Guild Wars 2

The blog post said:

“Guild Wars 2 is a huge game, and keeping it strong means making tough decisions about where to spend our time to best serve the most players. We decided we couldn’t justify the sacrifice to Guild Wars 2 to make more new worlds for SAB.”

Could a dev specify if that was just for this year’s SAB? Or.. Forever? Some people told me it’ll be a yearly festival and maybe get tiny gimmicky changes or maybe new skins but no new content and the thought of that breaks my heart.

Considering how popular the SAB is and that most of the SAB was made by just 1 developer it seems like an april fool to me.

They simply don’t know yet. At this point in time, they’re not going to do it. They’re not going to tell you they’re never going to do it.

Best thing to do if you want more SAB stuff 1) buy the SAB gemstore stuff 2) play as much SAB as you can to make the metrics look good
Then Anet has a reason to dedicate resources for world 3 and 4

Malediktus.9250:

Best thing to do if you want more SAB stuff 1) buy the SAB gemstore stuff 2) play as much SAB as you can to make the metrics look good
Then Anet has a reason to dedicate resources for world 3 and 4

Absolutely — I haven’t seen specific evidence that SAB is hugely popular among the majority of players — those who like it seem to love it beyond words. That might be reason enough to spin off a development team dedicated to stand-alone minigames that plug into GW2, but it might not be enough for ANet to decide to focus on SAB instead of any of the 1000s of other things the community wants (including new legendary weapons, which also recently got postponed “indefinitely”).

tl;dr devs can’t do everything we want — if you want them to focus more attention on SAB, put your money and time where your mouth is.

Most of our guild seems to be in SAB tribulation fever to earn those skins and aura infusions. And on friendlist I see a lot of people in SAB for many hours too. But who knows what it will be like in a week or 2 when hype died down.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Malediktus.9250:

Best thing to do if you want more SAB stuff 1) buy the SAB gemstore stuff 2) play as much SAB as you can to make the metrics look good
Then Anet has a reason to dedicate resources for world 3 and 4

Absolutely — I haven’t seen specific evidence that SAB is hugely popular among the majority of players — those who like it seem to love it beyond words. That might be reason enough to spin off a development team dedicated to stand-alone minigames that plug into GW2, but it might not be enough for ANet to decide to focus on SAB instead of any of the 1000s of other things the community wants (including new legendary weapons, which also recently got postponed “indefinitely”).

tl;dr devs can’t do everything we want — if you want them to focus more attention on SAB, put your money and time where your mouth is.

then i will make my own SAB, with blackjack and bookahs.

TerminalMontage.5693:

The blog post said:

“Guild Wars 2 is a huge game, and keeping it strong means making tough decisions about where to spend our time to best serve the most players. We decided we couldn’t justify the sacrifice to Guild Wars 2 to make more new worlds for SAB.”

Could a dev specify if that was just for this year’s SAB? Or.. Forever? Some people told me it’ll be a yearly festival and maybe get tiny gimmicky changes or maybe new skins but no new content and the thought of that breaks my heart.

To hear it straight from the Dev’s mouth, watch this week’s Guild Chat. Josh specifically addresses this question.

Good luck.

I bought the Infinite Continue Coin yesterday to show my support. And, I know I will only be able to use it 3 weeks a year.

BTW, for someone who is not very good at jumping puzzles, it makes SAB a lot less stressful.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

TerminalMontage.5693:

The blog post said:

“Guild Wars 2 is a huge game, and keeping it strong means making tough decisions about where to spend our time to best serve the most players. We decided we couldn’t justify the sacrifice to Guild Wars 2 to make more new worlds for SAB.”

Could a dev specify if that was just for this year’s SAB? Or.. Forever? Some people told me it’ll be a yearly festival and maybe get tiny gimmicky changes or maybe new skins but no new content and the thought of that breaks my heart.

To hear it straight from the Dev’s mouth, watch this week’s Guild Chat. Josh specifically addresses this question.

