Guild Wars 2

I like all people would like to see an expansion to the world of Guildwars 2, however the game model is so much different than anything that came before it.

Guildwars 2 works off of dynamic events -to the point where the event system has completely overtaken traditional leveling. In order for events to work, they require people. If zones were to die off due to population migration to new content, some events might be impossible to complete.

I think that this is why the game pushed for living story instead of traditional expansions. I think that the addition of huge new land masses and especially instanced content, can actually do a large amount of damage to the game.

Living story was an attempt to keep the game world interesting without splitting the playerbase too thinly over so much content that existing events and world areas completely break. Living story was created to prevent tequatl from becoming impossible, to prevent the Shatterer from never dropping down because no one is doing the meta event, etc.

I think the real challenge of Guildwars 2 is “expanding” the game without completely murdering the sensitive web of events that currently exists or killing player leveling zones.

To me, this is truthfully why we have seen no major expansions and instead get rotating temporary events for existing zones that decrease in popularity. This keeps the game world active and healthy. I can’t think of any other game where you could go into the darkest corner of any map and still find a name tag.

I think as a playerbase, instead of harping on why the game can’t traditionally expand, we should offer some constructive feedback on how to expand Guildwars 2 without the game killing itself.

Feel free to post your ideas!

What damage? The megaservers will prevent any kind of population decline… Unfortunately for me. I’d love to see a bit fewer zergs around.

Yeah, Megaservers help with population.

Though I think if reducing numbers playing in maps is the goal, they’re going the wrong way. Making levelling much less pleasant and rewarding isn’t really doing much for the maps where the LS or farms currently aren’t.

It seems like encouraging alt play with new classes and races would be a good way to get people into the open world. Or at least not ruining the trait system so that you kind of have to grind EotM or whatever to 80 before being able to play properly.

lordhelmos.7623:

Living story was created to prevent tequatl from becoming impossible, to prevent the Shatterer from never dropping down because no one is doing the meta event, etc.

No living story changes were made to Shatterer, to my knowledge – and Teq changes certainly didn’t prevent him from becoming impossible – it’s much harder to finish the event now, after all.
If anything, living story actually pulls people off the zones, and channel them through very limited content.

I’m going to copy and paste my post in the previous expansion threads again. They don’t seem to get addressed.

“During the living story releases it was evident that many people were logging on the first day or the first few days of the story’s release and then would not log in until the next step. Two weeks breaks are fine but this phenomena would also be seen with expansions especially if they are as “needed” as people claim them to be.

This leads to the question of what is better in terms of game health and revenue. Is it a life line of expansions that part of the population will buy to complete in under a week or month? This would result in spike activity at certain times and stagnation in the rest especially if people want as much new stuff in the expansions as they have stated (new classes, races, etc.).
Or is it better to have a slower medium of content delivery that gives incentive to at least log in bimonthly and play for a day or two for free and be informed of all of the new gem store items that are regularly introduced? This is part is apparently sustainable by 20 people, but I think should have more support to release more content (which is primarily what everyone wants).

An expansion would also probably shift the revenue stream from GW2 completely and end up being the primary source of revenue if enough people keep buying it and playing in longer bursts. This will also weaken the revenue from gems since the people bursting would be less exposed to releases. Another problem is WvWvW and sPvP both of these strive to achieve a competitive scene and the fragmented nature of expansions can hurt this a lot especially the WvW. Expansions would also remove incentives to improve these areas since expansions are mainly pve (pvp would be too unfair) and may become the primary source of revenue. The retention from wvw would then be insignificant. The longer burst nature would also be very harmful to wvw.

Living story can alleviate most of the concerns if only it produces more diverse content and well produces more. The problem is that content would always be slower than the player mastery of the content. One concern with living story however is that it does not seem to be as marketable as an expansion. This can be mended if Anet were to release teasers for the whole season but that can be bit spoilerly."

lordhelmos.7623:

I like all people would like to see an expansion to the world of Guildwars 2, however the game model is so much different than anything that came before it.

