Guild Wars 2

Didn’t you post this exact thread word for word the other day?

First, how about we wait until the year is actually over before you discuss what we haven’t gotten.

Second, they have delivered far more than half of what they discussed in that blog.

Dont forget new fractals.

Finaldeath.1059:

Didn’t you post this exact thread word for word the other day?

Nope, it must have been somebody else. I’d be interested to see it.

GoldenTruth.2853:

First, how about we wait until the year is actually over before you discuss what we haven’t gotten.

My point is that after tomorrow’s update, there will be 3 more updates to fit in all of the stuff on the list I posted. It’s clearly not going to happen. I’d be surprised if even one thing from the list is implemented before the year is over.

Second, they have delivered far more than half of what they discussed in that blog.

That’s simply not true. I even missed some stuff off my list, as they said they would revamp the dungeons and Fractals too.

And here is why Arena.net has gotten into the practice of lumping everything they say with a million qualifiers rather than “straight talk.”

you can’t expect that Anet WILL implement everything they said they would later on in the year. Yes, there’s a lot left to be implemented, but some of those changes are just insanely huge, like adding new skills and traits. That takes a lot of time and effort/balancing etc. New maps in Spvp is also a really big and time-consuming task. There’s been 3 new maps added to Pvp since launch, and though that may not seem like a lot of maps, Wvw’ers only had the current map, and now, Edge of the Mists is coming out like in a few days? And I bet, after that, Anet might be able to squeeze in at least another update/patch or two I didn’t even know that they were working on/made a new Wvw map until about a week ago

all the things they said would show up in the second half of the year are things they would like to have by then…

Fractals. And I bet when they release new fractals they’ll put more rewards into the shop.

Also: more skills and traits. Don’t know if they promised to do them this year, but yea. That.

@everyone who is saying “we still have time left this year.” Yeah, a whopping 1.5 months. We are approaching midway point through November.

Still looking for those four more items. Can they be squeezed into a few more updates? Or is this another failure of the hype machine?

OP could be completely jumping the gun, but his point is valid.

Direksone.3867:

Also: more skills and traits. Don’t know if they promised to do them this year, but yea. That.

They did.
Purchasable via skill points.
Still waiting…

ozma.3498:

GoldenTruth.2853:

Second, they have delivered far more than half of what they discussed in that blog.

That’s simply not true. I even missed some stuff off my list, as they said they would revamp the dungeons and Fractals too.

After re-reading the blog…

Things implemented:
- Continuing 2 week release cadence
- Improved (or at least changed) world bosses
- Updated dungeons (though only 1 was really updated)
- Created world events with larger scale and more permanent impact
- Increased number of dynamic events
- Super Adventure Box
- Added new skills and traits (though not on the scale they made it seem so this could be a rightful complaint)
- Increased way to earn skill points
- Champion rewards
- Dungeon reward revamp
- New crafting materials
- Magic find revamp
- Making blues and greens matter more
- Ascended weapons
- Improved functionality of legendaries
- Replacement for Borderlands orb mechanic
- PvP solo rated play (albeit very buggy)
- LFG tool
- Limit culling in PvE

Things not implemented:
- Updated fractals (though it’s obvious this will be released before the end of the year either on Nov 26th or Dec 24th).
- Wintersday (most likely released on Dec 10th)
- All crafting professions to 500
- Ascended armor (which has been datamined)
- Building precursor (good chance of not being implemented before 2014)
- New legendary weapons
- New type of legendary
- Improved PvP rewards
- New PvP map types
- Way to gain legendary skins in PvP

Looking at the list the only people who got kind of screwed over was PvPers, and even then there’s 3 updates left (excluding tomorrows) before people can rightfully complain.

That said I would argue the main complaint should be the scale of some of the things they implemented, mainly things like skills/traits and dungeons (though for dungeon updates I expected them to only be 1 or 2 new dungeons). Besides, they even said the things listed could change. It’s far better for them to be open about what they are working on than just tell us right before a release.

and also, i’d like to point out that they do, in fact, have lives outside of work :o and they can’t always be doing “this and that and fixing these bugs and glitches and nerfing X class because they’re too strong and buffing/reworking other classes’ skills and adding new content etc…” you get my point? though it would be nice to have some of those things they said would get to, but that was more of an estimate of what they wanted to do. And LS content takes up a lot of their time too…

CMstorm.8679:

and also, i’d like to point out that they do, in fact, have lives outside of work :o and they can’t always be doing “this and that and fixing these bugs and glitches and nerfing X class because they’re too strong and buffing/reworking other classes’ skills and adding new content etc…” you get my point? though it would be nice to have some of those things they said would get to, but that was more of an estimate of what they wanted to do. And LS content takes up a lot of their time too…

If something needs to be urgently done, or would be prefered over the LS, time and resources should be reallocated to make it happen. There’s no point to piling more pepperonis onto a pizza if the dough went off in the first place.

