Guild Wars 2

Bigsexy.8302:

Galen Grey.4709:

I am going to assume you have no experience in development by this theory. Well let me tell you why what you’re suggesting would not work.

In order to add / change code on a project you need to understand that project. Failing that whatever you do is likely to break a million things you didnt know depended on something you changed. That’s not a couple lines of code, its generally millions of lines. That getting familiar with a project generally takes 6 months – 1 year just to get to a point where you start being productive. Its much worst when you get no proper handover.

That alone is a bad idea for NCSoft cause lets assume they force Anet developers to switch over for a couple of years, they’re only going to take 1 year of actual production value and loose 2 years minimum (1 year for the anet developer to get up to speed + 1 year for the new developer coming in to replace the anet developer after they go back)

Also Anet is in Washington area, Carbine is in California so okey Ncsoft is going to ask a bunch of Anet developers to go work for carbine for a while … well that means spending a ton of money to move those devs to california only to move them back when the time comes.

But perhaps the biggest reason why NCsoft would never even consider such a move has got to be what they understand best… MONEY. Such a move would cost them colossal amounts of money.

1. Employee + family relocation – TWICE
2. 2 years of downtime on wildstar development that really can be cut in 1/2 if you hire new full time staff.
3. damaging your 2nd most profitable product in lieu of a product that’s unfortunately 2nd worst product and thats the quarter after release. why would they do that? there is no guarantee the problem with wildstar is one of development and even if that can be fixed its by a team you’re going to loose what if the one that comes after isnt going to be able to deliver either?

Sorry to burst your bubble of convince but I do in fact have an idea of development. And moving onto new project is not really that hard when you are seasoned developer. 6 months is more than enough, that’s not some NASA spaceship…
Aside GW2 has been out for 2+ years.
And of course you missed the part where I mentioned the possibility of work from distance.
Do you know how many big game companies outsource work to 3rd parties? Mostly assets, not code, but there are devs who do that and it’s not hard.
There’s nothing new.

Here’s an example for you
http://www.liquiddevelopment.com/about.php

edit: and btw GW2 as a product is beyond damaged already. Wonder why…

The example you gave relates to art work not coding. I doubt the Issue that made wildstar less then successful had to do with its art style. Thats probably one of its strong points.

Also probably its quicker to start working on a nasa spaceship then it is to start working on an MMO actually. Coding for Aerospace applications needs to be compact and simple as much as possible. The important part there is robustness not complexity. Bet that most MMOs have more lines of code then anything nasa have ever produce. Of course you need to be a lot more skilled to work on space stuff simply because to reduce that complexity everything needs to be designed from scratch. There is no using off the shelf libraries to cut down development time like an MMO can do. So obviously you need much more skilled developers to work on something like the space shuttle then you would an MMO but there will be ton less code to deal with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle
" the number of code lines was tiny compared to a public commercial software product, changes were only made infrequently and with extensive testing, and many programming and test personnel worked on the small amount of computer code"

and finally I didnt ignore your working remotely suggestion its just not really practical to have 100s of people working independently on something this complex. There needs to be a lot of co-ordination. There is a reason why a lot of MMOs adopt Agile development methodologies and one of the core aspects of Agile development is daily status meetings.

Xenon.4537:

Scipio.3204:

Xenon.4537:

Vayne.8563:

Xenon.4537:

Belenwyn.8674:

Xenon.4537:

@DeceiverX.8361

What I mean to get at is that the current format for living world doesn’t seem to include a lot of the big things that expansions have, like new races, classes, skills, weapons, maps, dungeons, end game, etc. The format has been far simpler.

Each episode consists of:

• one section of a new map
• a small handful of story instances totaling 1-3 hours tops
• an armor piece OR backpack OR weapon skin
• a new type of enemy
• some dynamic events
• some achievements

I talked about this with Vayne the other day, but I don’t see things like races, classes, or dungeons fitting in to the scope of this format. I can MAYBE see a single new skill OR weapon being added through this format, but it’s unlikely because everyone is just terrified of possible balance issues. It’s sad that everyone ignores the fact that balance can be addressed with further patching.

Races are even less likely because they would need a whole story arc (multiple episodes) dedicated to them, and new animations, and a laundry list of new armor skins to fit their body, etc, etc. These are things that are beyond the scope of a single episode of the current format, and it would simply make more sense to do a whole expansion to accommodate all of it as a cohesive package instead of a hodge-podge of separate episodes.

Only a small team is working on the current season. And we see the maximum of content it can provide. Assumed much bigger teams are working on the big projects – let us call them season 3 and 4 – it is easily possible to deliver larger quantities of content: bigger maps, skills, new weapons etc.

If Arenanet fear balance issues caused by new skills we will never see them – not via LW and not via X-pac. If it is too much work to design gear and animations for a new race the reace will never be released.

There’s absolutely no reason to believe Anet has a secret team working on an expansion in the background. And you have no idea how big the living world team is. Maybe you’re right, but maybe you’re wrong. All we know is there is no official statement on an expansion, and they seem to be going ahead with the current living world model full steam.

Anet said there are 20 people on the living world team now and they said the rest of the team is working on longer term bigger projects. They even said as one big project gets launch they work on the next ones.

Where did they say that?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Enough-of-your-GMPC-please/page/3#post4193277

Here. If it is really true that only ~ twenty people works on the living story releases that , including the maps & dynamic events that would mean most of anet’s resources is spent on something else, however the twenty people on the LS team could mean only the story part of the releases…. also they mentioned “Big background projects” numerous times, but we don’t know what they meant, perhaps we already got them with the new zones, megaservers or china release.

