Guild Wars 2

Celtic Lady.3729:

Burtnik.5218:

Oh look.. they released SAB.. now lets forgot about legendary weapons… No.

If they do release SAB temporarily in order to give people something to do, that’s all it’s going to be – a temporary distraction from the larger problems HoT has created.

Now players will yell “Thank you Anet you are the best” but they are forgetting SAB is not HoT content…..

Celtic Lady.3729:

ekarat.1085:

People want new content, and while new legendaries technically are new content, it’s not going to drive people to keep playing the way the living world will. I’m a little grumpy that they are keeping the raid team but not the legendaries team, even though they are about the same size, but I admit that finishing the third raid wing and legendary armor is probably more important to more people than legendary weapons.

I’m not sure I believe this. Raiding, in my experience, has largely been content only a small amount of a game’s population do. Legendaries, it seems to me, have a larger group of people pursuing them than the new raid. I believe that, overall, more people will make legendaries than will raid.

But I guess it would look bad to forever have only 2/3 of a raid… Course, I think it’s also bad to have 4 new legendaries when there are way more weapons than just a shortbow, staff, pistol, and an axe, and most of these aren’t even the most popular weapons overall.

Legendaries are of interest to a larger number of people than raiding is, for sure, but I’d wager a fair amount that in terms of participation, Raiding beats Legendaries by a hefty margin.

Andulias.9516:

I am sorry in advance, this is going to be a bit of a rant.

In the last several months I have been defending Heart of Thorns on these forums from what I perceived (and still do) to be to a large extent unwarranted hate. It was from the off-set clear that HoT would be a feature rich expansion that’s relatively light on content and for that reason I was more interested in the quality of what’s in the expansion, hoping that after building the base for it the quantity would follow. And to a large extent I feel HoT succeeded – masteries might not have been implemented perfectly but they have a lot of potential, elite specs are cool, raids are pretty good and the map metas, while all on timers, are fun. So I waited.

Six months later, the only new stuff we got are two raid wings. People started hating on raids because we got nothing else in the meantime (completely understandable), but I’d rather wait longer and get really good content than wait less and get another Mordrem invasion piece of kitty. I decided to pass judgement when we have something to pass judgement on. So I waited.

Then you cancelled legendaries.

Now, I don’t care THAT much about them, although I love the idea of having such a long-term goal. I can also even somewhat justify the decision – I don’t think it’s about the six people being desperately needed in LS (I sincerely doubt they would actually be working on the chapters at this stage), as much as it is about all the resources necessary in addition to those six people (documentation, meetings, QA etc). I sort of get it.

But this isn’t about that, it’s about consumer trust. This isn’t the first time Anet promised something and they didn’t deliver. That’s also fine – priorities change, something that sounds good on paper might not actually work in practice and game development is very fluid. However, Legendaries are a marketed feature of HoT. People bought it on the educated presumption that more Legendaries would come. This isn’t about shifting plans anymore, it’s bordering on false advertising and I would love to hear from someone who’s well versed in legalese if it truly constitutes that. I gave Anet money for something I am not going to receive. It doesn’t matter what part of the community was interested in this, and not even Anet can actually come up with such a metric anyways. If this was marketed as part of the package, it should be in it, regardless! That is unacceptable.

All of this of course has been said probably hundreds of times by hundreds of different people, I know, I just had to vent a little, so here’s the thing:

MO, you feel you need to put the Legendaries on ice? OK, I have little insight into Anet’s inner workings, maybe you are right. For all we know this might be the right decision, kitten do we know about MMO development anyways. What I DO know is business language. I do know what indefinitely means. It means “probably never, but we don’t want to say it”.

I am not saying give us an ETA, that would be ridiculous. But give us something, however vague. MO, what does “indefinitely” mean? Is it going to be until you wrap up a part of LS3? Or after? Before you release the next expansion? After? Keep in mind, those are not specific dates by any stretch! Just confirm if we are going to get this HoT feature before you ship your next expansion! Confirm we are getting it at all!

And why would anything told to us now be any different. Fool me once fool me twice.

Behellagh.1468:

People who think SAB returning is because of the legendary announcement then you’re crazy. Players have been asking for it’s return. Players have complained that they sold us a infinite continue coin on the TP and then SAB vanished for nearly two years.

This has been in the motion for months now and April 1st is the logical release date for it, that’s all.

How about the other way around?
MO clearly knew about the legendary team issues for a while now (considering that they were only able to produce 3 weapons since mid 2013, and finish 1 additional weapon in the last 4 months)…
So instead of announcing it at the time when they actually canceled the team, he announced it a few days before a feature that a lot of players were asking for – so their hype could overpower the disapointment of everyone else. It’s not an uncommon strategy and definitelly not a tinfoil-type one.
Either way – people that are kittened won’t forget. The people that would forget are the one that aren’t kittened to begin with (people that are lightminded and don’t really care where their money is spent on)

SAB is just a recicled content. The only new thing is copy/pasted mashes and textures pasted over guild decoration server scripts and copy/pasted weapon skins with a different color hue.
Oh my bad. they are also adding SAB auras. I can only guess, but I think they used a similar procces as they used when they copy/pasted the tempest water overload to the glider server scripts.

Let’s stop with the guessing of what content has more or less players, seriously.

