Guild Wars 2

Since many people who are active on the forums don’t really read reddit, I thought I’d
post this here for anyone interested: http://www.tentonhammer.com/editorial/more-same-guild-wars-2

It basically highlights what most people here post on a daily basis: Overall good quality
of content but complete lack in terms of quantity .
I personally feel really let down by the ‘only 4-5 releases left this year’ statement.
Compared to the claim of ‘every two weeks’ this seems like a rather bad joke :/

Quote from the article that perfectly describes my feelings towards LS:

In an article our own David brought up there is a serious lack of content to keep a player really engrossed in the game. This year, since I had been playing the game almost exclusively since launch, I had been hoping that we would final have more content for veteran players. There needs to be something more than the Living World to draw along a player who has done everything. There needs to be more than the zerg-fest that is World versus World to keep a player engrossed between updates.

All players have had is the Living World to stay in the game and, as David said, it has come to the point that nobody really plays Guild Wars 2 as their primary game anymore due to that. What is worse is that ArenaNet doesn’t seem to be aware of that, or they just don’t’ care. In the first season of the Living World, while players were still learning the game and trying to build a Legendary Weapon, there were twenty different episodes. These didn’t include the holiday events or “break” events that were still designed and catered to the Living World ideal.

Crovax.7854:

I personally feel really let down by the ‘only 4-5 releases left this year’ statement.
Compared to the claim of ‘every two weeks’ this seems like a rather bad joke :/

wat
its october
if they have 5 more releases this year that comes down to about 1 per 2 weeks

Crovax.7854:

Since many people who are active on the forums don’t really read reddit, I thought I’d
post this here for anyone interested: http://www.tentonhammer.com/editorial/more-same-guild-wars-2

It basically highlights what most people here post on a daily basis: Overall good quality
of content but complete lack in terms of quantity .
I personally feel really let down by the ‘only 4-5 releases left this year’ statement.
Compared to the claim of ‘every two weeks’ this seems like a rather bad joke :/

I don’t recall anyone stating you would have fresh, new content every two weeks. That is quite a bit different than an update, some have content, some do not. The one’s that don’t generally contain bug fixes, skill tweaks, tool tip tweaks, etc.

GOSU.9574:

Crovax.7854:

Since many people who are active on the forums don’t really read reddit, I thought I’d
post this here for anyone interested: http://www.tentonhammer.com/editorial/more-same-guild-wars-2

It basically highlights what most people here post on a daily basis: Overall good quality
of content but complete lack in terms of quantity .
I personally feel really let down by the ‘only 4-5 releases left this year’ statement.
Compared to the claim of ‘every two weeks’ this seems like a rather bad joke :/

I don’t recall anyone stating you would have fresh, new content every two weeks. That is quite a bit different than an update, some have content, some do not. The one’s that don’t generally contain bug fixes, skill tweaks, tool tip tweaks, etc.

Compared to season one, the release schedules in season two are a joke. The most massive breaks we have ever seen, and the least amount of conrtent.

During my first year in the game, I don’t remember ever catching a break. If it wasn’t a content update they were changing some class balance, or running a festival. I was constantly bouncing back and forth between one thing and the next – the living world was so hectic that I barely got a chance to do anything normal, like run dungeons, fractals of the mists, Orr temples or play around in WvW.

This year, I have just sat on my hands and exhausted all “normal” content due to having nothing to really do, even resorting to achivement grinding.

The content needed to be permanent, but maybe the cost was too high.

Let’s just fix more tooltips, eh?

insanemaniac.2456:

Crovax.7854:

I personally feel really let down by the ‘only 4-5 releases left this year’ statement.
Compared to the claim of ‘every two weeks’ this seems like a rather bad joke :/

wat
its october
if they have 5 more releases this year that comes down to about 1 per 2 weeks

What about their ‘break’ that lasted longer than the actual season so far? I was talking about the whole year, not the time between Nov 4th and new year.

There have been 4 releases since S2 start and 4-5 to come; that’s 8-9 releases since March 18th with rehashed festival of four winds but let’s just add that too to a maximum of 10 releases in 33(?) weeks.
That’s hardly ‘every two weeks’ and what’s even worse, is that the only 4 story releases were back to back in 2 months after a 3 1/2 month (!) break. The current break has been 2 1/2 months too. That’s just far too long.