Xae Isareth.1364:

CMstorm.8679:

and also, i’d like to point out that they do, in fact, have lives outside of work :o and they can’t always be doing “this and that and fixing these bugs and glitches and nerfing X class because they’re too strong and buffing/reworking other classes’ skills and adding new content etc…” you get my point? though it would be nice to have some of those things they said would get to, but that was more of an estimate of what they wanted to do. And LS content takes up a lot of their time too…

If something needs to be urgently done, or would be prefered over the LS, time and resources should be reallocated to make it happen. There’s no point to piling more pepperonis onto a pizza if the dough went off in the first place.

Mmm…i’m pickin up what ur puttin down

Sadly, we are continued to be beaten down with living story. LS is driving their entire development it seems.

I want a dungeon overhaul!
I want to see players in ALL zones.
I want new skills!

Oh..darn. Another patch tomorrow. With more achievements, little story, and more grinding and zerging. Sigh. Great.

People like you are the reason that companies like ANet cannot be transparent about what they’d like to do.

On one end people are yelling at them to tell them their future plans. On the other hand there are people like you QQing about not meeting the standards that they set for themselves EVEN THOUGH they had stated that these timelines are not set in stone.

It seems like ANet has made great strides over the course of this year and has met most of their benchmarks. They still have 2 months to come to terms with even more of them and my faith in the ANet team is strong.

ozma.3498:

That’s four updates to get the following implemented:

- A new “specific way” to build precursors.
- Crafting level 500 for all professions.
- New legendary weapons.
- New types of Legendary gear.
- Ascended armor (including craftable pieces).
- New skills and traits. (We’ve had existing traits changed and one new skill so far.)
- New map types in sPvP.
- The ability to gain Legendary weapon skins in PvP.

I don’t think tomorrow’s update includes any of this stuff, and Wintersday will take up at least one update (beginning on December 24 assuming the usual four week cycle). In other words, we have two ridiculously epic updates to look forward to in the next 30 days.

Let this be a lesson to ArenaNet… don’t over-hype what’s around the corner. Sure, you delivered the dungeon tool, updates every two weeks, Ascended weapons, etc. (and kudos for doing so) but please, in the future, think before you release these grandiose blog posts/videos/forum posts and just be straight with people.

You shouldn’t say all this stuff is coming in the next 5 months and then not deliver even half of it. I get it, I get it… development is more complicated than us players realize. I don’t doubt that for one minute. But ultimately, it’s not our job to figure out these things – it’s yours. This whole “saying one thing and doing another” business is getting old.

Again – good job on the stuff from the blog post you’ve actually implemented, but please, stop overreaching so much. The hot air is starting to get stale.

They explicitly stated this was open to change, and later reiterated that some of it almost certainly won’t make it in… You people are ridiculous. Everyone with half a brain should have known, from the outset, some stuff probably wouldn’t make it in. They’re being crazy ambitious and getting a lot of stuff done, but getting every single thing on that list in + routine story additions is tough for even them to do.

Seriously, think things through next time, instead of being pretentious and insulting.

MMOs are so complex that nearly any change breaks something in the game, at least for a small number of people. Extensive testing and proper management of updates can minimize this, but it’s a fact of life that updates are going to bring bugs, sometimes game-breaking ones. Rushing an update to meet a deadline when it’s clearly not ready is just asking for trouble.

I’d rather see a working update in February than a broken update in December followed by months of attempts to fix the game.

The gear updates (crafting, Ascended, Legendary) have the greatest potential for hurting the game’s economy, the plan to introduce new skills has the potential to unbalance the game at every level, and new/altered dungeons and fractals have the greatest potential for game-breaking bugs. So obviously these things need the most time for development and are at high risk of being pushed back if there are difficulties that need to be solved before they are introduced into the game.

From the “manifesto” arguments and discussions that have been going on since before the game was released, it’s obvious that Anet doesn’t make small, easy to accomplish plans. They plan big, and even if they don’t quite get 100% of the way there, it’s better to go most of the way to the moon than to aim for a mile away and reach it without effort.

Seriously, I am not a white-knight. I have my share of disagreements with some of the things Anet is doing. However, they have done an incredible job this year with keeping up with content, taking customer feedback into consideration as they can, communication and just overall quality (in the context of a buy-to-play game with a midsize team).

Halloween burned up a chunk of goodwill from me, and even I can admit that they’re clearly working to get these things implemented.

i’m just glad some people here appreciate the work that Anet has already done with patches/updates and LS and overall content with the game. Like, just go back to the releases info. and look at how much Anet has accomplished.

If you hired someone to paint your house and when you asked when it will be done, they told you a vague timeframe loaded with qualifiers, you wouldn’t hire them.

If you hired someone to paint your house and they said the job would be done by the end of the week, you’d be pretty upset when 6 months had gone by.