Bottom line is that content, no matter how many pay it, is taking way too long to come out, and certain content has been suspended, and some content has been tweaked to be left for dead (dungeons, fractals) to push people to play HoT content, which is already not offering its full potential anyways.

Content that everyone should be able to enjoy has been sacrificed. We all lose as a community because look at how divisive we have become. Just sucks.

Wow, so Anet already played their Bunny Ears card, SAB (temporary) card, and Alpine BL card (which will come sometime later this year/decade). Someone at Anet HQ must be panicking and hard.

So much smoke and mirrors, so little actual permanent content, and once smoke dissipates and majority realises that Alpine BL (or anything else) is not coming anytime soon, there are only mirrors left to shatter.

Burtnik.5218:

Oh look.. they released SAB.. now lets forgot about legendary weapons… No.

That’s what they hoped for… and the masses are like…

Anet are the best. I’ve always said so.

Ok as a compensation for stopping work on new legendaries could you please just make SAB permanent content? Something people have been asking for years! PleeAAAaaaSSSssseEEEeee.

It’s becoming more and more obvious that MO canceled the legendary team a while ago, but was waiting for the right moment to tell us.
In the last month we got 2 of the most demanded items that we were constantly asking for : Wizards hat, bunny ears and now we got SAB.

So first they put Wizards hat and bunny ears in the shop, then, a dey before easter (a family holiday when people tend to be less stressed and kinder) they told us about the legendaries, and 1 week after, they put SAB in game, hoping the hype would overcome the disapointment (or at least change the current appearrance of the community).

Interesting fact: It’s not accurate at all and I’m sure anet has more info about it, someone on reddit posted a survey. Based on the results, over 50% of players own a legendary 49% have played for more than 3000 hours and 62% have played for 3 or more years

Of players who have played for 2+ years, approximately 72% own legendaries.
Minor interest?..

Behellagh.1468:

Spira.4578:

Behellagh.1468:

People who think SAB returning is because of the legendary announcement then you’re crazy. Players have been asking for it’s return. Players have complained that they sold us a infinite continue coin on the TP and then SAB vanished for nearly two years.

This has been in the motion for months now and April 1st is the logical release date for it, that’s all.

How about the other way around?
MO clearly knew about the legendary team issues for a while now (considering that they were only able to produce 3 weapons since mid 2013, and finish 1 additional weapon in the last 4 months)…
So instead of announcing it at the time when they actually canceled the team, he announced it a few days before a feature that a lot of players were asking for – so their hype could overpower the disapointment of everyone else. It’s not an uncommon strategy and definitelly not a tinfoil-type one.
Either way – people that are kittened won’t forget. The people that would forget are the one that aren’t kittened to begin with (people that are lightminded and don’t really care where their money is spent on)

SAB is just a recicled content. The only new thing is copy/pasted mashes and textures pasted over guild decoration server scripts and copy/pasted weapon skins with a different color hue.
Oh my bad. they are also adding SAB auras. I can only guess, but I think they used a similar procces as they used when they copy/pasted the tempest water overload to the glider server scripts.

Are you like stockpiling tin foil?

While the skins for the first three new legendaries may have been done in 2013, the grunt work of the “journey” wasn’t. What ever method they were looking at back then wasn’t satisfactory so they lumped it until HoT. Or is it your opinion that it was all ready to ship in 2013 and they held it for and expansion?

Whatever it still doesn’t change my point that SAB was in the pipeline for release now and just like how Alpine Borderlands were always going to be rotated back at some point, just sooner than later, this isn’t about throwing us goodies in hope to placate us about the recent news (well Alpine sooner than later is to placate WvW players but the HoT “New Coke” moment with WvW is hardly recent news).

It’s a common strategy. Give something good, then tell the bad news and give some more goods. If it doesn’t calm down the community, at least what it does is make the hype temporarelly replace the disapointment.

I understand why you don’t have any reason to believe me.
What I don’t understand is why would you still believe ANET after so many failed fact stating (and using their statements as facts).
“we’re gonna do fotm leaderboards” “we’re not gonna do fotm leaderboards”
“we’re gonna rework WvW” " we all know that no player is playing WvW only" “we’re gonna rework WvW again”
“we’re gonna add bark cutting” “no we’re not”.
“you’re getting new legies in 2013!” “We said we would be working on them, we will probably add them ingame in 2014!” “Can’t do it. sorry!” “With HoT we’re gonna ship 16 new legendary weapons in small groups in regular intervals!” “no, actually we’re canceling that!”
“Fotm max lvl 80”, “Fotm max lvl 30!”, “Fotm max level 50!!!”, “Fotm max level 100 \o/”, “fotm rework!”, “fotm rework again!”
“Dungeon rework so you can get more money!” “dungeon rework so you don’t get so much money!” “dungeon reward rebalance so you can get more money!”
“Transparency! We’re soo transparent!” " We did a mistake, We can’t do everything we said we would. From now on, we rather not say much about our plans because we got burnt!" “HoT WILL HAVE SO MANY GOOD FEATURES GYUS!” “Sorry, can’t do it. From now on we’ll only say what’s coming out”

The list is literally endless at this point.

Mo, Arenanet has a pretty bad track record of supporting new systems long term.

HoT was pretty content light at release based specifically on its heavy implementation of new systems meant to mark an end to ‘iterative development’ and allow the staff to move forward with a clearly expandable structure.

While I applaud the admission that something is wrong internally with staffing for legendaries, legendary journeys were advertised as both a large part of the expansion and the ongoing content focus.

