Guild Wars 2

I know that this has been suggested many of times, but I don’t know if it’s been officially answered. During these times of drought why not open up some of the older, past content like SAB or Queen’s Gauntlet? The Bazaar of the Four Winds also comes to mind, but the events that lead to Dry Top kind of nixes that.

I also realize that SAB was just released and that seemed to be a big hit. Which kind of proves my point that re-releasing old content during droughts is a plus for the community and thereby for the game too.

I suppose that too much has changed in mechanics to just simply re-release QG without spending some precious dev time and that would explain why it doesn’t happen.

Maybe going forward, as the company evaluates the 4 quarterly release cycle it can look at putting this stuff in between releases? I think that it is a huge bonus for the game. Every time some sort of festival happens whether it’s for holidays or random, I see a lot optimism, thanks, and large chunks of the community getting together to have fun. This is obviously quite contrary to what you see now on the forums. It seems very much a win/win.

For example, something I miss greatly from GW1 that is could be dropped into GW2 is the weekend events. I remember my old guilds planning throughout the week for certain events and when the event happened, cities/outposts would be filled with new players participating in the events. It was great weekend warrior fun and I remember looking forward to quite a few of those profitable events.

TL/DR: The community goes stagnant to bitter during droughts, so why not rehash some temporary content or implement weekend events to bring the community together and infuse some joy? I suspect there would be a lot less kittening. (OK maybe a little )

Yep always wonder this myself, why don’t we have festivals at random intervals anymore?? Even the old ones would give us something different to do. It makes no sense not to.

Festivals coming around would significantly help things..

Having a selection of these, such as QG which can be switched on would have made a lot of sense for keeping players occupied..

Unfortunately many of them were set up in LA, and anet decided to change LA dramatically..

How about weekend events? In GW1 they were there to mostly grind for points for some title. Most had some benefit other than title. GW2 isn’t really set up for that system, true, but they could easily increase drop rates of some special items. Yeah there is an effect on the economy, but it’s only for a couple of days but the community health would improve for longer. If they said: "Hey! Triple drop rates for Black Lion Keys for 48 hours!, I would bet there would be a sudden influx of players for that time period. They wouldn’t really lose anything because 3x 0.000000001% is still really low. However there would be a lot of excitement and I bet it would cause people to spend a little for some extra keys to get those scraps.

Having a selection of minor festivals to pop at random between the big holidays would definitely liven things up. I’d love some more SAB time—didn’t quite finish farming the storm wizard skins.

Loving these ‘drought’ topics. Pretty much proves that those who warned about this very situation were right. Meanwhile, most of us are playing something else in the meantime.

Agreed! That would be absolutely awesome.

Two things. First is every time they roll out a repeat of a festival, no matter how much content/rewards got tweaked, there is a contingent of players who cry about how it’s not “new” content. The other is the game engine does evolve over time and it’s not just reactivating old content. Actual scripts need to be at the very least tested against the current engine and then may need to be tweaked (and thus tested again). Those development hours have to come from somewhere so to do something like that would mean that other development would suffer.

And I’m loving this “drought” because now I have the time to work on items I never had a chance to get done before. The new dailies are directing me to JPs and mini-dungeons I had no idea existed before (and I don’t just wait for the portal). I’ve been re-exploring the core maps with gliding. I’m getting my crafting maxed out an several characters so I can make ascended armor and weapons, from scratch. Making Mawdrey. Trying out fractals. Even doing dungeons.

To be clean I’m not a newb, I have over 4400 hours in this game and I’ve never done those things before.

In my opinion I don’t think any game has the excuse for this much content drought(especially considering this isn’t a free game), it is a cop-out to say people don’t like old content calling it “not new”. People always love the return of things. It has almost been a year and besides raids, no new maps or living story, cancelled legendary weapons, and really a lack of followup on promises.