That’s very interesting. I was under the impression that they had far more than 20 people. I mean during season 1 they said they had 4 different living world teams, each with around 20 people, which would bring it to about 80 people in total working on living world. That still leaves over 200 people, around 300 total working at Anet. But I still feel like Anet’s idea of “big background project” is something like the wardrobe or the NPE, not a full blown expansion.

Maybe I’ll be wrong. Maybe the reason Anet has been so quiet and slow to talk about an expansion is because they are working on a stand alone GW2 side-quel just like they made Factions and Nightfall. Maybe its taking them longer than a usual expansion because it needs to be a full stand alone game.

you’re right that for season 1 they had 4 teams but they never disclosed the team size of season 1. that post states all 4 teams where joined together and are now 20 people so its very possible each season 1 team was made of 5 people but thats speculation on my part afaik they never disclosed that detail.

darkace.8925:

Vayne.8563:

Now when the game launched that was true. The situation changed when they saw people getting exotic gear and leaving the game. So were they dishonest, or did they change their mind. There is such a huge difference in this.

Years ago, due to doctors advice, everyone gave up butter to eat margerine. The doctors believed at the time that it was healtier. Now they tell you margerine is a killer and you’re better off with butter. Did the doctors lie? Were they dishonest.

The first paragraph says “we believe” and I’m sure when they said that that’s exactly what they did believe.

Only the least forgiving person could call that a lie, unless you have proof that when they said it they didn’t believe it. Things change in my life all the time and I make statements based on now. I’m not lying if the situation changes.

Only the most naive person would pretend it’s anything other than a lie. There’s simply no amount of spin that reconciles “we expect X” and “we never expected X”. into anything other than a lie. If they’d said “we expect X” and “we now believe not-X is best for the game” it wouldn’t have been a lie. But that’s not what was said.

I’m far far from naive and I see it as a business making a business decision based on circumstance. It happens in business all the time.

Astralporing.1957:

also they mentioned “Big background projects” numerous times, but we don’t know what they meant

My bet is on the twice-a-year feature packs.

You loose your bet sorry

In this interview its clearly outlined that the feature packs and big background projects are sperate things:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

“Not really. ArenaNet is full tilt with the Chinese launch of Guild Wars 2, the Season One finale, the feature-build update and the two big background projects.”

What ever those big background projects are they’re definitely not Living story, A chinese release or a feature patch.

Galen Grey.4709:

Astralporing.1957:

also they mentioned “Big background projects” numerous times, but we don’t know what they meant

My bet is on the twice-a-year feature packs.

You loose your bet sorry

In this interview its clearly outlined that the feature packs and big background projects are sperate things:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

“Not really. ArenaNet is full tilt with the Chinese launch of Guild Wars 2, the Season One finale, the feature-build update and the two big background projects.”

What ever those big background projects are they’re definitely not Living story, A chinese release or a feature patch.

More precisely they were not a Season one Living Story, a chinese release, and the April feature pack. Those two projects could have been the September feature pack and season two of LS.

Vayne.8563:

I’m far far from naive and I see it as a business making a business decision based on circumstance. It happens in business all the time.

It was still a lie. They might have admitted that they decided to change the design. Instead they preferred to insist that the game did not work as it was supposed to.

Astralporing.1957:

Galen Grey.4709:

Astralporing.1957:

also they mentioned “Big background projects” numerous times, but we don’t know what they meant

My bet is on the twice-a-year feature packs.

You loose your bet sorry

In this interview its clearly outlined that the feature packs and big background projects are sperate things:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

“Not really. ArenaNet is full tilt with the Chinese launch of Guild Wars 2, the Season One finale, the feature-build update and the two big background projects.”

What ever those big background projects are they’re definitely not Living story, A chinese release or a feature patch.

More precisely they were not a Season one Living Story, a chinese release, and the April feature pack. Those two projects could have been the September feature pack and season two of LS.

Vayne.8563:

I’m far far from naive and I see it as a business making a business decision based on circumstance. It happens in business all the time.

It was still a lie. They might have admitted that they decided to change the design. Instead they preferred to insist that the game did not work as it was supposed to.

The game didn’t work as it was supposed to. It didn’t hold players. I hope no one ever tries to apply to you the same standards of honesty you’re trying to apply to Anet.

You have a business, you make an unpopular change, people are human they try to justify stuff. That’s what being human is. That’s how I saw it.

People were freaking, people were trying to explain, interviews happened and people panicked.

I’m sure you’d like to think it was some kind of devious plot, some kind of lie, but reality is a very hazy thing. Eight people can remember the same event completely differently. A dev might not even remember an interview he gave a year earlier.

Fans pour over dev’s every word. They don’t do that themselves.

This is precisely why Anet won’t say anything. Exactly because of this. If people would stop being so liberal with their use of words like lie, Anet might be able to talk to us.

Ashen.2907:

Changing their minds is not what made for it being a lie. Claiming that they never expected for something that they previously said that they did expect did.

1) We intend X
2) We have changed our mind and no longer expect X

Is very different from:

1) We expect X
2) We never expected X

You could both be right you know… you’re not considering the temporal factor here.

We intend X was said in 2011.

We never expected X was said in end of 2012 there’s over a year between the two
its possible though to be honest no likely that they changed idea in between

like say 2011 they were expecting X, mid 2012 they decided X is a bad idea and the game would benefit if there is a delay for players to acquire X and then end of 2012 it turns out the intended delay to acquire X didnt happen hence the statement.

but anyhow are we sure Arenanet said “We didn’t expect players to get the best gear so quickly.”?