I think what OP is trying to communicate is that it is annoying to have Anet talk up all the goodies they have planned for the year and then miss deadlines and alter the end product. Remember precursor scavenger hunt? Of course you don’t, that idea that they wanted to make sure the “got just right” turned into crafting, which is now pushed back.

I think that they’ve done a great job putting stuff out this year. That said, if the stuff they put out wasn’t the thing you were excited for, it’s understandable you’d be miffed. The need to either manage expectations better or step up their delivery process. That would quell a lot of the forum outrage I’m sure.

PraetorMortis.8610:

If you hired someone to paint your house and when you asked when it will be done, they told you a vague timeframe loaded with qualifiers, you wouldn’t hire them.

If you hired someone to paint your house and they said the job would be done by the end of the week, you’d be pretty upset when 6 months had gone by.

Painting a house is not an enormously complex task that requires the help of dozens of people, the use of complex mathematics, and when you miss a spot it doesn’t involve slogging through thousands of lines of code and testing for hours just to even find the spot. It’s more like building a skyscraper when all the customer has given you as a guide is a picture of what it should look like from the outside. Big construction projects are very often completed at times very different from their estimated completion date. And that’s what this game is more like, an enormous construction project. There are probably more lines of code in this game already than there are lines of text on this entire forum. And each of these 2 week updates probably contains hundreds of hours spent on art and several thousand lines of code.

Also, ANet doesn’t even have to add these things. You are not a house owner; this is not your game. You aren’t paying a subscription. This content isn’t an expansion. They aren’t on your schedule, they were just kind enough to give you a rough estimate of theirs.

If you really think this stuff is so easy to produce, maybe you should apply to ANet and finish it all yourself. I’m sure they would appreciate a programming savant like yourself.

Kittens is hard, yo. You have no idea.

PraetorMortis.8610:

If you hired someone to paint your house and when you asked when it will be done, they told you a vague timeframe loaded with qualifiers, you wouldn’t hire them.

If you hired someone to paint your house and they said the job would be done by the end of the week, you’d be pretty upset when 6 months had gone by.

I think what OP is trying to communicate is that it is annoying to have Anet talk up all the goodies they have planned for the year and then miss deadlines and alter the end product. Remember precursor scavenger hunt? Of course you don’t, that idea that they wanted to make sure the “got just right” turned into crafting, which is now pushed back.

I think that they’ve done a great job putting stuff out this year. That said, if the stuff they put out wasn’t the thing you were excited for, it’s understandable you’d be miffed. The need to either manage expectations better or step up their delivery process. That would quell a lot of the forum outrage I’m sure.

Except that painting your house is completely different from programming a game. The odds are painting your house won’t throw up quite so many unknown issues. It’s less complex.

Building an office build, for example, often goes over budget and over schedule, because it’s more complex.

Progamming tasks, even with the best intentions can take a whole lot longer than you want them to. So here’s the choice.

Say nothing at all when everyone is bugging you to say something because they want to know the direction of the game…they want transparency…or say something and put a likely date on it and move it back if it runs over time.

I suppose they could say we’re going to do this but we can’t say when but people complain about that too.

What would you suggest Anet do in these circumstances?

Something you will learn after you have played MMOs for years, don’t believe what they say until it actually happens. Too many things can go wrong from conception to actual implementation. So while the left hand might say “Hey we going to make craftable precursors”, the right hand can’t figure out how to do it. Plus did they actually say for sure that precursors were gonna be craftable through crafting? I thought I heard them say they would LIKE to make an alternate way which would involve crafting. That doesn’t mean you will be able to purely craft one and even then if it is purely craftable, they didn’t mention if you will need to spend 400g on vendor bought components. This is just for crafting precursors. Now apply that to everything else they said and the fact that from what I have gathered, unless it’s something cut and dry like a new map, there is a lot of interpretation of what will happen. An example is icy runestones. Those alone are 100g and that’s only for 1 of 4 items needed. Imagine what items will be needed for the precursor……

Clearly all the people who feel angry about the way the game is headed have all been banned because of the new forum rules. I guess the forums are finally going to get to that point where they want them, with no one being critical about the game…

Edit: Also incoming infraction/ban

A huge, complex software development project has failed to meet some of its schedule goals! Stop the presses!

GoldenTruth.2853:

Things implemented:
- Continuing 2 week release cadence – which most people get to half do before it disappears

- Improved (or at least changed) world bosses – which no one seems to do much of these days (witness fails at Jormag on most servers, the non-event that is Teq, etc).

- Updated dungeons (though only 1 was really updated) – these are ok for speed running (once the initial wow factor has gone)
- Created world events with larger scale and more permanent impact – another one that players seem to ignore. Most don’t even pay attention to invasions anymore.

- Increased number of dynamic events – once you have done them a dozen times, they fall into the “I need to farm these for xxx resources”.