Good luck.

What did Josh say? I havent been able to catch up yet

Would love time stamps of interesting passages of that guild chat. I dont have patience to listen to 55min of chat.

Personally I think it would be sad to never see world 3+4. After finishing 2-3 the game does not feel “complete”.

I’ll keep an eye out for the next Guild Chat.

Also, I’m totally forking over all my money to get every SAB thing there is, I can’t wait for the glider to come out

TerminalMontage.5693:

I’ll keep an eye out for the next Guild Chat.

Also, I’m totally forking over all my money to get every SAB thing there is, I can’t wait for the glider to come out

He is talking about this guild chat

SAB deserves to have world 3 and world 4.

At least World 3 for the next April.

It’s a fact SAB is one of the most popular and liked content in Gw2.

Malediktus.9250:

Would love time stamps of interesting passages of that guild chat. I dont have patience to listen to 55min of chat.

Personally I think it would be sad to never see world 3+4. After finishing 2-3 the game does not feel “complete”.

At 26:30 he answers the question about additional worlds. Hate to be the bearer of bad “news” but he says it’s highly unlikely, which sucks, but they have their reasons.
It will probably be a long, long time before new worlds come out, if they ever do.

Interesting that when I asked the same question, the moderator moved it to SAB trash topic. Thankfully he didn’t do it here….yet

Malediktus.9250:

Would love time stamps of interesting passages of that guild chat. I dont have patience to listen to 55min of chat.

Personally I think it would be sad to never see world 3+4. After finishing 2-3 the game does not feel “complete”.

Link to a thread with livestream notes, with times noted for each point.

Super Adventure Chat

Yeah, it’s a bit disappointing to hear that the prospects of future worlds are hampered due to the always busy work schedule they have. However I am not that surprised by it at the same time. After World 2 came in with a lot of critical feedback. I kind of felt future SAB content was going to be doomed. Especially when they kept moving Josh around after it’s release. Starting with Triple Trouble update. All the way through HoT tight nit development schedule. Which actually started with Seasons 2 development and finished up this last October.

Honestly though I wish they would give them more down time to work on these “festivals.” Simply because they can prototype all kinds of things. I believe that even SAB itself brought in some interesting mechanics into the main game. Just like many of the Season 1 content did. The only things I did not care for in Season 1: was when they introduced scarlet as a character, temporary content (reoccurring seasonal festival don’t count), and the lack of polish for it’s limited run. Beyond that there were some fantastic stuff to come out of Season 1 even compared to Season 2.

While I am a big fan of practically every jumping puzzle and mini-dungeon in the game. It’s refreshing to have content like SAB that is not just fun to do, but is just as equally rewarding for doing it. Even compared to a lot of other area of the game. No massive amount of currency grinding or terrible RNG system to muck up the fun all the time.

Now if only Queen’s Gauntlet, Bazaar of the Four Winds (Labyrinthine Cliffs), and Dragon Bash would get the same treatment as SAB. I think they would relieve some of that content drought that Mike was referring to in his recent post. Just make sure they are as equally fun to do with the rewards that you can get.

It would be cool if some super wealthy guy could donate like $10k(?) Or whatever the development costs might be to Anet to make a world 3 and 4

This SUCKS, I never knew I could be this happy and disappointed at the same time.

I am really happy to be playing SAB again, and right now I am having a blast, I am also happy for Josh because now what begun as his wacky experiment has been sort of immortalized as a permanent, albeit just once a year, fixture in this game.

Then you have to go and make me feel like this, I know W2 was controversial, but what you have done to it now is a nice compromise. Fast daily runs and the “expanded experience” for achievements. You made mistakes and you learnt from them, however…

Josh Foreman

This release [Back to School] taught us a lot about what SAB fans really wanted from this kind of content..