I can find plenty of reference for this: “We think everyone, including casual players, should have the best gear by the time they hit level 80.” but not one for this: “We didn’t expect players to get the best gear so quickly.”

closest statement on the subject I found was this one: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-11-15-guild-wars-2-players-upset-at-the-apparent-arrival-of-an-end-game-armour-grind

""As we watch Guild Wars 2 mature in its Live environment, we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting ‘the Legendary wall’. We designed the process of getting Legendary gear to be a long term goal, but players were ready to start on that path much sooner than we expected and were becoming frustrated with a lack of personal progression. Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level."

and while they’re similar this one isnt stating the never expected players to get the best gear so quickly. IT was that people were rushing for a legendary too quickly (with the issue that once you finish getting a legendary there is nothing else to do.)

So there is also a possibility that more then a lie this could be a case where the original statement was changed as it was repeated by players.

If anyone can find me a quote for "We didn’t expect players to get the best gear so quickly.”? I would appreciate it though.

Astralporing.1957:

Galen Grey.4709:

Astralporing.1957:

also they mentioned “Big background projects” numerous times, but we don’t know what they meant

My bet is on the twice-a-year feature packs.

You loose your bet sorry

In this interview its clearly outlined that the feature packs and big background projects are sperate things:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

“Not really. ArenaNet is full tilt with the Chinese launch of Guild Wars 2, the Season One finale, the feature-build update and the two big background projects.”

What ever those big background projects are they’re definitely not Living story, A chinese release or a feature patch.

More precisely they were not a Season one Living Story, a chinese release, and the April feature pack. Those two projects could have been the September feature pack and season two of LS.

Vayne.8563:

I’m far far from naive and I see it as a business making a business decision based on circumstance. It happens in business all the time.

It was still a lie. They might have admitted that they decided to change the design. Instead they preferred to insist that the game did not work as it was supposed to.

Not possible… Season 2 team is the 4 season 1 teams consolidated. this was stated by Arenanet themselves. The same people cannot work on two different things at the same time. Besides that interview is from January 2014.. they’d have a full year to work on season 2, why would they have needed such a long break in the middle of season 2 if they had at least 7 months of development ready on season 2 before they even started season 2?

As for the feature pack okey we dont really have confirmation there is a dedicated team for it but it seems extremely unlikely there are different teams working in parallel on feature pack. if it was the case the 2nd feature pack would have been twice the size of the 1st feature pack which wasnt the case.

My guess is : there is no work on a GW2 expansion in the background. LW + feature packs is all we will get as updates.

But, all those quiet people in the backgroud are working on GW3/another game, which will take 5+ years to develop (as GW2 did). They waited 1-2 years after the launch of GW1 before launching the development of GW2. This time they decided to begin immediately considering the time it will take for GW3/next game to be ready.

So I expect nothing more than LW + Feature packs for GW2, and a GW3 reveal in like 2016 or something.

A lot of speculation in this topic is based on what we heard about the number of people working on LS (around 20?) and the number of all Anet-employees (around 300?) which leads to conclusions like: the rest of 280 people must also work on something.

What´s probably wrong in this conclusion is the definition of LS and LS-team: I´m quite sure that number of 20 people was not ment to include those people working on the Drytop- and SW-maps and all the events, new mobs and other things coming with them (“it takes 1 year for a new map”).

I wouldn´t be surprised if Drytop and SW were the “big projects in the background”.

hydeaut.1758:

A lot of speculation in this topic is based on what we heard about the number of people working on LS (around 20?) and the number of all Anet-employees (around 300?) which leads to conclusions like: the rest of 280 people must also work on something.

What´s probably wrong in this conclusion is the definition of LS and LS-team: I´m quite sure that number of 20 people was not ment to include those people working on the Drytop- and SW-maps and all the events, new mobs and other things coming with them (“it takes 1 year for a new map”).

I wouldn´t be surprised if Drytop and SW were the “big projects in the background”.

Why do you think it takes a year to make a new map?

Edit: Guild Wars 2 had 25 maps at launch (I believe) which they made in five years. During that time, they were obviously also working on races, character creation, dungeons, and a bunch of other stuff.

I doubt very much it takes a year to make most maps.

hydeaut.1758:

A lot of speculation in this topic is based on what we heard about the number of people working on LS (around 20?) and the number of all Anet-employees (around 300?) which leads to conclusions like: the rest of 280 people must also work on something.

What´s probably wrong in this conclusion is the definition of LS and LS-team: I´m quite sure that number of 20 people was not ment to include those people working on the Drytop- and SW-maps and all the events, new mobs and other things coming with them (“it takes 1 year for a new map”).

I wouldn´t be surprised if Drytop and SW were the “big projects in the background”.

last count provided by Anet was they have 350 employees.

and yes its entirely possible the people who develop the maps arent the same people working on the living story we just dont know that.

That being said. Drytop and SW are like 1/2 the size of a regular zone at release. Development on Gw2 took 5 years.. accounting for 1 year ramp up (development on the engine, conceptualizing, settling on an art style etc…) it means with a team that at launch was 300 people they developed 25 zones + 3 PvP Maps + WvW map how come with more people suddenly they’re only able to develop 1 zone sized map in the same time period? doesnt seem to add up.

Thats not counting southsun cove which was developed in less then 2 months and is as big as drytop and silverwastes combined.

“It takes 1 year for a new map” – if I´m right, something like this once was in a dev-post – though I also find it strange given the original size of GW2.

Still, the point is: a LS-team of 20 people certainly didn´t build these maps alone (if they even were involved in something else than the instanced part of LS).

And you know the words: size alone doesn´t matter . . . The new maps are rather small but filled with a lot more than vanilla-maps or Southsun.

hydeaut.1758:

“It takes 1 year for a new map” – if I´m right, something like this once was in a dev-post – though I also find it strange given the original size of GW2.

