Guild Wars 2

Woodenpotatoes recently did a video going over HoT in general. He highlighted what ANET did well, what they did poorly, and his general thoughts on the expansion. I, for one, think that EVERYONE at ANET needs to watch this video.

It is so thought out and highlights things I didn’t even think about. Things like poor masteries, lack-luster lore, and more.

What do you guys think? Do you agree with some of his major points?

I think he hit some of the points but missed many others. As usual, he assumes several things that have no grounding on what actually happens in game, but overall? yeah, it was a decent review.

The absolute biggest ball they dropped is not incorporating the specializations into the story.

The worst part is that they were setting up so many plot points that could have made it work.

Brahm picks up Eir’s bow. Marjory specifically talks about training to use a great sword. Taimi needs to build a new golem. Canach grows as a person overall and learning to focus his anger could lead into Berserker.

None of it is addressed at all. The only plot that references any of the new HoT class mechanics is Rytlock and his take on the Revenant is his typical crummy “lol, I’m so anti-social. I’m not going to talk about it” he has on everything that makes me think Anet will leave it at that and nothing more.

I’m really hoping that Rox get’s the entirety of LS3 to herself because she is the most wooden, 1 dimensional character in the story and desperately needs something more to her and much better voice direction as well.

Substance E.4852:

The absolute biggest ball they dropped is not incorporating the specializations into the story.

Thats big but I would say the actual story being so rushed and poorly done is the biggest issue.

morrolan.9608:

Substance E.4852:

The absolute biggest ball they dropped is not incorporating the specializations into the story.

Thats big but I would say the actual story being so rushed and poorly done is the biggest issue.

True, but padding it out with forays into what the characters were going through would have made it much longer feeling.

I did the story after the nerf to the poison mastery so I never needed to chill in the jungle before getting to Mord and the whole thing did very much feel like you just walk up to it and kill it.

What they did for Taimi in Rata Novis could have been done for every character and it would have made the journey feel longer and more in depth in my opinion. Having each character grow and develop new skills that help you push further and further into Mord’s domain would have made sense and been better pacing.

The one thing that Zaihtan did much better than Mordremoth was it felt like a real struggle to get to Z to kill him. Unless you do the Tangled Depths (lol, I know) and the Dragon Stand meta’s you miss out on a lot of fighting and struggle, maing the journey feel rather easy given that the Dragon wiped out most of the Pact in and instant just prior.

I agree pretty much everything woodenpotatoes has said as well of the rest of you. I’ll contribute my own bit to this i suppose.

My over feeling about the expansion is how I feel about just about everything as a whole that arenanet does. They come up with a GREAT idea, they start working on it, then realize “OH kitten, this is gonna be so much work, and we are so under staffed cuz our business model doesn’t make kitten for money, and its all on me and my meager pay check that barely feeds my family and i gotta make this deadline. I guess I’ll cheese kitten this kitten, make it look pretty and cool to disguise the fact that theres no real depth and the underlying mechanics and engine are shoddily build and held together by bandaids.”

I really try to keep my faith in anet and the vision they shared with us for guildwars 2 but I’m honestly getting near the end of my hope reserve. I have been taking my time with the expansion avoiding the trap i set for myself with vanilla in which i burned out nolifeing to 80 and doing all the content and then realizing there was nothing left to do. I’ve been keeping a steady pace of only putting in a couple hours a day after work taking my time. However i have already played through all the major meta events and nearly every sub event, completed the disappointingly short and rushed story. Beat dragon stand meta and there little left to do other than grind out to max on all my masteries which im more than half done with, and its just… they basically left us with a massive grind with limited content to burn through it on, I try to subside the grind by doing different event chains to break up manotany, however its getting old doing the same events since to complete all 4 maguuma masteries is like how many millions and millions of exp?

