Guild Wars 2

I’m intrigued by the name…!

Also, appreciate the comms, especially via the forums. It’s a shame to see this since it was part of the HoT package players paid for, but it is, what is is.

This is disappointing, especially since new legendaries were advertised as being part of the HoT content, which people paid for.

I’m glad to see a new legendary incoming.
Yet I’m mostly sad to hear it wasn’t the Legendary Mace which was said to be furthest in development.

I just hope the Legendary Mace won’t be a joke-weapon like The Moot was.
I’d love to go on a Journey for a Legendary Mace, one of the most beautiful types of weapons in-game in my opinion. Yet The Moot just feels so.. out of character.

I currently use The Flameseeker Prophecies because it’s a beautifully designed, intricate, legendary looking piece of equipment.
Not a disco-ball on a music-stick! :P

P.S.

As game director I have to make tough trade-offs. One thing I believe is that we have to focus on the core game first before taking on additional responsibilities. I wrote in the Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto in 2010 that our vision was to create a living, dynamic world, where there’s always something to do. Let’s ensure we succeed on that front.

So, after shipping Chuka and Champawat, I’ve asked that we indefinitely suspend work on new legendary weapons. This team of developers will instead shift their efforts back to Living World style content, building new journeys and events for everyone to participate in.

I believe it’s a wise decision.
Legendaries, although impressive, are for a minority of the players in Guild Wars 2.
Story progression is appreciated a lot.

One question though:
Does the decision of shifting attention from Legendary weapons/collections to the Living World Style content indicate that we might get story-content sooner than expected. Or is it mainly intended for other reasons such as having more developers work on the large Living World project for less pressure?

Thanks for letting us know. Does that mean LS3 will arrive sooner than indicated at the AMA?

Mike O Brien.4613:

So, after shipping Chuka and Champawat, I’ve asked that we indefinitely suspend work on new legendary weapons. This team of developers will instead shift their efforts back to Living World style content, building new journeys and events for everyone to participate in.

Can you hear me laughing? Because I am, you know. At least, I think I’m laughing. And if I think I’m laughing, therefore I am laughing. Or something…

Anyway, some of us have seen this coming. Personally, I’m glad you’ve decided to address it and make this cut rather than some others you could have made, or just dragging along trying to do everything.

New Legendary Weapons (Greatsword/Sword/Scepter specifically) was one of the main reasons i bought Heart of Thorns. I feel betrayed.

This is extremely disappointing to hear. I am glad you guys finally said something about the Legendary Weapons, but like someone already said, a lot of people paid for this sort of content that was promised and now we will no longer be getting what was paid for.

Honestly people will be disappointed because many people paid for new legendaries weapons aswell with HOT.

People are disappointed since HOT made this game something like :

You have friends you nerd 24h you achieve something.
While before this game was casual.

People are disappointed because you don’t think about players,6 developers and what is hard to add some new style armor for every class? i don’t think it is so hard.

People are disappointed because they want see something new in the game,yes something new but not unachievable such as the content that there are now.

People are disappointed because since beginning we only have 13 world bosses… lol since 3 years we farm the same things over and over,instead of just take an unused map and put a world boss.

People are disappointed because living world story is bad really bad,and the following map that came with HOT are incredible bad designed, 300 floors,you can’t even find the way to reach a commander when u see in the map.

People are disappointed because pvp is never balanced,not all class are playable,is it hard to fix?.

And so on,there are tons of things people can complain,but i won’t give you any advice on how to make the game better,you have your developers your managers,so let them do the job,while gw2 keep losing players.

Mike O Brien.4613:

As game director I have to make tough trade-offs. One thing I believe is that we have to focus on the core game first before taking on additional responsibilities. I wrote in the Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto in 2010 that our vision was to create a living, dynamic world, where there’s always something to do. Let’s ensure we succeed on that front.

Could not agree more.

I’m playing GW2 because of the living world not because I want to chase next “shiny”. I’d gladly trade any existing and future legionaries for the new open world content anytime, also, can we get more player driven event maps/chains (SW like) instead of timer based (HoT) ones?