We were told that the future of GW2 was a combination of guild content, legendaries, raids, and living story. We were also told tht living story was decoupled from the previous 2 week cadence to allow for better quality control and extended devlopment to create better and more impactful releases.

HoT was supposed to set a precedent whering Anet broke a persistant pattern of inventing and immediately abandoning systems and content. You told us that’s why it shook out the way it did. You said the HoT systems were the final solution, the fix for arenanet’s pattern of spending lots of R&D time on new systems, only to roll them out with a skeletal amount of content and then discontinue support while you go spent more R&D on new systems.

This move appears to be more of the same. You designed an amazing new set of systems. You released a skeletal amount of content for them. Then you put them on hiatus indefinately. This is exactly the type of thing we were promised HoT and beyond was supposed to put an end to.

What changed? Did HoT not meet projections? Did more staff than you expected vacate their positions after its release?

This move doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence in the promise that we’ll see the kind of support you promised for other content that supposed to be core to GW2 moving forward. You’ve had a brisk rollout on raid wings, but everything else, which was supposed to be tackled by separate teams so that those deadlines don’t conflict hasn’t seen any meaningful additions in two major content patches.

What we have seen is the inclusion of yet another new system, the pvp leagues. Again, another new system, while adding no support of content to the existing, supposedly “core” systems.

We’ve still yet to see a single new guild mission, fractal, adventure, elite spec, guild upgrade, or guild hall. In six months since the expansion’s release the only meaningful content additions have been raid wings. Those are great pieces of content, but we were promised that all of these things would coexist meaningfully and get updated regularly because the teams were restructured to allow it to happen.

Nobody is questioning the absence of living world. I think everyone is willing to wait for quality ongoing story content with fun encounters, cool maps, great writing and voice acting, etc.

But the other systems, the ones specifically designed to be easily iterated on and added to, the ones designed around rapid implementation of smaller pieces of content haven’t produced. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have those teams push out mirco content? Like just one new fractal/guild mission per patch? What are those teams working on and why does it take six months?

Ardid.7203:

Jaxom.7310:

if we can’t have anet’s legendaries, maybe we can have our own.

Since anet has suspended their plans for new legendaries, they should put a method in place for us to build a legendary we could actually be proud of, and would feel unique to wield.

i think a lot of folks don’t want to use the overly flashy, often silly looking legendary weapons, that everyone already has anyways. but it would be nice to have the footfall and the stat swapping. this way people can see it, know you got a legendary, and its not exactly the same as the one that guy/gal has over there because they are also using a greatsword.

lets look at the formula for a legendary which is simple:

precursor X + gift of X + gift of fortune + gift of mastery

fortune and mastery are easy, they already exist.

we have a conceptual framework for crafting precursor’s, but what if we could bend it a little to make the precursor achievements offer us a gift of X, or something that can then be used to make a gift of X. this gift can basically determine what kind of footfall you make.

And since the precursor achievement gives us a gift of X, let say the precursor X can be any weapon, Lord Taeres’s Shadow or even Royal Ascalonian Dagger, whatever you wanted to make legendary. i know this can be totally variable so someone could use something xtra expensive, or xtra cheap. devs can just make the gift of X achievement super expensive so that this doesn’t become a cheap way to make a weapon w/ stat swapping.

it’d give me more incentive to make a legendary. there are a lot of skins i like more than the current set of legendaries. w/ a framework like this, i could still look/feel good wielding a legendary w/o having to wield a weapon that doesn’t fit the theme/look that i want for my character

AMAZING idea, IMO.

you may be alone. it was an idea tho

Spira.4578:

It’s becoming more and more obvious that MO canceled the legendary team a while ago, but was waiting for the right moment to tell us.
In the last month we got 2 of the most demanded items that we were constantly asking for : Wizards hat, bunny ears and now we got SAB.

So first they put Wizards hat and bunny ears in the shop, then, a dey before easter (a family holiday when people tend to be less stressed and kinder) they told us about the legendaries, and 1 week after, they put SAB in game, hoping the hype would overcome the disapointment (or at least change the current appearrance of the community).

Interesting fact: It’s not accurate at all and I’m sure anet has more info about it, someone on reddit posted a survey. Based on the results, over 50% of players own a legendary 49% have played for more than 3000 hours and 62% have played for 3 or more years

Of players who have played for 2+ years, approximately 72% own legendaries.
Minor interest?..

It does seem likely that the legendary announcement was held back to be put out along side several big positive announcements. It makes a lot of sense and I’d say is a smart business decision. Though, it is a bit underhanded and disingenuous. I also think that it’s not going to work as well as they hoped. The legendary “suspension” is not something that will be easily forgotten.

As for that reddit poll, I think the results would be skewed quite a bit because players active on forums (especially non-official ones) are more likely to have more dedication to the game, hours played, and legendary weapons.

mrstealth.6701:

As for that reddit poll, I think the results would be skewed quite a bit because players active on forums (especially non-official ones) are more likely to have more dedication to the game, hours played, and legendary weapons.

Yea, I agree. Well a friend of mine just pointed out that we can see a better legendary statistic directly trough some of the webpages that uses the gw2api.
So based on gw2efficiency, 42.5% of users has at least 1 legendary weapon.

