Guild Wars 2

Hello I played for 3-4 months straight at release, and had a blast the entire time. I leveled many classes, did lots of dungeons, did lots of fractals, did lots of crafting, did tons of events, and WVW’d a bunch. I eventually got burned out and quit the game, hoping that when I came back there would be tons of new content to experience. To my dismay, 6 months after I come back, I do all the new content(secret of southsun + guild imssions and a few other new events/jump puzzles/dailies) in a matter of 5-10 hours, less than 1 day of playing. That is completely unacceptable – if the content that was added had not been temporary, there would be a ton of mini-games, dungeons, jump puzzles, events, etc I could be doing right now, but because it was all temporary I got less than 10 hours of new content to do.

I love this game, I really do, but this is the first MMO I’ve ever played(I’ve been playing MMO’s for 11+ years now) where I’ve come back to a game 6 months later and had less than 1 day of new content to experience. This is also the first MMO I’ve played where 90% of the new content was temporary, why is this? It is not very fun to miss out on tons of content, then come back and have almost nothing to do. I don’t want to play for 3 days every month when you add temporary content, I want to save up tons of content then do it all after I stop playing for a few months, ensuring when I come back I’ll have months and months of content to play and look forward to.

I’m not the type of person who plays on/off for 3 days when new stuff is added, I like to play a lot, then quit, then come back and play a lot again. At the rate this game is moving, I’ll basically never be able to do that until a boxed expansion comes out that adds hundreds of hours of gametime.

Does anyone else have a problem with temporary content or is it just me?

Thanks for reading this and have a nice day!

You’re not the first person to complain about temporary content in a game. You probably won’t be the last. But it seems like this is the direction Anet has decided to go.

I’m of a mixed mind about it. Anyway, some of the stuff will be staying behind on Southsun when this event ends, or so they say.

As I said in another thread, the downside of temporary content is new players will never see it, thus it never existed to them. Making GW2 seem like nothing has been added since release.

While the content is alright for those that are already playing, and we know it was there, new players will see nothing. It’s like playing the “vanilla” version of the game to them since the content is always temporary. Thus it seems like Anet has done nothing.

The content is decent while it is here, but they need to start working on permanent content, not all this temporary stuff. Temporary content is for holidays, not actual storyline content. Otherwise you’re leaving new players clueless to what is going on in the game cause they never get to see any of this storyline content cause it is all temporary.

Again, players need to see that stuff has been added to the game. They need that reassurance that Anet is releasing new content and the game is alive and healthy. Temporary content goes against that and leaves new players seeing nothing being done to the game since release, since it was all temporary.

I think Anet wants to change the game. I think they want to make the temporary content so prevalent that people will come back just to look for it. They’ll keep an eye in. Obviously this won’t work for people like the OP, but it might well work for a lot of others.

If nothing else, it’s an interesting experiment.

If they are new players, they have to whole game to experience. And while they experience the game, they will probably see some new content being added. Returning players, on the other hand, may well have missed content that came and left while they were gone, though there will probably always be current new content.

Just in the last couple of weeks, we have been assured that permanent content will be appearing; I believe the Southsun story will leave something behind for us to enjoy after the Living Story moves on. =)

I am not a fan of temporary content either but for a different reason.

When I play, which is basically way too much and almost all of my free time recently, I get immersed in other things and hate feeling the pressure of a time limit in order to get through content.

When the recent living story line ended with a dungeon scenario I accepted it as content I would not finish as I do not enjoy dungeons that revolve around structured group play.

I spend a few hours today pushing myself through the new Southsun Cove content knowing that if I did not, it just might not be there in a few weeks.

I enjoyed the overall experience of the content but there were periods of frustration as I pushed myself to do the mini game and jump puzzle just to get a back piece for future use.

There are times where I focus on some achievements and even gear related interests but I like to do these things at my leisure, not as an obligation to be completed before the area is removed. These time frames often conflict with other things I am already working on.

I also find that sometimes the content is not as enjoyable when there are hundreds of people all over the place killing everything in sight or crowding certain areas. My efforts to get through a jump puzzle in Southsun Cove were made a great deal more difficult as there were also about 7 or 8 others all bouncing on the rocks at the same time. I had to exit the area after a bit just because I couldn’t even see where I was trying to land.

Sometimes there is a bit more adventure when it is not shared by so many others all at once. That is harder to do when you know the content is at risk of being removed or even altered before you get to have your own personal ideal experience.

This does not mean I wish this was a single player game or any of that garbage. I just do not enjoy some types of content and prefer to see the game in a more relaxed way with fewer crowds.

I like my real world like this as well. I do not enjoy crowds.

Temporary content by default are not bad. The problem is to define what should stay permanent within the temporary content.

