Guild Wars 2

I miss the days, when Anet was so confident about their plans for the future, that they gave us consistantly previews about what is comming next to the game with trailer videos, pictures and the forum’s main page being decorated all under the preview, that showed us things about, what is coming to improve the game, not actually spoiloring the game’s story – no but actually telling us about new features to give us new stuff to discuss about and to wait happily about to come, having something for that you’d mark a red cross in your calendar waiting for.

Days, when Anet was so confident about what they do, that they actually told us their plans in large blog posts early on, even to the point, that we learned whats the patch for this game for likely the next 6 months.

There isn’t really much about Final Fantasy 14 for example that I’m envying for, except for some gameplay features where the game currently is better in , than GW2, like Player Housing, Story Telling cough.. just feels more like RPG when I hear a friend of mine talking about it
But without having played it so far, I must admit, SE does one thing after their huge flop with the game very right now, after they felt first flat very bad onto their faces with their initial release – the Game Marketing.

SE does an awesome job to promote their game and their new content with always new long awesome trailers, that actually SHOW YOU, on what the company is actually working on, which actually SHOW YOU, about what you can happily wait for to be able to play it in the next upcoming months and all that without spoilering the player with any story.

Just view threse trailers and tell me, how someone should not be intrigued to go play this game and at least test it out to see it live in action, compared to what we get for GW2 super short trailers that are always only like 1-2 minutes long or so, show us absolutely nothing interesting.
We got so far 2 Feature Packs and instead of promoting it professsionally (in my terms I find what SE does is professionelly cause its really able to create a large interest and advertises actually what it should do as a “teaser” – new content.
What did Anet out of it? Blogposts that got riddled and time gated, keeping all of us for an extreme unneccessary long time in the dark, in the hope, this would create interest (in the mean time many peopel left the game, because they couldn’t be patient enough to wait longer to get to know for what they are actually waiting for and had in general enough of all this waiting)

Look at them and compare them with the quality of our trailers. One should instantly see, what a big stretch there is between these and what we get/got.

Just those that are known so far:

Spring 2015 comes the next huge expansion with Heavensward, just to say basically as a guessed counter to whatever other companies might want to come up with early 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbiFK4tcz9w
P2.4 – Dreams of Ice – over 8m long Teaser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYBu4dpZJBo
P2.3 – Defenders of Eorzea – over 8m long Teaser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zueQqbWhZeo
P2.2 – Through the Maelstrom – 8m long Teaser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_aliYN8hNk
P2.1 – The Realm Awoken – over 10m long Teaser!!

(And those Trailers show naturally not everything, one has to say…)

They do, what Anet actually did with GW1 providing basically every 6 months so far large content updates, that actually really improve significantly the whole game with lots of new content features of all kinds of sorts, be it fashion stuff, be it new explorable maps/dungeons, be it stuff like housing/gardenign/fishing or compelte new classes – short said, they do, what players expect from new game content to be delivered to keep the players interested in the game

Just watching these Teasers shows me so much potential for GW2’s improval , what I’d like to see in this Game too under Anets own Style being implemented, its not even funny anymore slowly!

I wish ANet would tease and promote GW2 with the same kind of quality, like SE does for FF14 and all this, I repeat myself – without that those Teasers spoiled the players with anything story related

My honest opinion as as big +1 to the topic, that Anet needs to refocus and show us more, about what you are proud of, that you have made and that you want us to play.
Improve your advertising Anet and I’m sure that alot of people that left the game, will eventually come back, because more and more people get sick from this permanent silence of not knowing, where this game is leaded to go and the easiest way to tell your community where the path of this game is going to, is to advertise professionally your new content features without spoiling the game’s story

Orpheal.8263:

I miss the days, when Anet was so confident about their plans for the future, that they gave us consistantly previews about what is comming next to the game with trailer videos, pictures and the forum’s main page being decorated all under the preview, that showed us things about, what is coming to improve the game, not actually spoiloring the game’s story – no but actually telling us about new features to give us new stuff to discuss about and to wait happily about to come, having something for that you’d mark a red cross in your calendar waiting for.

Days, when Anet was so confident about what they do, that they actually told us their plans in large blog posts early on, even to the point, that we learned whats the patch for this game for likely the next 6 months.

There isn’t really much about Final Fantasy 14 for example that I’m envying for, except for some gameplay features where the game currently is better in , than GW2, like Player Housing, Story Telling cough.. just feels more like RPG when I hear a friend of mine talking about it
But without having played it so far, I must admit, SE does one thing after their huge flop with the game very right now, after they felt first flat very bad onto their faces with their initial release – the Game Marketing.

SE does an awesome job to promote their game and their new content with always new long awesome trailers, that actually SHOW YOU, on what the company is actually working on, which actually SHOW YOU, about what you can happily wait for to be able to play it in the next upcoming months and all that without spoilering the player with any story.

They do, what Anet actually did with GW1 providing basically every 6 months so far large content updates, that actually really improve significantly the whole game with lots of new content features of all kinds of sorts, be it fashion stuff, be it new explorable maps/dungeons, be it stuff like housing/gardenign/fishing or compelte new classes – short said, they do, what players expect from new game content to be delivered to keep the players interested in the game

Just watching these Teasers shows me so much potential for GW2’s improval , what I’d like to see in this Game too under Anets own Style being implemented, its not even funny anymore slowly!

I wish ANet would tease and promote GW2 with the same kind of quality, like SE does for FF14 and all this, I repeat myself – without that those Teasers spoiled the players with anything story related

My honest opinion as as big +1 to the topic, that Anet needs to refocus and show us more, about what you are proud of, that you have made and that you want us to play.
Improve your advertising Anet and I’m sure that alot of people that left the game, will eventually come back, because more and more people get sick from this permanent silence of not knowing, where this game is leaded to go and the easiest way to tell your community where the path of this game is going to, is to advertise professionally your new content features without spoiling the game’s story

Agree with everything you said. Final fantasy is not my cup of tea, but the teasers are fantastic.