We are coming up on a one year mark for HoT and still no living story. I don’t mind the lack of content the expansion gave, but to release nothing for open world in 9 months is plain ridiculous, the 4 maps gave only about a few months of content if you played casually. Sure there are the few people that say the expansion wasn’t worth $60 but I beg to differ on that. I think it was worth it, but I feel that when you develop content you can’t just have no follow up and cancel plans. Arenanet has potential to be better than this, but they make some weird decisions and make them with very bad timing. I don’t play this game for raids, I don’t play to grind out legendary items and pray for precursors, I play for the game in the now— the sprawling living worlds that exists at every moment. Why would you as a developer stray so far from the core of the game that drew everyone here to begin with? Quite frankly I am sick of the appeal to the meta(raids, legendary items, pvp leagues).

In my opinion I think the number one thing that makes players cringe is every week when Arenanet announces new cash shop items. There are WAYYYYYYYY too many releases of new items and rereleases in the news. Cash shop items should never have been news and it really puts up a bad front. To have 9 months of no new maps/living world ( Raids are not because they are made for a different audience ) and constant releases of cash content is just insulting to everyone who spent $60 if not more on the other higher priced editions; we put our faith in content releases and get bombarded by content that wants more money. Honestly this feels more and more like a kickstarter that always asks for more but gives nothing in return.

I stopped playing when raids were getting released because I did not play this game for group content(that is why I left WoW, to escape the madness). I played guild wars because I could jump in and out, which is guild wars at the core since day 1 back in 2005. If a new expansion is announced I quite honestly am not going to recommend it to anyone, because the company has not been delivering. Either let it die or bring back the core, quit appealing to the few.

i’d love to see queen’s gauntlet back, not so much for the gauntlet but the legendary runs, those were fun, got tons of people together to chain take out tons of legendaries and everyone was rewarded nicely

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Meanwhile, most of us are playing something else in the meantime.

Yeah dude
Steam has so many good games that I don’t even care that GW2 is currently dry

Dragon Bash. Fix the scripts, torture some programmers, do whatever needs to be done to bring it back. And make us kites out of the dragon kite decorations that were all over Lion’s Arch like I asked back when it was first released.

Behellagh.1468:

Actual scripts need to be at the very least tested against the current engine and then may need to be tweaked (and thus tested again). Those development hours have to come from somewhere so to do something like that would mean that other development would suffer.

It shouldn’t. What you are talking about wouldn’t be done by the dev team. Change management, agile working, testing.. it’s a whole separate process. Actually completely irrelevant if anet don’t work this way but from a content re-use point of view it would be useful if they started working this way. Look at SAB, content can be reused. May not be what anet want, may not be how original content was coded, may just not be worth it to them but it shouldn’t hold up other content in development.

I’m totally in two minds. I am with you on the drought meaning I’m catching up on tons of stuff that I never got round to doing, I did a lot of LS2 achievements, feel like I’m making actual HoT progress with things like adventures and collections and I’m still managing to get in some dungeons and fractals and so on.

On the other hand IF standalone content like the festivals could be rolled out on a year round schedule so there was an Easter event, a Xmas event, a Summer event.. whatever.. then I’d be fine with that. Would give me a chance to catch up on things I’d started there and not finished. Or I could totally ignore the event and just carry on working on HoT collections.

Well the raid is the first thing I can think of that could be reused and is a significant piece of content. Be it open world, solo or small group content reconfiguring.
Reopening the Labyrinthine Cliffs is another.

Bringing back old events is definitely a good idea, or even introducing small weekend events (even if it’s just simple temporary achievements)

There is so many small and fairly easy things they can do to have reduced this drought, but they’ve done none of it.

Threads complaining there’s not (fast) enough new content vs threads complaining that there’s not (fast) enough new content AND ANet is covering it up with laziness.

Kittened if they do and kittened if they don’t.

~EW

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Threads complaining there’s not (fast) enough new content vs threads complaining that there’s not (fast) enough new content AND ANet is covering it up with laziness.

Kittened if they do and kittened if they don’t.

~EW

You misunderstand the purpose of this thread. This thread was not intended as a complaint about “fast” enough new content and/or Anet’s “laziness”. Content droughts are a natural part of any game like GW2. If the time spent developing new content is proportional to the quality of the end product, then they can take all the time they need, provided it’s released. For one, I enjoy the drought too as others have said because I have time to catch up on some things. I do not necessarily look forward to new content from Anet because usually the hype>actual product.