Behellagh.1468:

People who think SAB returning is because of the legendary announcement then you’re crazy. Players have been asking for it’s return. Players have complained that they sold us a infinite continue coin on the TP and then SAB vanished for nearly two years.

This has been in the motion for months now and April 1st is the logical release date for it, that’s all.

Spira.4578:

MO clearly knew about the legendary team issues for a while now (considering that they were only able to produce 3 weapons since mid 2013, and finish 1 additional weapon in the last 4 months)…

Your facts are not quite accurate. They produced 4 new skins (and probably most of the rest as well) but they produced 20 precursor scavenger hunts which was where most of the work was (plus maybe some new infrastructure to support them). It’s all the detail work of hooking up all those individual quests and icons, etc… that was time consuming.

The end result was full delivery of a new precursor system, 16 old precursor hunts, 3 new hunts and 3 new skins (with number 4 coming soon). The other 13 are a ton more work but we don’t know how much of that is partially complete but clearly needed significant resource to finish. They must have known about this workload for a while but decided to sacrifice that promise in favor of fixing the LS drought.

We can only hope they decide to fix this problem but clearly they think exp pack 2 is more important which of course I disagree with.

Behellagh.1468:

People who think SAB returning is because of the legendary announcement then you’re crazy. Players have been asking for it’s return. Players have complained that they sold us a infinite continue coin on the TP and then SAB vanished for nearly two years.

This has been in the motion for months now and April 1st is the logical release date for it, that’s all.

Except….. It didn’t release on April 1st, it released on March 31st.

But timing.
Announcement of Legendary suspension: at the start of a long weekend that’s a major holiday. After 2 posts on the thread all red posts essentially disappear from both the official forum and Reddit. Not even Gayle posts during that time.
Then after 4 days: the announcement of upcoming changes….that will be in 2 or 3 weeks
Then the next day: Sab is released after a nearly 2 year absence. And not on a Tuesday, which is when most updates happen and not on April 1st, but on a Thursday.

I see some managing of player reactions with the timing of all this. First the bad, then let us talk to ourselves to exhauation, then two good things back to back and an update on a non Tuesday.

Spira.4578:

Behellagh.1468:

Spira.4578:

Behellagh.1468:

People who think SAB returning is because of the legendary announcement then you’re crazy. Players have been asking for it’s return. Players have complained that they sold us a infinite continue coin on the TP and then SAB vanished for nearly two years.

This has been in the motion for months now and April 1st is the logical release date for it, that’s all.

How about the other way around?
MO clearly knew about the legendary team issues for a while now (considering that they were only able to produce 3 weapons since mid 2013, and finish 1 additional weapon in the last 4 months)…
So instead of announcing it at the time when they actually canceled the team, he announced it a few days before a feature that a lot of players were asking for – so their hype could overpower the disapointment of everyone else. It’s not an uncommon strategy and definitelly not a tinfoil-type one.
Either way – people that are kittened won’t forget. The people that would forget are the one that aren’t kittened to begin with (people that are lightminded and don’t really care where their money is spent on)

SAB is just a recicled content. The only new thing is copy/pasted mashes and textures pasted over guild decoration server scripts and copy/pasted weapon skins with a different color hue.
Oh my bad. they are also adding SAB auras. I can only guess, but I think they used a similar procces as they used when they copy/pasted the tempest water overload to the glider server scripts.

Are you like stockpiling tin foil?

While the skins for the first three new legendaries may have been done in 2013, the grunt work of the “journey” wasn’t. What ever method they were looking at back then wasn’t satisfactory so they lumped it until HoT. Or is it your opinion that it was all ready to ship in 2013 and they held it for and expansion?

Whatever it still doesn’t change my point that SAB was in the pipeline for release now and just like how Alpine Borderlands were always going to be rotated back at some point, just sooner than later, this isn’t about throwing us goodies in hope to placate us about the recent news (well Alpine sooner than later is to placate WvW players but the HoT “New Coke” moment with WvW is hardly recent news).

It’s a common strategy. Give something good, then tell the bad news and give some more goods. If it doesn’t calm down the community, at least what it does is make the hype temporarelly replace the disapointment.

I understand why you don’t have any reason to believe me.
What I don’t understand is why would you still believe ANET after so many failed fact stating (and using their statements as facts).
“we’re gonna do fotm leaderboards” “we’re not gonna do fotm leaderboards”
“we’re gonna rework WvW” " we all know that no player is playing WvW only" “we’re gonna rework WvW again”
“we’re gonna add bark cutting” “no we’re not”.
“you’re getting new legies in 2013!” “We said we would be working on them, we will probably add them ingame in 2014!” “Can’t do it. sorry!” “With HoT we’re gonna ship 16 new legendary weapons in small groups in regular intervals!” “no, actually we’re canceling that!”
“Fotm max lvl 80”, “Fotm max lvl 30!”, “Fotm max level 50!!!”, “Fotm max level 100 \o/”, “fotm rework!”, “fotm rework again!”
“Dungeon rework so you can get more money!” “dungeon rework so you don’t get so much money!” “dungeon reward rebalance so you can get more money!”
“Transparency! We’re soo transparent!” " We did a mistake, We can’t do everything we said we would. From now on, we rather not say much about our plans because we got burnt!" “HoT WILL HAVE SO MANY GOOD FEATURES GYUS!” “Sorry, can’t do it. From now on we’ll only say what’s coming out”

The list is literally endless at this point.

Why do I still believe them?