If you don’t feel that way then great, I’m happy you like the game the way it is now but in consideration of all the threads popping up asking for actual content I think I’m hardly alone with my perspective.

I feel that the current updates would be acceptable if we had large updates every so often as well. Whether that be DLC every 6-12 months or a large expansion every 2 years. The game has been out for over 2 years and is in need of large amounts of new content.

Crovax.7854:

insanemaniac.2456:

Crovax.7854:

I personally feel really let down by the ‘only 4-5 releases left this year’ statement.
Compared to the claim of ‘every two weeks’ this seems like a rather bad joke :/

wat
its october
if they have 5 more releases this year that comes down to about 1 per 2 weeks

What about their ‘break’ that lasted longer than the actual season so far? I was talking about the whole year, not the time between Nov 4th and new year.

There have been 4 releases since S2 start and 4-5 to come; that’s 8-9 releases since March 18th with rehashed festival of four winds but let’s just add that too to a maximum of 10 releases in 33(?) weeks.
That’s hardly ‘every two weeks’ and what’s even worse, is that the only 4 story releases were back to back in 2 months after a 3 1/2 month (!) break. The current break has been 2 1/2 months too. That’s just far too long.

If you don’t feel that way then great, I’m happy you like the game the way it is now but in consideration of all the threads popping up asking for actual content I think I’m hardly alone with my perspective.

I am in agreement here. If there isn’t going to be new content then why not do more polishing? Why not add some skills? Why not do more frequent meta shifts? The gem shop isn’t lacking in the regular updates department. That’s really the kicker for me. If skins and costumes can be added on a regular basis for the gem shop, why can’t things be done on a regular basis for the game?

This article makes a lot of sweeping claims and reads like something I would’ve written in 5th grade. Keep in mind that Season 1, while it had 20 LS episodes, took place over 1 and a half years. In comparison Season 2’s projected 9 episodes will take place over a period of 6 months.

The real problem with Season 2 is that Anet seems to have forgotten the multiplayer aspect of their MMO, pushing most of the LS content into single player instances. Dry Top is the open-world component of LS this season, but I find it entirely lackluster, especially in comparison to events like the Marionette, Tower of Nightmares, and Escape from LA.

Iason Evan.3806:

The gem shop isn’t lacking in the regular updates department. That’s really the kicker for me. If skins and costumes can be added on a regular basis for the gem shop, why can’t things be done on a regular basis for the game?

ArenaNet have an economist on staff. That should tell you all you need to know.
Face it, it’s been blatantly obvious for a long time now that quick-fire, gem store “content” they can generate cash from is more important than hard-to-develop, quality content along the lines of an expansion.

One thing that actively prevents me from returning out of sheer disgust is their decision to charge players who haven’t logged in for access to past Living Story content.
Even though I haven’t played for well over a year now, I suspect I have ploughed more into the gemstore than most (more fool me). Yet people who have paid nothing more than the initial price of the game get access to this content for free, whenever they like.
Instead of using this content as an incentive to draw me back to playing, they punish me.

I utterly resent the money I have wasted on Guild Wars 2.

Yet I gladly threw money at ArenaNet when I played Guild Wars 1, to the extent that I had two of every Collector’s Edition, all of the pre-release packs and even the Guild Wars 2 art-book.
Hell, when GW2 pre-orders became available, I ordered a Digital Deluxe to play and a Collector’s Edition to keep in a box.
Where the original Prophecies CE only continued to rise in price over the years, the GW2 CE has remained at a constant price among eBay sellers, something that indicates there’s no demand for the thing.

ArenaNet have burnt all of their bridges with me, and unless they spectacularly change course and realise that players are more than cash cows to be milked, I’ll never play an ArenaNet game ever again. What’s more, I take great pains to explain to friends who show interest in Guild Wars 2 exactly what they would be getting themselves into.
I actively dissuade them from spending any money on ArenaNet products.

And it’s worked.

Of course, aside from Gaile, who they’ve recently wheeled out in an attempt to better placate the community, they’re not really ArenaNet anymore. Most of the veteran developers have left to pursue actually innovative projects rather than soulless cash grabs.