So then what is the point of my thread? My concern is for the community. IMO, there is simple tried & true model they could implement during these unavoidable droughts. There is tons of old content, with old achievements, with old skins, etc just sitting there within GW2. Yes it would take some work, and no I am not a programmer or an expert, but it seems to me that the effort invested now would pay off in the future during these times.

How about the stuff from LS1. I know the whole time-line thing causes some continuity issues. They could bring back for a weekend something like the Tower of Nightmares, or the Marionette battle, or even the Battle for LA. If they are really concerned the average player isn’t smart enough to understand that the special event is something historical, they could flash it really big on the screen or whatever.

Also, if scripting/programming is hugely time consuming and complicated they could do something simple like temporarily increasing the gain of something for the weekend. There are the weekend warriors who don’t/can’t play 24/7 to acquire all the diverse mats/currencies for their legendaries, collections, or progress. Why not, have weekend events, like they have had before, that give temporary boosts to just one of those things. For example this weekend could be double whatever for VB, and next weekend maybe something for WvW, the next weekend double drop rates of something in Ascalonian Catacombs, then next something for PvP folk, and so on.

The point being again is the community. It just seems to me that even though the community is fickle and easily bored it has become stagnant and stagnation leads to this increase in bitterness and there is a wealth of old unused content or special 2 day events that make the stagnation less.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Festivals coming around would significantly help things..

Having a selection of these, such as QG which can be switched on would have made a lot of sense for keeping players occupied..

Unfortunately many of them were set up in LA, and anet decided to change LA dramatically..

I REALLY want the festival of the 4 winds back. I know I know the storyline blah blah blah.. WANT!!!!! Lotro solved this by having previous content in an instanced format, and explained before you entered it was the past, etc..

Such a simple solution.. Plus it’s just sitting there..

hardy.7469:

Well the raid is the first thing I can think of that could be reused and is a significant piece of content. Be it open world, solo or small group content reconfiguring.
Reopening the Labyrinthine Cliffs is another.

Their ship was destroyed in Season 2 decimating the Zephyrites. I don’t think we will be going back. I did enjoy the festival, it was fun, but just saying it isn’t likely.

CMM.6712:

hardy.7469:

Well the raid is the first thing I can think of that could be reused and is a significant piece of content. Be it open world, solo or small group content reconfiguring.
Reopening the Labyrinthine Cliffs is another.

Their ship was destroyed in Season 2 decimating the Zephyrites. I don’t think we will be going back. I did enjoy the festival, it was fun, but just saying it isn’t likely.

If they make it a historical instance, like LOTRO does that is all solved. Players just coming to the game are so left out of what has happened. The game now seems to focus on players that have been here and not on gathering new ones. I have the little thingy that shows a glimpse of the festival, when I put it down some ask where it is at. I explain and they usually reply, “Too bad looks cool..”

Kythan Myr.4719:

You misunderstand the purpose of this thread.

…snip…

Nope, you just misunderstood the purpose of my comment: there are those in the community will remain saying the same kinds of things no matter what ANet does; and a band-aid is not a good solution.

The solution is not on ANet’s head to spend time and effort rehashing or porting old content. They’re working on new content as best as they can, and that’s where their time is better spent.

The solution is for the community to remind each other to be patient, enjoy what is there, try be positive (or at least constructive), and remember that no MMO is supposed to be the sole provider of electronic entertainment.

~EW

GW1 had a message when you entered missions in a different campaign from the one you originated from, that took place before this character would have come to the campaign.

Say, if I took my Canthan Ritualist to the Fort Ranik mission, it takes place in time before “Trouble in Tyria” or whatever that was called, and the screen would show a message saying something like “These events happened before you arrived in Tyria”.

Considering how long it took the Devs to get SAB working with the current engine, I’d much prefer they focus their efforts and resources on completing and releasing new content, than spend that time on content from the past. It would only delay new content, and players are anxiously awaiting said new content.