Because I’m a software developer and have seen first hand when a new feature looks quite doable, gets promised to customers, and at some point an insurmountable wall is hit that derails the whole schedule of implementation.

Numerous times.

Sometimes it’s simply underestimating the work required, other times it’s discovering that changes need to be made in a lot more places to support it, and other times it’s a dependency on another group who is being pulled in five different directions and currently it’s not in yours. That’s the nature of developing in a live environment on older software with large groups.

So when, as it seems here, that the process of adding these new legendary weapons and their journeys are taking too long compared to when they thought they could have them done, I believe them. I’ve simply seen it happen first hand too many times on projects.

I don’t disagree with some of the things you’ve said. I think ANet has a tendency, because they want to give the players something, they releasess part of an overhaul of a system only to see the remaining development go mammary glands up and thus leaving the player with an awful experience, and you’ve outlined several. Fractal reset and the HoT WvW revamp being two glaring examples.

I do believe that quite often that a combination of “the telephone game” and the echo chamber of development that features players request get perverted often into something they didn’t ask for. And in the end there is never any play testing among players to inform them of that so the standard reply to the eventual outcry is “well it’s too late to change it now”.

Bugs in annual festivals that persist year to year because “it’s too late to change it” while the festival is going on. When the next year comes along, they only had time the alter some of the rewards and not actually fix the problems with it.

I couldn’t care less about SAB if I want to play an outdated looking graphics game ide play an old console I didn’t buy HoT because of the possibility of secret adventure box which is just a gimmicky mini game, I bought HoT because of advertised features that are now not being delivered.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Except….. It didn’t release on April 1st, it released on March 31st.

But timing.
Announcement of Legendary suspension: at the start of a long weekend that’s a major holiday. After 2 posts on the thread all red posts essentially disappear from both the official forum and Reddit. Not even Gayle posts during that time.
Then after 4 days: the announcement of upcoming changes….that will be in 2 or 3 weeks
Then the next day: Sab is released after a nearly 2 year absence. And not on a Tuesday, which is when most updates happen and not on April 1st, but on a Thursday.

I see some managing of player reactions with the timing of all this. First the bad, then let us talk to ourselves to exhauation, then two good things back to back and an update on a non Tuesday.

You noticed that too, hmm?

I agree with all you just stated.

It would be hilarious if they release them tomorrow…

Behellagh.1468:

Because I’m a software developer and have seen first hand when a new feature looks quite doable, gets promised, and at some point an insurmountable wall is hit that derails the whole schedule.

Good so we have something in common. I finished my degree in programing and softwar developing in 2004 and as a hobby I was a developer on different mmo private servers, working on both client and server side.
So I can, at least to some extend, understand how much work is needed to implement different kind of content.

I’m not sure what your point was, as it had little to do with what we were talking about.
Even if the production is slow, the director of the company didn’t just suddenly come up with the idea to shut down the legendary weapon dev team.
Since, as a director, he was well aware how slow the development was going and how little were they able to do since 2013, they either:
- knew way sooner (so, let’s say, around the time when they were promoting this feature) that there will be delays regarding this feature and
- knew it way sooner that they will cancel it, since the team is being too slow to deliver things in time.

I mean, what’s more likely, what I wrote above or that a company director didn’t know what was going on with not just his employees but the team that was working on a feature that his company was promoting for more than 3 years (Let’s not forget that as a director he also had to approve the promotion of those features, so it’s not like he didn’t know that the team existed)

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Behellagh.1468:

People who think SAB returning is because of the legendary announcement then you’re crazy. Players have been asking for it’s return. Players have complained that they sold us a infinite continue coin on the TP and then SAB vanished for nearly two years.

This has been in the motion for months now and April 1st is the logical release date for it, that’s all.

Except….. It didn’t release on April 1st, it released on March 31st.

But timing.
Announcement of Legendary suspension: at the start of a long weekend that’s a major holiday. After 2 posts on the thread all red posts essentially disappear from both the official forum and Reddit. Not even Gayle posts during that time.
Then after 4 days: the announcement of upcoming changes….that will be in 2 or 3 weeks
Then the next day: Sab is released after a nearly 2 year absence. And not on a Tuesday, which is when most updates happen and not on April 1st, but on a Thursday.

I see some managing of player reactions with the timing of all this. First the bad, then let us talk to ourselves to exhauation, then two good things back to back and an update on a non Tuesday.

Well, last day to book quarterly income and it would be odd? scarry? to release the Gem Shop items without SAB. April Fools, you thought you were getting it right? Not that they would do that. And it worked as the exchange rate spiked back up to 25 gold per 100 and will later, due to an influx of gem to gold conversion, head back down to the 20 gold per 100 range.

And do you really want to release a major, due to the size, patch on a Friday when you and I know at least one issue will likely sprout up that’ll need to be stamped out before everyone goes home on the weekend?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Behellagh.1468:

People who think SAB returning is because of the legendary announcement then you’re crazy. Players have been asking for it’s return. Players have complained that they sold us a infinite continue coin on the TP and then SAB vanished for nearly two years.

This has been in the motion for months now and April 1st is the logical release date for it, that’s all.

Except….. It didn’t release on April 1st, it released on March 31st.