-Seasonal events (Christmas, Halloween, Easter, etc..):
This events should stay temporary as they are meant to bring the hollidays and other noticble RL events into the game. They aren’t tied to the Lore of the game and they surely are meant to be played on that times solely!

-Living Story type events:
While the content that is the backbone of the “Living Story” should not stay permanent (living story steps), the content that is not directly attached to the story, should stay. Taking the Flame & Frost Living story, the dungeon should have stayed. It may be slightly different to accommodate the Living story conclusion (Like 2 paths – The first dredges exclusive and the second Flame Legion exclusive as their alliance have been broken, or not).

LHound.8964:

Temporary content by default are not bad. The problem is to define what should stay permanent within the temporary content.

-Seasonal events (Christmas, Halloween, Easter, etc..):
This events should stay temporary as they are meant to bring the hollidays and other noticble RL events into the game. They aren’t tied to the Lore of the game and they surely are meant to be played on that times solely!

-Living Story type events:
While the content that is the backbone of the “Living Story” should not stay permanent (living story steps), the content that is not directly attached to the story, should stay. Taking the Flame & Frost Living story, the dungeon should have stayed. It may be slightly different to accommodate the Living story conclusion (Like 2 paths – The first dredges exclusive and the second Flame Legion exclusive as their alliance have been broken, or not).

The reason why the content doesn’t stay is because the more you fracture the playerbase, the less people there are playing. SAB and the new dungeon kept a lot of people out of the open world, which is not really Anet’s goal.

Vayne.8563:

The reason why the content doesn’t stay is because the more you fracture the playerbase, the less people there are playing. SAB and the new dungeon kept a lot of people out of the open world, which is not really Anet’s goal.

That is quite a loop, ain’t it?

Content is played → Players stays off Open World → They remove content to stop that → Players stop playing until there is “content to play” (No Open World interaction aswell) → Content is created to bring players again. /Repeat

So the thing here, is what should be left as permanent and shouldn’t be, to make players stay tuned in the game (whatever the mode they are playing)!

LHound.8964:

Vayne.8563:

The reason why the content doesn’t stay is because the more you fracture the playerbase, the less people there are playing. SAB and the new dungeon kept a lot of people out of the open world, which is not really Anet’s goal.

That is quite a loop, ain’t it?

Content is played -> Players stays off Open World -> They remove content to stop that -> Players stop playing until there is “content to play” (No Open World interaction aswell) -> Content is created to bring players again. /Repeat

So the thing here, is what should be left as permanent and shouldn’t be, to make players stay tuned in the game (whatever the mode they are playing)!

I agree. This is a real balancing act. It’s like the hotter colder game. I believe Anet is trying different things and looking at the player reaction…using data to figure out which way works best. I’m pretty sure more tests like this are coming.

LHound.8964:

Vayne.8563:

The reason why the content doesn’t stay is because the more you fracture the playerbase, the less people there are playing. SAB and the new dungeon kept a lot of people out of the open world, which is not really Anet’s goal.

That is quite a loop, ain’t it?

Content is played -> Players stays off Open World -> They remove content to stop that -> Players stop playing until there is “content to play” (No Open World interaction aswell) -> Content is created to bring players again. /Repeat

So the thing here, is what should be left as permanent and shouldn’t be, to make players stay tuned in the game (whatever the mode they are playing)!

Why do people stop going to the open world? Is it because the new temporary content is more rewarding, easier, and gives better/more loot/rares/etc? Well, an easy fix to that is to make the content temporary give you that bonus, for the duration of how long the content lasts now, but after the event is over, they reduce the rewards and make it slightly worse or equal to the outside world. That way people will still have new content to do.

Shiyo.3578:

LHound.8964:

Vayne.8563:

The reason why the content doesn’t stay is because the more you fracture the playerbase, the less people there are playing. SAB and the new dungeon kept a lot of people out of the open world, which is not really Anet’s goal.

That is quite a loop, ain’t it?

Content is played -> Players stays off Open World -> They remove content to stop that -> Players stop playing until there is “content to play” (No Open World interaction aswell) -> Content is created to bring players again. /Repeat

So the thing here, is what should be left as permanent and shouldn’t be, to make players stay tuned in the game (whatever the mode they are playing)!

Why do people stop going to the open world? Is it because the new temporary content is more rewarding, easier, and gives better/more loot/rares/etc? Well, an easy fix to that is to make the content temporary give you that bonus, for the duration of how long the content lasts now, but after the event is over, they reduce the rewards and make it slightly worse or equal to the outside world. That way people will still have new content to do.

A lot of people go to the event for achievements and because it’s new. In the case of the new event, it’s because of the advantages.

Anet has already said some stuff from this event will stay, so there’ll be some permanent content from this, presumably stuff that makes Southsun worth visiting to more people.

I am more interested in getting the Daily done for laurels than I am in doing the temporary content.