Guildwars 2 works off of dynamic events -to the point where the event system has completely overtaken traditional leveling. In order for events to work, they require people. If zones were to die off due to population migration to new content, some events might be impossible to complete.

I think that this is why the game pushed for living story instead of traditional expansions. I think that the addition of huge new land masses and especially instanced content, can actually do a large amount of damage to the game.

Living story was an attempt to keep the game world interesting without splitting the playerbase too thinly over so much content that existing events and world areas completely break. Living story was created to prevent tequatl from becoming impossible, to prevent the Shatterer from never dropping down because no one is doing the meta event, etc.

I think the real challenge of Guildwars 2 is “expanding” the game without completely murdering the sensitive web of events that currently exists or killing player leveling zones.

To me, this is truthfully why we have seen no major expansions and instead get rotating temporary events for existing zones that decrease in popularity. This keeps the game world active and healthy. I can’t think of any other game where you could go into the darkest corner of any map and still find a name tag.

I think as a playerbase, instead of harping on why the game can’t traditionally expand, we should offer some constructive feedback on how to expand Guildwars 2 without the game killing itself.

Feel free to post your ideas!

Megaservers alleviate any issues with spreading the player base too thin. As it stands the player base gets condensed automatically.

An expansion would bring players back and increase interest and player numbers.

lordhelmos.7623:

I like all people would like to see an expansion to the world of Guildwars 2, however the game model is so much different than anything that came before it.

Guildwars 2 works off of dynamic events -to the point where the event system has completely overtaken traditional leveling. In order for events to work, they require people. If zones were to die off due to population migration to new content, some events might be impossible to complete.

I think that this is why the game pushed for living story instead of traditional expansions. I think that the addition of huge new land masses and especially instanced content, can actually do a large amount of damage to the game.

Living story was an attempt to keep the game world interesting without splitting the playerbase too thinly over so much content that existing events and world areas completely break. Living story was created to prevent tequatl from becoming impossible, to prevent the Shatterer from never dropping down because no one is doing the meta event, etc.

I think the real challenge of Guildwars 2 is “expanding” the game without completely murdering the sensitive web of events that currently exists or killing player leveling zones.

To me, this is truthfully why we have seen no major expansions and instead get rotating temporary events for existing zones that decrease in popularity. This keeps the game world active and healthy. I can’t think of any other game where you could go into the darkest corner of any map and still find a name tag.

I think as a playerbase, instead of harping on why the game can’t traditionally expand, we should offer some constructive feedback on how to expand Guildwars 2 without the game killing itself.

Feel free to post your ideas!

“Guildwars 2 works off of dynamic events -to the point where the event system has completely overtaken traditional leveling.” I would love to see them also putting traditional quest in an expansion next to events because they add something to the game next to events. It’s not that I think events are bad, they are good but are especially good next to events and are can not simply be replaced by them as Anet did try.

Maybe that can then help. New land where we have a nice mix of events and quest and also lots of things to do in the game. Little quest that reward mini’s and so on. A land where the big story is not so important but the little stories of the NPC’s are important sending you form the one adventure into the other adventure (quest chains). No grinding. Just new land that gives new opportunities.

i would view an expansion of this game much differently than GW1…..it would simply be an add-on.GW1 expansion were practically new games……..in gW2 they will be more
like add-ons.
a few new zones and a new but much smaller version of a Personal Story, but mainly new weapons/skills/traits and the intro of a new race and class. it’s clear they will not add most of these things in any significant amount in “feature packs”.

i don’t see it as a danger…i see it as a necessity.

New zones would not necessarily pull people away from existing events any more than does the living story.

To be honest, when I look to an expansion for GW2, I’m not actually looking for new zones. I’m looking for mainly more character progression. Skills, traits, new systems, new weapons, things other than gold and skins you can work towards.

Because that’s the front which GW2 is massively lacking in at the moment. Your character just stops developing after 80, there’s no new skills, there’s no use for the experience you get after 80 other than to see a whole bunch of useless SP pile up. What we end up with is well, for the lack of a better description, because gear/gold are the only things left to achieve and progress towards.

more progression in terms of skills and traits would be nice but it is very hard to do and keep balanced. Also I don’t think it should require an expansion though. spvp and wvw issues.

