Guild Wars 2

The breaks between the LS3 episodes were very annoying, even if it was about the quality I was really upset for waiting next 2-3 months for almost the same things. The story of LS3 is good but waiting so long for them was bad for many of my friends, guildies, and it made some of them only coming back to game when episode hit and then I and others I know did not know what to do after.

LS1 had a lot of amazing content- introduction of Fractals, Edge of the Mists, seasonal events and really good story and the episodes had been released more regulary and the story had really good quality.

LS1 lasted for over one year (from January 2013 to March 2014) and had probably 20 episodes (correct me if I’m wrong).

LS2 lasted ~6 months and had 8 episodes, but had probably the best story so far, secrets, changing the course of actions.

LS3 lasted for exactly one year from July 2016 to July 2017, but as I said the breaks were too long.

LS4 will certainly start in January 2018 so I really hope it will contain like 20 episodes with great quality in every month or less, so people will not be like “I dont know what to do during this long break”.

Also it seems the next expansion will be in 2019 so it surely be the underwater expansion with Bubbles/Selbbub. He will attack Lion’s Arch (mark my words).

So maybe Tengu are the topic for 4th expansion or LS5, because if Bubbles will attack Lion’s Arch it must involve Tengu to get out. So Tengu will be playable race in 2023

Don’t laugh. Mark my words.

I thought the breaks between ls3 episodes were spot on. 2-3 month for content is nothing at all. I’d much rather that than the messy, rushed and often shallow gameplay LS1 offered. I have criticisms of LS3 (mostly narrative), but the release cadence is def not one of them. They got that right in my opinion.

I do however hope LS4 isn;t January. They said they would not start LS4 unless they were confident enough players had finished PoF. If this is a content heavy expac, then with 2 festivals as well, January is far too soon for a new episode. I don’t want to feel rushed into what absolutely needs to be a huge, in depth, sweeping story arc (wishful thinking I know, but it still needs to happen imo), just to keep to an arbitrary schedule.

It’s not clear to me what you are asking for other than I should mark your words without laughing.

Here are some things that we do know about ANet’s medium term plans:

• They are intending to release Living World story updates on the same 2-3 month cadence for the foreseeable future, i.e. they already have the next 2-3 years mapped out for this.
• Expansions will be part of this release cycle, probably occurring every 7th or 8th update, with slightly more time on either side (e.g. sometimes closer to 4 months before and after the expac).
• Currently, they are not working on a sixth playable race. While it might happen “some day”, that day won’t be within the next 2-3 years.
• They are not working on underwater combat currently, but they have been more cagey about their responses saying, “wait and see”. However, in the immediate future, we know that they aren’t releasing aquatic weapons as part of weapon sets, fixing revenant for underwater, or reconciling traits, runes, and skills (especially elites) for underwater. In other words: it’s not going to be ‘soon’.

In short, we should expect

• 2-3 months between story updates, 3-4 months when it’s an expac;
• No new playable races
• Problematic underwater combat for a while.

2-3 months is not a long time to wait if it means we are getting a new map and mastery with each release.

Overall I loved the release schedule of LWS3, it gave people plenty of time to enjoy each release at their leisure before the next one came out.

One of the main reasons that LS Season 1 was able to have content out so frequently was that they had a large portion of their team devoted to the content. With them switching to the expansion format now, a large portion of the team is now devoted to that, leaving smaller teams to things like PvP, WvW, and PvE and Living Story content, etc.

Unless they had a major influx of capital on a regular basis, it would be hard for them to be able to get the man power together to release Living World content at the pace they were in Season 1 with the staff size they currently have.

I don’t see any issue with 2-3 months between episodes, it’s not that much of a wait, and I’d rather this than having content rushed out. Having a couple of months gives players time to get most of the content done, achievements, explore it with alts etc, all at a comfortable and enjoyable pace. And also gives time for Anet to patch any bugs with the zone, or balance things in it etc.

Plus it’s also a good move as it gives quite a large window for players to log in and get the episode for free.

Arden.7480:

The breaks between the LS3 episodes were very annoying, even if it was about the quality I was really upset for waiting next 2-3 months for almost the same things. The story of LS3 is good but waiting so long for them was bad for many of my friends, guildies, and it made some of them only coming back to game when episode hit and then I and others I know did not know what to do after.

