time with nothing to do but waiting for the expansion to drop.

Now an Expansion and living story together… ahhhh thats beautiful.

GW2 has tons of content and has had since the day it started. The problem is that after two years most, not all, players have played through them multiple times. The pace of the game is fast and there is no time to smell the flowers in a dungeon.
That said the game need a extensive update in form of new classes, new races, new weapons, new weapon skills for old weapons, new traits, new utility skills (both racial and class) and most importantly new areas that are not just for the level 80 characters.
Level 80 characters can go to level 15 area and explore there, but level 15 character can’t survive in level 80 area.
Why doesn’t Anet make more use of the single most impressive idea they had for the game, the level scaling downwards. Sure it’s bugged now as it’s effect is too little and level 80 chars are way too powerful in lower areas. hopefully that can and will be fixed at some point.

At the moment I’m at the point that I’ll look at the next LS story and do it, but I seriously doubt I’ll hang on after that. There just isn’t anything to do in the game after you have multiple chars at 80 and have done map completion multiple times. Sure I’d like to have some special items and stuff, but it’s getting harder and harder to be exited to log on.

Galen Grey.4709:

I dont think anyone is saying lets not have a no expansion ever. Its more along the lines of an expansion alone wouldnt solve content problems because it would most likely result in a huge gaps of time with nothing to do but waiting for the expansion to drop.

Now an Expansion and living story together… ahhhh thats beautiful.

I think some people are saying exactly this and some saying that it’s no rush, let’s take it slooow, which i would mind that much if it wouldn’t be for that long after release now. Huge gaps of time with nothing to do? Well, people, those who actually play GW2 all this time, they do something , right? You’re still catering to that myth that expansion won’t fix or add anything in the long run, but that’s not true. Expansion will make it so, that for some period of time there will be lots of new things to experience for every kind of player and there will be much more content in the game overall, in the long run.

Rangelost.4857:

Perhaps my first post wasn’t very clear.

Firstly, players spent about $40 for Guild Wars 2, and are not subjected to a monthly subscription fee. They are not forced to continue playing the game once they have completed it (or parts of it they are interested in). Nowhere in “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game” is it written that these types of games are meant to provide an infinite amount of repetitive content.

~

The player that is done in those other mmo’s in a few weeks after an expansion is releases and then starts complaining is done after a few hours after a patch in GW2 and then starts complaining. So in that way this does not help.

Personally I managed to keep me busy for a long time in those games. Collecting special recipe’s, leveling alts, collecting special mounts, collecting mini’s, finding rare pets for my ranger and so on, that took me all over the world usually leveling was even more a byproduct. In GW2 as far as that even is available that has become a gold-grind (for what the cash-shop focus is mainly to blame) so that is not fun content to do.
What I am saying with this is that the people rushing to the content are done very fast in those expansion games yes but they are as well here so in that way this approach has no benefit so referring to that is irrelevant. At the same time it does destroy the content that does keep some players longer playing.. Well it does not really destroy it, it turns it into a boring grind.

Let’s not fool each other we both know that also at this moment a huge number of players are just grinding the Labyrinth because that’s what the current approach has ended up doing.. providing a game where people for a large parts mindlessly grind some currency.

And the story driven.. All those other games have a story while maybe that might have been a little better put in the game. This game however puts way to much time into the story imho while of course also that is personal. I don’t really care so much about it. Remember the very first LS patches where one patch added some refugees and then a month later there where signs placed for them and so a story evolved. For me that would have been enough. Then at half a year release a little bigger patch with some content and then continue that story in the same way eventually working up to an expansion. In that way you have a story going on that nicely links all patches and expansions together.

echo.2053:

oh wow who would of guessed you’d make a b2p expansion thread after that last one lol. Oh geez now there’s some kind of expansion schedule for mmos lol. If one comes it comes, if it doesn’t then it doesn’t. Sitting here ranting trying to put pressure on them to develop an expansion when one prolly isn’t even in the works is only going to end badly. You self-entitled kids are what’s dragging games down. There is nothing that says they have to make an expansion every x amount of years. This is why we get those kittenty copy pasted expansions.

If you like how game y releases their expansion every x amount of years then go play game y.

Btw you do know they don’t pay attention to the forum, even if you are able to get their attention, itll just get turned into a cdi for easier storage

What last one? And this is more about the expansion-like content then about B2P. B2P is my reason for wanting expansions while for some other it’s the content they are missing.

And there is obviously some expansion schedule for mmos if you are looking at the marked. However as I explained in this thread it’s not me who came up with that. No I have been talking about expansion since half a year after the release. No it’s those defending this current approach who time after time came up pointing to other mmo’s out there saying ‘we’ should give reasonable Anet time to deliver that content just as those other games took x amount of time.

So now I am here to tell that ‘we’ waiting as long as many of them asked us and to note that the content is still not here. Also to see what the new excuse was and it’s clear what the new excuse was. Did ‘we’ first have to wait for the same amount of time as those other games, now what the marked does is suddenly not relevant anymore.

“You self-entitled kids are what’s dragging games down.” I don’t feel self-entitled but I do say if I dislike something, I think those people who just accept everything is what’s dragging games down.