I get your point, but I disagree. Imo the game will die much faster if an expansion isn’t released soon

I think the developer says the same thing about dungeons and spvp. Some thing along the line of we dont’ want new dungeons/spvp mode because it fractual the player base.

I dont’ know the answer to it. But I think it is a bit hard to hold on to players without major change to the game after 2 years.

Looking at how much content they’ve pushed out in the past 6 months (4 episodes of LS including one quarter-sized map), an expansion is simply beyond their capabilities. So don’t worry too much OP.

The danger of no expansion is equally dire, and it’ll turn GW 2 into RIPGW 2.

All I can say is that I dislike the cash shop, I wish to support the game but all we get is skins and skins. I remember when the wepons skins were rolling out and I didn’t know that they were black lion chest gambles, I thought they were drops, or awards for the hard work into achievemtns points. Those skins pumped me up for the living story, but when they turned out to be just a cash grab, I just quit, I can’t play this game anymore. There is so much to do but its getting menotnes, the events, dungeons, fractals, over and over again. For God sakes at least add new events, add rewards that I want like boss loot chests with new weapons.
I want to see the world, I, me, me who didn’t read a single guild wars quest is interested in the game to want quests to read them, find more about the world, but all I get is the same maps over and over again. What an expansion means to me is change, change to this repetition that is guild wars 2, of the events, dungeons, I WANT to learn again, of new maps, classes, wepons, I want to die because I was doing something wrong or it is to hard again. I miss when the dungeons used to be hard, ahh that rush of finishing it. Change is what this game needs, living story or expansion or both, I hope to have joy playing this game once again.

I think event scaling and the megaserver helps cushion the blow of fewer people in zones… and honestly there are always going to be areas with high population and low population, even right now. Events still work for the most part, even in areas far from the heavily populated zones. Seeing how it has worked, I have almost no concerns anymore about the fracturing of the playerbase. With event scaling and megaservers, the problems that happened after the release of Nightfall and Factions wouldn’t be nearly as bad, and I never really had much of a problem with them to begin with, because like almost everything in GW2, you can do most things solo. The few things you couldn’t, like dungeons or elite areas, were usually easy to find help.

Ever since the next chapter of the living story was announced, I’ve been troubled by a real lack of enthusiasm I’ve felt at the thought of running through more of it. Which bothers me because I remember the excitement I used to feel before Nightfall and Factions were released. I remember the anticipation was huge for months before, and the content in those expansions kept me busy for the next three months at least. And the accumulation of those areas, missions, objectives kept me busy for years afterward; there was a freedom bouncing between different goals in Tyria, Elona and Cantha. I know for certain that I haven’t played Living Story content as much as even one of the GW1 expansions, what little there is to replay is mostly annoying point accumulation. There just isn’t a comparison between the two, the Living Story is nice but a pale shadow of the excitement and content we used to get from expansions every six months in GW1.

Expansion could still follow the idea of keeping the community within the boundaries of the current game we have now. Update a few zones (like a real living world), rebuild, hubs, add dynamic events, story, personal story, invasions, permanent etc..

When players see xpacs being released 1-3 times in other mmo’s within GW2 life, and NCsoft/Anet cash in showing in return cash shop items, LS, and rehashed holiday events they start to question why they should financially support GW2.

This doesn’t mean they don’t like GW2.

Permanent content from xpac is what I would like to see,

Hype, Marketing, Teasing, Races,Professions, quests, personal story, GvG, mounts, flying mounts, zones changed, invasions, War, PvP modes, loot, mini games, QoL, skills, traits, recipes, housing/guild halls, Dynamic events, WvW updates(alter the map skins), yearly, and a Zeppelin war sky map in WvW.

Granted I don’t expect my personal wish list, but If they think spreading out one contents worth of a xpac across the next 3-5 years in LS is going to get me to open my wallet they’re are wrong.