- Super Adventure Box – personally can’t stand it, but that’s just my opinion.

- Added new skills and traits (though not on the scale they made it seem so this could be a rightful complaint) – some of these are good and the balances are getting better. more work needs to be done and the future changes in Dec look interesting.
- Increased way to earn skill points – most have more skillpoints than you can point a stick at. Since when did SP become currency though?
- Champion rewards – I laughed so hard the milk came out my nose – champions and rewards are two words that are only loosely associated together in GW2. Champions and junk is a more apt joining.

- Dungeon reward revamp – see Champion Rewards

- New crafting materials – most of which is account bound, takes weeks to gather and is largely hidden from newer players who don’t want to continually tip money into the game.

- Magic find revamp – this is neat but once everyone has the same MF level, what is the point?

- Making blues and greens matter more – see above on Magic find revamp. Really though blues and greens only matter for recycling, nothing more.

- Ascended weapons – poor mans legendary without the flashy particle effects.

- Improved functionality of legendaries – *good for the 1% of the population who have them(

- Replacement for Borderlands orb mechanic – now this was a good move but has increased the zerginess of wvw

- PvP solo rated play (albeit very buggy) – spvp is the weird redheaded step-child of the game

- LFG tool – * cool tool that allows you to meet people who rage-quit the dungeon at the slightest “you aren’t doing this right!!!!”*

- Limit culling in PvE – * allowed us to use the full functions of the awesome machines we play with (once A-net realised that we don’t play with consoles)*

Things not implemented:
- Updated fractals (though it’s obvious this will be released before the end of the year either on Nov 26th or Dec 24th). do people still do fractals?

- Wintersday (most likely released on Dec 10th) it’s fun playing winter games in the middle of summer

- All crafting professions to 500 let’s make everything crafted below 500 useless and superfluous in the same manner that everything below 400 is these days.

- Ascended armor (which has been datamined) Exotic is gonna be the new rare

- Building precursor (good chance of not being implemented before 2014) bets are now being laid on components only being available via the GS

- New legendary weapons will be interesting to see
- New type of legendary so a legendary legendary?
- Improved PvP rewards much needed
- New PvP map types would like new PvE maps at some stage
- Way to gain legendary skins in PvP

Looking at the list the only people who got kind of screwed over was PvPers, and even then there’s 3 updates left (excluding tomorrows) before people can rightfully complain.

That said I would argue the main complaint should be the scale of some of the things they implemented, mainly things like skills/traits and dungeons (though for dungeon updates I expected them to only be 1 or 2 new dungeons). Besides, they even said the things listed could change. It’s far better for them to be open about what they are working on than just tell us right before a release.

sirflamesword.3896:

Clearly all the people who feel angry about the way the game is headed have all been banned because of the new forum rules. I guess the forums are finally going to get to that point where they want them, with no one being critical about the game…

Edit: Also incoming infraction/ban

You mean to imply the majority of posts on these forums are positive? I’m thinking that might not be the truth.

On topic: Schedules either will or won’t get pushed back….but I’d personally rather have stuff worked on a bit longer and released when it’s ready than rushed out to meet some arbitrary deadline.

Vayne.8563:

PraetorMortis.8610:

If you hired someone to paint your house and when you asked when it will be done, they told you a vague timeframe loaded with qualifiers, you wouldn’t hire them.

If you hired someone to paint your house and they said the job would be done by the end of the week, you’d be pretty upset when 6 months had gone by.

I think what OP is trying to communicate is that it is annoying to have Anet talk up all the goodies they have planned for the year and then miss deadlines and alter the end product. Remember precursor scavenger hunt? Of course you don’t, that idea that they wanted to make sure the “got just right” turned into crafting, which is now pushed back.

I think that they’ve done a great job putting stuff out this year. That said, if the stuff they put out wasn’t the thing you were excited for, it’s understandable you’d be miffed. The need to either manage expectations better or step up their delivery process. That would quell a lot of the forum outrage I’m sure.

Except that painting your house is completely different from programming a game. The odds are painting your house won’t throw up quite so many unknown issues. It’s less complex.

Building an office build, for example, often goes over budget and over schedule, because it’s more complex.

Progamming tasks, even with the best intentions can take a whole lot longer than you want them to. So here’s the choice.

Say nothing at all when everyone is bugging you to say something because they want to know the direction of the game…they want transparency…or say something and put a likely date on it and move it back if it runs over time.

I suppose they could say we’re going to do this but we can’t say when but people complain about that too.

What would you suggest Anet do in these circumstances?

Or…you know, the middle ground of waiting a little bit until they’re confident they can deliver in the estimated time frame before giving a time frame, there’s little more damaging to customer relations than failing to meet your estimates.

When you give estimated time frames and then continually fail to deliver, it’s a bit “the boy who called wolf” people get tired of it.