How can you say this, and follow it up with below…

Josh Foreman

Guild Wars 2 is a huge game, and keeping it strong means making tough decisions about where to spend our time to best serve the most players. We decided we couldn’t justify the sacrifice to Guild Wars 2 to make more new worlds for SAB.

Yeah we learnt a lot about what to do and not do, but we aren’t actually ever going to get a chance to put that into effect on any new SAB content. So after the tweaks to World 2 it doesn’t really matter.

This makes me sad, because I remember from Back to School, you might have made some miscalculations, however, back then and even now I feel sad because I remember that the things W2 was criticized about were mostly you guys being way too enthusiastic and trying to do too much (I hate that this can be seen as a fault at all, but unfortunately sometimes too much is actually too much).

Now that, as you say, you have learned from all of that. I really would love to see what W3 would be like. Because while the compromise to W2 is nice. What would happen if you took what you have learned and applied it to a totally new world would be countless times better. So yeah, it sucks… it really does.

I know I will play SAB for years to come, but one of the draws for me personally was that it was an evolving piece of content, and say what you will about the lore around it. I liked that SAB both inside and outside the box was a play on gaming and developing games. The back story about the shadow box and the in-game plot about princess Miya and Lord Vanquish. I hate cliffhangers…. I will play SAB, but without the development and conclusion of SAB and those stories, it won’t be the same, it just won’t. It is sad to see the whole Genie bit was also removed, but I guess in light of everything it was to be expected.

I know you sort of said unlikely but never say never during the Guild Chat, but at the same time what you said is the closest thing to saying never without actually saying it.

I will go enjoy SAB, while holding a silent vigil for the content that could have been while I am at it now. Sorry for waffling on like this, but I just had to get it all out of my system.

If they never make world 3 and 4, it will be just another unfinished and half baked project in a long row of unfinished and half baked things in GW2. Would be a real evidence of incapacity.
And I am still waiting for those purple and red tribulation skins (or whatever colors were promised when tribulation mode was introduced) of world 3 and 4

He said on the stream that it took 8 devs almost half a year for one world.

That is indeed quite huge for such a small part of the game.

Maybe, but it is also one of the most popular piece of content released so far. So I would say 8 devs were well invested compared to how many devs worked on content that worked on unpopular things that will get deleted again like the new desert borderlands.
Also there are around 220 devs in total working on the game at the moment, so 8 devs is just 3,6% of the total dev team. I think a lot more than 3,6% of the playerbase enjoy SAB, so the investment must be worth it.

Malediktus.9250:

If they never make world 3 and 4, it will be just another unfinished and half baked project in a long row of unfinished and half baked things in GW2. Would be a real evidence of incapacity.
And I am still waiting for those purple and red tribulation skins (or whatever colors were promised when tribulation mode was introduced) of world 3 and 4

purple and red is correct.

Also, would be nice to have that “Kaiser Snake” the current set is actually based on… cough

Entenkommando.5208:

He said on the stream that it took 8 devs almost half a year for one world.

That is indeed quite huge for such a small part of the game.

I don’t want to dispute his words but, he himself has said before that when W1 was built ie. SAB was made, it was less people than that… don’t recall what the timescale was like but I do recall it being three to four people for W1 (including the engine stuff to support their UI etc.). W2 was huge by comparison (without the shortcuts) and they also added Tribulation mode for all zones in that (or added it to W2, finished it in W1).

It is all about scale and pace… I guess, I have no doubt it could take exactly as much time as he said it does, however, what about only releasing one zone of W3 at a time then, surely that will cut down the time required to, well a third.

Also, so far all world have had entirely unique aesthetics, I mean for some zone’s the aesthetic is used only in that zone (see rapids), so maybe a bit of asset reuse mixed in with new props could also used to cut development costs.