I mean for the love of Mike, they’ve even managed to make Blizzard and Diablo 3 look like a superior alternative, and there was a game that released to much derision from the community.
Yet Blizzard listened and improved the game until it’s now focussed on actually being a great game to play rather than a conveyor belt of shiny things with a price-tag attached.

Don’t get me wrong, I have the utmost respect for Gaile, and she works like a machine, but it’s blatantly obvious they’ve asked her to step back into the fray in order to try and increase respect amongst veterans.
But all it’s done for me is strengthened my respect for Gaile whilst making me realise people further up the chain lack the ability and and requisite decency in order to do the job themselves.

They need to work on more player driven features like housing and whatnot to keep players engaged. The static content is not particularly good and opinions vary wildly when it comes to the quality of the storytelling. Besides, if you’re not into the characters you’re not going to be getting much out of the story. Personally I really don’t give a kitten about any of them and in terms of story I’m just holding out hope for somebody like Palawa Joko making an appearance.

But yeah, I don’t really play anymore because I feel like I have nothing to actually work towards. There’s also way too much of a focus on the shop in general and it feels like they design every single element of the game around it. While I realize ArenaNet needs to make a profit here we do have an issue when that seems more important than designing fun content. Entertain us and success will come to you.

Kaldrys.1978:

This article makes a lot of sweeping claims and reads like something I would’ve written in 5th grade. Keep in mind that Season 1, while it had 20 LS episodes, took place over 1 and a half years. In comparison Season 2’s projected 9 episodes will take place over a period of 6 months.

Wait. We got 4 LS2 releases so far in almost 4 months. More releases will come on 4th November, 18th November and 2nd December. Either LS2 finishes with that or there will be break due to christmas events again. So if LS2 has 9 episodes then it will need at least 7 months. But I think that there will be another break after the next 3 episodes and LS2 returns in February or even later.

Kaldrys.1978:

This article makes a lot of sweeping claims and reads like something I would’ve written in 5th grade. Keep in mind that Season 1, while it had 20 LS episodes, took place over 1 and a half years. In comparison Season 2’s projected 9 episodes will take place over a period of 6 months.

The real problem with Season 2 is that Anet seems to have forgotten the multiplayer aspect of their MMO, pushing most of the LS content into single player instances. Dry Top is the open-world component of LS this season, but I find it entirely lackluster, especially in comparison to events like the Marionette, Tower of Nightmares, and Escape from LA.

First of all, you insult an article from a site that reviews MMOs for a living. And not just GW2, but dozens of MMOs beyond that. You must realize that GW2 is a small boat in a sea of games, although it is one of the most popular.

I’ve seen their reviews for other games as I played them, and the developers usually raged against it instead of accepting the critism of an outside reviewer. Of course, ArenaNet will just ignore it instead, because that is their style.

Second, what 9 epsiodes over a period of six months? Maybe if you count the entire time that content is released collapsed into a single unit. But in reality, all of those releases are radically spread out, with little inbetween except a few feature packs that received more complaints than acclaim, for easy-to-fix reasons that have simply not been fixed for unknown reasons that ArenaNet will not reveal due to policy.

Try to think about how it all looks from the outside. Imagine being a new player to the game, finding out that everything that people experienced in the game in the first year is no longer available and that it is just the tip of the iceburg of bad decisions made on this game that have yet to be rectified. Then imagine that on top of that you find out that when the company finally starts fixing things, they do it by starting to make everything the same and resorting to copy&paste.

The second year of the game has not been what everyone expected it to be. We expected solutions to problems, not just a different set of problems.

In a way, it is just more of the same …

Kaldrys.1978:

This article makes a lot of sweeping claims and reads like something I would’ve written in 5th grade. Keep in mind that Season 1, while it had 20 LS episodes, took place over 1 and a half years. In comparison Season 2’s projected 9 episodes will take place over a period of 6 months.

Erm, season one ran from January 2013 to March 2014 and that isn’t a year and a half also apart from a break for Christmas they kept their 2 week schedule with special events along way.