Still, the point is: a LS-team of 20 people certainly didn´t build these maps alone (if they even were involved in something else than the instanced part of LS).

And you know the words: size alone doesn´t matter . . . The new maps are rather small but filled with a lot more than vanilla-maps or Southsun.

That was for a WvW map.

hydeaut.1758:

“It takes 1 year for a new map” – if I´m right, something like this once was in a dev-post – though I also find it strange given the original size of GW2.

Still, the point is: a LS-team of 20 people certainly didn´t build these maps alone (if they even were involved in something else than the instanced part of LS).

And you know the words: size alone doesn´t matter . . . The new maps are rather small but filled with a lot more than vanilla-maps or Southsun.

I dont think anyone can really claim with any kind of certainty that 20 person team is not enough to build an entire map themselves. We simply do not know either way. Even if its not the 20 person team who was responsible for these maps how big of a team would it need to be? It will be no were close to 330 people thats for sure.. I dont see it any larger the 10 people really especially considering they had like 3 – 6 months to finish it.

I completely disagree with these maps having a lot more content then the vanilla zones. Gw2 launched with 1500 events spread across 20 maps thats an average of 75 events per map. Dry top and SW dont have nearly that much. Thats excluding every map had like 2 jumping puzzles, about 8 vistas, about 8 Skill challenges. about 10 hearts. Some have secrets sprinkled here and there.

Galen Grey.4709:

It will be no were close to 330 people thats for sure..

Of course. After all, not all of those 300+ people are programmers/developers. They certainly have people in management, accounting, hr, pr (oh well, that one is likely understaffed), marketing… That’s a lot of people. And of course there are some teams we do know about – pvp and WvW teams, bugfixing is likely also separate.
How many people are truly unaccounted for?

Well they are removing the Dungeon, fractals, crafting, and economy sub forums. Seems like further indication that they have no plans for an expansion. They are funneling all their time and resources into the LS (which maintains its own sub forum and gets an expanded lore forum).

There are no secret projects, LS is it.

If you want to know how many people worked on GW2 and what work is done by them, play the personal story and watch the “end credits” that are scrolling through the final instance in Fort Trinity after you defeated Zaithan.

I don’t remember them well, but as far as I remember, the actual content developers were not that many. Perhaps half of the listed people, or even less. The current staff is different for sure, but not the jobs, and these are probably not that different.

Vayne.8563:

The game didn’t work as it was supposed to. It didn’t hold players. I hope no one ever tries to apply to you the same standards of honesty you’re trying to apply to Anet.

You have a business, you make an unpopular change, people are human they try to justify stuff. That’s what being human is. That’s how I saw it.

People were freaking, people were trying to explain, interviews happened and people panicked.

I’m sure you’d like to think it was some kind of devious plot, some kind of lie, but reality is a very hazy thing. Eight people can remember the same event completely differently. A dev might not even remember an interview he gave a year earlier.

Fans pour over dev’s every word. They don’t do that themselves.

This is precisely why Anet won’t say anything. Exactly because of this. If people would stop being so liberal with their use of words like lie, Anet might be able to talk to us.

No amount of verbal or mental gymnastics will ever change the fact that one of those two sentences a lie. If you’re so blinded by your sense of duty to defend ArenaNet, then so be it. But claiming they never expected players to get the best gear so quickly when they literally designed the game so that they would is, was, and will always be a lie.

ANet can barely get a 15 minutes LS chapter out in two weeks and some people still expect an expansion at this point. That said, there is tons of work which goes into that 15 minutes of content….

But up until now, EoTM is still the best piece of content we got since the game was launched 2 years ago which they said it took 1 year of development. The living story drives the gem store business model and that will not change….

Edit: I honestly don’t understand why ANet doesn’t just come forward and announce that there will not be an expansion and put an end to all these discussions…

Zylonite.5913:

ANet can barely get a 15 minutes LS chapter out in two weeks and some people still expect an expansion at this point. That said, there is tons of work which goes into that 15 minutes of content….

But up until now, EoTM is still the best piece of content we got since the game was launched 2 years ago which they said it took 1 year of development. The living story drives the gem store business model and that will not change….

Edit: I honestly don’t understand why ANet doesn’t just come forward and announce that there will not be an expansion and put an end to all these discussions…

Not sure where you get the “barely” and the 15 minutes figure from… other than to be trollish.

CMM.6712:

Zylonite.5913:

ANet can barely get a 15 minutes LS chapter out in two weeks and some people still expect an expansion at this point. That said, there is tons of work which goes into that 15 minutes of content….

But up until now, EoTM is still the best piece of content we got since the game was launched 2 years ago which they said it took 1 year of development. The living story drives the gem store business model and that will not change….

Edit: I honestly don’t understand why ANet doesn’t just come forward and announce that there will not be an expansion and put an end to all these discussions…

Not sure where you get the “barely” and the 15 minutes figure from… other than to be trollish.

The barely probably comes from the fact that they can only keep that pace for 4 releases before they need a 16 week break.

The 15 minutes comes from the total instance time if you exclude the dialog and only include the parts where you are actually playing the game.

I personally think the dialog and lore are pretty good, but many people just want to play, not listen.

darkace.8925:

Only the most naive person would pretend it’s anything other than a lie. There’s simply no amount of spin that reconciles “we expect X” and “we never expected X”. into anything other than a lie. If they’d said “we expect X” and “we now believe not-X is best for the game” it wouldn’t have been a lie. But that’s not what was said.