But timing.
Announcement of Legendary suspension: at the start of a long weekend that’s a major holiday. After 2 posts on the thread all red posts essentially disappear from both the official forum and Reddit. Not even Gayle posts during that time.
Then after 4 days: the announcement of upcoming changes….that will be in 2 or 3 weeks
Then the next day: Sab is released after a nearly 2 year absence. And not on a Tuesday, which is when most updates happen and not on April 1st, but on a Thursday.

I see some managing of player reactions with the timing of all this. First the bad, then let us talk to ourselves to exhauation, then two good things back to back and an update on a non Tuesday.

They may have delayed the legendary announcement to coincide with it, but it’s pretty safe to assume they’ve been planning on rereleasing SAB for a while.

Behellagh.1468:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Behellagh.1468:

People who think SAB returning is because of the legendary announcement then you’re crazy. Players have been asking for it’s return. Players have complained that they sold us a infinite continue coin on the TP and then SAB vanished for nearly two years.

This has been in the motion for months now and April 1st is the logical release date for it, that’s all.

Except….. It didn’t release on April 1st, it released on March 31st.

But timing.
Announcement of Legendary suspension: at the start of a long weekend that’s a major holiday. After 2 posts on the thread all red posts essentially disappear from both the official forum and Reddit. Not even Gayle posts during that time.
Then after 4 days: the announcement of upcoming changes….that will be in 2 or 3 weeks
Then the next day: Sab is released after a nearly 2 year absence. And not on a Tuesday, which is when most updates happen and not on April 1st, but on a Thursday.

I see some managing of player reactions with the timing of all this. First the bad, then let us talk to ourselves to exhauation, then two good things back to back and an update on a non Tuesday.

Well, last day to book quarterly income and it would be odd? scarry? to release the Gem Shop items without SAB. April Fools, you thought you were getting it right? Not that they would do that. And it worked as the exchange rate spiked back up to 25 gold per 100 and will later, due to an influx of gem to gold conversion, head back down to the 20 gold per 100 range.

And do you really want to release a major, due to the size of the patch, update on a Friday when you and I know at least one issue will likely sprout up that’ll need to be stamped out before the weekend?

So? That doesn’t mean it all wasn’t calculated beforehand to manage reactions.

They’re a corporation and they had some bad news to give. He didn’t wake up one fine morning and decide to axe legendary crafting and rush over to make an announcement about it on the Forum. All that would be thought about and discussed at meetings over a period of time. Their lawyers would have to be consulted and they would need to check the relevant laws in the various countries to calculate what impact it would have. What he said on the forum would need to be written out, and that also looked over by their lawyers. Once they knew that they were going to cut the crafting, they undoubtably discussed how to mitigate expected negative reactions, and Sab came up as an option, was approved and it was debugged and made ready to go.

Of course a plan was made up to minimize the impact. That’s what cooperation do. They don’t just wing it and pray.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

So? That doesn’t mean it all wasn’t calculated beforehand to manage reactions.

They’re a corporation and they had some bad news to give. He didn’t wake up one fine morning and decide to axe legendary crafting and rush over to make an announcement about it on the Forum. All that would be thought about and discussed at meetings over a period of time. Their lawyers would have to be consulted and they would need to check the relevant laws in the various countries to calculate what impact it would have. What he said on the forum would need to be written out, and that also looked over by their lawyers. Once they knew that they were going to cut the crafting, they undoubtably discussed how to mitigate expected negative reactions, and Sab came up as an option, was approved and it was debugged and made ready to go.

Of course a plan was made up to minimize the impact. That’s what cooperation do. They don’t just wing it and pray.

For sure. It’s not a coincidence that SAB and bunny ears just came out.

Bread and circuses FTW.

Lord Kuru.3685:

For sure. It’s not a coincidence that SAB and bunny ears just came out.

Bread and circuses FTW.

Don’t forget wizards hat.

Spira.4578:

Behellagh.1468:

Because I’m a software developer and have seen first hand when a new feature looks quite doable, gets promised, and at some point an insurmountable wall is hit that derails the whole schedule.

Good so we have something in common. I finished my degree in programing and softwar developing in 2004 and as a hobby I was a developer on different mmo private servers, working on both client and server side.
So I can, at least to some extend, understand how much work is needed to implement different kind of content.

I’m not sure what your point was, as it had little to do with what we were talking about.
Even if the production is slow, the director of the company didn’t just suddenly come up with the idea to shut down the legendary weapon dev team.
Since, as a director, he was well aware how slow the development was going and how little were they able to do since 2013, they either:
- knew way sooner (so, let’s say, around the time when they were promoting this feature) that there will be delays regarding this feature and
- knew it way sooner that they will cancel it, since the team is being too slow to deliver things in time.

I mean, what’s more likely, what I wrote above or that a company director didn’t know what was going on with not just his employees but the team that was working on a feature that his company was promoting for more than 3 years (Let’s not forget that as a director he also had to approve the promotion of those features, so it’s not like he didn’t know that the team existed)

And I’ve been doing it since the mid 80s and not as a hobby.

MO wasn’t the director until Colin stepped down. And again, I’ve seen information about problems not flow up the management chain until it couldn’t be swept under the rug anymore for decades. The last person who ever knows about the true state of a project is a company president, unless he’s also developing shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the staff.

And while the notion of allowing players to pursue the precursor/legendary of their choice than relying on blind luck or grinding for gold (or breaking out the CC) to buy one is a good one, I think they realized they had issues back in 2013 so it was stuck on the back burner until they got this collection system up and running and experimented creating “journeys” with them before they tried again. So working on and off on them for three years, just not full time for three years.