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

The solution is for the community to remind each other to be patient, enjoy what is there, try be positive (or at least constructive), and remember that no MMO is supposed to be the sole provider of electronic entertainment.

~EW

Like me, you obviously been around awhile. I understand your point, but you over-estimate society. Times have changed a lot over the past 10 years. and the average gamer is not willing to sit around and be patient and won’t endure being reminded of that. You are correct, no MMO is supposed to be the sole provider of electronic entertainment, but that is not what the majority of MMO gamers expect these days. Those days are behind us. Distractions are aplenty and loyalty is scarce. Positive was and is still a good thing, and hopefully remains that way. That was the hope of my “band-aid” to bring something positive to the community. Perhaps my suggestions are unreasonable, but I believe that the current state of MMO gamers has evolved to needing band-aids more so than patience. Personally, I hate the idea too, I just think that’s the reality of the times.

Kythan Myr.4719:

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

The solution is for the community to remind each other to be patient, enjoy what is there, try be positive (or at least constructive), and remember that no MMO is supposed to be the sole provider of electronic entertainment.

~EW

Like me, you obviously been around awhile. I understand your point, but you over-estimate society. Times have changed a lot over the past 10 years. and the average gamer is not willing to sit around and be patient and won’t endure being reminded of that. You are correct, no MMO is supposed to be the sole provider of electronic entertainment, but that is not what the majority of MMO gamers expect these days. Those days are behind us. Distractions are aplenty and loyalty is scarce. Positive was and is still a good thing, and hopefully remains that way. That was the hope of my “band-aid” to bring something positive to the community. Perhaps my suggestions are unreasonable, but I believe that the current state of MMO gamers has evolved to needing band-aids more so than patience. Personally, I hate the idea too, I just think that’s the reality of the times.

If your suggestion would in fact help bring a bit more peace to the aggravated/bored/etc players, then you can certainly count me in. I don’t think we’d know for sure unless it is tried; though I do have my skepticism as noted above.

I don’t think your suggestions are unreasonable… my criticism stems more from an efficiency stand point. Whenever I see any suggestions for any kind of improvements, the first thing I always do is try to imagine if I were in ANet’s shoes looking in from the outside. I firmly believe they’re trying to make a solid product to please as many people as possible… but they have limited resources and will always have to make tough cuts in what they could/want to do that’ll largely revolve around their bottom line. I think the general cost-to-entertainment ratio gives a better return with new content over nostalgic or previously released content. (I also recognize that what I imagine for ANet’s perspective isn’t necessarily correct… but it’s a start, I think)

I certainly agree that loyalty to games still exists very strongly, especially in the older gamers… That’s why I do try to help people understand that it’s okay to be polygamerous. GW2 has made it easier than a lot of MMOs to come to accept it.

Maybe I do overestimate people’s patience… but we can’t learn it if we don’t take the opportunities we’re given to do so.

~EW

I think it’s a great idea to revive some of the old festivals during this lull period. ANet made so many beautiful new maps during the Queen’s Gauntlet, Festival of the 4 Winds and SAB… it really is a shame that we can’t get to see these again (except maybe SAB?).

Timeline-wise, we already have a lot of inconsistencies in the game anyway (Case in point, the original plot with Zhaitan), I’m sure we’ll get over it eventually (give or take a number of complainers).

CMM.6712:

hardy.7469:

Well the raid is the first thing I can think of that could be reused and is a significant piece of content. Be it open world, solo or small group content reconfiguring.
Reopening the Labyrinthine Cliffs is another.

Their ship was destroyed in Season 2 decimating the Zephyrites. I don’t think we will be going back. I did enjoy the festival, it was fun, but just saying it isn’t likely.

Time means nothing in this game. We killed two dragons but some of the old zones are still the same since launch.
We can replay old missions essentially going back in time and people who have just gotten the game are exposed to both newer changes and frozen in time moments during the story missions. There’s no reason not to do something like reopening the Labyrinthine Cliffs.