Or maybe, just maybe, one person stated that first part, and another person stated the next, possibly with the first person gone from the company? ANet is not a hive mind, any more than is the government, and only the most naive person would imagine that the corporate entity has full control over what each of its employees says. (See what I did there?)

If I say “my husband and I will come to your party,” and after that my husband gets grumpy and refuses to go and says “we were never going to the party,” neither of us is lying. I thought we’d go, he thought we wouldn’t.

I do hope that Anet is smart enough to release some expansion,becouse even though LW season 2 is good it isnt nearly enough to satisfy majority of people.GW2 lacked end game zones from the beggining and dungeons proved to be one big dissaster.And i agree that thse new map dont have nearly as much events as vannila maps.

As much as I would like for this game to have an expansion/major release/major update, it seems that me and a lot of people are just grasping at straws and connecting dots to form a pattern that just doesn’t exist. I remember a similar thing happened to Mass Effect 3 where people just could not accept that bioware could end the series in a certain way. They came up with crazy theories to try and justify their hopes that ultimately turned out to be in vain as bioware stated that the ending was final and canonical.

As for me, I’ll give gw2 a year. A year to release or announce some form of major content. Maybe some new skills or even giving more weapon sets to classes. Maybe maps that that are similar in size to the original maps such as queensdale or frostgorge sound. Maybe new dungeons/raids/group activities. Sure gw2 has gotten better with living story releases, but as many other people on this forum have said, when you add everything together, it seems so meager compared to a traditional expansion/major content release. It really is disheartening when you see fewer and fewer of your friends or guildies log on with each successive LS release. I too find myself logging in less and less and soon perhaps another game might take my attention.

Kurrilino.2706:

So the we reached a peak of anger and frustration here at the forum.
So suddenly a “mysterious” blogger wakes up and decides… “oh yes, a good day to show up at A-Net”.
Of course he gets invited to a studio tour and sees all these “magical” things going on and all the Jazz.
We don’t have to mention that he can’t tell what he saw or what is important.
But he is allowed to tell that everyone is incredible busy and super stuff is going on…………….

As a “mysterious” blogger who recently got invited to take a studio tour while on vacation in Seattle, I would like to clarify that if I could just wake up and decide to go to Seattle whenever I liked, I’d be there right now. It’s 80 degrees where I am; please don’t tempt me to liquidate all my worldly possessions and hop on a plane.

The only reason I brought it up is that I think some people tend to inject a little too much “mystery” into how things work at ArenaNet, and it might help cooler heads prevail to know that they’re people doing their jobs. There isn’t some conspiracy to keep fans from understanding how things are going there and when they say they have hundreds of employees you can go ahead and take that at face value, because it’s true. Their office has several floors and those are full of people working on the game. I didn’t see any janitors, although maybe I was just in the wrong place.

Everything they’ve said so far hints at the idea that there wont be an expansion of any kind:
The living Story is the focus
They aren’t working on new dungeons
They haven’t worked on SAB since the second levels were added, and only said they will work on it in the future because everyone was disappointed.
WvW maps are so long and complicated to make apparently that we can only expect little changes like the siege disabler
They started to think about Guild Halls and Raid
They are not scared to talk about GvG but wont still won’t discuss it yet

So according to what they say we could expect the Living Story to keep going, no new dungeons, no new WvW map, no GvG, and something like SAB world 3 in 1 year, Guild raids and halls in 1 years or 2 perhaps, and possibly 2 new PvP maps along the road, precursor crafting (because it will make people buy gems) and tons of Gem store items.

I really don’t see why would expect an expansion after Anet said they won’t make new dungeons (or “aren’t planning” on making as they put it).

My bet is they are working on GW3.

DiogoSilva.7089:

People “missing” include the original director (Eric Flannum?), writers, among others. The living world team’s size also happens to be around 20-30 people, only. So they are clearly working on something big in the background. Even NCSoft has talked about it several times.

The only thing big in the background that they are working on, is other games.

Donari.5237:

darkace.8925:

Only the most naive person would pretend it’s anything other than a lie. There’s simply no amount of spin that reconciles “we expect X” and “we never expected X”. into anything other than a lie. If they’d said “we expect X” and “we now believe not-X is best for the game” it wouldn’t have been a lie. But that’s not what was said.

Or maybe, just maybe, one person stated that first part, and another person stated the next, possibly with the first person gone from the company?

Oh boy, you really should have checked before posting. Both statements were made by Colin Johanson. Who, as far as we know, still works in Arenanet.

Galen Grey.4709:

Xenon.4537:

Scipio.3204:

Xenon.4537:

Vayne.8563:

Xenon.4537:

Belenwyn.8674:

Xenon.4537:

@DeceiverX.8361

What I mean to get at is that the current format for living world doesn’t seem to include a lot of the big things that expansions have, like new races, classes, skills, weapons, maps, dungeons, end game, etc. The format has been far simpler.

Each episode consists of:

• one section of a new map
• a small handful of story instances totaling 1-3 hours tops
• an armor piece OR backpack OR weapon skin
• a new type of enemy
• some dynamic events
• some achievements

I talked about this with Vayne the other day, but I don’t see things like races, classes, or dungeons fitting in to the scope of this format. I can MAYBE see a single new skill OR weapon being added through this format, but it’s unlikely because everyone is just terrified of possible balance issues. It’s sad that everyone ignores the fact that balance can be addressed with further patching.

Races are even less likely because they would need a whole story arc (multiple episodes) dedicated to them, and new animations, and a laundry list of new armor skins to fit their body, etc, etc. These are things that are beyond the scope of a single episode of the current format, and it would simply make more sense to do a whole expansion to accommodate all of it as a cohesive package instead of a hodge-podge of separate episodes.