I mean, it is pretty obvious Josh had a vision of some kind for all four worlds, because even when SAB was fresh off the oven he said that the super explosive finisher was actually the last upgrade for the bauble bombs inside the box. If he is not willing to compromise at all on that vision, then yeah I can see how SAB updates would be cost prohibitive. I mean it even shows on the map now that at some point there would be an underwater level in W3 or W4 (well it is sort of obligatory considering the subject matter), it really sucks that we might never get to see that. However, I would take something over nothing, because no matter how great SAB is it will eventually get stale as the years go by if nothing changes… which would be a huge shame.

AysonCurrax.3254:

Malediktus.9250:

If they never make world 3 and 4, it will be just another unfinished and half baked project in a long row of unfinished and half baked things in GW2. Would be a real evidence of incapacity.
And I am still waiting for those purple and red tribulation skins (or whatever colors were promised when tribulation mode was introduced) of world 3 and 4

purple and red is correct.

Also, would be nice to have that “Kaiser Snake” the current set is actually based on… cough

red and purple :P

Anyways, at least they made an additional colour for these extra rewards rather than using the red or purple colors…. so maybe, just maybe there is a slim hope they did that in the hopes that they might be able to do future worlds.

That said, I am far too much of a pessimist to think like that.

Vayne.8563:

They simply don’t know yet. At this point in time, they’re not going to do it. They’re not going to tell you they’re never going to do it.

That’s how I read it, too. I understand and agree with their current logic – Heart of Thorns is still fairly fresh and needs a lot of attention. But I hold out hope that we will get the rest of SAB, in due time.

At the least, we can rest easy and take heart that we don’t have to wait until then to get our SAB fix. September 2013 to April 2016 was a long time to go without Moto (especially if you bought the Infinite).

Forever. Or in Anet speech: indefinitely suspended.

(Take two, because I’m an idiot who posted this in the wrong thread. Teach me to multi-tab…)

I’m holding out for worlds 3 and 4 and the continuation of Moto’s story simply because if I don’t, I’m letting a corporation get away with breaking its promises and shafting good content because it’s not central enough. I’ve had more than enough of that, let me tell you.

So.

I’m glad they brought it back. I’m glad they put in the effort to upgrade it for the engine and add a few new things like the furniture store hunt. I’m more than glad — I’m ecstatic. I’ve been spending all my free time going after the tribulation mode achievements and questioning my life decisions. I’d probably spend my birthday in there if not for the play I’m in that weekend. I’m not ungrateful for what they’ve done for this month.

But if they think that’s enough for the indefinite future, they’re only fooling themselves. I hope they don’t plan to leave unfinished business unfinished, because I can’t respect any company that does that. Not anymore.

Malediktus.9250:

Best thing to do if you want more SAB stuff 1) buy the SAB gemstore stuff 2) play as much SAB as you can to make the metrics look good
Then Anet has a reason to dedicate resources for world 3 and 4

i thought the same thing till i logged in to play it this year. they made a ton of it daily account wide and the grind to get 35 bad. i dont play on trib mode and that doesnt help at all but when you limit it like it is i just see no point in playing. i played all worlds a day or two ago on normal and seen i only had 12ish of the currency and said to heck with it. was a great mini game but now its no different then HoT to me. just mindless grind with little reward in the end.

They could justify it if it was permanent content.

Tomoyo.3482:

— The grind to get 35 bad. i dont play on trib mode and that doesnt help at all but when you limit it like it is i just see no point in playing. i played all worlds a day or two ago on normal and seen i only had 12ish of the currency and said to heck with it.

You actually get 14 per day, plus at least one or two if you do the SAB dailies. So with minimal effort it is 2-3 days for a skin depending on how many baubles you grab in the levels. Usually after my daily run I have enough for one or two extra bubbles from Moto, and still 60 left over from converting Continue Coins to baubles.

The new short versions of the latter zones are so generous in terms of time investment required that at leas for me the daily run hardly registers as a grind. But for me it has become a routine already, I guess it helps that I enjoy chip tunes so it ends up being pretty zen experience.