Question(s) for you, Mo. These Legendaries have seemed to take an absolutely exorbitant amount of time to create. Is that primarily due to the precursor crafting elements of them? Despite being happy with the final result, do you think the labor required to create these expansive collections has been way too high for the “playable content” most players experience?

Basically, any lessons learned from the journey?

(For what it’s worth, my questions are a bit leading because I don’t see collections as “content” per se, just a system that makes you do other content. It doesn’t really make the game world bigger, it just serves to drive you toward specific things. This game, to me, has a huge lack of new content, and shifting six people from building collections to building new content is a change I support.)

Thank you for posting the information, even if it is disappointing to many. I’d much rather have it said than have us left hanging.

Looks at the date

Bit too early for an april fools joke, aint it?

I sincerely hope that this has something to do with what a week from today’s date is.

At this point, I am not exactly surprised. It is what it is, and I hope that we will see additional content faster for this decision.

I will however add that while I was more than willing to pre-purchase HoT as an act of faith in a developer I believed in, Arena Net has long since burned that bridge. I won’t say that I will never purchase an expansion in the future, but given the amount of promised yet unreleased content, gutted content, and bugs that came with HoT, I will not make the mistake of pre-purchasing one again. That was my mistake, and it will not be repeated.

As long as time is devoted to fixing WvW as fast as possible then this is fine with me.

One of my biggest problems with GW2 is the lack of new content. There’s way too many “feature patches” and too few “content patches”. There’s way too many “old systems revamps” and too few new maps/ events/ stories/ etc.

Mike, when I was reading your post, about halfway, when you said that your goal was to give us always something to do, my first reaction was “but not everyone wants a legendary, and for those that want it, not everyone wants a short bow!” Then I read the part where you confirmed that the legendary journey would be over, and I’m actually happy with that decision, even if it is very controversial.

That being said, I think there are flaws with the current living world systems that need to be fixed/ improved:

• There’s a lack of additional story content outside of big living story seasons/ expansions.
• There’s a lack of linear sidequests that can tell stories. Collections are cool, but they’re heavily non-linear, with interesting lore but little narrative, and are, well, more about collecting stuff than doing an actual adventure.
• Most of the content being developed is targetted way too much at niches. Raids are heavily social-driven, fractals are heavily agony-grinding driven, etc. I would like to see more content that can appeal to a larger majority of players (generally, new maps with new stories do that), or see existing content be made more accessible to non-hardcore players (removal of agony and much improved LFG for raids, in my opinion, would go a long way towards that).

You do recall this was something yall sold HoT on, yes?

Bit more than disappointing. The game in general seems like it saw a real shift in direction. Stuff like this doesn’t help with the perception that if you aren’t interested in two specific things, there is very little to keep you in the game. After three years of heavy time investment, its a little jarring for people to have their game flip the script on them.

This isn’t going to make it easier to buy future expansions, even for those of us in it till the end.

More content is always better, great decision. No matter what decisions are made and no matter what direction you go people will always find something to complain about.

Why not just make them completely craft-able outside of the collections?

Edit: Just make the components from the collections cost HoT currency and some fixed gold amount.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Hi all,

In the upcoming Spring 2016 Quarterly Update, we’ll launch the new legendary short bow, Chuka and Champawat. The team outdid themselves on this one. This new precursor journey takes you through a memorable experience inspired by a real-world story, and the bow you craft at the end is the perfect commemoration of that journey. I hope you all check it out.

Last year we talked about plans to gradually build out a second set of legendary weapons through live content updates. That’s a big responsibility. We have a team of six developers working on that, who could work on it for years to come.

As game director I have to make tough trade-offs. One thing I believe is that we have to focus on the core game first before taking on additional responsibilities. I wrote in the Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto in 2010 that our vision was to create a living, dynamic world, where there’s always something to do. Let’s ensure we succeed on that front.

So, after shipping Chuka and Champawat, I’ve asked that we indefinitely suspend work on new legendary weapons. This team of developers will instead shift their efforts back to Living World style content, building new journeys and events for everyone to participate in.

I know this will be a controversial decision. I’ll hang out with you here on the forums for a little while today to discuss it. And I’m always available by email.