Anet have issues with maintaining customer expectations, they don’t know how to handle it and always go to one extreme or the other rather than coming up with achievable plans and following through on those.

I mean of the things that GoldenTruth pointed out that haven’t been implemented yet

“- All crafting professions to 500
– Ascended armor (which has been datamined)
– Building precursor (good chance of not being implemented before 2014)
– New legendary weapons
– New type of legendary”

We didn’t need to know about these ones yet but Anet are the ones who put it out (and seemingly as soon as the idea popped into their head without thinking through the how of it, rather than when they knew it was something achievable within their estimated time) and could realistically be something that they only mention around now for the first time, to be implemented within the next 4 months or so.

I mean look at the precursor one…it’s been talked about by the dev’s as coming for the past year and it’s the one that’s pretty much guaranteed to not come out until next year (and given that there’s new legendary weapons coming, it seems pretty obvious the craftable precursors will be for new legendaries rather than existing and that’s going to cause a poop storm) which leads back to an inability to maintain customer expectations (largely in part due to them implying things or wording things in favorably ambiguous ways and then when they see the hype from it and it isn’t what they are intending to implement they don’t correct the customer expectation straight away….they wait until after they release….)

@medival: you’re wrong about world bosses, people are doing them it’s just at server reset (there’s giant zergs for a few hours after the daily reset) people just do it once a day after that you don’t get the bonus chest and to get the normal chest you need to do it on an alt since if you do it on the same toon, no bonus chest, no normal chest (which defeats the point of the bonus chest….)

people still do fractals for karma/obishards that and it’s still one of the easier ways to get an ascended back piece (the mystic forge recipe for them costs quite a lot due so fractals is still largely the main way) but again it’s one of those once a day things for the bonus chest (see the trend?)

@medieval: I agree with your post, but when did they add in skills as you say? There are no new skills in the game, aside from a healing skill that is associated with an LS event.

I do not have any new skills on my thief or mesmer…if new ones have been added, please let me know because this hasnt happened yet.

Protoavis.9107:

Vayne.8563:

PraetorMortis.8610:

If you hired someone to paint your house and when you asked when it will be done, they told you a vague timeframe loaded with qualifiers, you wouldn’t hire them.

If you hired someone to paint your house and they said the job would be done by the end of the week, you’d be pretty upset when 6 months had gone by.

I think what OP is trying to communicate is that it is annoying to have Anet talk up all the goodies they have planned for the year and then miss deadlines and alter the end product. Remember precursor scavenger hunt? Of course you don’t, that idea that they wanted to make sure the “got just right” turned into crafting, which is now pushed back.

I think that they’ve done a great job putting stuff out this year. That said, if the stuff they put out wasn’t the thing you were excited for, it’s understandable you’d be miffed. The need to either manage expectations better or step up their delivery process. That would quell a lot of the forum outrage I’m sure.

Except that painting your house is completely different from programming a game. The odds are painting your house won’t throw up quite so many unknown issues. It’s less complex.

Building an office build, for example, often goes over budget and over schedule, because it’s more complex.

Progamming tasks, even with the best intentions can take a whole lot longer than you want them to. So here’s the choice.

Say nothing at all when everyone is bugging you to say something because they want to know the direction of the game…they want transparency…or say something and put a likely date on it and move it back if it runs over time.

I suppose they could say we’re going to do this but we can’t say when but people complain about that too.

What would you suggest Anet do in these circumstances?

Or…you know, the middle ground of waiting a little bit until they’re confident they can deliver in the estimated time frame before giving a time frame, there’s little more damaging to customer relations than failing to meet your estimates.

When you give estimated time frames and then continually fail to deliver, it’s a bit “the boy who called wolf” people get tired of it.

I’ve lost track of the number of games that have been delayed. I don’t really get this whole middle ground thing. The only time you can be sure you can ship something in time, particularly with a program, is not to say anything at all until you’re ready. Microsoft is a much bigger company than Anet and their stuff ships with so many bugs it’s not funny sometimes.

I don’t see how it’s reasonable to expect Anet to do better than any other game manufacturer when it comes to either release dates or bug free content. Take a popular game like Skyrim…buggy as hell.

So they announce stuff that the think they can do, probably with the best intention and stuff comes up. If they say nothing people complain. If they don’t give a time frame, people complain. If they give a time frame and they don’t meet it, people complain.

And if they wait long enough to give a time frame until they can be sure it will make the deadline, it’s about the same as waiting until its out.

It would be different if other programming companies didn’t have the exact same problem, but on a project this big with this many people working on it…you just can’t ever really guarantee a schedule and I suspect most people accept that.

Some of you guys need a better understanding of development cycles and milestone scheduling.

Love the house painting comparison though, very similar to a design cycle.

Mash Hog.5672:

People like you are the reason that companies like ANet cannot be transparent about what they’d like to do.