LS1 had a lot of amazing content- introduction of Fractals, Edge of the Mists, seasonal events and really good story and the episodes had been released more regulary and the story had really good quality.

LS1 lasted for over one year (from January 2013 to March 2014) and had probably 20 episodes (correct me if I’m wrong).

LS2 lasted ~6 months and had 8 episodes, but had probably the best story so far, secrets, changing the course of actions.

LS3 lasted for exactly one year from July 2016 to July 2017, but as I said the breaks were too long.

LS4 will certainly start in January 2018 so I really hope it will contain like 20 episodes with great quality in every month or less, so people will not be like “I dont know what to do during this long break”.

Also it seems the next expansion will be in 2019 so it surely be the underwater expansion with Bubbles/Selbbub. He will attack Lion’s Arch (mark my words).

So maybe Tengu are the topic for 4th expansion or LS5, because if Bubbles will attack Lion’s Arch it must involve Tengu to get out. So Tengu will be playable race in 2023

Don’t laugh. Mark my words.

They can just do more involved current events. There’s a lot of existing, and most likely future, story arcs that could easily be wrapped up in these.

Don’t forget they were able to pull off that release schedule during Season 1 because the entire studio was working on nothing else.

They then needed a break to carry out the work required to make the switch to permanent releases for Season 2. (Either 4 months or 2 months, depending on whether you count the April 2014 Feature Pack and May Festival of the Four Winds as part of Season 1 or part of the Intermission.)

Season 2 maintained the bi-weekly/monthly release schedule but then they needed 9 months with no releases at all while they worked on Heart of Thorns and then another 9 months focusing on updates/fixes to HoT and related releases like the raid before Season 3 started.

It’s one or the other – either everyone at Anet works on small, regular releases and we don’t get the big expansions (which they started doing because players demanded it) or we get fewer small releases and big ones in between.

(Or they hire a lot more staff, but that requires a lot more money.)

Now personally I’d prefer the first one (assuming these releases would still be permanent). I think there’s no reason they couldn’t release everything they’ve put into HoT and everything they’ve told us is going to be in PoF via the Living World approach, maybe with periodic ‘Feature Packs’ for less content related things like a new profession or new specialisations.

But apparently I’m in the minority. Before HoT was announce this forum (and Reddit and Facebook and everywhere else) was full of people insisting that the game needed expansions, that it was the only acceptable way to release content and the game could not survive without it. Anet listened, players got their expansions and the release schedule (and payment system) was adjusted to match.

(Now I need Just A Flesh Wound to post in this topic so I can reference her signature.)

We got a new zone every 2-3 months with LS3. Can’t beat that. Yes, there’s definitely room for improvement on the story, but those zones were and always will be pretty awesome. (Except maybe the last one, but hey, ascended backs!!)

I love what they did with LS2 too, particularly the story, which was much smoother and compelling than the disjointed story telling in LS3. Anet must find the happy medium: drop different zones every 2-3 months without allowing those differences to make the story feel disjointed.

I believe ArenaNet had about half the staff (~200) during LWS1 than they do now (~400), so I’m not sure it’s a matter of staffing.

The expansion, Path of Fire, is releasing, almost exactly to the day, 2 months after the release of LW Season 3 Episode 6, One Path Ends. That’s pretty impressive. I don’t know if LW Season 4 Episode 1 will release in November (2 months after PoF release, and the only ‘break’ between Holiday Festivals), or in January/February (4/5 months after PoF release). Time will tell.

I loved Season One and its format and release cadence, but it was very difficult on the Devs. Every 2 months (or so) isn’t too bad, and with this cadence we have been getting new maps recently; so, that’s pretty nice.

Good luck.

I think there’s a bit of selective memory here. Yes, some LS1 was great, but there was a fair amount of filler too. As Ayrilana says, most of these could have been bundled into Current Events if that existed at the time.

As you get older and accumulate more responsibilities, you’ll appreciate the slower but bigger release cadence… burnout (both dev and player) is a very real thing with the more intense release schedule.

I played Wildstar at its launch, and their dev team over-reached on their release cadence – new maps and story every month. After 2 of these releases, the game had built up such a backlog of bugs, some of which were pretty significant, that they had to literally cancel Christmas (and also Halloween) in their first year, and put a block on new content for several months until they caught up.

So be careful what you wish for. I would much prefer the current release rate, with a minimum of major issues (the ascended soulbinding issue from a year or so ago is pretty much the only bug I can recall arising from LS releases that had a major impact) than a faster release rate that will result in buggier and/or smaller updates.