And no, I don’t see it happening either, I just find it very odd that ANet has all these events, maps and other that they could’ve used to keep people busy, but preferred to give us essentially nothing.

hardy.7469:

<snip> And no, I don’t see it happening either, I just find it very odd that ANet has all these events, maps and other that they could’ve used to keep people busy, but preferred to give us essentially nothing.

It seems like a love hate relationship sometimes.

This was Anet most fatal flaw with LS1. Instead of spending the time adding recyclable content, they did all this one shot crap. And the sad part is most of it could have been recycled. Took a fractal update to recycle story dungeons, but only 80-90% of them.
Dragon Bash, Festival of the 4 Winds, Queen gauntlet and SAB could have been routine festivals. It took SAB 2 update for them to figure this out.
Right now we have Halloween, Wintersday, Lunar new year, and now 3 years later, the SAB festival all 2 months apart from each other in Q4 and Q1.
Right now in Q2 and Q3, we are in the content drought WITH NOTHING TO DO for the past 3 months, and probably nothing to do for another 3 months if reddit rumors are true.
What I suggest. Fix Dragon Bash and put it in early June and have it always show up at early June. Then Fix Queens Gauntlet and have it be the GW2 Birthday festival. Hell if you really want to make things spicy, replace one of the areas in Queens Gauntlet with White Mantle.
I sorta wish we could have festival of the 4 winds back, especially with gliding now, but Anet painted themselves in a corner with that faction.

I don’t have a strong opinion about whether ANet should spend effort to make use of old content (keep in mind, they can’t "re-use it; the game engine changed, so there would be lots of work required, if only in QA).

I do think ANet made a horrible mistake in how they switched from major updates every two weeks to every six weeks to quarterly or less. There’s pros & cons to a rapid release schedule and to a long interval; I am okay with either.

The problem is that ANet set our expectations and then pulled the rug out from them. Instead of putting all their focus on HoT, without telling us they were working on it, they should have devoted some resources to other stuff.

Old festivals would never placate everyone, but it would give most people things to gnaw on while we hunger for something more substantial.

Actually it’s something I have suggested for a long time. Even before SAB had returned. A long time ago (during living world season 1) Colin brought up the idea that they were bringing this type of content back. Saying it allowed them to bring back this temporary festival content when their was dead time. So they could focus on other newer content. Dragon Bash, Bazaar of the Four Winds, and Queen’s Jubilee were originally designed to come back on a seasonal basis. Yes, I am aware of what it took to bring SAB as an annual seasonal festival. However to me that is a sacrifice you are going to have to make, in order to put these festivals back into a yearly rotation. These small-ish current events just pales in comparison to those festivals types I mentioned above. The problem we are facing right now is HoT is not tiding everyone over until the next major release.

Also I have speculated on why it’s taking this long for Season 3 to come out. Beyond the 2nd expansion team and them going back to fix post HoT problems. They are probably doing the same thing they did with season 2, but with a way smaller team. Which is making new maps to coincide with the new story. Unfortunately that is the problem right there. Making these new maps is what is slowing progress down to a grind. Especially if it’s a pseudo multiple layer one, akin to what we got in HoT. What they should do is what they did for season 1. Using what they already have in game and expand upon it. Minus the temporary content bit. You can still deliver good quality content by building on-top of your older content. It was one the major things that season 1 did right.

I’d still be waiting for the day I can enjoy the story of whatever happened in Lion’s Arch..

…. but I doubt it’ll ever happen.

General Health.9678:

Behellagh.1468:

Actual scripts need to be at the very least tested against the current engine and then may need to be tweaked (and thus tested again). Those development hours have to come from somewhere so to do something like that would mean that other development would suffer.

It shouldn’t. What you are talking about wouldn’t be done by the dev team. Change management, agile working, testing.. it’s a whole separate process. Actually completely irrelevant if anet don’t work this way but from a content re-use point of view it would be useful if they started working this way. Look at SAB, content can be reused. May not be what anet want, may not be how original content was coded, may just not be worth it to them but it shouldn’t hold up other content in development.

I’m totally in two minds. I am with you on the drought meaning I’m catching up on tons of stuff that I never got round to doing, I did a lot of LS2 achievements, feel like I’m making actual HoT progress with things like adventures and collections and I’m still managing to get in some dungeons and fractals and so on.