Though I do have all the possible upgrades from SAB, from last time it was around… so W2 Z3 is probably a lot easier for me than it is for someone who doesn’t have that stuff (regardless of whether you take the long or the short path). Also I use both of the classic shortcuts, the eagle in particular beats even the new shortcut in W2 Z2 by a mile if you know how to stay on it to the end.

I mean they can’t exactly hand you 35 bubbles a day or more… since that would mean you run out of rewards before the festival is over, so what did you actually expect?

Edit: if you blindly follow dulfy’s or someone else guide from three years ago you are taking the long way through the later zones. Which you really should not do, unless you are gunning for achievements or secrets/upgrades (the nun chucks and the flute are so worth the extra trip) since you have the option to avoid that now.

There is (was?) an hidden achievement from a possible world 3 (on the API) but I can’t find it in game.

There are some new SAB assets that aren’t used yet. I think the devs tried to do the world 3 but they didn’t get the time to finish it before 1st april.

Khyan.7039:

There is (was?) an hidden achievement from a possible world 3 (on the API) but I can’t find it in game.

There are some new SAB assets that aren’t used yet. I think the devs tried to do the world 3 but they didn’t get the time to finish it before 1st april.

Are you sure it is not just the genie stuff from last time that was unceremoniously cut from this release. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Q9iAx_8Wk

I mean they couldn’t actually just remove the achievement, because people had it already so they just hid it (it might have been at least partially hidden during the original release as well, ie. at least one of the two was).

“Due to time constraints we’ve decided to cut Jormag from the game. He’s just not central enough! We have to make hard sacrifices and GW2 can continue along just fine with only 5 elder dragons”

Looking at the map we’re only lacking 3 zones, anyhow. 3-2, 3-3 and 4-1.

Crise.9401:

I don’t want to dispute his words but, he himself has said before that when W1 was built ie. SAB was made, it was less people than that… don’t recall what the timescale was like but I do recall it being three to four people for W1 (including the engine stuff to support their UI etc.). W2 was huge by comparison (without the shortcuts) and they also added Tribulation mode for all zones in that (or added it to W2, finished it in W1).

Yeah, I found that odd. I’m not accusing anyone of lying or anything, but I’d like clarification. The story I had heard was that SAB was essentially done in Josh’s spare time. I’m sure that was an exaggeration, but I’d like to know what exactly would take world three so long?

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Yeah, I found that odd. I’m not accusing anyone of lying or anything, but I’d like clarification. The story I had heard was that SAB was essentially done in Josh’s spare time. I’m sure that was an exaggeration, but I’d like to know what exactly would take world three so long?

Quoting myself from elsewhere because I am lazy like that.

Crise.9401:

Blaeys.3102:

Remember, SAB was never intended to be serious content. It’s an homage to old console games that started as a bit of an April Fool’s Day joke by a developer in his spare time.

Correction, SAB was an April Fools joke that Josh came up with and pitched to the company and while doing so he said he had an idea of the people he’d want to do it with. They prototyped it for a while and eventually got the full green light for that first April Fools.

SAB was conceived by Josh, but created by a team of people (4-5 if memory serves) with Josh as their coordinator. So please let’s debunk this one developer spare time project theory once and for all… yes Josh deserves a lot of credit for SAB but not all of it. Even for the first release, while it was that small team for most of it towards the end bunch of other people at the company pitched in (like the composers for the music and cinematics team for the trailer, and obviously QA).

If I had to guess, Josh is talking about in relation to what it took to make W2, which is fine… but compared to W1, W2 is gigantic with way more mechanics (perhaps too many mechanics even). Also, unlike W1, W2 uses mostly unique asset set for each zone which is nice but very ambitious. While W1 used lot more of the same assets, or palette swaps of them, yes it shows it was made by a small team, but it is also smart and cost effective.

Carighan.6758:

Looking at the map we’re only lacking 3 zones, anyhow. 3-2, 3-3 and 4-1.