Another thing I’m REALLY disappointed with is the revamp of fractals to scale to 100 but they added no new fractals… I was already at level 50, so now just for me and not even the new guys, I have to grind through another 50 levels of fractals with nothing new to look forward to AND reportedly far less rewards from it… wtf…

Wooden potatoes and many of you other guys covered a lot of my personal gripes with the story and lore. The lack of character development, the serious feeling of how it was like they rushed it out to make a deadline… you could REALLY feel it. 2 things I’m gonna touch on is the Nightmare Court, they seemed to, in there interviews with the story/lore people, push an agenda that they nightmare court was not mordrem and that there would be a defining presence of that or something in the expansion. There was only 1 instance in that this was brought up and that was the short part of the story with Faolin getting killed and they brought back as a vinetooth… thats it. Another thing was the Exalted, theres no really connection build with these people. We deliver the egg and thats it, you save Tarir from the mordem if you do the Octovine meta but even so you don’t really do much more than that. These people are supposed to be build by the forgotten to be some sort of savior race that works to stop the elder dragons but they dont really should any sort legendary status. I would have figured that our characters would be working closely with them to discover the weakness proposed in Ratanovus.

I could go on but I think you all know what I’m kittening about. Story and lore wise the expansion was a let down, content wise its… 50/50 if you like grind then you probably love it, if not they you’re hurting.

A few things they did good was the explorable nature of the new zones and methods to navigate, the new specializations and superior AI. I just wish there was more… Story and content, fractals, dungeons, i know we have raids coming but theres no new 5 man instanced content added…

I’m tired, I’m done complaining for now, I’ll come back later to see what yall got to say.

Looking back it kinda feels like all that hype got thrown into the fire and I got slapped in the face for ordering HoT with how little story they added to progress the narrative and the monumental amount of holes and dropped plot lines that many have pointed out already. Like the person above and Woodenpotatoes I feel as though Im at an impass here. Im kinda just left very much wanting from this experience. Gameplay wise the events/maps are fun, but they’re getting sort of tiresome and the map crashes/memory freezes and other bugs are really bogging them down and wearing on me.

I was really kind of hoping for something great to put GW2 up for awhile on given that Im shipping out into military life in early Febuary. I think WP hit the nail on the head this time in this review.

Jasper Defthand.3018:

My over feeling about the expansion is how I feel about just about everything as a whole that arenanet does. They come up with a GREAT idea, they start working on it, then realize “OH kitten, this is gonna be so much work, and we are so under staffed cuz our business model doesn’t make kitten for money, and its all on me and my meager pay check that barely feeds my family and i gotta make this deadline. I guess I’ll cheese kitten this kitten, make it look pretty and cool to disguise the fact that theres no real depth and the underlying mechanics and engine are shoddily build and held together by bandaids.”

Anet does try to do a lot, that is for sure.

However (puts on critic hat) they also waste a lot of time on unnecessary things. It’s the Harry Potter movies syndrome, where there are all these cool details that they have time for, but that they ignore because they see a butterfly and go off in some other direction that they thought would be cool in the moment.

Anet is great at having visions and making things from those visions, but they don’t seem to be that great at sticking to a vision in the long-term. I don’t know if it’s because of staffing, because of money, because of players, because of workplace politics, or a variety of other possible causes… but whatever the case, when Anet revamps a system they go all out and they make it super new in the process. Except they make it so new that it barely fits into the existing structure of the game.

I would argue that Anet’s Achilles Heel is feature creep. They have big ideas and even bigger expectations from players, but they can’t possibly fulfill all of those ideas. And I don’t think it’s just being under staffed as you said. I think it’s more a matter of losing themselves in those ideas to the point that they forget they need to integrate every new feature into the game in a way that is both meaningful and doesn’t disrupt the existing design.

With unlimited time and resources, their game would have every cool feature ever asked for… but it would also be a hodgepodge with very little in the way of centralized design.

In a macabre twist of fate, one of the few centralized design trademarks this game has is the endless grinding for items that have virtually no impact on gameplay. And a lot of people despise it. Probably because, in a contradictory twist of fate, one of the few centralized design trademarks of this game is that most of the content is soloable, with limited investment in skillful gameplay, and a general sense that most of the game is made for whimsically whittling away free time more than it’s made for any sort of competitive seriousness.

These two are at war with each other because anything that vaguely resembles a “grind” is against the whimsical whittling design. There is little whimsical about farming 1,000 Doohickeys to make a Doodad.