Mo

This better be an April 1st joke.
The whole HoT expansion is an unfinished product.
First you cut some of the masteries and some of the guild hall features and now you’re cutting another important aspect to the game – all of those were PROMOTED by your team. It was literally what we paid for in advance. What kind of plan is a plan that doesn’t follow the plan that people actually alread paid for?
You know how this look like, right?

Since we only got around 60% of the things you were promoting, can we get the 40% of the money back?
The fact that you are using that money to work on the core game – which we already paid for says a lot..

At the same time we are getting new cash shop glider and weapon skins….

I’m extremely sad about this, i was saving mats for the upcoming legendary (i was hoping on making one per expansion, the sword specifically for HoT).
I don’t know what to say… thanks for the info i suppose? :/

Ayrilana.1396:

Why not just make them completely craft-able outside of the collections?

Yeah. I think less people will complain about the loss of journeys and collections than not having the legendaries at all.

I just made a sunrise sword and bought my precursor off of the trade post – building it via the “legendary journey” would have been a waste of both gold and time.

The precursor creation system is a complete waste of time and effort that serves no purpose.

Simply drop it for the other legendaries and get the gemstore team to make some shiny items with a couple of effects and I am sure most people would be happy. It would also take them about 2 weeks, considering how quickly they are able to put out items – heck – if we took the timekeeper set and had made just the greatsword, added a cool effect and said “that’s a legendary greatsword”, I would have been ok with that.

Well honestly this is a real disappointment. Being a main WvWer i have no real interest in other parts of the game, but (since WvW is the less rewarded aspect) I’m saving mats, doing daily gatherings and trying to do some HoT content daily just to be able to build one new legendary when it comes out. Now you take away even this feature… Honestly I’m extremely disappointed. You keep hiding organizations fails by playing the blaming game “we take away things from here only to develop there”, but still everyone of us payed HoT full price, with all your promises, developers and expectations included.

I’m not one that usually complains on forums etc, but seriously, the only reasons i still commit to this game are my guild and the fact there’s no real competitor in the mmorpg panorama atm (especially RvR). And you, anet guys, seems to know this well and pulling the rope really too much.

So in 6 months, we’re only getting 4 out of 20 of the new legendaries? please let this be an april fool’s joke So dissapointed with this expansion

Doctor Faustus.6372:

Ayrilana.1396:

Why not just make them completely craft-able outside of the collections?

Yeah. I think less people will complain about the loss of journeys and collections than not having the legendaries at all.

Completely agree. Continue adding legendaries, but cut out the journey for future legendaries.

I think it’s time you tell us what you’re working on instead.

This is a huge part of what players bought HoT for and without Legendaries to look forward to, we have no idea what to expect in the future. I know you’re trying to be very open with the community but this is a time where you need to REALLY be open. I mean, tell us what is going on. What’s happening within the company that’s causing this to be an issue? Was funding cut? Did staff leave? What’s going on? Tell us, and replace the hype we had for legendary weapons with something else: tell us where we’re going in the next expansion or how many new maps you’re working on, or things of that nature.

Legendaries are a really niche item that only a small portion of the playerbase get, but they represent a really important part of the game. This is going to make people quit.

This is also the time to be candid about why the process had to be stopped. Was the Precursor crafting too overwhelming? Tell us. Give us the design-side explanation for why this had to be cut, and not just in vague terms of resource allocation. Let us know what you can and can’t do instead of pretending you can do something and then letting us down – if precursor crafting was going to prevent us from getting new legendaries, it shouldn’t have been done.

Mike, what does this mean about ad infinium, the legendary backpack? In the last ama, fractal leaderboards were being gutted. I fear that finishing ad infinium will be postpone as well?

Mike O Brien.4613:

Nero and Onevstheworld, you asked if this means that LW can come sooner than July.

Full story episodes have a long lead-time. But I don’t think LW content has to be all about the episodes. So… maybe.

But I’m not here today to make predictions or promises. I’d rather we start by shipping, then talk about what we shipped.

Mo

What about additional story content/ sidequests?

Traditional MMOs usually do that through quests/ dungeons. New content, new bosses, new stories that are not directly tied to the main plot.

It’s the right decision.