The three 3-1 we saw with Back to School wasn’t really a zone per se, just a place for our old fried the genie to hang out. If anything it was a demo of the aesthetic of 3-1 moe than any actual part of the zone itself. It did not have any real progression through it, just a way to chat with the genie.

Mortifer.2946:

Interesting that when I asked the same question, the moderator moved it to SAB trash topic. Thankfully he didn’t do it here….yet

Because the topic was trash.

You got the exact same replies telling you what Josh and the blog said but refused to accept them as answers.

Malediktus.9250:

Maybe, but it is also one of the most popular piece of content released so far. So I would say 8 devs were well invested compared to how many devs worked on content that worked on unpopular things that will get deleted again like the new desert borderlands.
Also there are around 220 devs in total working on the game at the moment, so 8 devs is just 3,6% of the total dev team. I think a lot more than 3,6% of the playerbase enjoy SAB, so the investment must be worth it.

You can’t take a simple ratio of 8:220: the purported “eight” devs doesn’t include QA, config|release management (which would be part of the 220) nor does it account for future costs (in maintaining the code after other changes to the game, which is one of the primary reasons why we didn’t see SAB for nearly 3 years).

Similarly, we don’t really know how popular SAB is. We know it’s a rare piece of free content (since ANet chose to devote all their resources to the expac at the expense of the core game, a decision I think was strategically short-sighted). We know that the fans of SAB are extremely enthusiastic and vocal about it. We also know that its critics are comparably unenthusiastic and quiet. Popular? sure, but “most popular” out of all the stuff that ANet has added? I’d love to see ANet’s metrics about how many players spend more than 5 hours/week in SAB versus other seasonal or temporary content.

That is to say: I’m sure that SAB is worth investing in, but I don’t think any of us can say whether it’s the best use of that investment, when compared with all other competing ideas

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

That is to say: I’m sure that SAB is worth investing in, but I don’t think any of us can say whether it’s the best use of that investment, when compared with all other competing ideas

I’ve convinced people to buy GW2 specifically on the basis of SAB, because it represented so much possibility and diversity within the game. I can’t think of anything else in the game that has a similar dev input to consumer output.

To put it in context, even if the 6 man legendary team had produced every single one of the new legendaries in six months, rather than one, that still isn’t a game seller. No one outside of the game cares about a second set of skins. Nor is a third of a raid particularly appealing.

Things like SAB and the Living World were things that I could go to other people with and say “Hey! Check out how alive and exciting the world of GW2 is! It’s all free too!” Since they abandoned that model, put most mini-games on a weird rotation and stuck them in LA, and the NPE gutted a lot of the starter zones of variety, there just isn’t that kind of feeling any more. It’s really hard to tell people that Tyria is a world of possibilities, which didn’t use to be the case.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

I’ve convinced people to buy GW2 specifically on the basis of SAB, because it represented so much possibility and diversity within the game. I can’t think of anything else in the game that has a similar dev input to consumer output.

That is sort of impressive, however, convincing people to buy something on a basis of content that is around for two weeks or a month (depending on when you did this) is not maybe the smartest thing to do unless they could also like the rest of the game.

But who am I to judge, maybe two weeks of fun is all they needed to get their money’s worth.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

To put it in context, even if the 6 man legendary team had produced every single one of the new legendaries in six months, rather than one, that still isn’t a game seller. No one outside of the game cares about a second set of skins. Nor is a third of a raid particularly appealing.

Things like SAB and the Living World were things that I could go to other people with and say “Hey! Check out how alive and exciting the world of GW2 is! It’s all free too!” Since they abandoned that model, put most mini-games on a weird rotation and stuck them in LA, and the NPE gutted a lot of the starter zones of variety, there just isn’t that kind of feeling any more. It’s really hard to tell people that Tyria is a world of possibilities, which didn’t use to be the case.