With HoT, the design philosophy appears to be leaning in the direction of abandoning whimsical whittling entirely. Which, if true, is probably motivated by monetary concerns more than anything. It’s just weird to me to see a game that seems like Red one minute and Blue the next.

Meanwhile, the playerbase seems to regularly fragment on this contradiction. The one side begging for whimsical whittling and the other begging for more Doodads to make, even if it requires farming 20,000 Doohickeys. Anet cannot fulfill both of these desires at the same time in every kind of content and retain their sanity as human beings.

They also cannot make the game perfect and, in my unprofessional opinion, should take better care in the future to reel in their enthusiasm a decibel or two. Sometimes the best ideas are also the simplest. And sometimes the most fun ideas are not ideas that require years of development, but simply require careful consideration of each detail.

It is easy to run away with ambition and forget that the goal is to make a game that’s fun and will last the test of time. GW2’s history is littered with cool features and temporary implementations that simply didn’t last the test of time. Which is not a shameful thing, but it is something to learn from.

When I play this game, I can’t help but feel at times that I’m a guinea pig for someone’s artistic experiments. I’d rather be a participant in Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, if you get my meaning. Not really into being the guy who bought his paintings when he was moderately good at it.

It just kills me that this game has so many half-finished ideas with so much potential and the bloatedness seems to increase over time, instead of many of those half-finished ideas reaching their full potential.

Substance E.4852:

The absolute biggest ball they dropped is not incorporating the specializations into the story.

The worst part is that they were setting up so many plot points that could have made it work.

Brahm picks up Eir’s bow. Marjory specifically talks about training to use a great sword. Taimi needs to build a new golem. Canach grows as a person overall and learning to focus his anger could lead into Berserker.

None of it is addressed at all. The only plot that references any of the new HoT class mechanics is Rytlock and his take on the Revenant is his typical crummy “lol, I’m so anti-social. I’m not going to talk about it” he has on everything that makes me think Anet will leave it at that and nothing more.

I’m really hoping that Rox get’s the entirety of LS3 to herself because she is the most wooden, 1 dimensional character in the story and desperately needs something more to her and much better voice direction as well.

Only problem us canach is not a warrior, he is an unknown class. I agree they should have put the specs into the story, but doing each member of destiny’s edge 2 gets their elite spec would have been just as lame and childish as not putting them in. If they had more time i would have loved to see some of the main npcs comment on ME being a druid in random dialogue.

I understand not everyone had their full spec for the story the first time, but if you playthrough it again you would hear it.

As far as my 2 cents (if anyone cares) I think anet did okay. The story overall was good, but they left out too much that should have been answered, and personally the BIGGEST thing I hated was my characters attitude and inflection when speaking. I play a female ranger and I hate that no matter the situation my character always had the same loud and rude tone

Also, I personally try and keep in mind the fact that this expansion was more for setting in place systems to more easily expand the game in the future, and it was their first one for this game, so I am understanding that they might have been overeager to please, aimed to high, or whatever. I did not expect a 10/10 expansion, but I gave them my money because they stated up front they knew it wasn’t going to be a content expansion, but a systems expansion. I supported the idea, and I think they did well for what the situation was

Ranlares.2513:

Only problem us canach is not a warrior, he is an unknown class. I agree they should have put the specs into the story, but doing each member of destiny’s edge 2 gets their elite spec would have been just as lame and childish as not putting them in.

I don’t mean make it a 1 person per chapter/instance thing necessarily. It could even be more organic like there’s a part of the story where we need to commune with the druids to proceed or get some vital information and Rox ends up the being the one to get their attention and receives some kind of blessing that is needed to proceed and becomes part of her combat routine. Marjory and Brahm already are half way there and could have progressed a little per chapter as they work on their training with weapons that they previously had no experience with.

As far as Canach goes, I had assumed he was an engineer with all the bombs etc but he’s using a sword and shield in HoT and distinctly uses the skill Shield Bash. He may be technically unclassed, but Warrior makes the most sense and is the only one that no longer has a person using it if we assume Taimi to be the equivalent of an engineer.

You know what would be cool? If instead of advancing the plot into the future, the next few chapters of Living World would be side stories, taking place during the HoT main story, but basically focusing on the other characters that got little focus, with each getting a plot story showing their personal growth.