Only a small team is working on the current season. And we see the maximum of content it can provide. Assumed much bigger teams are working on the big projects – let us call them season 3 and 4 – it is easily possible to deliver larger quantities of content: bigger maps, skills, new weapons etc.

If Arenanet fear balance issues caused by new skills we will never see them – not via LW and not via X-pac. If it is too much work to design gear and animations for a new race the reace will never be released.

There’s absolutely no reason to believe Anet has a secret team working on an expansion in the background. And you have no idea how big the living world team is. Maybe you’re right, but maybe you’re wrong. All we know is there is no official statement on an expansion, and they seem to be going ahead with the current living world model full steam.

Anet said there are 20 people on the living world team now and they said the rest of the team is working on longer term bigger projects. They even said as one big project gets launch they work on the next ones.

Where did they say that?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Enough-of-your-GMPC-please/page/3#post4193277

Here. If it is really true that only ~ twenty people works on the living story releases that , including the maps & dynamic events that would mean most of anet’s resources is spent on something else, however the twenty people on the LS team could mean only the story part of the releases…. also they mentioned “Big background projects” numerous times, but we don’t know what they meant, perhaps we already got them with the new zones, megaservers or china release.

That’s very interesting. I was under the impression that they had far more than 20 people. I mean during season 1 they said they had 4 different living world teams, each with around 20 people, which would bring it to about 80 people in total working on living world. That still leaves over 200 people, around 300 total working at Anet. But I still feel like Anet’s idea of “big background project” is something like the wardrobe or the NPE, not a full blown expansion.

Maybe I’ll be wrong. Maybe the reason Anet has been so quiet and slow to talk about an expansion is because they are working on a stand alone GW2 side-quel just like they made Factions and Nightfall. Maybe its taking them longer than a usual expansion because it needs to be a full stand alone game.

you’re right that for season 1 they had 4 teams but they never disclosed the team size of season 1. that post states all 4 teams where joined together and are now 20 people so its very possible each season 1 team was made of 5 people but thats speculation on my part afaik they never disclosed that detail.

5 people per team… That’s very far fetched. Those releases required animators, environmental artists, prop artists, character designers, story writers, event designers, producers…. the list goes on. Besides I’m fairly certain I read somewhere they said 4 teams of 20. I just don’t know where I read it. Games don’t just get farted out by a couple guys with a laptop. Not in the AAA industry. There’s no magical “make character” button. It takes many people collaborating, and from what they gave us in season 1, it definitely took more than 5 per release.

hydeaut.1758:

A lot of speculation in this topic is based on what we heard about the number of people working on LS (around 20?) and the number of all Anet-employees (around 300?) which leads to conclusions like: the rest of 280 people must also work on something.

What´s probably wrong in this conclusion is the definition of LS and LS-team: I´m quite sure that number of 20 people was not ment to include those people working on the Drytop- and SW-maps and all the events, new mobs and other things coming with them (“it takes 1 year for a new map”).

I wouldn´t be surprised if Drytop and SW were the “big projects in the background”.

Actually what’s most wrong about this assumption is that the information is still accurate at this very moment. Game studios are made up of highly talented programmers and artists collaborating. Everyone has a number of different skillsets. People can shift jobs all the time. The structure of teams is subject to change. They will organize their employees in whichever way they need to in order to get the project done. All we can say for sure is that at the time they made the statement about 20 people, there were 20 people working on that particular project at that particular time. They could have completely changed that the week after.

Vayne.8563:

I doubt very much it takes a year to make most maps.

I would speculate (using my semi-limited experience as a student) that it takes them about a month to make a map like Dry Top or Silverwastes. And I’m talking about the environmental design and construction (modeling) from pre-production to finish. It probably takes them another 2-4 weeks to get the dynamic events working. They can probably start roughing in the dynamic events before the map is fully modeled, which would actually give them more time. Some things can be worked on simultaneously. Then there’s QA testing. You can begin to see why they take a good 4 months to produce these patches.

I really wish Anet would do some kind of documentary on the whole process behind the scenes. Not a reveal of any content. Just show people what exactly game designers, artists, and programmers do all day. I swear that the majority of gamers just don’t seem to appreciate the work that goes on. There aren’t magic “make game” buttons. There’s a hundred or so hours that go in to making just one new character. Everything from modeling, texturing, rigging, animating, scripting, etc… Likewise there’s no magical “make map” button. Some guy has to spend 3 weeks putting blades of grass everywhere. Imagine you have to trim your lawn with a toe nail clipper. That’s what the environmental artists have to do on a daily basis. A documentary would help gamers appreciate all of this a lot more…

Astralporing.1957:

Galen Grey.4709:

It will be no were close to 330 people thats for sure..

Of course. After all, not all of those 300+ people are programmers/developers. They certainly have people in management, accounting, hr, pr (oh well, that one is likely understaffed), marketing… That’s a lot of people. And of course there are some teams we do know about – pvp and WvW teams, bugfixing is likely also separate.
How many people are truly unaccounted for?

no of course not all of the 330 are developers / artists etc.. You get a variety of roles like you said. Then again they might be way more then 350 employees by now. They have consistently had over 20 job openings for the entire year that 350 number was quoted from.

Yes you also have PvP and Feature pack teams, none of them really come close to the amount of content LS teams release so I guess its safe to say they’re sub 20 people teams still leaves close to 300 people unaccounted for. How large management / marketing / sales / support is? hard to say lets go all crazy and say 100 people. Still leaves the bulk of the developers unaccounted for. And lets not forget these positions didnt come into existence just now they were there prior to release when the time size was much smaller then it is now and they still develop all those zones and all that content.