I guess you have a pretty good point, something like SAB is such an unique thing nowadays you won’t find it anywhere else, certainly not in an MMO. All the new platformers out there are either 2D or high def 3D/2.5D. SAB has sort of an unique aesthetic. Kind of like a Nintendo 64 game but still its own style.

SAB has enough substance that it could in theory be its own game, sure the audience from general GW2 player population might be just a subset, however, like you said it has potential for broader appeal. Especially from the age group that grew up with classic platformers.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Malediktus.9250:

Maybe, but it is also one of the most popular piece of content released so far. So I would say 8 devs were well invested compared to how many devs worked on content that worked on unpopular things that will get deleted again like the new desert borderlands.
Also there are around 220 devs in total working on the game at the moment, so 8 devs is just 3,6% of the total dev team. I think a lot more than 3,6% of the playerbase enjoy SAB, so the investment must be worth it.

You can’t take a simple ratio of 8:220: the purported “eight” devs doesn’t include QA, config|release management (which would be part of the 220) nor does it account for future costs (in maintaining the code after other changes to the game, which is one of the primary reasons why we didn’t see SAB for nearly 3 years).

Similarly, we don’t really know how popular SAB is. We know it’s a rare piece of free content (since ANet chose to devote all their resources to the expac at the expense of the core game, a decision I think was strategically short-sighted). We know that the fans of SAB are extremely enthusiastic and vocal about it. We also know that its critics are comparably unenthusiastic and quiet. Popular? sure, but “most popular” out of all the stuff that ANet has added? I’d love to see ANet’s metrics about how many players spend more than 5 hours/week in SAB versus other seasonal or temporary content.

That is to say: I’m sure that SAB is worth investing in, but I don’t think any of us can say whether it’s the best use of that investment, when compared with all other competing ideas

Does a QA member or release manager even count as a dev? They are not developing anything after all

Jarwel.9180:

“Due to time constraints we’ve decided to cut Jormag from the game. He’s just not central enough! We have to make hard sacrifices and GW2 can continue along just fine with only 5 elder dragons”

But…Jormag’s life of looting needs to end! :D

I hope the Inquest will play a strong role in Jormag’s story and we get to fight Jormag twice: original Jormag and Inquest enhanced Jormag after they kidnap him after the player defeats him and give him ceramic armor (heatproofing) and inject different magic (not “magic” as in “that stuff that handwaves bad writing away” but as an energy that follows consistent laws and rules within the fictional universe) into him to enhance his powers. Poison would be his weakness and they’d inject some Itzel genes into him to do away with this weakness. Heat is too obvious for an ice dragon so…yeah, poison. Making poison his weakness would give a good reason to keep the Itzel (who are based off poison dart frogs so hugging them would be very hazardous as a real life poison dart frog has enough poison in one drop to kill 20 humans) and Nuhoc (Itzel allies) relevant to the next expansion.

Malediktus.9250:

Does a QA member or release manager even count as a dev? They are not developing anything after all

Well each cross-disciplinary team inside ArenaNet has at least one QA embed, so that is definitely part of any team size they would announce… but that QA embed is sort of like a liaison so yeah it is not like one person is responsible for all the QA for each team.

That having been said though, the fact is that people beyond the core project team will at one point or another be required. Take SAB W1 for instance that was made with a team of ca. 5 people (check their youtube channel for a source on this, too lazy to look it up again). That five people included a QA embed, however, it did not include f.ex. the composers doing the music for SAB or the cinematics team that did the kitten trailer for it.

However, whether they count as devs in there or not… that is sort of irrelevant because at one point or another their involvement is still necessary and they have limited time and as thus are a limited resource within the company.

