Guild Wars 2

Hi guys.

I haven’t played GW2 in a while since I got bored of it rather quickly. But my girlfriend and I were looking forward to the new season. Apparently, the patch notes are underwhelming, with almost nothing new added.

What we have is: gem store stuff, some veeeery light bugfixes (after 6 months? really?) and…what? That’s it.

Discuss

Um…a new map, new mechanics, new items, new recipes, new stats, new mobs, new events…..and more.

What were you expecting?

Well, I’m at work, so I haven’t gotten to check out if anything has actually been added that’s not in the patch notes. I’d imagine there’s something new going on in Brisban, but I have to wait to find out

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Um…a new map, new mechanics, new items, new recipes, new stats, new mobs, new events…..and more.

What were you expecting?

Well out of that list I would expect the ‘new items, new recipes, new stats’ to be gated behind a 1 in million chance drop thing (again). I am hoping to be badly disappointed.

Inculpatus, what new mechanics?

Why don’t you log in and find out for yourself? They kept it spoiler free for a reason.

Pibriamal.8719:

Why don’t you log in and find out for yourself? They kept it spoiler free for a reason.

It is a new, small zone. Yes, I did expect that. There are some events and some writing. That’s it. I think it’s not much, I believe much more could have been done, especially changes to how abilities work or readjustments. What I’ve seen were just minor bugfixes for which we should’ve waited two weeks tops, not 6 months.

Templar.4512:

Pibriamal.8719:

Why don’t you log in and find out for yourself? They kept it spoiler free for a reason.

It is a new, small zone. Yes, I did expect that. There are some events and some writing. That’s it. I think it’s not much, I believe much more could have been done, especially changes to how abilities work or readjustments. What I’ve seen were just minor bugfixes for which we should’ve waited two weeks tops, not 6 months.

Why does everyone get the impression that fixing bugs only take a a few days or perhaps a week?

Some bugs you literally have to fix a parent object, which in turn breaks all of it’s dependents and before you know it you have to rewrite like 5 or 6 different sections of code.

Then after all that trouble, you have to deal with QA testing and the budgeting. There are tons of bugs that are minor and can be fixed but production will not allow the company to fix it because it costs money to pay someone to fix those bugs.

One does not simply fix bugs.

Chase, I work in QA for another company. Bugs don’t take that long to fix, even in extremely large projects such as physics simulation engines.

And then again, you’d expect the skilled programmers at ANet to use the principles of encapsulation. Even then, if you knew what you were talking about, you’d notice how those spells are class-specific and they surely don’t tie to other objects

And how can other games work faster on fixing bugs? Please do tell

And why does everyone expect some singularly HUGE update when it’s a biweekly series of updates?

Everything ArenaNet makes is spread out across the updates of the season. A full season is an expansion’s worth of content, and by doing biweekly updates they get the first of it to us faster than releasing it all at once (and also keeps us playing the new content for longer than 10-18 hours before we ‘complete’ it because rushers don’t take time to explore the nook and crannies of content, just focus on the main plot and then complain that there’s nothing else when they finish it, despite skipping 80% of the content made).

You won’t get a singular huge content patch. You’ll get such spread out over a season.

And unlike Season 1, Season 2 is all permanent. So if you don’t want to play bit by bit and are one of those rushers, just log on once every 2 weeks for 5 seconds, and then start playing seriously in say, 6 months. Because that’s how long it’d take minimally for a full-fledged expansion that’s worth its salt (read: minimally).

Templar.4512:

Chase, I work in QA for another company. Bugs don’t take that long to fix, even in extremely large projects such as physics simulation engines.

And then again, you’d expect the skilled programmers at ANet to use the principles of encapsulation. Even then, if you knew what you were talking about, you’d notice how those spells are class-specific and they surely don’t tie to other objects

And how can other games work faster on fixing bugs? Please do tell

An update on another side of the world of Tyria somehow makes a living story instance pop up inside of Ascalonian Catacombs, so it makes you wonder how that can occur. I’m not even mad, it’s amazing.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And why does everyone expect some singularly HUGE update when it’s a biweekly series of updates?

Everything ArenaNet makes is spread out across the updates of the season. A full season is an expansion’s worth of content, and by doing biweekly updates they get the first of it to us faster than releasing it all at once (and also keeps us playing the new content for longer than 10-18 hours before we ‘complete’ it because rushers don’t take time to explore the nook and crannies of content, just focus on the main plot and then complain that there’s nothing else when they finish it, despite skipping 80% of the content made).

You won’t get a singular huge content patch. You’ll get such spread out over a season.

And unlike Season 1, Season 2 is all permanent. So if you don’t want to play bit by bit and are one of those rushers, just log on once every 2 weeks for 5 seconds, and then start playing seriously in say, 6 months. Because that’s how long it’d take minimally for a full-fledged expansion that’s worth its salt (read: minimally).

There are only so many nooks and crannies in the span of two years…honestly.

Templar.4512:

Pibriamal.8719:

Why don’t you log in and find out for yourself? They kept it spoiler free for a reason.

It is a new, small zone. Yes, I did expect that. There are some events and some writing. That’s it. I think it’s not much, I believe much more could have been done, especially changes to how abilities work or readjustments.

For the first update of many more to come.

And if you look at this map here, taken from the gw.dat it seems obvious that they’re going to expand Dry Top west and northern. They wouldn’t detail nothing but mountains that far out if Dry Top was to remain as small as it is.

It’s rather obvious that they made the rest of Dry Top look like impassible mountains to avoid gw.dat divers like that_shaman from finding out what all of Dry Top will look like when it’s fully released.