I think I read something a few days ago that NcSoft will improve the marketing for GW2. I hope they finally woke up now.

I would just like to know in which direction this game is drifting.
Like dlonie, I’m waiting. I’ve been waiting a long time now and the only part of GW2 left that entertains me is the gemstore, at the same time I dislike ANet for pushing the gemstore so hard, my whole game experience has shrinked down to get gold to buy the fluff they release next because there isn’t anything else left for me.

And I thought ANet would knew this, I thought they know that the dungeons aren’t enough to keep players interested, I thought they know that the normal PvE has grown redundand, from a lore prespective (seriously, even if you would like to help that charr in trouble, the event would just start over ten minutes later. Your impact: Zero), from a gameplay perspective (When I started, I struggled to kill the most veterans, now I can solo almost all champions in the open world) and from a reward centric perspective (1 silver for completing that 10 min. long event! Yay!). I thought they know their game lacks interesting mechanics and challenge.

But then they started to release the NPE changes, because obviously some players can’t even pick up weed to feed the cows, and dumped down the game even more.

So I would like to know, which playertype is the one you are catering to? Is it the one who seeks challenge? Or is it the one who doesn’t want to be challenged, the one who only needs to buy the newest intrument or the newest outfit from the gemstore to be happy? Don’t tell me both because I wont believe you and you haven’t done a good job in the past convincing me of the contrary.

Gaile, I for one can say that I am not looking for story spoilers. I think the spirit of the OP’s post was more in line with what direction the game as a whole was heading in. Are we getting new dungeons? We don’t want to know the mechanics of the dungeon(s) or name etc. etc. but it would be nice to know what type of content is coming our way(if any).

Is the game headed toward an expansion or is it going to be living stories? Are we headed to new lands or staying in Tyria with a single map per release that is given to us one chunk at a time over the course of 8 weeks?

Are we ever getting new classes or races?

I like having things to look forward to while playing the content that exists. I could sit here and just hope that we are going to get even a fraction of the breadth of content we got in GW1 in GW2 or you all could lay out a road map for where we are headed.

Not a story roadmap, but a game roadmap.

I for one know I do not want to play for another 6 months hoping that something big and exciting might be coming, but I guess if nothing is coming then why tell anyone that or they might stop playing because there is nothing to look forward to for the long term.

I have no problem relegating GW2 to a secondary MMO that I hop into for 3-5 hours every two weeks. It’s a lovely game that I adore but one I am ready for an expansion with. Without knowing whether or not that is in the works, why continue spending the bulk of our time with it though?

Kraljevo.2801:

I think I read something a few days ago that NcSoft will improve the marketing for GW2. I hope they finally woke up now.

If they don’t change their policy to tell us more then this money will be wasted. Nothing marketed great is still nothing.

Iason Evan.3806:

Gaile, I for one can say that I am not looking for story spoilers. I think the spirit of the OP’s post was more in line with what direction the game as a whole was heading in. Are we getting new dungeons? We don’t want to know the mechanics of the dungeon(s) or name etc. etc. but it would be nice to know what type of content is coming our way(if any).

Is the game headed toward an expansion or is it going to be living stories? Are we headed to new lands or staying in Tyria with a single map per release that is given to us one chunk at a time over the course of 8 weeks?

Are we ever getting new classes or races?

I like having things to look forward to while playing the content that exists. I could sit here and just hope that we are going to get even a fraction of the breadth of content we got in GW1 in GW2 or you all could lay out a road map for where we are headed.

Not a story roadmap, but a game roadmap.

I for one know I do not want to play for another 6 months hoping that something big and exciting might be coming, but I guess if nothing is coming then why tell anyone that or they might stop playing because there is nothing to look forward to for the long term.

I have no problem relegating GW2 to a secondary MMO that I hop into for 3-5 hours every two weeks. It’s a lovely game that I adore but one I am ready for an expansion with. Without knowing whether or not that is in the works, why continue spending the bulk of our time with it though?

+1

Gaile Gray.6029:

My question: Do you agree that it’s good to not share that sort of information, information related to the actual direction of the game saga as a whole?

- I was thinking more along the lines of what are the long-term priorities of the company. Is it just about retaining the playerbase by any means necessary and making changes on the game based on “metrics” type of feedback, or is there some sort of creative ambition going on? If latter, what kind?

I know that the situations of companies aren’t comparable, but as an example League of Legends has had some significant investment in the core structures of the game. If an old champion no longer filled the role it was originally designed for, then the champion was redesigned and re-released to players. To me that feels like the developers want to maintain cohesive player experience of quality throughout.

You can run through some World vs. World and count plainly visible bugs that have been there since the launch of the game. Bugs that you encounter every time you play the game mode, week after week. I’m sure that if anybody had bothered to playtest the game, this version would not have been released. Anything from NPC standing in the middle of supply depot and player pressing F for ‘hello’ instead of getting supplies.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Yes, so in the future, all frogs will become sentient, treble in size, and take over Lion’s Arch, leading to the elimination of all non-amphibian races. Yep, yep, that’s where we’re heading with the story.

evil hylek overlords confirmed!!!!1

dlonie.6547:

Before I get a ton of “Well, I don’t have a problem with this, stop speaking for all of us,”, I’ll make it clear that this is my viewpoint, shared in the hopes that it will put some of my negativity towards this game in perspective.

Simply put, I just have no idea what direction the game is headed.

My story:

hide spoiler

I love running dungeons. It’s really the only reason I play the game. Get a small group of players together, face a challenge, wipe a few times, learn the fights, and eventually succeed. I love that. You get to know people, you have fun, and develop a little social circle of people to just get on and hang out with. That’s what makes an MMO fun.

My guild is (was, most have left the game…) the same. We had a lot of fun learning the original dungeons in the game, and about 10 months after launch, we had them down pat. Not really much challenge left to them after that point, my “usual” group would clear them out in about 15-30 minutes without even paying attention to what we’re doing.

After we got to that point, we thought “Well, this is an MMO. Surely there will be new dungeons added as time goes on” and we waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing.