Either way, I think Josh proved with W1 that even a small team can do something amazing, same applies to the raid team (although I do not raid, so their amazingness is sort of irrelevant to me). However, Josh is also very ambitious… so yeah I have no doubt 6-8 people for 4-6 months or whatever it was working primarily on SAB would be what would be necessary for another world in the same scope as W2. But honestly I would take something less ambitious over nothing at all…

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

That is to say: I’m sure that SAB is worth investing in, but I don’t think any of us can say whether it’s the best use of that investment, when compared with all other competing ideas

I’ve convinced people to buy GW2 specifically on the basis of SAB, because it represented so much possibility and diversity within the game. I can’t think of anything else in the game that has a similar dev input to consumer output.

To put it in context, even if the 6 man legendary team had produced every single one of the new legendaries in six months, rather than one, that still isn’t a game seller. No one outside of the game cares about a second set of skins. Nor is a third of a raid particularly appealing.

Things like SAB and the Living World were things that I could go to other people with and say “Hey! Check out how alive and exciting the world of GW2 is! It’s all free too!” Since they abandoned that model, put most mini-games on a weird rotation and stuck them in LA, and the NPE gutted a lot of the starter zones of variety, there just isn’t that kind of feeling any more. It’s really hard to tell people that Tyria is a world of possibilities, which didn’t use to be the case.

My friends bought GW2 around the time SAB first came out, they renamed their GW2 folder SAB and some of them only log in when SAB is around lol

TerminalMontage.5693:

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

That is to say: I’m sure that SAB is worth investing in, but I don’t think any of us can say whether it’s the best use of that investment, when compared with all other competing ideas

I’ve convinced people to buy GW2 specifically on the basis of SAB, because it represented so much possibility and diversity within the game. I can’t think of anything else in the game that has a similar dev input to consumer output.

To put it in context, even if the 6 man legendary team had produced every single one of the new legendaries in six months, rather than one, that still isn’t a game seller. No one outside of the game cares about a second set of skins. Nor is a third of a raid particularly appealing.

Things like SAB and the Living World were things that I could go to other people with and say “Hey! Check out how alive and exciting the world of GW2 is! It’s all free too!” Since they abandoned that model, put most mini-games on a weird rotation and stuck them in LA, and the NPE gutted a lot of the starter zones of variety, there just isn’t that kind of feeling any more. It’s really hard to tell people that Tyria is a world of possibilities, which didn’t use to be the case.

My friends bought GW2 around the time SAB first came out, they renamed their GW2 folder SAB and some of them only log in when SAB is around lol

That’s awfully sweet that people are willing to pay just to play SAB (although that can be done for free). That ignores all the other people who buy GW2 and don’t even know about SAB or the people who try SAB and never return.

Again, I’m not saying it isn’t popular. I’m saying we don’t know how popular.

Malediktus.9250:

Does a QA member or release manager even count as a dev? They are not developing anything after all

In this forum, people use the word, “dev,” to refer to anyone working for the company. Gaile is called a “dev” even though she doesn’t code.

Regardless, even if ANet has 220 primary coders, they also have to pay for folks that support those functions and those costs vary depending on what’s being worked on.

Adding a new weapon skin requires art, but usually not changes to mechanics, so there’s little if any code management, maintenance, or code QA. Adding a new fractal instance would require typical code management and initial QA, but not add notably to long term maintenance costs.

The wardrobe cost a lot to implement and the initial QA was high, but it reduced certain maintenance costs and setup a system that is reusable as new things are added to the game.

Adding a new SAB world, on the other hand, increases all the secondary costs, since there would be new skins, an increase the breadth of the instance, etc. And since SAB includes different visuals, adapted movement & combat mechanics, and so on, lots of the code can’t be re-used later for the rest of the game.

tl;dr it’s not enough to say “8 people out of X worked on SAB, therefore we need only look to see if the content is played by an average of at least 8:X concurrent players” — there are lots of other considerations that change that calculus.

Honestly? I think all festivals should continue to get development associated with them and not just be regurgitated the same way year after year. W3 and W4 SAB is something I want more than a lot of other things in-game, and hopefully metrics at the end of the SAB event show that lots of people played it and would like to play new stuff associated with it.