On the other hand IF standalone content like the festivals could be rolled out on a year round schedule so there was an Easter event, a Xmas event, a Summer event.. whatever.. then I’d be fine with that. Would give me a chance to catch up on things I’d started there and not finished. Or I could totally ignore the event and just carry on working on HoT collections.

SAB had to be recoded if you watched the interviews, to support engine changes. That’s why it didn’t come back sooner.

Sindex.9520:

Actually it’s something I have suggested for a long time. Even before SAB had returned. A long time ago (during living world season 1) Colin brought up the idea that they were bringing this type of content back. Saying it allowed them to bring back this temporary festival content when their was dead time. So they could focus on other newer content. Dragon Bash, Bazaar of the Four Winds, and Queen’s Jubilee were originally designed to come back on a seasonal basis. Yes, I am aware of what it took to bring SAB as an annual seasonal festival. However to me that is a sacrifice you are going to have to make, in order to put these festivals back into a yearly rotation. These small-ish current events just pales in comparison to those festivals types I mentioned above. The problem we are facing right now is HoT is not tiding everyone over until the next major release.

Also I have speculated on why it’s taking this long for Season 3 to come out. Beyond the 2nd expansion team and them going back to fix post HoT problems. They are probably doing the same thing they did with season 2, but with a way smaller team. Which is making new maps to coincide with the new story. Unfortunately that is the problem right there. Making these new maps is what is slowing progress down to a grind. Especially if it’s a pseudo multiple layer one, akin to what we got in HoT. What they should do is what they did for season 1. Using what they already have in game and expand upon it. Minus the temporary content bit. You can still deliver good quality content by building on-top of your older content. It was one the major things that season 1 did right.

Really? You think there are less than ~20 people working on Living Story Season 3? That’s how many worked on Season 2. I suppose it could be, but I was thinking more out of the 120+ assigned to the live game.

There are some recurring events like Easter, Winter’s Day, Halloween and Chinese New Year festival that recur every year. It would be nice for several other such events to take place at other times, such as summer. Perhaps as many as 12 monthly events that cycle, although that would require a lower level for when major events are released.

The return of events like the dragon festival, Queen’s Gauntlet or The Bazaar of the Four Winds would certainly be welcome if there is dev time to do it. It would definitely make it at least appear that there is something going on rather than just repeatedly farming.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Really? You think there are less than ~20 people working on Living Story Season 3? That’s how many worked on Season 2. I suppose it could be, but I was thinking more out of the 120+ assigned to the live game.

I actually have a long winded answer for that, but it was on the semantics of the issue. So I am skipping that for now. However suffice to say it would not surprise me if that was the case. Even though we probably have no clear way of seeing those numbers at all. Right now the people not working the expansion 2 are really divided up between PvP, WvW, and PvE (and their respected sub-divisions). Therefore I am for them bringing back these festivals. Furthermore I predict that there will be more dead time after we get the first chapter of season 3.

Not much of a prediction if that ‘leaked’ article is anything to go by. Seems to be the consensus on the forum that Living Story Season 3 releases will be 2-3 months apart.

Lol, it seems players often find anything that isn’t released daily/weekly/bi-weekly to have ‘dead time’ between releases.

Me, personally? I look forward to whatever gets released, whenever it gets released. I’m much too old to worry about a game, or when it’s updated. But, of course, that’s just me.

Yearly festivals really seem like a no-brainer as it’d be the best way to recycle content with little effort without too much trouble. They already do it for Halloween and Wintersday after all.

It’s good for the far future too.

I’m still waiting for a full-blown Meatoberfest.

Heraldusluminare.2946:

I’m still waiting for a full-blown Meatoberfest.

A new festival? Centered around Char culture? Sign me up!

Behellagh.1468:

SAB had to be recoded if you watched the interviews, to support engine changes. That’s why it didn’t come back sooner.

I didn’t and I’m sure that’s the case. It shouldn’t be the dev team working on the core game doing this is all. It can be hard for a dev team to hand over to cmo/pmo and it’s only worth it if you plan on re-releasing old content. May be the case they’re not interested and SAB was a one-off but it would be a shame if that were the case.