Not even a word about the possibility of new dungeons. One by one, my guild lost its core players as they got bored with the same content day after day. They stopped waiting and left for other games with higher content output. I didn’t give up hope and stuck around. Then, two years after launch, they let it slip in a gamescon interview: They aren’t working on new dungeons, and they have no plans to add more to the game.

I felt cheated. I spent more than a year waiting for content that they knew a lot of us wanted, but they knew it would never come. And we only found out because someone slipped up in an interview. To this day, we have no idea what they intend to add. New races? Professions? Opening up a new continent? More PvP maps? WvW improvements? We have no idea.

I don’t need exact details about what content is on the way. I (and many other vocal players on these forums) just want to know what sorts of content ArenaNet is even interested in developing. Basically: Will we ever see the content we want to play?

tl;dr What does Guild Wars 2 hope to accomplish in the next few years? What is ArenaNet’s development focus? Will we see more than new open world PvE zerg maps and “accessible to all” (read: impossible to fail) living story instances? From the overwhelming negativity on the forums/reddit (not to mention glassdoor), it sounds like ArenaNet would benefit greatly from sitting down, figuring out what their goals are, and communicating that with their customers.

BTW, I know we had a raiding CDI and that we can probably expect a few raids, which will make me happy. But that’s only one aspect of a large game that at the moment, feels aimlessly adrift.

What goals? Goals died the same day the manifesto died 28/8/2012.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Kraljevo.2801:

I think I read something a few days ago that NcSoft will improve the marketing for GW2. I hope they finally woke up now.

If they don’t change their policy to tell us more then this money will be wasted. Nothing marketed great is still nothing.

Agree.

There are a couple mmo’s that regularly upload videoblogs about their plans and the future of their game, which I really like. I know there is “point of interest” and “ready up”, but those are mostly about current living world content and pvp.

They could implement a link ingame, on the right upper corner. Player clicks on it and gets linked to the videoblog. Or put it on the launcher. Once or twice a year, I don’t really care.

No matter what you choose to do, ANet, your players expect more transparency. Please.

I for one, welcome our Evil Hylek Overlords!

Glad to see the discussion continuing so well!

Given the nature of a lot of discussion on this forum, this thread has stayed very respectful, mature, and on topic. The fact that we’re setting aside the drama, trolling, etc and trying to communicate what we’re looking for so clearly and effectively really speaks volumes about how serious this community is about wanting a change to the “silence” policy.

I just wanted to really thank everyone for sharing their stories. I mostly expected to get overrun by people trying to argue over trivial nonsense when I posted this, but instead, I got an outpouring of people sharing stories and visions that mirror my own.

<3

Just a simple “we are working on an expansion.” would get me playing again. Not to mention that it would help them with sales and get people back they lost.

SWTOR saw a rather large jump on raptr since the announcement of another expansion. It’s not a very large expansion either.
Surprised to see ArcheAge doing so well a month after launch.

http://caas.raptr.com/most-played-pc-games-october-2014-fifa-borderlands-and-shadow-of-mordor-climb-the-chart/

One of the things I’ve been waiting for the devs to do is for them to show me they care about the game. Right now it kind of feels like a game of telephone with Gaile passing messages back and forth and with her repeatedly saying everyone is working hard and cares a lot about the game. But I don’t see the devs actually coming here and showing us they care.

Gaile has actually been really good at this. Look through her post history and you’ll see her making personal comments on game topics, making jokes and having fun with some things, and in general showing us that she loves the game. This is a GOOD thing and I hope she doesn’t stop.

Josh and Evan stop by the PVP forums and joke with players occasionally and John has a running thread in the BLTP forums where he educates and jokes with people about the economy. Chris started to loosen up a bit in the last couple CDI’s. They’re actually interacting as people and fans of the game and not just a faceless dev that stays hidden behind a wall of silence, or at least trying to.

Even if devs can’t post about what’s going on, they can post as just a person commenting on something else. Be a person, be a fan of the game, show us that you love the game too. Be a part of the community.

Fernling.1729:

SWTOR saw a rather large jump on raptr since the announcement of another expansion. It’s not a very large expansion either.
Surprised to see ArcheAge doing so well a month after launch.

http://caas.raptr.com/most-played-pc-games-october-2014-fifa-borderlands-and-shadow-of-mordor-climb-the-chart/

Sorry mate, but the majority doesn’t give a kitten about raptr. I’d wager that 75% of the gw2 playerbase doesn’t even have an active gw2 forum account, let alone on Raptr. No wonder it’s so low on the ranking.

Orpheal.8263:

I wish ANet would tease and promote GW2 with the same kind of quality, like SE does for FF14 and all this, I repeat myself – without that those Teasers spoiled the players with anything story related

Oh wow, I know for a fact that I’d hate FF14 based on watching a friend play, but if those trailers aren’t exiting, I don’t know what is.

I’d love for the the same quality of trailers for gw2.

However, I think we also have to realize something: FF14 has arguably more content en each of those releases than gw2 does. Just looking at the first one I saw new races, maps, and raids among other things.

If we applied the same trailer format to gw2, we couldn’t do more than our trailers already do: tease another story episode and maybe a map or event. It’s pretty small by comparison.

Here’s the thing which really relates to this thread, though:
I’m OK with smaller releases, but because you have smaller, more frequent releases, it makes the changes feel less significant on their own. So, help me stay invested and feel like my time is going into something that will eventually pay off (in terms of game mechanics and diversity), I have to know where the game is going.

I don’t need or want to know where the story is going.

What I do want to know is whether or not we’re going to have more diversity in the game in order to continue holding my interest.

You’ve been doing a great job with open-world PvE. Congratulations. Please, by all means, give yourselves a pat on the back, but what else is being worked on? Will there be new PvP game modes? Will we be getting new dungeons? Will there be more cooperative instanced PvE other than dungeons? Will there be any significant changes to keep WvW fresh?

And most importantly:
How soon can we expect these, or at the very VERY least, what is the priority of this project?