Both NCsoft titles GW2 and Wildstar have gotten some pretty bad pr, real odd management and vision. I’m sure NCsoft has made a profit, it’s just weird.

Ill just leave a few words here which should express my opinion as to how difficult an expansive theoretically is :

Original Guild Wars.

POST vs PRE searing Ascalon…

The problem i see with expansions is, that unlike in other MMOs nobody is forced to
play them, since most players don’t want a new level cap and grind for new items
and also since we have the mentoring system.

In other MMOs you MUST play with all of your chars to play through the new zones
and do all the quests to level up, and then do the dungeons for better gear.

In GW2 you CAN take a look at the new zones, if you don’t like them you can simply
ignore them. So that could lead to the chance that for a lot of people an whole
new expansion gets already boring much faster than in other MMOs.

laokoko.7403:

I think the developer says the same thing about dungeons and spvp. Some thing along the line of we dont’ want new dungeons/spvp mode because it fractual the player base.

That’s simply not true. Anet has stated that they aren’t working on dungeons since they are hard to make and not many people seem to do them (they cited aetherblade path for this).
They also do want to create new spvp game mode types, we know this because they have shown works in progress and there are data mined maps.

KngGilgamesh.3481:

laokoko.7403:

I think the developer says the same thing about dungeons and spvp. Some thing along the line of we dont’ want new dungeons/spvp mode because it fractual the player base.

That’s simply not true. Anet has stated that they aren’t working on dungeons since they are hard to make and not many people seem to do them (they cited aetherblade path for this).
They also do want to create new spvp game mode types, we know this because they have shown works in progress and there are data mined maps.

ya I should correct myself. It’s at the PAX interview, MattVisual asked Colin weather they’ll do hard mode. And he says it is very unlikely, since having so many game type will fractual player base. And the way they want to update dungeon is maybe some change to a few of the exp dungeon and make it harder, or fractal.

That being said, that is a really long time ago, lots have changed. I think they also mentioned about fractual player base in another interview. So that is something they are concerned of.

Oh the comment that I was referring to was from around the time of the second feature pack.

lordhelmos.7623:

I think that the addition of huge new land masses and especially instanced content, can actually do a large amount of damage to the game.

I like pretty much all the different types of content in the game. This includes instances. When I want to do an instance, I do it. The people that want to do instances.. are already doing it.. so they’re already not in the world.. so offering more instances to these people doesn’t take them out the world.. it provides them with more content so they keep playing the game.. and potentially buy things off the gem store in support.

Yes perhaps an expansion is not the best thing for this game, but it’s all Anet can do now after making us wait for so long without new permanent content.

If they had expanded the world, let’s say one zone per 2 months, then we would have over 10 new zones by now. Since all they’ve released are 2 areas about 1/8th the size of a zone people expect them to release one big chunk of content.

KngGilgamesh.3481:

That’s simply not true. Anet has stated that they aren’t working on dungeons since they are hard to make and not many people seem to do them (they cited aetherblade path for this).

Of course they cited the aether path for this. I bet they didn’t expect, that a path meant for only a small subset of the population (design-wise) would end up being done by (surprise, surprise) a small subset of population.

^ Aetherpath was just doomed to fail. From every single perspective.

Design: it’s hard. If this was Wildstar, where the general design of every dungeon is ‘prepare to get your kitten whooped’, it’d be fine. But this is GW2, the most casual MMO on the market, and up to the point of Aether’s implementation, the population was fed with content that were almost entirely consisting of press 1 to win.

It also didn’t help that a lot of the mechanics in the dungeon was quite frustrating.

Rewards: three letters. RNG. Sure, you can get a 400g skin but most people’s memory of running the dungeon was enduring 3 hours of hell to come out with 2g and a few pieces of vendor trash.

Yeah, as has been listed before, mega-server population consolidation should be able to control any ‘damages’ caused by voluntary player-base redistribution. If some event chains start seeing less players and dies out, that’s fine, another elsewhere will make up for it. If people were interested they’d be there.

My constructive feedback, and expansion would be fine, is wanted, and would be payed for. Your move Anet.