On one end people are yelling at them to tell them their future plans. On the other hand there are people like you QQing about not meeting the standards that they set for themselves EVEN THOUGH they had stated that these timelines are not set in stone.

It seems like ANet has made great strides over the course of this year and has met most of their benchmarks. They still have 2 months to come to terms with even more of them and my faith in the ANet team is strong.

Nonsense. If there was even a slight chance something wasn’t going to make it that they talked about in their “second half of 2013” blog then they shouldn’t have mentioned it pure and simple.

And not only that but Colin Johannson has gone on record saying that precursor crafting was in fact coming in 2013 separate from that blog. But then later reneged on that and said that it’s one of the things that has a good chance of slipping into 2014.

Forget everything else. It’s all mostly fluff. Precursor crafting has been the single most asked for and/or demanded thing since release. They promised it was coming in late 2012, then it wasn’t. Then it was for sure going to happen again in 2013. But then it’s not.

Talk about disrespecting your loyal customers. They sure as hell had time to make new ugly back items that no one wants and 18 dozen weapon skins hidden in RNG boxes that we have to pay real money to even have a slight chance at getting though.

Vayne.8563:

snipped because message was too long to post.

I dunno, I’m developer by trade (ecomm rather than gaming, banks before that…you have bugs in either of those and someone’s likely to get fired due to money issues and legal issues, have been involved in 13 of the top 30 grossing ecomm sites in my country) and the project/account managers don’t tell the client’s any dates or estimates until it’s guaranteed to be out by that time (often this involves breaking down big tasks into tiny tasks by someone very familiar with the system), as dev’s we don’t tell the project/account managers estimates or dates until we can guarantee it’ll be out by that time…because if we did and continually failed to deliver it would be what the company is known for and that’s a reputation you don’t lose, clients don’t ever forget and they will talk like crazy with anyone that will listen.

Microsoft get away with it because effectively they have a monopoly, OS and Linux don’t and won’t ever hold a big enough share of the market for MS to worry about quality because they know people are going to buy it (kind of like apple knowing people are just going to buy iphone’s…even though very little changes between versions)

You missed the point though, Anet can say things, things they know will be delivered while still holding back on things they aren’t sure about yet rather than blurting out everything in one go and then ultimately failing. They could be having a continual stream of info rather than a giant info dump that ultimately they can’t deliver. At the moment, the LS updates are on a 4 month dev cycle (4 teams, each doing 1 month of content every 4 months) there’s a lot of time in there for them to know what is and isn’t going to happen INTERNALLY before releasing what is going to happen to us.

ozma.3498:

That’s four updates to get the following implemented:

- A new “specific way” to build precursors.
- Crafting level 500 for all professions.
- New legendary weapons.
- New types of Legendary gear.
- Ascended armor (including craftable pieces).

- As stated previously, precursor crafting is likely not to make it into the game this year
- Since the art for the armor and the ascended crafting materials are already in the game files, we can safely presume it will come in time. No news about lvl 500 Chef though.
- No new legendary weapons are schedulded. People misinterpreted the announcement of the new types of legendary items and thought it was about weapons. What we will get is legendary trinkets of one type (either rings, amulets or earrings)

Yamiga.7863:

ozma.3498:

That’s four updates to get the following implemented:

- A new “specific way” to build precursors.
- Crafting level 500 for all professions.
- New legendary weapons.
- New types of Legendary gear.
- Ascended armor (including craftable pieces).

- As stated previously, precursor crafting is likely not to make it into the game this year
- Since the art for the armor and the ascended crafting materials are already in the game files, we can safely presume it will come in time. No news about lvl 500 Chef though.
- No new legendary weapons are schedulded. People misinterpreted the announcement of the new types of legendary items and thought it was about weapons. What we will get is legendary trinkets of one type (either rings, amulets or earrings)

I don’t think people misinterpreted anything. I’m pretty sure they specifically said new legendary weapons would be coming. Now if those are going to be entirely new weapons types if they add new kinds of weapons to the games or for current weapons they never said.

They also said new types of legendaries, which Colin revealed to likely be accessories.

ozma.3498:

That’s four updates to get the following implemented:

- A new “specific way” to build precursors.
- Crafting level 500 for all professions.
- New legendary weapons.
- New types of Legendary gear.
- Ascended armor (including craftable pieces).
- New skills and traits. (We’ve had existing traits changed and one new skill so far.)
- New map types in sPvP.
- The ability to gain Legendary weapon skins in PvP.

I don’t think tomorrow’s update includes any of this stuff, and Wintersday will take up at least one update

Well, part of me thinks “Maybe this stuff will be included in the Wintersday patch as a Wintersday gift to us all”. Maybe the last load of living story patches have been so light because they’re gearing up for a massive update at the end of the year.