I will accept any delay or cancellation providing you’ve kept us abreast of the situation REGULARLY. If you update us on the situation with some degree of regularity, it boost my confidence in seeing SOMETHING I like being released.

I think a good way to do this might be a monthly round-up post talking about the kinds of things that are being worked on as well as delays.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Ok, I’m back. About Harry Potter…

I think that the whole basis for the presentation in this and other threads about communication has a few pillars. And it’s one of them that I’m thinking about. J. K. Rawlings wrote a series of well-loved books, and I am sure (although I didn’t follow it) that people gave feedback to her on every release, heck, probably every nuance of every release, and that they also provided suggestions for future books. It’s a natural thing: People were highly invested in the series, loved it a bunch, and wanted to know more, or to have input.

In that small sense — and yes, that’s only part of the communication question — I don’t think I’d want our team to communicate about the game’s direction. Like, “Yes, so in the future, all frogs will become sentient, treble in size, and take over Lion’s Arch, leading to the elimination of all non-amphibian races. Yep, yep, that’s where we’re heading with the story.” NOTE: This is NOT where the story is going. This is only a wildly-improbable scenario offered for purposes of… umm… providing a wildly-improbable scenario.

My question: Do you agree that it’s good to not share that sort of information, information related to the actual direction of the game saga as a whole?

If so, then my sense is that you want to know more about the nuts and bolts.

• “Are you looking at XXX new feature?”
• “Do you intend to improve ABC functionality?”
• “Is ### working as intended, or is it bugged, or will you incorporate player feedback to change it?”

Again, this is a small part of the discussion, but I wanted to make sure I was looking at that part accurately. I wondered if generally, no one is asking about the whole “Tell us where the story is going” bit.

I don’t think people really want that kind of spoilers, at least what I’ve seen, is that people want to know the direction of the game, as a game, not really the story by itself. When we ask about if there will be a new continent, or new race, we are not really asking for the story part of it, but rather to know if the game mechanics will see some changes, or if we will be able to expand on terms of exploration, or new items, etc. At least I can speak for myself when saying that, I love this “teaser” game with the story, is entertaining, what is sad though, is when the mechanics don’t follow that hype.
At this point, we expect things that can be perfected, to be perfected, and things that can be added, to be added. I don’t really know if in two years in the future I will still be playing (I hope so), so I don’t really want to wait for that point to know if, for instance, an expansion will be released or if SAB will be a permanent part of the game, even if I don’t demand those things now, It would be nice to know if in 6 months in the future, those things will be available. Or even, if there is a plan for that (since as a veteran MMO player, I know, things get delayed, and is not the end of the world.)

Are we getting an expansion?

Problem is this is a no-win scenario. Continue mostly silent treatment, loses some players. Announce focus and goals, lose players who do not agree with the direction. So keeping people waiting probably keeps the losses more controlled.

I used to love how this game kept me distracted from doing homework and sometimes even exercising because it was so fun to play....

Now I’m reading textbooks, taking notes, and starting to ride my bike again O_O I might even take up a sport in the college. Help me Anet! need to re-obtain my GW addiction.

#evidenceofthestateofgameforme #hashtagwaitwutineverdohashtagslol

Baltzenger.2467:

Are we getting an expansion?

Personally, I’m less concerned with learning what is coming, so much as how much and approximately when. LW episodes through the next quarter? Fine. Huge chunk of content coming after a possible break later in the year? Great. Something of undetermined size coming at some undetermined point? Less great.

Bran.7425:

Problem is this is a no-win scenario. Continue mostly silent treatment, loses some players. Announce focus and goals, lose players who do not agree with the direction. So keeping people waiting probably keeps the losses more controlled.

That’s the thing, it’s not a no-win scenario as the people who have become completely disenfranchised by the silence aren’t spending money… if they’re told “yeah you’re right you’re not getting anything” there’s no loss as they weren’t spending money anyways. At best they’d be getting rid of the malcontented community that the silence has created. Eliminating that toxic community can only help, they’re not spending money, just reassuring newer players that the game isn’t moving forward in these areas.

New PVP maps and game styles… not happening.
New WvW maps or any adjustments to make that game style more popular… not happening
New Dungeons… LOL, are you kidding?

If ANet cares to disagree with any of those statements, please do, but as of now, we’re not seeing that anytime soon. So again, why have hope? Why be positive? Why not create a toxic community where your fellow players of PVP, WvW, and Dungeons can console each other in the fact that they’re all unhappy with the current situation?

I still have fun playing things, but I’m running out, i finally got my Lupi solo today… and well, I’m kinda out of things I want to work towards. Doesn’t mean I don’t have friends in the game or on the forums, but honestly I’m late to the game and already I was jumping into a community that is lacking hope and positivity, now I’ll simply fully join the side that’s saying “yup… they don’t give a kitten”.

So what does ANet gain from commenting on this stuff? Well it sheds the toxic element and Maybe, Just maybe, they might instill some hope for the future in some players who actually like the direction they intend to go.

Jerus.4350:

So what does ANet gain from commenting on this stuff? Well it sheds the toxic element and Maybe, Just maybe, they might instill some hope for the future in some players who actually like the direction they intend to go.

Honestly, at this point, it’d be hard to disappoint people with their direction ( or lack-thereof ). The only way I can see them losing a ton of people, is if they went out and said to expect the exact same thing next year, as what they’ve done this year; more LS driven story, a couple new maps, couple of feature packs/balance updates, and pushing the gem store.

I dunno, but i’ve never seen a company that with holds content and information as much as ANet does. But, thats old news. You either hate it and play something else, while flaming here, or you don’t care about it and wonder what all the “hub-bub” is all about.

TBH, i think its all one big psychology experiment at this point. It sucks, because i can see through it all. For example, Gaile points out three things shes “given” us information on (aka “improved communication”):

Engineer Backpacks
Whats considered copyright infringement
Gemgate Improvement

I’ll give her the Engineer backpack info. At least someone said, “hey, we see and issue here and we are working on it.” Thats what ANet needs to do for alot of issues brought up here. Take it a step further. give us a road map.