Bonefield.9813:

Kurrilino.2706:

So the we reached a peak of anger and frustration here at the forum.
So suddenly a “mysterious” blogger wakes up and decides… “oh yes, a good day to show up at A-Net”.
Of course he gets invited to a studio tour and sees all these “magical” things going on and all the Jazz.
We don’t have to mention that he can’t tell what he saw or what is important.
But he is allowed to tell that everyone is incredible busy and super stuff is going on…………….

As a “mysterious” blogger who recently got invited to take a studio tour while on vacation in Seattle, I would like to clarify that if I could just wake up and decide to go to Seattle whenever I liked, I’d be there right now. It’s 80 degrees where I am; please don’t tempt me to liquidate all my worldly possessions and hop on a plane.

The only reason I brought it up is that I think some people tend to inject a little too much “mystery” into how things work at ArenaNet, and it might help cooler heads prevail to know that they’re people doing their jobs. There isn’t some conspiracy to keep fans from understanding how things are going there and when they say they have hundreds of employees you can go ahead and take that at face value, because it’s true. Their office has several floors and those are full of people working on the game. I didn’t see any janitors, although maybe I was just in the wrong place.

Probably you didnt see Janitors cause they get in early and finish their work before people get back to work, it would be too disruptive to wash the floors while everyone is at their desk

But yeah this shouldnt be such a big surprise much less something hard to believe. At game release Anet had 300 Employees. Back in January 2014 they had 350 employees. They’re still hiring a lot of people. It stands to reason they should at the very very very least develop the same amount of content they did in the 5 years since they’ve began working on the game. More likely a lot more since they have more manpower as well as better tools to work with. Yet people believe just because they named their release strategy Living story they’re suddenly only able to do small tiny updates and nothing else.

I just dont follow the Logic.

Xenon.4537:

5 people per team… That’s very far fetched. Those releases required animators, environmental artists, prop artists, character designers, story writers, event designers, producers…. the list goes on. Besides I’m fairly certain I read somewhere they said 4 teams of 20. I just don’t know where I read it. Games don’t just get farted out by a couple guys with a laptop. Not in the AAA industry. There’s no magical “make character” button. It takes many people collaborating, and from what they gave us in season 1, it definitely took more than 5 per release.

You probably read the same thing I read which said the 4 teams where consolidated into 1 and the team size of that is 20 people. I provided the link in a previous post above for that reference.

As for the team sizes you’re forgetting teams can collaborate with each other.
For example Team A developer cannot start scripting events until Team A artist finishes the characters and props so s/he can help another team. Likewise Team A writer will be finished developing the story long before the artist and developer finish their work (especially considering they cannot start a lot of their work before the writer finishes his part) and he can then do work for the other teams while the rest of his team is finishing their part.

Another important aspect you seem to have missed is a lot of stuff is reusable. Sure there is no magic create character button but they didnt have to create scarlet from scratch for each episode. If Scarlet was developed by Team A, Team B-D will still need to do a little work on scarlet in order to use her for their releases but Team A did the bulk of the work on her.

In simple terms we’ve been told outright now that the Living story for season 2 is developed by a team of 20 people there is no reason why 4 teams of 5 couldnt do the same amount of work although less efficiently.

Xenon.4537:

Vayne.8563:

I doubt very much it takes a year to make most maps.

I would speculate (using my semi-limited experience as a student) that it takes them about a month to make a map like Dry Top or Silverwastes. And I’m talking about the environmental design and construction (modeling) from pre-production to finish. It probably takes them another 2-4 weeks to get the dynamic events working. They can probably start roughing in the dynamic events before the map is fully modeled, which would actually give them more time. Some things can be worked on simultaneously. Then there’s QA testing. You can begin to see why they take a good 4 months to produce these patches.

I really wish Anet would do some kind of documentary on the whole process behind the scenes. Not a reveal of any content. Just show people what exactly game designers, artists, and programmers do all day. I swear that the majority of gamers just don’t seem to appreciate the work that goes on. There aren’t magic “make game” buttons. There’s a hundred or so hours that go in to making just one new character. Everything from modeling, texturing, rigging, animating, scripting, etc… Likewise there’s no magical “make map” button. Some guy has to spend 3 weeks putting blades of grass everywhere. Imagine you have to trim your lawn with a toe nail clipper. That’s what the environmental artists have to do on a daily basis. A documentary would help gamers appreciate all of this a lot more…

question is though takes how many people 1 month to make a map like dry top?

As for Make magic buttons there is and there isnt. You mentioned blades of grass for example. I very much doubt, in fact I am nearly sure that grass isnt simply modelled as individual models and physically placed one by one on the map. Its more likely they create a few models, mark areas on the map where they want grass to “grow” and the engine will place those models. (well in many cases grass isnt even models they generally use billboards for grass)

Now Gw2 does do some interesting things. Like there are seemly a large variety of grass and flowers that make it seems like grass isnt simply copy and pasted. However I dont expect they do that by individually create a separate texture for every billboard. There probably is some randomizing transformation magic they do on the textures themselves. If I had to guess I’d say they have the engine map multiple levels to every build board and do transformations on layers. That still means compared to other games they’d need to develop more billboard textures but its still a lot less work then creating and placing individual models.

Grass on a map is probably more like a 2 – 3 day job then it is a 2 – 3 week job.

darkace.8925:

Vayne.8563:

The game didn’t work as it was supposed to. It didn’t hold players. I hope no one ever tries to apply to you the same standards of honesty you’re trying to apply to Anet.

You have a business, you make an unpopular change, people are human they try to justify stuff. That’s what being human is. That’s how I saw it.

People were freaking, people were trying to explain, interviews happened and people panicked.