Behellagh.1468:

MO wasn’t the director until Colin stepped down.

ROFL. Okay. you lost all of your credibility here.
It’s a WELL KNOWN FACT that MO was Colin’s boss.
Colin was simply the enthusiastic guy who was usually speaking in ANET’s name.
Yea he was a director, but MO had more power than him.

Spira.4578:

Behellagh.1468:

MO wasn’t the director until Colin stepped down.

ROFL. Okay. you lost all of your credibility here.
It’s a WELL KNOWN FACT that MO was Colin’s boss.
Colin was simply the enthusiastic guy who was usually speaking in ANET’s name.
Yea he was a director, but MO had more power than him.

Obviously you’ve never worked in a corporate environment as part of the management chain.

You know its all PR damage control when they didnt even bothered to make world 3. Its just reused contest from.. i dont even remember anymore, 2 yr ago? Same for apline borderland. Not sure why some of you argue over it.

Behellagh.1468:

Obviously you’ve never worked in a corporate environment as part of the management chain.

I did

Ticky.5831:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Behellagh.1468:

People who think SAB returning is because of the legendary announcement then you’re crazy. Players have been asking for it’s return. Players have complained that they sold us a infinite continue coin on the TP and then SAB vanished for nearly two years.

This has been in the motion for months now and April 1st is the logical release date for it, that’s all.

Except….. It didn’t release on April 1st, it released on March 31st.

But timing.
Announcement of Legendary suspension: at the start of a long weekend that’s a major holiday. After 2 posts on the thread all red posts essentially disappear from both the official forum and Reddit. Not even Gayle posts during that time.
Then after 4 days: the announcement of upcoming changes….that will be in 2 or 3 weeks
Then the next day: Sab is released after a nearly 2 year absence. And not on a Tuesday, which is when most updates happen and not on April 1st, but on a Thursday.

I see some managing of player reactions with the timing of all this. First the bad, then let us talk to ourselves to exhauation, then two good things back to back and an update on a non Tuesday.

They may have delayed the legendary announcement to coincide with it, but it’s pretty safe to assume they’ve been planning on rereleasing SAB for a while.

2 years ago was the last time. Times passed. Years passed. Multiple requests are made that Sab get released and it’s always one day, some day but not today.

When is it released? It’s released after they admit they are so shorthand that they have to pull Devs off a heavily advertised feature of the first expansion. It’s interesting that they are so short handed that they had to pull people off the crafting but not so short handed that they had the manpower to update and debug a feature that is guaranteed to make many forget about that announcement and reduce their anger, and release it 5 days after the announcement, after a 2 years abscence.

Nah, I absolutely stand by what I said.

To clarify; they may have decided to hold off on announcing the Legendary suspesion until it was close to SAB being reintroduced in April, but I do think it’s basically a 0% chance the decision to reintroduce SAB came about as a response to the outrage of the legendary suspension.

I believe they were planning to do that for a while as well – however, I also believe they were planning to tell us they canceled the production of new legies together with sab release to soften the blow and create an illusory environment of a happy community.

Burtnik.5218:

You know its all PR damage control when they didnt even bothered to make world 3. Its just reused contest from.. i dont even remember anymore, 2 yr ago? Same for apline borderland. Not sure why some of you argue over it.

Because some of you didn’t realize that alpine was always going to come back. Because some of you didn’t bother to read Josh’s blog post about SAB and that they updated world two as well as upgrading both worlds to work under the current game engine.

I love it when players first believe that ANet’s PR was like watching The Three Stooges short with their missteps but suddenly on a dime turned into some Machiavellian master manipulator and all of these things were planned to interconnect in some grand scheme to keep us here.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

2 years ago was the last time. Times passed. Years passed. Multiple requests are made that Sab get released and it’s always one day, some day but not today.

When is it released? It’s released after they admit they are so shorthand that they have to pull Devs off a heavily advertised feature of the first expansion. It’s interesting that they are so short handed that they had to pull people off the crafting but not so short handed that they had the manpower to update and debug a feature that is guaranteed to make many forget about that announcement and reduce their anger, and release it 5 days after the announcement, after a 2 years abscence.

Or put some more stuff up on the Gem store:

BLACK LION TRADING COMPANY GEM STORE
New Items and Promotions

• The Super Adventure Pack is now available and contains the Infinite Continue Coin, 1 Super Adventure Box o’ Fun, and the exclusive Super Bee Dog Mail Carrier, located in the Special category of the Gem Store for 600 gems.
  * Super Adventure Box miniatures have returned. They can be found in the Toys category of the Gem Store for 500 gems, only for a limited time.
• The Super Explosive Finisher can be found in the Upgrades category of the Gem Store for 600 gems.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, oh man….

Wow, Anet. I thought it was a joke, but no. Red post and everything. Worse of all you tried to sell it as a good thing. Oh we are stopping this to work on LS3. Because everyone just loved how LS2 played out.

Seriously. People paid money in the hopes that it would be different. Hell I even dropped some cash, and BAM.

Its like you guys are trying to alienate your player base. One step forward, two steps back. But LOOK, we have SAB. For that one third of the playerbase that likes it.

So what is the plan for those players (new and old) that were looking forward to the new legendaries? Let me guess: Once you have worked out the kinks and have made it easier on your team to code they will start getting worked on again BUT they will only be made available to people that buy your NEXT expansion. Right? Right?