As a player who experienced it all as it came out, LS1 was far to fast. Every two weeks wasn’t enough time to get cheevos, and everything else done before it was gone. The landscape of tyria also changed rapidly and forever. This steady release gives people adequate time to get the cheevos and do the story and still work on other things without feeling pressured or rushed. The quality of maps is better imo. The POF expac should open up several maps like HOT did and give you plenty of materies to get you where you need to be with new specializations and mounts. Plus people who have stuff outside of the game can. Login to unlock the new maps instead of missing them entirely.

what i would truely love on lw s4… is a daily effort to collect resources etc for a war effort and get reward for contribution for the day but actually make it feel like a front line event all day that we could actually lose.

Where to begin…

Arden.7480:

The breaks between the LS3 episodes were very annoying, even if it was about the quality I was really upset for waiting next 2-3 months for almost the same things.

We got a new map with every LS3 release, LS1 did not have any new maps. Although the story part of LS3 was short, the map content wasn’t. Each LS3 episode has way more substance than any LS1 episode.

LS1 lasted for over one year (from January 2013 to March 2014) and had probably 20 episodes (correct me if I’m wrong).

Fractals were released in November 2012. So how do you say that Fractals were released as part of LS1?

Let’s do a quick analysis of LS1. There were about 24 releases in LS1.

The first 4 releases combined formed the Flame and Frost storyline. Each one individually had very little story, very little content, much less than a whole LS3 episode. All 4 of them were roughly similar to an LS3 episode, although I’d say still smaller because they didn’t add an entire new map to play in.
To complete Flame and Frost it took them from January to April 2013, that’s 4 months, longer than the average LS3 episode, with less content.

May and June had the Southsun and Dragon bash/Aetherblades releases. The story was minimal, there was hardly much open world change, they added one world boss and one dungeon. The average LS3 episode has way more open world bosses, more events, more story content than those releases. It took them 2 months to finish those, less time than an LS3 episode but with far less content.

It continues like this mostly. Labyrinthine Cliffs was a new map, but much smaller than an LS3 map. They added a new world boss here, a new dungeon/fractal there, done minimal changes to a zone here and there. That’s LS1.

Let’s take a look at LS2. LS2 lasted 7 months July 2014 → January 2015 and had 8 LS releases (also a Feature Pack and 2 festivals). However they gave us only 2 maps, Dry Top and Silverwastes. 2 zones in 7 months is very similar to LS3. In LS2 they released the maps in small segments, revealing new parts of the maps with every release.

So that’s what you want? To release the LS4 maps in a way similar to LS2, in small pieces and not the entire map at once like in LS3? Why? It’s like saying that you want them to release 2 shrines in Siren’s Landing per episode, and make it last 3 episodes instead of one. Why lock the rest of the map and not release the entire map at once?

Oh. Something happened to my 2nd post in there… I was trying to make myself clear.

2-3 months spaces between the episodes were good because the players have had more time to unlock the episodes and that was better than LS2.

Didn’t LS1 have Fractured episode? I’ve always thought it introduced Fractals, well it seems I was wrong.

Also I agree the breaks are good, but Devs were talking about the quality of all the things in LS3 and this is why we had them every few months, but IMO only maps’ designers did their job, and story who should be at the 1st place went on the background.

I see positives, I really do, but the quality of story was ‘meh’.

And I was waiting after episode 1 that the things will look better, episode 1 was great, but then this stupid Braham’s thread, Taimi’ex-machina made it so bad… It just destroyed the atmosphere of mystery, also this Lazarus’ thread was really weird. I was talking about it many times on LS forum, so there is no need to focus on that right now.

LS1 had its point- Scarlet
LS2 had its point- Glint’s Egg
LS3 did not have any point, it was all about make people confused.

Also Core Story had the point- Zhaitan, Sylvari- new race in Tyria.
In HoT- Mordremoth and Sylvari

I am worried about PoF Story if it will look like 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th episodes I’ll quit this game forever.

I am a lore player and I am not playing BabyRage, I just want a good piece of story and I want to enjoy in every detail.

The Head of the Snake was not so bad but killing my fave char in the end was a dire mistake.