I’m sure you’d like to think it was some kind of devious plot, some kind of lie, but reality is a very hazy thing. Eight people can remember the same event completely differently. A dev might not even remember an interview he gave a year earlier.

Fans pour over dev’s every word. They don’t do that themselves.

This is precisely why Anet won’t say anything. Exactly because of this. If people would stop being so liberal with their use of words like lie, Anet might be able to talk to us.

No amount of verbal or mental gymnastics will ever change the fact that one of those two sentences a lie. If you’re so blinded by your sense of duty to defend ArenaNet, then so be it. But claiming they never expected players to get the best gear so quickly when they literally designed the game so that they would is, was, and will always be a lie.

I’ve seen things a lot stranger. I’ve personally give the wrong version of something I remembered perfectly, only to be absolutely proven wrong. My memory still remembers it the same way but I’m undeniably mistaken in my memory. It’s happened to most people.

When someone says we always intended something after a year of meetings, they can’t necessarily reliably remember exactly when something did or didn’t happen. People remember to the best of their recollection. If Anet was actually intending to lie as a company, they’d have had something quite a bit more rehearsed, don’t you think. They’d have worked out a story and stuck to it. They didn’t, though. They depended on people to answer questions and answering questions isn’t going to be perfect.

It doesn’t require a singe ounce of mental agility. It requires understanding humans and treating them like what they are. Fallible humans.

Again, I hope no one ever holds you to the same standards you’re holding Anet.

I for one am very cautious when it comes to new classes and races. Games that rush such things tend to mess up in a big way. Eventually it would get rebalanced, but that could take months. Do you really want to experience months of having your rear end handed to you by a new class in PvP or WvW?

New races is very doable since there is very little practical difference between the races in GW2. It’s mostly about role playing and cosmetic differences.

As other posters have said, the new areas that slowly enter the game via the living story will eventually add up to an expansion. And, by incorporating them piecemeal, if ANet does mess up, they only mess up a little part of the game versus introducing several large zones at once with an enormous set of bugs and playability shortcomings. Right now you cannot travel directly from Drytop to the the Silverwastes, but I suspect that when this living story is done, that new passageways will be dug, new skritt burrows may be put in place, etc. and it will all be one big zone, possibly even larger than most zones on account of the enormous jumping puzzle area just introduced.

I would like to see the underwater guys with the wings (Largo?) introduced as a player race. The bird men, the quaggans, hylek, jotuns, dwarves (where did they go?) and even skritt or grawl might make player races in the future. I imagine that if new player races are introduced, it will be as a part of a living story saga and not just a “Now you can play quaggans!”

ALL IS VAIN!

Galen Grey.4709:

question is though takes how many people 1 month to make a map like dry top?

Depends on what you mean by “make.” If you mean the entire completed release, probably at least 20 people. If you mean just the physical environment, probably around 5.

As for Make magic buttons there is and there isnt.

The only sort of “magic button” would be some kind of instancer script, which would take a programmer significant time to build anyway. That’s what the program tools designers do. They build actual tools for artists and programmers. I have a few of them on my friends list actually.

You mentioned blades of grass for example. I very much doubt, in fact I am nearly sure that grass isnt simply modelled as individual models and physically placed one by one on the map.

Grass is modeled using several polygon planes. They make a patch of grass and then copy/paste that around the map. However it’s not as simple as making 1 patch of grass. They make a bunch of slightly different ones to avoid making it look artificial.

Its more likely they create a few models, mark areas on the map where they want grass to “grow” and the engine will place those models.

That would be the instancer thing I mentioned, and honestly it’s the same amount of work to mark a spot on the map as it is to copy/paste a model. Both actions require the artist to click a spot on the map.

(well in many cases grass isnt even models they generally use billboards for grass)

If you mean polygon planes, sure. That would count as a model though. All models are made of polygons. There are things like sprites, but grass in video games hasn’t been made of sprites since like 1995. Sprites are used nowadays for particle emitters.

Now Gw2 does do some interesting things. Like there are seemly a large variety of grass and flowers that make it seems like grass isnt simply copy and pasted.

Exactly! They do seem to have a lot of different-looking plants, almost as if they were hand crafted each time! That’s because they were. Each different-looking plant was custom made. That’s the only way to do it. They can copy/paste some of those around, but they make sure to have a lot of variety and never place the same copy too close to each other.

However I dont expect they do that by individually create a separate texture for every billboard. There probably is some randomizing transformation magic they do on the textures themselves. If I had to guess I’d say they have the engine map multiple levels to every build board and do transformations on layers. That still means compared to other games they’d need to develop more billboard textures but its still a lot less work then creating and placing individual models.

I’m sorry but this is just not how it works. Like I said, they hand craft each model out of polygon planes. The planes are then given a texture. Then they copy/paste the model throughout the map, while making sure never to put two copies of the same model too close to each other. This gives the illusion of natural vegetation. Same deal with rocks and debris and everything else.

Grass on a map is probably more like a 2 – 3 day job then it is a 2 – 3 week job.

Grass may be done in 2-3 days, but then there’s rocks, rubble, lost badges, gathering nodes, dynamic events, buildings, mountains, set dressing, NPCs, the sky box, enemies, etc etc, the list goes on. By the way They don’t just dive right in to modeling all of this. They spend at least a week in pre-production. That means they plan every nit-picking detail out on paper. It’s the only way they are able to make sure the map flows together properly. None of this would be possible without pre-production. And again, they give at least a week or two of post-production to QA testing to make sure there are as few bugs as possible.

Don’t take this as an attack. I just want to clear up misconceptions. I’m a game design/animation student, and it breaks my heart when people don’t appreciate or understand what goes on behind the scenes.