Yeah.

Man, this is going to be fun.

Buried under SAB hype. I mean SAB is amazing , as someone who wasn’t around to experience it before I instantly fell in love with it yesterday – it lived up to the hype and more . But still sad to see the topic of legenderies get buried so soon , though I can’t blame MO – it was a good move to appease the masses

I can really imagine the executives and the people monitoring the forums rubbing their hands, being like “oh yeah, our little SAB-stick really distracted them from our Legendaries kitten-up.” lol.
I am really really sad. And there isn’t even a real april fools joke this year, no being turned into a puppet, or stickman, or running around with your arms stretched out like a pilot…
Im not really surprised by that tbh, and Im really looking forward to how long it will take until this thread is burried, dead and forgotten by players and mods alike. :/

I think SAB will just be a momentary distraction. After the initial hype settles, and especially after SAB has gone away for another indefinite period of time, the community is not going to let go of the fact that the most prominent items on the already short list of endgame goals just got canned.

mrstealth.6701:

I think SAB will just be a momentary distraction. After the initial hype settles, and especially after SAB has gone away for another indefinite period of time, the community is not going to let go of the fact that the most prominent items on the already short list of endgame goals just got canned.

ANET knows about the 5 stages of loss.

1.“Denial and Isolation”: It must be an april fools prank!
2. Anger: How dare you cancel a project we practically paid for.
3. Bargaining: Maybe what you could do, is give us a partial discount or offer some gems..
4. Now we’re at Depression, hence SAB. So it can help us get trough it.
5. Acceptance: in 18 days (After SAB’s done), most players will accept the fact that we won’t get those weapons regardless of what we do.

Good job ANET, you really are great at calming down your community.
But the fact that you are trying to ignore is, people WILL remember this.
And this WILL affect your next expansion.

Honestly, right now all I’m wanting in the game is more character slots so I would happily take a half price sale on the gem store (Hint Hint)

So it’s April now… time to reveal its all been a prank….

mrstealth.6701:

I think SAB will just be a momentary distraction. After the initial hype settles, and especially after SAB has gone away for another indefinite period of time, the community is not going to let go of the fact that the most prominent items on the already short list of endgame goals just got canned.

SAB is now a yearly festival, meaning it will appear every year on April 1st.

As a yearly festival, SAB will now be a dependable fixture in Tyria, and that makes us very happy.

source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/welcome-to-the-super-adventure-festival/

SAB back, today’s live stream about April fools…Anet sure know how to brush everything under a rug.

maddoctor.2738:

mrstealth.6701:

I think SAB will just be a momentary distraction. After the initial hype settles, and especially after SAB has gone away for another indefinite period of time, the community is not going to let go of the fact that the most prominent items on the already short list of endgame goals just got canned.

SAB is now a yearly festival, meaning it will appear every year on April 1st.

As a yearly festival, SAB will now be a dependable fixture in Tyria, and that makes us very happy.

source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/welcome-to-the-super-adventure-festival/

I stand corrected on that detail, but it does not change the fact that SAB is a temporary distraction. It’s not as if players are going to simply forget about undelivered, already paid for content because of a few week festival that will be gone for another 11 months.

And it also possible, especially in light of current events, that SAB could end up being suspended for various reasons. As per that same announcement, the current iteration of SAB took considerable effort to re-implement to due changes in the engine and other game systems. I believe game engine improvements are still ongoing, so future SAB events will likely require updates and fixes as this one did. So, its return is dependent on Anet’s ability and willingness to continue updating it along with the rest of the game.

Just because Anet says something is coming back, doesn’t mean it actually will. If this thread has shown us anything, it’s that Anet’s promises aren’t to be fully trusted. I’ll believe that SAB is returning in 2017 when I see it ingame on April 1, 2017. Honestly, it’s a little disappointing to see that some people are already willing to accept Anet’s promises as if it means they will actually be delivered.

Oh, wow. That’s a heavy one. I wonder where I should begin…!

So, I’ve been absent from the game for over 7 months now and didn’t visit the forum for 2 months due to the countless frustrations I had with HoT; Guild Hall grind destroying my small guild was probably the biggest shot. I decided to take a look at the forum again today, maybe things had become better and I must admit, I was pretty curious about this year’s april joke.

And what is it I see? One of the key features promised with HoT, new legendary weapons, just won’t be delivered anymore. The reasoning for that is LS3, hahaha! To make things even funnier, a few days after that news, they decide to “give” their hungry playerbase SAB back, that’s 3generous5me. The latter might have taken a few months to adjust to the current game engine and new mechanics. I know from my own working place (design/IT company) that news can be hold back for almost a quartal after they have been decided, depending how urgent the topic at hand is. People don’t need a tinfoil head to see how “well” ArenaNet managed the damage control this time. A continous hater like me would use the word “sly” instead of “well” though…

Silly me, thinking the game could again become the MMO I used to love and put over 200 bucks into in just the first two years.
Oh well, off to B&S again~ cough a f2p game that gave away a charslot FOR FREE after the new class was introduced cough

Where’s Vayne btw.? Haven’t read a comment from him in all the topics I’ve read today.

Never ever understood the whole legendary drag out grind thing people seem to worship, even at release it seemed over done, i am glad they are focusing on content over some grindy shinies..