I’d pay gems just to be able to play SAB any time I want >_>

I think they have missed out on a true living world by not using the player’s story to give the players slightly different version of the maps depending on where they are in the story arch. I’d like to see a post Zhaitan version of Orr where one or more of his lieutenant are trying to take power. They could limit it to the 3 Orr maps and it would explain risen on other maps with some slight change of dialog to remove direct references to Zhaitan. I know there are quite a few people who would like to see the old LA map. I really don’t think it would take many changes on ANets part to do it since missions mostly take place in private instances on Central Tyria maps. Tweeks of dialog here and there to avoid references to characters that die in the story on non-changing maps. I think that’s the best way to reuse content.

There could be missions to replace the self-destructed energy probes with ley-line collectors. Since they appear to be an item that could easily be flagged to use one model or another to any given player without having a dedicated post changed map. They could hint at the mission by having ley-line energy coming out of them. The Pact could see them as dangerous and give the mission to replace them. If done right they could explain a reoccurring event on each spot to collect the energy not unlike the ley-line events they have now. There are many ways to adapt content to make it fresh.

I am surprised they haven’t done a summer festival or even a wintersday in summer.

The #1 problem this game has always had is that it sees too little change/update over too long a time period too frequently. I’m not sure why Anet doesn’t recognize this as a problem and seems to be largely apathetic about doing much about it.

Tekoneiric.6817:

I think they have missed out on a true living world by not using the player’s story to give the players slightly different version of the maps depending on where they are in the story arch. I’d like to see a post Zhaitan version of Orr where one or more of his lieutenant are trying to take power. They could limit it to the 3 Orr maps and it would explain risen on other maps with some slight change of dialog to remove direct references to Zhaitan. I know there are quite a few people who would like to see the old LA map. I really don’t think it would take many changes on ANets part to do it since missions mostly take place in private instances on Central Tyria maps. Tweeks of dialog here and there to avoid references to characters that die in the story on non-changing maps. I think that’s the best way to reuse content.

There could be missions to replace the self-destructed energy probes with ley-line collectors. Since they appear to be an item that could easily be flagged to use one model or another to any given player without having a dedicated post changed map. They could hint at the mission by having ley-line energy coming out of them. The Pact could see them as dangerous and give the mission to replace them. If done right they could explain a reoccurring event on each spot to collect the energy not unlike the ley-line events they have now. There are many ways to adapt content to make it fresh.

I am surprised they haven’t done a summer festival or even a wintersday in summer.

Yep. I’ve been saying this for a while. They did it with old Ascalon in GW1, I’m not sure why it’s such a bizarre concept now.

Einlanzer.1627:

Tekoneiric.6817:

I think they have missed out on a true living world by not using the player’s story to give the players slightly different version of the maps depending on where they are in the story arch. I’d like to see a post Zhaitan version of Orr where one or more of his lieutenant are trying to take power. They could limit it to the 3 Orr maps and it would explain risen on other maps with some slight change of dialog to remove direct references to Zhaitan. I know there are quite a few people who would like to see the old LA map. I really don’t think it would take many changes on ANets part to do it since missions mostly take place in private instances on Central Tyria maps. Tweeks of dialog here and there to avoid references to characters that die in the story on non-changing maps. I think that’s the best way to reuse content.

There could be missions to replace the self-destructed energy probes with ley-line collectors. Since they appear to be an item that could easily be flagged to use one model or another to any given player without having a dedicated post changed map. They could hint at the mission by having ley-line energy coming out of them. The Pact could see them as dangerous and give the mission to replace them. If done right they could explain a reoccurring event on each spot to collect the energy not unlike the ley-line events they have now. There are many ways to adapt content to make it fresh.

I am surprised they haven’t done a summer festival or even a wintersday in summer.

Yep. I’ve been saying this for a while. They did it with old Ascalon in GW1, I’m not sure why it’s such a bizarre concept now.