Since ending season one they’ve taken two large breaks from the living story (about six months in total) and are likely to end season two before Christmas after seven episodes.

insanemaniac.2456:

Crovax.7854:

I personally feel really let down by the ‘only 4-5 releases left this year’ statement.
Compared to the claim of ‘every two weeks’ this seems like a rather bad joke :/

wat
its october
if they have 5 more releases this year that comes down to about 1 per 2 weeks

It will be a MIRACLE to see ONE major update between now and Xmas imho…

Pifil.5193:

Kaldrys.1978:

This article makes a lot of sweeping claims and reads like something I would’ve written in 5th grade. Keep in mind that Season 1, while it had 20 LS episodes, took place over 1 and a half years. In comparison Season 2’s projected 9 episodes will take place over a period of 6 months.

Erm, season one ran from January 2013 to March 2014 and that isn’t a year and a half also apart from a break for Christmas they kept their 2 week schedule with special events along way.

Since ending season one they’ve taken two large breaks from *UPDATING THEIR GAME*(about six months in total) and are likely to end season two before Christmas after seven episodes.

’fixed

Crovax.7854:

What about their ‘break’ that lasted longer than the actual season so far? I was talking about the whole year, not the time between Nov 4th and new year.

There have been 4 releases since S2 start and 4-5 to come; that’s 8-9 releases since March 18th with rehashed festival of four winds but let’s just add that too to a maximum of 10 releases in 33(?) weeks.
That’s hardly ‘every two weeks’ and what’s even worse, is that the only 4 story releases were back to back in 2 months after a 3 1/2 month (!) break. The current break has been 2 1/2 months too. That’s just far too long.

If you don’t feel that way then great, I’m happy you like the game the way it is now but in consideration of all the threads popping up asking for actual content I think I’m hardly alone with my perspective.

Frenk the Vile.2596:

It will be a MIRACLE to see ONE major update between now and Xmas imho…

o sure, now you guys qualify a release as something better/meatier/more substantial than what anet calls a release. got it.

to anet, 30 skill fact updates and 5 bugfixes is a release.

Crovax.7854:

It basically highlights what most people here post on a daily basis: Overall good quality of content but complete lack in terms of quantity .

Don’t forget diversity. So far it’s been pretty much all story instances, something that bored me when I first logged in. It’s like me going to an all-you-can-eat-buffet and getting Italian food, and then going back for a second plate only to find the salad bar open.

Season 1, people complained there were too many updates too quickly.

Season 2, people complain there are too few updates too far apart.

Conclusion; people will complain about anything if you let them.

chemiclord.3978:

Season 1, people complained there were too many updates too quickly.

Season 2, people complain there are too few updates too far apart.

Conclusion; people will complain about anything if you let them.

People were asking for more substantial updates not quite as often. As far as I’ve seen, we aren’t getting updates more often and we aren’t getting more substantial updates. The only thing that has improved imo is that we are now getting permanent content.

Fernling.1729:

People were asking for more substantial updates not quite as often. As far as I’ve seen, we aren’t getting updates more often and we aren’t getting more substantial updates. The only thing that has improved imo is that we are now getting permanent content.

Well, the answer is pretty simple to me. Arena.net can not produce the amount of content you want in the time frame you want. You’re either going to have to accept slightly more content more rarely, or smaller chunks more frequently.

If you cannot accept either of those options, you need to find a game that gives you what you’re asking for (presuming such a game even exists, which I am dubious).

Hannelore.8153:

Second, what 9 epsiodes over a period of six months? Maybe if you count the entire time that content is released collapsed into a single unit. But in reality, all of those releases are radically spread out, with little inbetween except a few feature packs that received more complaints than acclaim, for easy-to-fix reasons that have simply not been fixed for unknown reasons that ArenaNet will not reveal due to policy.

“In addition to the frustrations of rehashed content players are essentially told that there are only four to five Living World releases left for this year. We might be lucky that season two of the Living World could extend into 2015 but I wouldn’t hold my breath. It seems the finale will come before or after Christmas and then players are going to be left wondering what will come next.”

That estimate was taken directly from the article.

“All players have had is the Living World to stay in the game and, as David said, it has come to the point that nobody really plays Guild Wars 2 as their primary game anymore due to that.”

Here’s what I mean by a sweeping claim. To be clear, I’m all for criticism of GW2 as long as it’s informative and analytical but this article is neither of those.