Guild Wars 2

I have played gw1 since launch as well as gw2 since launch, and the practice of taking away finished content because it was either exclusive or in the case of SAB is seasonal, in my opinion is whats ruining the PVE in this game. When they first announced a living world where content would be available and then would be permanently unavailable because its like the world is alive and so events come and go, I thought to myself – " well the only way that is going to work, is if they release a ton of content all the time which will have to be progressively better then the previous content, so that we don’t care about the old content which is now permanently gone, otherwise people are going to be mad or have regret or lose interest in the game." The end result is that they develop content and then take it away and give us long stretches of nothing.

I cant even count how many times I have done content and have gotten used to doing said content and even mastered it and mapped out routes or enjoyed running content with friends and developing a community around said content, only for the content to be taken away and the entire community that was based upon said content vanishes.

From what I see this practice of removing content makes people quit playing the game. I for one don’t enjoy it and feel a huge loss of motivation to keep playing. Simply knowing that SAB is going to be gone in 2 days only to be replaced with nothing, another long stretch of no content saps a lot of desire to keep playing.

Why doesn’t a-net make there content more permanent, knowing that its not feasible to create a real “living world” from a development perspective? It destroys nostalgia and feel good thoughts about the game as much of the content can never be re-experienced.

RIP – all of season 1, queens gauntlet, southsun cove + karka events, fractal events, (sab for now and its still unfinished).

Even in Guild Wars 1, the boardwalk was only opened a couple of times a year, which was content. Those quests you do daily during the lunar new year only happened once a year. That special event in Shing Jea only happened once a year. The mad king quests only happened once a year.

Rollerbeetle racing was one of my favorite things in Guild Wars 1, but it was only available a couple of times a year.

This is no different. It’s it’s own little festival now.

I understand your point, however i do feel there’s merit to a system where content is only there for a while. It makes you long for something, look out and get hyped over it. And then when it’s there, everyone wants to enjoy it while it lasts so the content is super popular and there’s this real atmosphere about it. Everyone’s in an SAB mood now, and maybe it would feel less special when it was there all the time.

It’s a bit like Christmas time, if it was Christmas all year round, it wouldn’t have the same special atmosphere.

Maybe SAB should be in the game all year, but i do believe that it can be good to keep stuff on rotation and make ppl get hyped over it and keep the content alive and popular by only having it a certain period.

Sheesh. I’ve been googling like mad, trying to find the dev post on these forums or on Reddit from last year in which they explained in detail that SAB does not play nicely with the game’s code and therefore needs special work every time there is a patch while it is up. I would love to just link to the dev quote in the various “please make this year round” threads.

Because while the arguments for keeping it special by making it just a few weeks a year have plenty of merit, those are a matter of opinion that won’t persuade SAB addicts. Whereas the issue that having it year round is a technical near-impossibility is a factual reason why it’s Not Going to Happen.

I found something. It’s not about code problems but their reasoning back in Aug 2014.

http://www.guildmag.com/guild-wars-2-interview-part-1-general-game-living-world/

GuildMag: Some folks are really bummed that their parents took away their Super Adventure Box. Is there anything that you can tell them that will cheer them up for going back to school?

Devon Carver: You want to… you want to deliver the news?

Matt Wuerffel: Sure. Yeah, I mean, when we are talking about the Living World and the Living Story, you can see that we are moving towards a much more focused narrative, and that is focused on your relationship with Braham and Rox and some of the other characters that we have introduced. And that means that there is less, one, there is less space to do something where you kind of take a break and say: ‘And now for something completely different’ – which is what Super Adventure Box was. I think the other part of it is that we look very carefully at how much people played and how much people enjoyed certain portions of content that we put out, and so that also weighs into the factor of ‘Well, okay, what are we going to do, and when are we going to bring back things? What do we do, how much time do we put into different festivals, Halloween and Wintersday.’ And so, Super Adventure Box has a ton of people that were really excited about it, and it also has that difficulty of, it is something that’s really different from Guild Wars 2 in a lot of ways, and it doesn’t easily fit into the narrative structure of Living World. And so, I think it would be very unlikely that you would see it as part of a Living World season release, as to whether or not we come back to it, whether or not in some other form, you know, I can’t really say, I don’t know how likely that is and that is really all I can say about it. We know that there are a ton of people that really enjoyed it, and we had a lot of fun playing portions of it, but it’s difficult to fit in within the narrative structure that we have now and I think that makes it very much less likely that it will appear in a Living World season going forward.