Templar.4512:

Chase, I work in QA for another company. Bugs don’t take that long to fix, even in extremely large projects such as physics simulation engines.

And then again, you’d expect the skilled programmers at ANet to use the principles of encapsulation. Even then, if you knew what you were talking about, you’d notice how those spells are class-specific and they surely don’t tie to other objects

And how can other games work faster on fixing bugs? Please do tell

Encapsulation protects objects from being called from other objects unintentionally. I.E you can have two objects calling the same variable health, but you do not want the code or human error to modify the wrong object without specifically inheriting it first.

A lot of issues can be caused by fixing one class, especially if it is inherited.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And why does everyone expect some singularly HUGE update when it’s a biweekly series of updates?

Because it’s been months since S1 ended, and not 2 weeks?

Guhracie.3419:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And why does everyone expect some singularly HUGE update when it’s a biweekly series of updates?

Because it’s been months since S1 ended, and not 2 weeks?

So what? Did you pay for an expansion or something? So entitled. This was a Living Story patch, not a Feature patch. No one said anything about balance changes, new classes/race, etc.

And tooltip fixes are very important. One thing this game lacks is user-friendly fast information. You highlight a skill in Dota 2, you get a bunch of useful crap. You hold alt and get even more useful crap. That’s good. GW2 needs more of that.

It’s a little PvE content they added, nothing else. Honestly i’ve never seen so little after all this time, they used to put content like this in once a month with changes on WvW/PvP in between aswell. aNet is focusing now on Gem store, that’s all.

So what? Did you pay for an expansion or something? So entitled. This was a Living Story patch, not a Feature patch. No one said anything about balance changes, new classes/race, etc.

And tooltip fixes are very important. One thing this game lacks is user-friendly fast information. You highlight a skill in Dota 2, you get a bunch of useful crap. You hold alt and get even more useful crap. That’s good. GW2 needs more of that.

I am actually very glad you brought Dota2 to the table. How do they offer so many bugfixes in such a short time, and so much content too? Honestly, just look at the rapid Compendium delivery. It’s amazing…and you don’t pay for that either.

Its a season, not a one-off event. Don’t expect the big stuff to come out at the start.

I really don’t understand why some people that obviously don’t like the game, don’t want to play it, come here and post their complaints (vs useful critiques/criticisms).

I played WoW for a while, didn’t like it, quit playing it and never looked back; and certainly wouldn’t bother posting to some forum what I thought of it.

bob.5680:

I really don’t understand why some people that obviously don’t like the game, don’t want to play it, come here and post their complaints (vs useful critiques/criticisms).

I played WoW for a while, didn’t like it, quit playing it and never looked back; and certainly wouldn’t bother posting to some forum what I thought of it.

Because some of us can still see the potential and are waiting for something to bring us back

Templar.4512:

bob.5680:

I really don’t understand why some people that obviously don’t like the game, don’t want to play it, come here and post their complaints (vs useful critiques/criticisms).

I played WoW for a while, didn’t like it, quit playing it and never looked back; and certainly wouldn’t bother posting to some forum what I thought of it.

Because some of us can still see the potential and are waiting for something to bring us back

Maybe you should play the game catch up what you have missed and try out the new season content before passing judgement.

What I have seen with this update :::

• 1/4th of a new map (its one area, and more areas are likely to open in two weeks. It doesn’t make sense to give us the whole map if the story doesn’t allow for it yet). The game also said something about underground areas next, it wouldn’t exactly be a desert every time…..
• New Rewards.
  *New Stat Type (Toughness, Healing Power, Vitality I think. Ain’t going to do anything about the rabid zerker mentality, but its always interesting to try out different gear stats)
• This section of the map has what could be considered a new mechanic for getting better rewards the more you help out. You only get 20 minutes to do it before the area changes entirely. The more you help, the better rewards you get, related to the new stat type and a bunch of new food recipes.
• 3 hours of new story content across half a dozen or so instances (I was blazing through that stuff too, probably missed some important stuff, and almost missed some very important optional dialogue about one of the bad guys.)
• More achievements open up after completing the story for every instance.
• Map achievements. Lots of them, as well as a new jumping puzzle and diving location.
• A Few new and updated enemies. In one of the story instances you see several more new enemies that are for future releases.
• (Almost) entirely bug free! (a huge plus for me since many earlier living story releases were riddles with a million bugs and almost made me stop playing)

Overall, I’d say that if you hit it really hard and try to finish everything, it will take 10 hours. If you try to get all the new items and stuff, it could take a few days. For the fact that Anet is still pumping out this stuff every two weeks (they haven’t said otherwise yet), that is quite a bit of content to do, and there is content for the casual players, the more hardcore players, and even the achievement hoarders. (Sorry omega organized Guilds who like to do 150 man events. I didn’t see any of that!) Unless you are part of an omega organized guild, there should be plenty for you to do! (also this is living story, so I left out the part where WvW and PvP gets NOTHING!!!!)

This time last year, I freaking hated the living story, but there is absolutely nothing for me to complain about this. My approval rating for Anet just went up 10 points.

I am not sure if there will be too many new zones. I thought they would rebuild LA, though?

First of all…stay in QA.

Second of all, there is a reason they aim updates at different things. You cannot do everything at once. This update was aimed at adding new PvE content, not bugfixes.

That being said, we just had a rather large bugfix / trait overhaul less than 2 months ago. Seriously.

I am normally pretty critical of the game (GW1 player, high standards, etc.), however they overhauled all of the traits, runes, and sigils, balanced classes, did bugfixes, launched a client for another country (China), and finished up the first part of Season 2 content…in the span of a few months. That’s pretty good.