You know what really irks me, though? All that time and effort spent on the new WvW map. Sure, it looks awesome, and I’ll have fun playing on it, but I’d dearly love to be able to explore more of the existing Tyria. I had so much hope last November when, only a few months into the game, we got a whole new zone: Southsun Cove. Sure, it was small, and the lagfest at the time was a real killer, but it smelt of promise. The last year has been a bit of a letdown for those of us who love exploring.

I’d like to issue a warning, for what it’s worth, to ArenaNet – anyone who happens to be reading this, if at all. DON’T DESTROY WINTERSDAY LIKE YOU DID MAD KING’S DAY. I’m talking about leaving out entire minigames “just because”. I’m also talking about not reworking holiday-themed items such that they are insanely grindy to get, especially when they were originally not so. The whole Candy Corn Cob fiasco was a total killer for so many people this Mad King’s Day.

There are a few holidays which need to be kept relaxed. Trying to grind up enough money and/or materials for limited time stuff completely obliterates the fun for so many people. Just stop it. Mad King’s Day and Wintersday certainly fit into this category of holiday events that need to be kept relaxed. If we get Cantha sometime, I’d also throw the Canthan New Year in that bundle too.

I’m talking to myself, I know. This Wintersday the only thing to be added will be designs for weapons requiring 100,000 snowflakes, and of course, snowflakes will drop 80% less than they did last year just to add to the lunacy. It all only serves to line the pockets of those players who have already spent a year fiddling the trading post, being banned, and somehow getting reinstated, with, no doubt, no penalty to the gold they made illegally. Sad times.

Mash Hog.5672:

People like you are the reason that companies like ANet cannot be transparent about what they’d like to do.

On one end people are yelling at them to tell them their future plans. On the other hand there are people like you QQing about not meeting the standards that they set for themselves EVEN THOUGH they had stated that these timelines are not set in stone.

It seems like ANet has made great strides over the course of this year and has met most of their benchmarks. They still have 2 months to come to terms with even more of them and my faith in the ANet team is strong.

There’s a great article that relates to this, basically saying the fans are the game industry’s worst enemies I think is what it’s point was. Don’t remember where I saw it though.

fellyn.5083:

I don’t think people misinterpreted anything. I’m pretty sure they specifically said new legendary weapons would be coming. Now if those are going to be entirely new weapons types if they add new kinds of weapons to the games or for current weapons they never said.

They also said new types of legendaries, which Colin revealed to likely be accessories.

Just checked the blog post and you’re right, they indeed talked about new legendary weapons. The misinterpretation I was remembering was people going for legendary armor when it was trinkets.

ArenaNet has a history of being overambitious.

Take a stroll through the main cities. Witness the shooting gallery in DR, subject of blog posts before launch, still closed for a private party that has lasted over a year. Or visit Rata Sum and the shiny gate to the Polymock Arena, under construction for just as long.

Next, open your character panel and see the alignment system. Nice little symbols, a name for your blend of Charm, Ferocity, Dignity, but think back to whenNPCs were supposed to react to us differently based on that.

Or open your favorite smartphone app store and look in vain for the Guild Wars 2 Extended Experience app.

Still, one of the reasons I got excited about GW2 were the big ideas that the ArenaNet team seemed to be so excited about. I’d rather hear what they hope to accomplish than blog after blog saying, “You never know, everything’s on the table”.

I just wish NCSoft would funnel more money back into ArenaNet so they could expand their staff and get more of their dreams implemented.

roamzero.9486:

Dont forget new fractals.

this

Sarie.1630:

You know what really irks me, though? All that time and effort spent on the new WvW map. Sure, it looks awesome, and I’ll have fun playing on it, but I’d dearly love to be able to explore more of the existing Tyria.

Though, to be fair, if they said they were going to give us a new PvE zone and it was the size of the Edge of the Mists, people would be freaking out, flaming “That’s it!?” all over the forums.

There’s potentially a lot more playability out of that WvW map for the development resources than a new PvE map built with the same amount.

Protoavis.9107:

Vayne.8563:

snipped because message was too long to post.

I dunno, I’m developer by trade (ecomm rather than gaming, banks before that…you have bugs in either of those and someone’s likely to get fired due to money issues and legal issues, have been involved in 13 of the top 30 grossing ecomm sites in my country) and the project/account managers don’t tell the client’s any dates or estimates until it’s guaranteed to be out by that time (often this involves breaking down big tasks into tiny tasks by someone very familiar with the system), as dev’s we don’t tell the project/account managers estimates or dates until we can guarantee it’ll be out by that time…because if we did and continually failed to deliver it would be what the company is known for and that’s a reputation you don’t lose, clients don’t ever forget and they will talk like crazy with anyone that will listen.