GuildMag: But will it come back after the current season?

Matt Wuerffel: We can’t really comment about what our long term plans are for the game, and so, you know, it is a similar answer if you ask me what was gonna happen in the upcoming episodes of season 2. Like, I really can’t say. But it is a very much different game in a lot of ways than Guild Wars 2 – a game within a game – and we’re trying to focus already in World v. World and PvP and PvE and Fractals. There are lots of systems that we have and we want to focus first on getting those to a state where we’re really happy with them and we’re fully supporting them and then we could look into… ‘All right, now that we have those up to a quality that we’re really happy with and fans are really happy with, what other projects can we take on, and what things can we look at doing?

Here are some links:

• Blog post from when it first returned
• Discussion with Josh Foreman:
  • Timestamp – 5:06
  • Timestamp – 8:28
  • Timestamp – 26:37

tl;dr: Maintaining SAB and ensuring that it continues to function outside of a small time-frame is too resource heavy.

Hi, Complainer. <3

I wish we could have SAB: Home Edition. That said, I have thoroughly SAB’d myself out this year… I grinded trib to finish the storm wizard collection and finished the blue collection. I got all the boom boxes and even mini Moto and the plush backpack… I’m done for now…

bauble/10
will jump again next year.

Seasons one and some other stuff isn’t so simple to bring back, but I agree in general and about Super Adventure Box. Sure, it started as an April 1st thing, and it’s called the Super Adventure “Festival” now, but there’s nothing inherently seasonal about it. It’s even justified fairly decently in-universe.

I see no reason it can’t stay around, and that actually gives a reason to keep more things on the store longer, and makes it a safer investment if they ever want to do more in the future. At the very least, I feel like it should be able to come back once a month for a week or something like that.

Loving SAB myself (and having grinded the King Toad and Storm Wizard skins this time around) I can fully understand why it is time limited.

I get the sentiment people have with wanting it all year round, but I honestly believe if arenanet were to add this, the SAB hype and glory would die off. The event has meaning because it is timegated and so different from the rest of the game. The best thing they could do is actually finish it with world 3 and 4 and finish the story told.

I really hate it when people try to justify removing SAB.
Look if you guys are bored of it then stop playing it. Let the rest of us enjoy the content or descover the content at our convenience. I barely got to play SAB and it’s about to go offline in just 2 days! This is not my fault cause reall life obligations and priorities come first. I don’t need hype to enjoy SAB whenever I want. I play when I’m in the mood and when I have time in real life. If people get bored of SAB they can play other content and when they feel like playing some SAB with their friends they can go whenever they want. This is the benifit of making it permenant cause everyone wins. Taking away content like SAB just means not everyone gets to enjoy it when they can or when they want.

There is no real way to justify taking content away because you feel bored after a while. I dont play to grind like you. I play to enjoy the content when I feel like doing it. Sorry I get really annoyed when I hear responses from people who prefer to take away content I barely got time to play, specially content that I love and adore…

I replayed Season 2, HoT, and Season 3 story 5 times on 5 different characters…
I didnt play them 5 times in a row, I played them after taking breaks from the game. I enjoy them very much. I wish I could play Season 1 but oh well… Yes I know SAB will be back next year but since I only got 2 days to fully play it and enjoy it this year, I’m not really motivated to wait next year.

P.S – I bought the SAB gliders, and finisher! I support SAB as a game mode not a festival. I want it permenant, I will buy it as a DLC to play it at my convenience. I dont care about the rewards. =(

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

If people get bored of SAB they can play other content and when they feel like playing some SAB with their friends they can go whenever they want. This is the benifit of making it permenant cause everyone wins.