Copyright infringement. Thats more community service. Good for you. /golfclap

Gemgate improvement. This was a disaster, and you added to it. You asked for suggestions, when the clear, obvious answer was to just rollback the change. This exact issue makes me think that common sense is a rarity, but then we get something like account wide achievements and the wardrobe and WvW which, is utterly brilliant in design and implementation.

So i dunno. Day of the week maybe? Maybe ANet comes in on Tuesday with their game faces on and makes awesome ideas and implements them once every 6 months or so? And the rest of the time, everyone is living “Bay lyfe” or something. Either way, the marketing team and economy team rule this game now.

I don’t think players want to know the direction of the story ahead of the release times, but we do want to know the direction of the game. It’s not the same thing.
When I think of direction of a game I think of expansions, additions to current classes, new classes and weapons, new skills or whatnots and especially new areas to see and discover.
That is not the same thing as revealing a story plot line, but giving your paying customers (I know the game has no monthly subscription, but people pay by buying gems) information on what kinds of improvements are in the plan ahead.

You don’t need to say this and that comes out next month, instead you give us an hope that there will be more to this game at some point. Sure it might take a year, but it’s on the planning.
Unfortunately, blooping out that there is no plan for new dungeons, is not a good information, but it is still information. Sure I don’t like it, but now I can focus on other things than waiting for another dungeon.

I’m pretty sure they will let us know what they they want to let us know when they are ready. And not before. They’ve said as much. The conversation these last several months has been this, Players: “Tell us what we want to know now.” Anet: “We’ll let you know when we have something to say.” Players: “Figure it out now and tell us.” Anet: “We’ll let you know when we have new info.” And so it has been and so it will be. Unless and until they decide to make internal changes on content development and marketing, this will be the narrative played out in the months to come. Over and over.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Alerno — Taking what you have (and everyone else has) put on the table I do wonder something. I want to ask, and hope nobody will bite my head off here.

You mention wanting to know there will be more to the game. The new and continuing episodes of the Living World count towards that, right? The fact that players know there’s a team working on new content and features, and that there are releases on a regular basis? I fully understand that may not fulfill every desire, but it does show a continuing commitment to “new stuff” for us players, wouldn’t you agree?

Honestly… NO

That doesn’t cut it.

Living story to many of us is a side thing, a little fluff to spice things up. That’s not what we play day in, day out. What we do play is Dungeons (and fractals), WvW, and PVP. Those are the core of the game, yet they’ve been largely ignored.

I’d ask you to consider, what do you feel is the core of the game? I can’t help but feel many of us players feel it’s those 3 aspects, but if the developers feel the Open World stuff LS is giving us is what the core of the game is… well I guess that answers the thread and there goes my hope for additions of content I’d find interesting enough to keep me around.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Alerno — Taking what you have (and everyone else has) put on the table I do wonder something. I want to ask, and hope nobody will bite my head off here.

You mention wanting to know there will be more to the game. The new and continuing episodes of the Living World count towards that, right? The fact that players know there’s a team working on new content and features, and that there are releases on a regular basis? I fully understand that may not fulfill every desire, but it does show a continuing commitment to “new stuff” for us players, wouldn’t you agree?

No. LW was a good idea, but the writing is weak and the content is basically repetitive. Moreover, if I log off for a few months, and then come back, I can’t replay anything I missed without dumping money into the cash shop. Honestly, the longer I stay logged off, the harder it is to log back on. Every time I do log on I’m met with disappointment and frustration because ANet have supposedly released "an xpac’s worth of content’ and I can’t play any of it!

I’d rather just buy a well-made xpac up front and be able to play/replay that content as much as I want, whenever I want.

In so, so many ways, LW is a very annoying turnoff. It’s the biggest reason why I just can’t play GW2 for more than a couple hours every quarter…

Gaile Gray.6029:

Alerno — Taking what you have (and everyone else has) put on the table I do wonder something. I want to ask, and hope nobody will bite my head off here.

You mention wanting to know there will be more to the game. The new and continuing episodes of the Living World count towards that, right? The fact that players know there’s a team working on new content and features, and that there are releases on a regular basis? I fully understand that may not fulfill every desire, but it does show a continuing commitment to “new stuff” for us players, wouldn’t you agree?

Nope. Living story doesn’t cut it. We want mounts. We want flying mounts. We want zones with no way points. We want raids with gear progression. We want raids with no gear progression. We want raids at all levels. We want craftable precursors. We want ascended gear to have selectable stats. We don’t want ascended gear at all! We want an end to TP trader barons. We want more build variety. We want the holy trinity back. We want more dungeons. We want dungeons to be faster. We don’t want speedrunning metas. We want dungeons to be harder. We want Cantha, Elona, and the Underworld. We want free content updates. We want paid expansions.

Now all you gotta do is tell us when you can make these things happen and we’ll be happy.

To add, I was talking to a friend who’s at this point quit GW2, he was redownloading it today just so he could send 5k gold away to various people.

We were discussing Everquest, I played the original, him EQ2.

We were discussing the oldschool MMO and the different aspects as we was redownloeding EQ2 as he just had the craving for it. I can’t say I really share his longing for that oldschool play style, but, in the middle of our discussion he exclaimed “wait, WHAT they added another expansion” as a huge EQ fan I was like “yeah, every octoberish…” He started reading off all the additions, multiple zones, multiple group dungeons, multiple raids… a huge chunk of content.

Now, that’s $40 and a sub fee, I get that. But the point is it’s there, this is a like 10 year old game (and the 15+ year old game of original EQ received similar additions).

I personally have a budget that would allow me to spend MUCH more on this game if I felt it was worthwhile, but honestly I don’t see much of a future for me in this game. I run Arah almost every day, and that’s pretty much what I find fun at this point. There’s not much else that keeps me going. Some WvW thrown in, Some LS to mix things up, a bit of leveling new alts just to kill time, but what I find fun is Arah.

Now… well… I don’t forsee another Arah type thing coming…. ever, it just doesn’t seem to be on the docket for GW2. Which is incredibly disappointing. I love the game that has been created, the combat system is excellent, the entire game is fun, but the content is becoming very stale, and this is someone who is only like 8 months into the game… not the 2 years that many others have been here.