Microsoft get away with it because effectively they have a monopoly, OS and Linux don’t and won’t ever hold a big enough share of the market for MS to worry about quality because they know people are going to buy it (kind of like apple knowing people are just going to buy iphone’s…even though very little changes between versions)

You missed the point though, Anet can say things, things they know will be delivered while still holding back on things they aren’t sure about yet rather than blurting out everything in one go and then ultimately failing. They could be having a continual stream of info rather than a giant info dump that ultimately they can’t deliver. At the moment, the LS updates are on a 4 month dev cycle (4 teams, each doing 1 month of content every 4 months) there’s a lot of time in there for them to know what is and isn’t going to happen INTERNALLY before releasing what is going to happen to us.

The gaming industry is different. You absolutely need to tell players when things are coming all the time because otherwise they’ll lose interest. Players want to know things are happening and that the game is going to grow. They want to know they won’t get bored of the game.

Anet was bashed constantly for making too many replies of ’we’re thinking about it’ or ’we’re working on it’.

Its important to note that theres a rumor floating around that on december 10th a new reward will be added to spvp, you will be able to transfer glory into exp. Apparently a dev leaked it on the twitch by accident while streaming but was taken down. 120k glory to get to level 80, however nothing is confirmed.

The image for the next release seems to hint at possibly getting a new fractal next patch… At least that’s the whispers I’m hearing…

And the image does sort of put you in mind of fractals…imo

GoldenTruth.2853:

ozma.3498:

GoldenTruth.2853:

Second, they have delivered far more than half of what they discussed in that blog.

That’s simply not true. I even missed some stuff off my list, as they said they would revamp the dungeons and Fractals too.

After re-reading the blog…

Things implemented:
- Continuing 2 week release cadence
- Improved (or at least changed) world bosses
- Updated dungeons (though only 1 was really updated)
- Created world events with larger scale and more permanent impact
- Increased number of dynamic events
- Super Adventure Box
- Added new skills and traits (though not on the scale they made it seem so this could be a rightful complaint)
- Increased way to earn skill points
- Champion rewards
- Dungeon reward revamp
- New crafting materials
- Magic find revamp
- Making blues and greens matter more
- Ascended weapons
- Improved functionality of legendaries
- Replacement for Borderlands orb mechanic
- PvP solo rated play (albeit very buggy)
- LFG tool
- Limit culling in PvE

Things not implemented:
- Updated fractals (though it’s obvious this will be released before the end of the year either on Nov 26th or Dec 24th).
- Wintersday (most likely released on Dec 10th)
- All crafting professions to 500
- Ascended armor (which has been datamined)
- Building precursor (good chance of not being implemented before 2014)
- New legendary weapons
- New type of legendary
- Improved PvP rewards
- New PvP map types
- Way to gain legendary skins in PvP

If you separate small features into separate list items, sure, they’ve added “more”. That’s kind of like saying an author who wrote two 100-page books has written more prose than another author who wrote a 500 page book.

Let’s face it – the second list is where all the exciting stuff and the bulk of the actual content is. If you pick a random item from the first list and compare it with a random item from the second list, virtually none of them can compare.

Getting a new item from salvaging greens vs. a precursor scavenger hunt? Slapping a bit of gold onto dungeon end rewards vs. fully revamped fractals and dungeons? Getting a loot bag from champions vs. all crafting professions at 500? Increased way to earn skill points (i.e. double-clicking a scroll…) vs. a full set of new legendary weapons?

I didn’t deny that they’ve added quite a bit of stuff from the blog post. My point is that they routinely get carried away over-hyping stuff, and then fail to deliver because they weren’t realistic about what could be done. I’d much rather they took a Blizzard style approach, where you know exactly what you’re getting. (In Blizzard’s case, ridiculously polished content at a painfully slow rate – but hey, at least they don’t pretend it’s going to delivered quickly.)

tolunart.2095:

MMOs are so complex that nearly any change breaks something in the game, at least for a small number of people. Extensive testing and proper management of updates can minimize this, but it’s a fact of life that updates are going to bring bugs, sometimes game-breaking ones. Rushing an update to meet a deadline when it’s clearly not ready is just asking for trouble.

I’d rather see a working update in February than a broken update in December followed by months of attempts to fix the game.

I agree. In fact, most updates are still riddled with bugs and glitches even after whatever internal testing goes on, which could easily be a symptom of trying to produce content too quickly. My point is that it’s better for the player-base to be direct about when to expect things instead of the “in an ideal world” type forecasting.

I knew when I first read the blog post that a lot of the stuff on there wouldn’t see the light of day before 2014 or beyond, which is one of the reasons I made this thread – because it was obvious and I wanted to point it out.

Not everything always works out as planned ozma. Their blog post was simply a list of goals they had wanted to achieve by the end of the year. Some of it will work out, some of it won’t. Have you never set a goal or had what seemed like a realistic deadline, then something happened and you simple were not able to meet it as originally planned?

That’s not hype, it a statement of intent. A “we intend to do x” and we “intend to do it by;” however like all things in life it doesn’t always pan out. Especially in programming.