I’ve never understood how people can use the “everyone wins” argument after it’s explained to them how not everybody will win. You may choose to keep yourself ignorant of the truth, you may choose to ignore what’s been said by the devs, but that doesn’t make it any less true:

SAB is a hack, and will break as the devs update the game and its engine. They’re not going to spend development time ensuring that it will continue to work all year long; that would be them operating at a loss.

Greener.6204:

Here are some links:

• Blog post from when it first returned
• Discussion with Josh Foreman:
  • Timestamp – 5:06
  • Timestamp – 8:28
  • Timestamp – 26:37

tl;dr: Maintaining SAB and ensuring that it continues to function outside of a small time-frame is too resource heavy.

I’m quoting this so that anyone who wants SAB to stay knows that it’s not an “everyone wins” scenario if it stays year long. There are legitimate problems whether you wish to accept it or not and it’s better for the state of the game to not spend so many resources on such a small part of the game that majority of the players won’t continuously play when those resources are better spent elsewhere for a far larger majority of players to,enjoy. Remember how SAB was gone for a couple of years? At least you can look forward to it every year now.

if Anet continues on SAB before continuing on LS1 or other festivals I will have lost all trust in their sense of priority

I love SAB, but I agree it’s most effective as a festival. Adding something else for the devs to debug all year around is just extra pressure on the team they don’t know while working on LS and an expansion at the same time.

It’s an annual festival, they’ve said it will remain an annual festival, people’s great love for it won’t change that anymore than other people’s great hatred for it.

No amount of forum posts are likely to change that. They have the numbers and I imagine that the number of people taking part in this and all other festivals go down each year because nothing new is added to them. (Unless it’s a profitable farm, that is, then numbers will probably stay up.) I’ve played a bit this year but it’s all very familiar at this stage and adding new skins that you can slowly grind out over a number of years isn’t a huge draw for me.

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

I really hate it when people try to justify removing SAB.
Look if you guys are bored of it then stop playing it. Let the rest of us enjoy the content or descover the content at our convenience. I barely got to play SAB and it’s about to go offline in just 2 days! This is not my fault cause reall life obligations and priorities come first. I don’t need hype to enjoy SAB whenever I want. I play when I’m in the mood and when I have time in real life. If people get bored of SAB they can play other content and when they feel like playing some SAB with their friends they can go whenever they want. This is the benifit of making it permenant cause everyone wins.

But that’s not what would happen. Even now the SAB entrance area is deserted compared to the first 3 days.

Here is what actually would happen if SAB became permanent:

- first week massive overcrowding as with every time the event went live
- second week up to 4th week the amount of people playing SAB declines
- 3 months in SAB is a completely deserted place
- Arenanets interest (which is already below minimal) would stop adding any content for a dead game mode

I understand your sentiment and get that real life priorities can get in the way and some times there just is no time for gaming. That does not justify to go against common sense which in this case dictates: scarcity creates value and hype.

Being an adult yourself (I assume due to commitments) you should know by now that when you can have something all the time, it will lose its value. So as far as an alternate, fun, minimalistic game mode this staying a festival makes the most sense.

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

I really hate it when people try to justify removing SAB.

Good thing that people in this thread are merely advocating maintaining its status quo as a festival.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

I really hate it when people try to justify removing SAB.

Good thing that people in this thread are merely advocating maintaining its status quo as a festival.

This.^ People could make a case for ANYTHING staying in game permanently, but then we would not have things to look forward to when the time rolls around.

Does it end today?

DoctorDing.5890:

Does it end today?

It ends Thursday.

DoctorDing.5890:

Does it end today?

There is a timer in-game in the UI.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Why take SAB away?

Because it artificially generates interest in it, just like how the gem store works. They can give us old content over and over and it makes people feel like they are actually getting something. It’s win-win for Anet.

Greener.6204:

Here are some links:

• Blog post from when it first returned
• Discussion with Josh Foreman:
  • Timestamp – 5:06
  • Timestamp – 8:28
  • Timestamp – 26:37

tl;dr: Maintaining SAB and ensuring that it continues to function outside of a small time-frame is too resource heavy.

Even if the extra interest generated by relative scarcity is a “win” for ANet (talking to the poster just above me), the above info should show that it’s not their choice. SAB’s design prohibits constant access for players.

Thank you, Greener, for finding the source I could not.