I don’t’ know what my point is really here, but I just felt that the discussion I had with my friend today would give a little perspective to Gaile, this is not an uncommon discussion I have. Now not many are giving away 5k gold, but I’m seeing long time players leave quite regularly, and it’s sad. And, while I’m mainly active in the Dungeon community, I see it in the WvW community as well, recently we’ve seen a few notable guilds have their last raids, it’s a sad thing really. I don’t PvP, just not a fan in this game, but I see similar discussions in the profession balance area regarding that type of game play. Things are crumbling and it’s really a concern.

I hope you can understand where we as players are coming from Gaile, It just feels like many aspects of the original game are being left behind and not supported. We’re in this futile hopeless spiral as people continue to disappear.

You mention wanting to know there will be more to the game. The new and continuing episodes of the Living World count towards that, right?

I fully appreciate the living world. I fully appreciate that the game continues to expand the story and provide chapters like Echoes of the Past, and how that this continues.

However. . .

I also want to see a grander vision than three mini-zones added over two years. I want to see a new Caledon Forest sized map added every six months (or two smaller ones, or two Caledons per year, but basically that much scale on average). I want the map to expand considerably faster than it has at the current pace.

I want new classes, and new weapons added to existing classes. We’ve seen one shared heal and one unique heal per class since launch, and four new traits added to each class, in two years. I want to see a dozen new traits per class, I want to see a dozen new skills, per two-year period. I want to see a fix to Condition Damage that allows it to do 100% damage against zergged enemies and world bosses. I want to see Precursor crafting, Ascended Jewelery and Cooking. I want to see a new set of Legendaries added, to give some variety to players that might want a Legendary bow that doesn’t shoot unicorns, or a Legendary pistol that it’s a party-popper.

I understand that these features would come at a development cost and I’m willing to pay it, if you need a paid expansion to make these changes viable, go right ahead, but make it happen.

Yes, the living world counts, but no, it’s not sufficient.

I’d like to remind people that the LW isn’t just content, it’s a content-delivery mechanism. It can be used to introduce absolutely anything you want in the game. There is no reason to assume that the only things in the LW pipeline are PvE maps and instances.

The only part of the Living World you need to pay for if you take a break is the story instances themselves, and they are entirely optional.

Gaile was not asking whether the promise of more LW is sufficient to sate our desires for intel, just whether it counts.

I know some of you want regular content and expansions and for everyone at Anet to report to you on everything they’re doing like you’re personally their boss, but the secret is that you will always be disappointed if you go in with a sense of entitlement.

ArenaNet is not your employee. They do not answer to you. They are a team of artists and technicians working together to make the kind of game they want to play, and they would very much like all of us to play it with them, so long as we help make it a positive experience. It is a very expensive project to undertake and maintain, and certain decisions have to be made with financial solubility in mind.

Minimizing disappoint is a big part of that last item, but I will say that I believe they have over-corrected after their initial post-release openness turned back and bit them. They are so afraid of disappointing veteran players that they’ve forgotten promises are what bring new players in.

We here on the forums are already invested in the game. Potential new players, however, need to see an exciting road ahead of them if they’re going to join us. Promises are what brought a lot of us into GW2, but the current silence has little to offer newcomers. They need to be told something more than “content is coming,” and the media certainly need more than that if they’re going to keep talking about the game in ways that lets people hear about it in the first place.

We need a middle ground. It’s okay for information to be vague, but not nebulous. Give us some bait. Hook us in. We aren’t geese eager to blindly follow breadcrumbs. You have to snag us and drag us with tantalizing visions of the future. They don’t have to be detail-laden promises like the pre-release days, but for Pete’s sake, ArenaNet, have enough confidence in what you’re doing to let us get excited about it.

Ohoni.6057:

You mention wanting to know there will be more to the game. The new and continuing episodes of the Living World count towards that, right?

I fully appreciate the living world. I fully appreciate that the game continues to expand the story and provide chapters like Echoes of the Past, and how that this continues.

However. . .

I also want to see a grander vision than three mini-zones added over two years. I want to see a new Caledon Forest sized map added every six months (or two smaller ones, or two Caledons per year, but basically that much scale on average). I want the map to expand considerably faster than it has at the current pace.

I want new classes, and new weapons added to existing classes. We’ve seen one shared heal and one unique heal per class since launch, and four new traits added to each class, in two years. I want to see a dozen new traits per class, I want to see a dozen new skills, per two-year period. I want to see a fix to Condition Damage that allows it to do 100% damage against zergged enemies and world bosses. I want to see Precursor crafting, Ascended Jewelery and Cooking. I want to see a new set of Legendaries added, to give some variety to players that might want a Legendary bow that doesn’t shoot unicorns, or a Legendary pistol that it’s a party-popper.

I understand that these features would come at a development cost and I’m willing to pay it, if you need a paid expansion to make these changes viable, go right ahead, but make it happen.

Yes, the living world counts, but no, it’s not sufficient.

Seconded. LS can be very good but it will never be (by itself) good enough.

I can speak only for myself now, but I’m a person, who compares alot, heck thats why i came up with the FF14 Teasers, because pictures often do tell alot more, than 1000s of words.

For me personally GW2 lacks currently alot of things, that make out of a MMO a MMO RPG, which is actually what Anet has planned to design this game letting GW2 be more like a traditional MMORPG and yet, it misses so extremely much things, that are typical for a good MMORPG of these days today:

• Emotes (GW2 has so less Emotes, compared to games like FF14, B&S, Aion & Co, what makes it really sad, when you think about it, that 2 of 3 of those games come from NCSoft >.>, especially when you rethink again about it, that even GW1 had far more Emotes than GW2!!)

• Douzens of new explorable Maps & Dungeons, we got in 2 years just only 3 new Maps to explore and just only 1 redesigned Dungeon Path that removed an old Path, so it destroyed content instead of adding just new content and Fractals, but I hardly count Fractals as a Dungeon

• Things like Raids, Housing, Gardening, Fishing, Mount Raising, all content features, that pretty much are today for a good MMORPG standard, are all missing here.