They do need a proper epilogue first though.

UnitedChaos.8364:

Woodenpotatoes recently did a video going over HoT in general. He highlighted what ANET did well, what they did poorly, and his general thoughts on the expansion. I, for one, think that EVERYONE at ANET needs to watch this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL-8bSUothk

It is so thought out and highlights things I didn’t even think about. Things like poor masteries, lack-luster lore, and more.

What do you guys think? Do you agree with some of his major points?

He didn’t go over HoT in general, he went over the story. That’s why it’s called a story review, not a HoT in general review rofl. Did you even watch the video? 99% of time is dedicated to the story. Woodenpotatoes (I watch him stream) is almost completely positive about everything in HoT BUT the story. Even in the video he mentions he thinks the expansion is easily worth it in spite of how terrible the story is.

Jasper Defthand.3018:

I agree pretty much everything woodenpotatoes has said as well of the rest of you. I’ll contribute my own bit to this i suppose.

My over feeling about the expansion is how I feel about just about everything as a whole that arenanet does. They come up with a GREAT idea, they start working on it, then realize “OH kitten, this is gonna be so much work, and we are so under staffed cuz our business model doesn’t make kitten for money, and its all on me and my meager pay check that barely feeds my family and i gotta make this deadline. I guess I’ll cheese kitten this kitten, make it look pretty and cool to disguise the fact that theres no real depth and the underlying mechanics and engine are shoddily build and held together by bandaids.”

GW2 is the second biggest earning product at NCsoft lol. Where on earth do you come up with their method not making money?

Labjax, you make some fantastic points, and I love that Mona Lisa analogy!

Substance E.4852:

Ranlares.2513:

Only problem us canach is not a warrior, he is an unknown class. I agree they should have put the specs into the story, but doing each member of destiny’s edge 2 gets their elite spec would have been just as lame and childish as not putting them in.

I don’t mean make it a 1 person per chapter/instance thing necessarily. It could even be more organic like there’s a part of the story where we need to commune with the druids to proceed or get some vital information and Rox ends up the being the one to get their attention and receives some kind of blessing that is needed to proceed and becomes part of her combat routine. Marjory and Brahm already are half way there and could have progressed a little per chapter as they work on their training with weapons that they previously had no experience with.

As far as Canach goes, I had assumed he was an engineer with all the bombs etc but he’s using a sword and shield in HoT and distinctly uses the skill Shield Bash. He may be technically unclassed, but Warrior makes the most sense and is the only one that no longer has a person using it if we assume Taimi to be the equivalent of an engineer.

I’m not saying I have a problem with them doing one character per instance getting their elotee spec either, I’m saying it would be dumb for everyone to get their elite spec in the storyline.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/SPOILERS-WoodenPotatoes-story-review/first#post5739365
Already been talked about here.

Ranlares.2513:

Substance E.4852:

The absolute biggest ball they dropped is not incorporating the specializations into the story.

The worst part is that they were setting up so many plot points that could have made it work.

Brahm picks up Eir’s bow. Marjory specifically talks about training to use a great sword. Taimi needs to build a new golem. Canach grows as a person overall and learning to focus his anger could lead into Berserker.

None of it is addressed at all. The only plot that references any of the new HoT class mechanics is Rytlock and his take on the Revenant is his typical crummy “lol, I’m so anti-social. I’m not going to talk about it” he has on everything that makes me think Anet will leave it at that and nothing more.

I’m really hoping that Rox get’s the entirety of LS3 to herself because she is the most wooden, 1 dimensional character in the story and desperately needs something more to her and much better voice direction as well.

Only problem us canach is not a warrior, he is an unknown class. I agree they should have put the specs into the story, but doing each member of destiny’s edge 2 gets their elite spec would have been just as lame and childish as not putting them in. If they had more time i would have loved to see some of the main npcs comment on ME being a druid in random dialogue.

I understand not everyone had their full spec for the story the first time, but if you playthrough it again you would hear it.