No point on adding more legendaries when only a few players will bother making them because of the insanely absurd ridiculously ludicrous material costs, when the best ways to get those materials are the most boring things one can do in the game.

If they ever fix that issue, and people can actually make more than 1 legendary weapon in over 5 years without spending their entire game time doing anything except actually playing and enjoying the game, then they could continue with the project.

I’m not even mad about this. I think it’s needed… due to the fact all other area’s of the game are at a pause. <3 do what you guys need to do.

This sucks, but I guess I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt on it. Something has clearly gone wrong with post-HoT, because the raid team is the only one that has actually managed to ship content. We’ve gotten little in the way of iterative improvements either. WvW is still a mess, PvP is still a power-creeped CC-fest, fractals are swampy to the core, etc. If you’ve decided that legendaries are the thing that need to get the axe in order to actually get stuff done on the game, fine.

But the community’s patience is really wearing thin here. There need to be visible payoffs soon. And the Black Lion skins + gliders are sending the wrong message here.

A couple of questions -

1. does this mean that the statements you made during the AMA regarding the next phase of the living world coming “after the third raid wing” or as late as July may be altered? Will we see content earlier than that and, if so, will it be on some kind of (even loose) schedule?

2. To that same point, have you decided to go back to regularly adding content to the game world (the thing that makes it living and breathing?

3. What about legendary armor? It seems like the same logic would apply?

4. Legendary weapons probably have a wider appeal than raids? If the goal is to put resources toward living story, wouldn’t it make sense to move resources (not all, but some) from raids toward this living breathing world (which I love the sound of)?

5. Cynical readers might read this as an excuse by ANET to discontinue legendaries early because you know there is no way you will get them all done before the next expansion. Can you unequivocally confirm that is not the case?

6. Finally, can you give us an idea (of any kind) of what is and isn’t included in your definition of “a living dynamic world”? Does it include new maps, new guild missions (PLEASE), new adventures, or is it simply the 1-5 player story instances we saw as part of season 2?

Also – people make a good point about the frequency of BL weapon skins. If the bottleneck for legendary weapons is the new story system behind the weapons, then maybe just go back to the old system rather than scrapping them altogether. (that said, I do care more about getting our living story back on track more than anything)

The Anet team openly sold half a product and it seems like every week they’re cutting more off the tail end to give them more room to work around the three things they care about. and here’s a hint. the players aren’t one of them.

They can push out a new black lion set every month to rake in cash but they can’t finish one set of weapons they already sold?

all they care about is their buggy living story that half of players don’t even care about. the story is bland and often times predictable, why don’t you pull some members off your next expansion that you’ve already said you’re building so maybe you’ll have 1/3rd of the player base you had before you shipped this disappointment by the time the next one arrives?

I can only assume the hang up in the legendary development is the boring and drawn out gold sink of a precursor adventure that you’re having to think up for every individual weapon.

so how about this for a change, just finish the legendaries and put the precursors on the drop table for HoT meta events and raids. the only players that will really miss them are the players who are capable of finishing a raid anyways so whats it matter? leave the care bear living story for the casuals and give the fans that want something more to strive for what they already paid for.

Ugh!!! Was so looking forward to new legendary weapons my heart’s crushed <\3

Don’t even try to leave HoT content incomplete with so many questions especially about Malyck, Other Trees, Pale Tree, Rata Novus and Asura society.
Legendaries CAN WAIT. Anyways only players that have enough kitten-tons of money they’ve got from previous drops of Precursors can have them. Ridiculous! Me and my people cannot get at least one Legendary, and some of other folks have full collections of them. I was and I am waiting for Living Story vol. 3, not for new weapons shooting with leaves, unicorns, ravens or kitten knows what more. Give us Malyck, Other Tree, Pale Tree and Rata Novus.
You killed Trehearne listening to moans of people on this forum ( I liked him a lot!!!), now I moan for making puzzles of lore that you made into complete thing.

Malyck come back! Malyck my bro! Canach is psycho, Malyck please defend me from him! I don’t want to work with somebody who has wanted poster, Canach to jail, Malyck to trail!