I just want to get a good story, nothing more, but LS3 maps were only outstanding, the story was far away from perfection and LS1 story was nearer.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I believe ArenaNet had about half the staff (~200) during LWS1 than they do now (~400), so I’m not sure it’s a matter of staffing.

The expansion, Path of Fire, is releasing, almost exactly to the day, 2 months after the release of LW Season 3 Episode 6, One Path Ends. That’s pretty impressive. I don’t know if LW Season 4 Episode 1 will release in November (2 months after PoF release, and the only ‘break’ between Holiday Festivals), or in January/February (4/5 months after PoF release). Time will tell.

I loved Season One and its format and release cadence, but it was very difficult on the Devs. Every 2 months (or so) isn’t too bad, and with this cadence we have been getting new maps recently; so, that’s pretty nice.

Good luck.

I am REALLY hoping they do not try to fit LS4EP1 into this year. It seems strange after all the complaints about the content dearth pre and post HOT but even doing it in January a lot of people will look up, see what is new in the chapter, then go back to the expansion content. I am not as excited by most of the elites this time but am by exploring the new zones and getting the masteries.

I agree with Menadena – do not start LWS4 in 2017 Anet. Please. Give us the rest of the year to enjoy the expansion content, especially considering it has 5 huge maps. Fill out the rest of the year with festivals and current events, but please don’t start LWS4 before Jan 2018

People are really letting those nostalgia googles blind them if they think LWS1 was “amazing” with “great gameplay and story”.

I remember it being much worse, extremely laggy and with Scarlet “lorebreaker” Briar constantly involved.

OriOri.8724:

I agree with Menadena – do not start LWS4 in 2017 Anet. Please. Give us the rest of the year to enjoy the expansion content, especially considering it has 5 huge maps. Fill out the rest of the year with festivals and current events, but please don’t start LWS4 before Jan 2018

The expansion content and LS4 content will be permanent. I don’t see why they should push out permanent content releases just because some people want to exhaust everything from the previous content first before moving on.

Ephemiel.5694:

People are really letting those nostalgia googles blind them if they think LWS1 was “amazing” with “great gameplay and story”.

I remember it being much worse, extremely laggy and with Scarlet “lorebreaker” Briar constantly involved.

It was amazing, with a story no better or worse than what we have now (some great characters and voice actors, some not so much). Part of what made it amazing was that it was new, it was fast, it was furious and 2-4 weeks later, it was new, fast, and furious again.

The pace depending on an entire studio working together and the content being temporary. They only had to worry about the mechanics of the moment, not whether a special skill or tactic would be appropriate even a month later. Even bugs could be left alone, unless they affected the current content.

And that also explains why we suffered lag, since everyone joined back on the same days.

(Scarlet, of course, generates polarizing opinions. She’s my favorite major villain in the franchise; some people thought she was the worst.)

tl;dr LS1 was amazing (and was also buggy and annoying). Regardless, whatever it was isn’t likely to be replicated by LS4 or beyond.

After watching the diary and reading/watching 3 interviews I am convinced the story of PoF will be good.

It will be focused on Balthazar and the Gods mostly so it’s coming back to old, good times before LS3 chaos.

Braham’s thread will not take a part thankfully, so it’s the topic for LS4.

You should not expect LS4 in 2017 at all.

One month after the launch there will be Halloween Event, then in the middle of December Wintersday begins, so LS4 will most likely start in the late January/February 2018.

So we will have 4-5 months break to figure out all the PoF features.

Ephemiel.5694:

People are really letting those nostalgia googles blind them if they think LWS1 was “amazing” with “great gameplay and story”.

I remember it being much worse, extremely laggy and with Scarlet “lorebreaker” Briar constantly involved.

I remember the forums being on fire most of the time because people hated Scarlet and felt the story was random and stupid. It had almost no ties to GW1. It was like Anet were just making up random things. Not to mention the content was extremely shallow, often being completed in just 2 hours or less (with a boring collection or achievement to fill in). I’m glad they changed their delivery methods.

What I remember of LS1 was:

Getting kicked because the content was way above my level at the time.
Being abandoned after 3 days once the content locusts had devoured the content enough to get all their precious AP.
Being called a ‘casual scrub’ because I hadn’t spent every waking moment learning how a battle is ‘supposed’ to work.
Being blamed for failing events AND being abandoned for ‘leeching’.

Now all we have left are a few out-of-context events that persist and devastation that’s not being repaired at all. KITTEN to LW1