Yeah I did notice that with the guild QoL that people have been posting about since release and nothing ever got done with and then now we get a CDI and that seems to be what they use. However like I said this was even more for those people who told ‘us’ to wait pointing to those other mmo’s.

I have one subject I do want to still post that is more for Anet and they will likely also not pay much attention to it but at least I did then do my task in supporting the game by saying it on the official forums. Maybe they read it maybe they don’t. But I did what I see as the task the gamers have. Other things that really are adressed towards Anet I will likely only do using CDI topics or topics that do have Anet’s attention like the gem conversion topic had.

wasted.6817:

Galen Grey.4709:

I dont think anyone is saying lets not have a no expansion ever. Its more along the lines of an expansion alone wouldnt solve content problems because it would most likely result in a huge gaps of time with nothing to do but waiting for the expansion to drop.

Now an Expansion and living story together… ahhhh thats beautiful.

I think some people are saying exactly this and some saying that it’s no rush, let’s take it slooow, which i would mind that much if it wouldn’t be for that long after release now. Huge gaps of time with nothing to do? Well, people, those who actually play GW2 all this time, they do something , right? You’re still catering to that myth that expansion won’t fix or add anything in the long run, but that’s not true. Expansion will make it so, that for some period of time there will be lots of new things to experience for every kind of player and there will be much more content in the game overall, in the long run.

Why do you think long gaps of time doing nothing will be better appreciated then short gaps?

Lets say it takes you on average a full 6 months to explore an expansion and lets go with the industry average of 2 years per expansion. That will leave 1 year and a half of content void. You feel people will be happy with that? when with the living story you’re getting a void of maybe a week and half generally and a month now and then?

Personally I’d rather have content every 2 weeks and an expansion every 3 years then long stretches of no content and an expansion every 2 years (assuming living story will push content back by a whole year which probably isnt the case considering the LS team is just 20 people out of over 350!)

A few things:

Guild Wars 2 launched in China on May 15th, about 6 months ago, it’s a bit too soon to release an expansion yet, because it will affect the China version too.

The November 4th patch should be a massive one, I don’t want to see a F&F Prelude or an Entanglement (first LS2 episode), I want to see something substantial. Once the LS2 kicks off again and players start logging back into the game, then it’s the time to announce the expansion, then release said expansion around April/May of 2015, 1 year after the China release.

Wishful thinking? Maybe. They’ve had a looot of time to prepare this next LS episode, and as the dev already said, Wintersday will be the same as last year, so I expect, the next few LS releases to be rather huge and pave the way for the expansion.

We will see soon enough

Gibson.4036:

… everyone asking for an expansion is wanting something for nothing…

I feel like this is the case whenever there’s an outcry about ArenaNet trying to make more money.

nightwulf.1986:

Players don’t really have a tendency to think outside of short term gratification and I’m sure Anet understands that. Even so, they press on with this concept in an effort to win over the nay sayers.

Like I said in my first post, I did believe they would be able to deliver the expansion we would normally see in an expansion with the Living Story. My reason for being against doing it that way because it meant they would generate the money with the cash-shop and all effects that has to the game.

However this hole LS approach started over 1,5 year ago and got changed (improved) many times by now. By now the time to improve it is over, it should have been good by now. This post was to point out that by now we should have gotten that content. So while for sure 1,5 years ago some people might have been against it for the wrong reasons (don’t really have a tendency to think outside of short term gratification) there conclusion did come out and by now you really can’t use that as excuse anymore. It has been 1,5 year. That is not short term anymore. We are now passed the point where we should have seen the same amount of content you would normally see in an expansion because we are passed the point where you would normally see an expansion even for P2P or F2P games (and I say it again, GW2 was released as B2P and then you expect expansions sooner).

So your argument might have hold up 1,5 year ago and maybe also 1 year ago but not anymore. That was also the point of this thread.. To point out those type of arguments are past there expiration date.

Galen Grey.4709:

Why do you think long gaps of time doing nothing will be better appreciated then short gaps?

It’s just my experience from other MMO games, including GW1 and it’s common sense for me. When you look back and see what’s actually in the game, it’s crystal clear how little LS managed to deliver so far compared to what a traditional expansion usually delivers. And i believe it’s the same experience for a lot of other people. Expansion supposed to bring substantial, meaningful, replayable content. LS, so far, mostly failed on every account, with few partial exceptions, like Tequatl and Wurm, and Marionette, but that’s gone now.

Galen Grey.4709:

Personally I’d rather have content every 2 weeks and an expansion every 3 years then long stretches of no content and an expansion every 2 years (assuming living story will push content back by a whole year which probably isnt the case considering the LS team is just 20 people out of over 350!)

2014 wasn’t about bi-weekly updates, was it? 2014 was about very moderate amount of content stretched very thin, unless episode 2 proves me wrong. Overall it’s not a bad option of course, what you described, but have we heard any kind of announcement or even some sort of comments from devs? Right now, it’s a general assumption at this point, that it’s probably coming, but for all you know it might as well not be coming at all, like ever xP.

Another thing, let’s just say, that GW1 used to have expansions released in 6 months, others in 1 year. It’s not always 2 years.