Seriously? This is incredibly disappointing. I mean, I’d like Living World too, but the fact that the set is just incomplete forever—and will be incomplete forever—truly sucks. There were so many legendaries I was looking forward to, and now they will never exist.

Do not promise things you can’t fulfill. Very kittened off, especially because I was on board with Heart of Thorns and was mostly okay with it being piecemeal. I am offended.

The new legs were a major part of the HOT Advertised content. This is kittening kittenkitten.

I can’t even begin to explain how disappointed I am, this was the feature I was looking forward to the most after Legendary Armor (and you better not cancel that one too )

Mike O Brien.4613:

Hi all,

As game director I have to make tough trade-offs. One thing I believe is that we have to focus on the core game first before taking on additional responsibilities

Mo

This is extremely Disappointing to hear/ HoT was Advertised on the motion of Raids/Legendary Weapons/Gliding, etc.

As I am sure i am not the only one whom is upset by this announcement, many of us have already farmed our Map completion/Gifts for the New Maps/Non specific gifts for New legendaries and have been waiting for the new ones to come out. Whether it be due to not liking the new ones or the new legendary being usable by a said class. What do the classes do that did not get a New HoT Legendary Weapon? As many of us who bought HoT with this in mind ? Do we if at all receive any sort of accommodations for this ? Seems rather bad business taste to have sell points to sell a product then later on change a crucial selling point/ removing it.

As always, I hope you hear the voices of your players concerns.

The easiest fix in the world. remove the trade restrictions on the already released legends and precursors and add the new ones to the drop table in HoT maps and raids. everyones happy and it would take less then a month. let people complain about people being able to just buy them, at least we’d have them.

Hmm already hate that SB based on the name alone.

Well that is disappointing. I was looking forward to complete all the new precursor collections. I have all 72 collections complete already.

I’d like to say that i’m disappointed, I’ve not really had much to grind towards as I’ve been waiting for the right legendary before I invest my time into it, and now thats gone. I’m glad that theres going to be new content because at the moment there really feels like there is so little to do as most group content is pretty impossible on your own or mindlessly easy in a zerg, leaving no middle balance.
Secondly, I hope you turn back to look at Kudzu before you suspend work entirely on legendaries. Kudzu’s bowstring is currently a standard bow string which doesn’t allign on either end and has no uniqueness to its nature/freeflowing kind of style. If you’re really going to just leave it with a standard string, at least make sure its done properly.

I don’t really know what to think atm… new legendaries were advertised as being part of HoT content but at the rate new content is being developped anyways its probably better off prioritizing more critical content releases.

I sincerely hope you guys at ArenaNet manage to deliver, because content drought is hard, and as evidenced by multiple posts in this thread, player satisfaction levels are dwindling.

Gator.5729:

More content is always better, great decision. No matter what decisions are made and no matter what direction you go people will always find something to complain about.

are..you serious? Anet straight up LIED about the new legendary weapon releases. They said, and i quote, “we will be releasing new legendary weapons in small groups at regular intervals until the full set of sixteen has been added to the game.” It’s been FIVE MONTHS since HoT dropped, and they’ve given us THREE. It’s been what, TWO MONTHS since they released the first set of weapons? And now, they’re adding ONE new weapon (not even mentioning the fact that only TWO CLASSES can even USE shortbow), and then say that they cant be bothered to make any more, and instead want to focus on the LIVING STORY? How about anet actually produces the content that we PAID FOR?

And yet, here we are. Still getting black lion skins, gliders and outfits that they’re proudly selling in the gem shop. It sure looks like they’re down on manpower. Anet, and by extension, GW2, is nothing short of a joke now.

tbh, i’m pretty sure this is grounds for suing them for false advertisement.

Mike O Brien.4613:

In the upcoming Spring 2016 Quarterly Update, we’ll launch the new legendary short bow, Chuka and Champawat.

Just imagine how much happier (correction – less angry) the people would’ve been if it was a GREATSWORD or a SWORD – a thing that more than 1, not really popular class will use…

Talk about planning and priorities.

Spira.4578:

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/advertising-marketing-internet-rules-road

I feel like you guys forgot to read this.

We’re definitely owed some form of compensation if we purchased HoT. This is absolutely treading in the realm of misleading consumers.