• Stuff like DX11 Support, 64bit Client and other performance tools that are pretty much standard for good MMORPGs.
  What has come out of ANets words, that they want to give GW2 also DX11 support??. 2 years total silence.
  GW2 started looking much better than games like FF14 or Aion, when the game started 2012, not its vice versa, because the competion graphically improved itself over the time alot.

I don’t need spoiled Living Story Content from ANet, Livign Story is NOT the core of the game and it will never become that, even if Anet wants to try to make us believe that. The Core Systems of GW2 are which keep this game alive:

• WvW
• PvP
• PvE Exploration/ Character Progression

Living Story is there just only the nice filler, that entertains you for a single day and then you are done with it, because sadly thats all ,what those small story Tid Bits offer us, content for 1 day, whereas you have with a large Expansions at least something to do for 1 Month due to all the new content and where the new story parts entertain you also for a much longer time than just 1 single day.

WvW instead got totally neglected for 1,5 years now. Its dieing out day per day.
PvP requires massively more attention and requires more different game modes to play, always the same stuff quickly becomes boring
PvE Exploration seems to have been slowly awaken now in Season 2, it was nice to see finally some more new explorable maps.. this is somethign that needs to happen more constantly to keep the players entertained and interested in GW2.
Character Progression on the other side has been neglected since 2 years ,its 100% stagnant, nothing happened here after the implemention of Ascended Stuff, because the player exodus after it basically seems to have shocked ANet so much, that they are totally afraid of it to make anything in that direction anymore..
We had an CDI about it, and since then total silence about what the results from this CDI could be, where a company like SE would have gone already so far and would have made already out of the results a big Teaser to show their players, on what they are currently working on and what might get implemented soon …

There feels every teaser like some kind of new mile stone, like a new era for their game, whereas our livign world teasers show us nothing that gets implemented with the patch.

Players are basically “forced” to go on sites like dulfy, just to get to know, what they actually get with a new patch mostly, which is really sad, when this should be actually your job Anet to tell us!

Whoa I just feel myself, as if i have let out now some big frustration, that I kept eating up for the last years- criticism that finally had to be said…

I’ll be a bit off topic but I’ll add something to what Orpheal said. A lot of people think GW2 is dead and it’s probably because there’s next to no advertising. If you don’t visit the website or dedicated fan forums/blogs, you hear little to nothing about the game. You don’t even get a mail when new content is released while on the other hand I’m getting tons of mails from Blizzard since I stopped playing wow years ago.
Another thing I discovered recently, thanks to reddit, some weapons will be removed from the Black Lion Weapon Specialist this tuesday and the information about this is a single line in a patchnote. In the same way, BLTC sales end are not well advertised, who knows when the tempest skins will be removed?

The main page and login screen should show more informations than they do right now.

Gaile, you might know me as someone strongly supportive of Anet and the game, but in this instance, the Living World isn’t enough because people think in terms of the living world being the story instances you get, which not everyone cares about.

If Anet wants the Living World to be more than it is, they need to provide updates to the game that supercede just story lines. Now they’ve done some of that by adding new zones, but you have to understand, there’s very little difference playing most professions now as there was a year ago.

In Guild Wars 1 you had new skills, you had so many choices. Here, you have a lot less options. Even with traits, playing characters isn’t vastly different.

People are looking for ways to expand their play internally as well as externally. It’s not just fighting a new monster, it’s a new way to fight old monsters too. People want to see more weapons, more skills, more traits, more options.

And they want to see new professions and races.

Until the Living Story (or an expansion) provides that, you’re going to continue to see these types of complaints.

nightwulf.1986:

Nope. Living story doesn’t cut it. We want mounts. We want flying mounts. We want zones with no way points. We want raids with gear progression. We want raids with no gear progression. We want raids at all levels. We want craftable precursors. We want ascended gear to have selectable stats. We don’t want ascended gear at all! We want an end to TP trader barons. We want more build variety. We want the holy trinity back. We want more dungeons. We want dungeons to be faster. We don’t want speedrunning metas. We want dungeons to be harder. We want Cantha, Elona, and the Underworld. We want free content updates. We want paid expansions.

Now all you gotta do is tell us when you can make these things happen and we’ll be happy.

Actually, no. Please take me out of your “we”. I don’t want mounts, I love way points, I don’t want Cantha. I don’t want more dungeons I am not playing. I seriously don’t want trinity. I don’t want more challenging content, I enjoy it the way it is, when I come home from a hard day’s work. With all due respect, if your list is what you want GW2 to be, you’d better be looking for a different game.

The “we” that you talk about doesn’t exist. And thats the problem. “We” have such a big variety of wishes, hopes and expectations that no matter what is done, someone will feel disappointed and will make sure the world knows about that. So in the end every action that is taken will feel wrong, since at least a voicy minority doesn’t like it.

What I feel “we” can agree on is: ANet didn’t give away too much information on Precursor scavenger hunt, it gave away not enough, so that “we” couldn’t understand the reason why it was postponed.

Some of us would finally like to see serious fixes in WvW, some want enhancements in PvP, some want PvE-Raids, changes to Megaservers, a better reward system… but “we” all want to have a better understanding whether at least some of these things are in the making.

“We” want to know: are you moving, ANet, other than LS-story updates?

^I think you misunderstood that post. I believe the point of it was that there are many, many conflicting wishes and desires from the playerbase, and therein lies part of the difficulty. /shrug

Gaile Gray.6029:

Alerno — Taking what you have (and everyone else has) put on the table I do wonder something. I want to ask, and hope nobody will bite my head off here.

You mention wanting to know there will be more to the game. The new and continuing episodes of the Living World count towards that, right? The fact that players know there’s a team working on new content and features, and that there are releases on a regular basis? I fully understand that may not fulfill every desire, but it does show a continuing commitment to “new stuff” for us players, wouldn’t you agree?