I liked pre-ascalon in GW1, it was one of my favorites. This is a good idea, but I don’t think they’d want to split the community up like that. That would force newer players into zones without veterans and so far that’s goes against their direction for the community.

It would be nice if they had an Orr update refreshing it with life coming back, but that will most likely never occur. Dreams of a healed Orr will have to remain to our imagination.

Kythan Myr.4719:

Einlanzer.1627:

Tekoneiric.6817:

I think they have missed out on a true living world by not using the player’s story to give the players slightly different version of the maps depending on where they are in the story arch. I’d like to see a post Zhaitan version of Orr where one or more of his lieutenant are trying to take power. They could limit it to the 3 Orr maps and it would explain risen on other maps with some slight change of dialog to remove direct references to Zhaitan. I know there are quite a few people who would like to see the old LA map. I really don’t think it would take many changes on ANets part to do it since missions mostly take place in private instances on Central Tyria maps. Tweeks of dialog here and there to avoid references to characters that die in the story on non-changing maps. I think that’s the best way to reuse content.

There could be missions to replace the self-destructed energy probes with ley-line collectors. Since they appear to be an item that could easily be flagged to use one model or another to any given player without having a dedicated post changed map. They could hint at the mission by having ley-line energy coming out of them. The Pact could see them as dangerous and give the mission to replace them. If done right they could explain a reoccurring event on each spot to collect the energy not unlike the ley-line events they have now. There are many ways to adapt content to make it fresh.

I am surprised they haven’t done a summer festival or even a wintersday in summer.

Yep. I’ve been saying this for a while. They did it with old Ascalon in GW1, I’m not sure why it’s such a bizarre concept now.

I liked pre-ascalon in GW1, it was one of my favorites. This is a good idea, but I don’t think they’d want to split the community up like that. That would force newer players into zones without veterans and so far that’s goes against their direction for the community.

It would be nice if they had an Orr update refreshing it with life coming back, but that will most likely never occur. Dreams of a healed Orr will have to remain to our imagination.

I’m not actually convinced this would be as much of an issue as everyone acts like it it. If they tied it to living world progress (which is how it should be done), then players would have the ability to go back to older maps. You would essentially have a choice of which version of Lion’s Arch you wanted to go to based on your current Living Story step. Some veterans would undoubtedly use the original version of Lion’s Arch or other maps simply because they prefer them.

I really don’t see how this “splitting the community” would be an issue.

Kythan Myr.4719:

I liked pre-ascalon in GW1, it was one of my favorites. This is a good idea, but I don’t think they’d want to split the community up like that. That would force newer players into zones without veterans and so far that’s goes against their direction for the community.

It would be nice if they had an Orr update refreshing it with life coming back, but that will most likely never occur. Dreams of a healed Orr will have to remain to our imagination.

Have you completed all the stories on all your characters? I haven’t. I sure most people haven’t. There would be plenty of people that would leave some of their characters at various stages to keep access to some maps like old LA. As it is now you can’t access old LA except in story instances. In GW1 I kept a character or two in pre-searing as did many people. There would be plenty of experienced and new players mixing on maps. Many maps wouldn’t have to be instanced; only changed areas like Orr, LA, Divinity’s Reach, etc.

It would force the devs to be a little more conservative about changing core maps. They would also have to stop referencing story characters on maps. As it is you do the story where one character dies then pop to another map and the character is magically alive again. Also as it is you’ll never truly defeat an elder dragon because even if you have defeated him when you revisit the maps he’s still alive. If they would focus their future map changes on the outlying maps impacted directly by stories it wouldn’t be an issue for core maps.

I know if I were directing a dev team I would basically introduce new maps in stories then the player gets access. The way they did it with entry into the HoT. I would make the stories more like a raid into the map but one player could do it with Destiny’s Edge 2.0 and other NPCs to pad it out. Enter with a party of players would remove some NPCs to balance it out. The raid like stories to new maps should be to establish waypoints along with completing the story. I would make them repeatable without messing up your story position. Until you finish a story on the map the waypoints could be like save points in some games. Start at the last established waypoint. An Asura tech NPC would say “This looks like a good spot for the waypoint!”.