In a word, no.

once more with feeling and sincerity

Gaile Gray.6029:

….I do wonder something. I want to ask, and hope nobody will bite my head off here.

You mention wanting to know there will be more to the game. The new and continuing episodes of the Living World count towards that, right? The fact that players know there’s a team working on new content and features, and that there are releases on a regular basis? I fully understand that may not fulfill every desire, but it does show a continuing commitment to “new stuff” for us players, wouldn’t you agree?

As long as the content being developed right now doesn’t have anything to do with what we’ve been begging and pleading for years for you to release (and fix), then no; not to me, not to anyone else who has posted here who has even a vague concern for the game’s direction.

I mean come on, you can’t even tell us if something is bugged or not. All we’re left to do is find out for ourselves, ‘oh no, it doesn’t work’… why not? Anet can’t even grace us with an explanation. Would you play something that has a development team which can’t even talk to their players about the game and its future? Short-, medium- and long-term goals are what need to be discussed and implemented, and not just in CDI form.

The releases don’t mean anything to any reasonable player if there’s nothing new to add to the game. I’m not talking about how hard you push your gemstore, LS episodes or LW content; I’m talking about stuff more tangible to the players who will appreciate it more, and you know as well as I do the stuff that’s being asked for in this game.

It’s more the fact that we don’t know what you’re working on and Anet’s too tight-fisted to release any information to keep us excited for what’s happening in the game. LW content only stretches so far. As a GW1 veteran you should know what we’re looking forward to in the game. The LS episodes and LW content can be enough to keep the newbies entertained for a while. The veterans (quite rightly) expect a bit more from what Anet can deliver, and to talk about such stuff with it’s longer-term players.

This isn’t an option, Gaile, it needs to happen.

People seem to have attachment issues. This is a game, not a personal relationship. You may be a wonderful person, you may be a nutbar, all the same thing since you are a name and in some cases several books worth of postings on forums or whatever. Nothing more.
There is no relationship except business to customer.
They owe you nothing but the game.
If they lose people it is not because they don’t love you.

Yargesh.4965:

People seem to have attachment issues. This is a game, not a personal relationship. You may be a wonderful person, you may be a nutbar, all the same thing since you are a name and in some cases several books worth of postings on forums or whatever. Nothing more.
There is no relationship except business to customer.
They owe you nothing but the game.
If they lose people it is not because they don’t love you.

Your straw man isn’t even very good. I feel sad for you.

If they lose people, they lose money.

This whole conversation is about the business/customer relationship.

^I think you misunderstood that post. I believe the point of it was that there are many, many conflicting wishes and desires from the playerbase, and therein lies part of the difficulty. /shrug

Today, 05:13

This is true, but this is a case where it’s ANet’s job to filter through the things we say, using game data and polling where necessary, to figure out which points do resonate with the broadest swath of the players, something they’ve problem incapable of doing when they claimed that we “wanted” the Spring trait changes.

All I have to say ablout Gailes postign related to the Living World is, that I could pile up here an unendless list that would easily explode the word limit of the forum like a douzen of times with things, that should be currently of a much higher focus/priority right now, than the Living Story should ever be.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Alerno — Taking what you have (and everyone else has) put on the table I do wonder something. I want to ask, and hope nobody will bite my head off here.

You mention wanting to know there will be more to the game. The new and continuing episodes of the Living World count towards that, right? The fact that players know there’s a team working on new content and features, and that there are releases on a regular basis? I fully understand that may not fulfill every desire, but it does show a continuing commitment to “new stuff” for us players, wouldn’t you agree?

Not really. That’s just story. As we have already said, what we’re asking for is not story spoilers, but an information on the direction the game goes. Unless of course the only direction the game goes is the story. That would be an answer in itself.

What kind of game GW2 is, according to devs? What kind of game they want it to be? What kind of people the game will be addressed to? What kind of content will be introduced to entice that group to play/make that group keep playing?(in general, not specifics).

It’s extremely hard to get any answers like that from devs, and when we do get them, they are conflicting and confusing, as if every dev had their own, individual vision of the game, and the overlaying strategy didn’t even exist. Which, if it is true, we’d also like to know, so we could cut our losses right now, instead of continuing to expect/hope for things that will never arrive.

Guhracie.3419:

Yargesh.4965:

People seem to have attachment issues. This is a game, not a personal relationship. You may be a wonderful person, you may be a nutbar, all the same thing since you are a name and in some cases several books worth of postings on forums or whatever. Nothing more.
There is no relationship except business to customer.
They owe you nothing but the game.
If they lose people it is not because they don’t love you.

Your straw man isn’t even very good. I feel sad for you.

If they lose people, they lose money.

This whole conversation is about the business/customer relationship.

All you have is strawman and sad? You really need new material.

Gaile Gray.6029:

You mention wanting to know there will be more to the game. The new and continuing episodes of the Living World count towards that, right?

Nope.
You’re welcome.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Alerno — Taking what you have (and everyone else has) put on the table I do wonder something. I want to ask, and hope nobody will bite my head off here.

You mention wanting to know there will be more to the game. The new and continuing episodes of the Living World count towards that, right? The fact that players know there’s a team working on new content and features, and that there are releases on a regular basis? I fully understand that may not fulfill every desire, but it does show a continuing commitment to “new stuff” for us players, wouldn’t you agree?

Nope.

It shows a commitment to new story, but not new “stuff”. One doesn’t always bring the other, you can tell a story without bringing in any new things for the game at large.

Let’s look at Marjory Delaqua for an example. Recently, the plot gave her a spirit infused weapon, her sister’s greatsword. For players, this would seem to be a HUGE step forward in “stuff”, because spirit infusing weapons could be a new class mechanic for Necromancers, or the start of a whole new class. And Necromancers wielding greatswords is a sign of the long awaited spread of weapons to other classes. However, there’s no sign that this is anything other than a plot point in the story, and the “stuff” it implies is nowhere to be seen for the game at large. The game at large hasn’t changed.

So, no. The LS doesn’t count for what we’re asking about. Not even close.