As far as my 2 cents (if anyone cares) I think anet did okay. The story overall was good, but they left out too much that should have been answered, and personally the BIGGEST thing I hated was my characters attitude and inflection when speaking. I play a female ranger and I hate that no matter the situation my character always had the same loud and rude tone

That last part about character tone, I think they did really well with this. Throughout the core game my male sylvari ranger always sounded like the biggest kitten, like a teenage boy whos nuts hadn’t dropped yet. With hot his nuts have definitely dropped, his voice carries a certain saltyness now, years of war with zaitan and scarlets forces and then the rise of mordremoth have hardened him and forced a new resolve and commanding presence to reforge and lead the pact in its darkest hour.

Loxias.2375:

Labjax, you make some fantastic points, and I love that Mona Lisa analogy!

Thank you.

What Goes Around

Labjax.2465:

Anet is great at having visions and making things from those visions, but they don’t seem to be that great at sticking to a vision in the long-term.

Nailed it, and an excellent post overall.

I think a lot of what we see is a consequence of “iterating”, which is a development model that supersedes any single game element, or even the grand vision of the game itself. It’s a core philosophy of ArenaNet that is both a blessing and a curse for the company, the game, and the players.

The very nature of an iterative approach eschews long-term stability in favor of short-term agility. If an idea works, they run with it. If it doesn’t, they may commit to another pass to fix it, but they might just as well drop it altogether for something entirely different — and hopefully (but not necessarily) better.

Inevitably, what results is a patchwork of different ideas, each chosen for its own merits, that reflects a process of experimentation and evolution more than a faithful execution of a single coherent plan.

The Living World exemplifies this, both in terms of its delivery, which has changed with each season, and its narrative, which has become increasingly subordinate to the mechanics of the game.

They had to change course with the Living World, because they are still recovering from the lavishly disastrous decision to literally throw away tons of Season One content and leave players both old and new with little more than old memories and smoldering ruins to show for it all. In this case, iterating was necessary to save the game from an ignominious end, and that ability to abandon a bad strategy even after going all-in illustrates the strength of the iterative model.

The weaknesses appear in cases like Heart of Thorns which, though enjoyable in itself (my opinion) is somewhat unceremoniously grafted onto the core game in a way that has left a large percentage of players cold on a wide range of fronts. There are a lot of new directions encompassed in the expansion, but it’s a jarring arrival for the community overall and alienates enough paying customers to become a costly Faustian bargain if left as is.

The day can be saved, however, with a relatively modest pass or two to address some of the more glaring issues players have raised, but action must come quickly enough to smooth things over before attrition becomes critical.

Season Three of the Living World appears to embody a grand design that ran out of time. It does seem story hooks were created to allow for a more thematic introduction to elite specializations, but what materialized was effectively “here you go: get to work and start doing hero challenges.”

Many other threads are left dangling, but those may well be dealt with as Season Three continues.

The overall effect of the iterative model is something of a roller coaster ride for both developers and players, with highs and lows at every turn, and that’s not always an easy thing to deal with. But there is a silver lining.

With each iteration, ArenaNet does learn important lessons, does apply them to future endeavors, and they do seem to be getting better at it. As the process matures, the net result may well end up being better than any single grand vision could yield.

Or it may end up being a big, untenable mess.

Here’s hoping elegance eventually arises from the turbulence.

WP is pretty spot on with a lot of what he said in the video.

For me there was too little lore – there was also an odd pacing that never felt right. The scope of the story felt off too – it was just rushed and you can tell.

There was very little build-up or coherence – and if not for the mastery gating I doubt it would have taken more than a couple of hours to complete.

Let me say that again -a couple of hours of story for an expansion that has been announced a year ago.

And yes – the lack of mastery lore, lack of going into critical stories (Rytlock and the mists) is just absurd and annoying.

UnitedChaos.8364:

Woodenpotatoes recently did a video going over HoT in general. He highlighted what ANET did well, what they did poorly, and his general thoughts on the expansion. I, for one, think that EVERYONE at ANET needs to watch this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL-8bSUothk

It is so thought out and highlights things I didn’t even think about. Things like poor masteries, lack-luster lore, and more.

What do you guys think? Do you agree with some of his major points?

That’s primarily a review of the story and not the systems added to the expansion.

Majic.4801:

What Goes Around

Labjax.2465:

Anet is great at having visions and making things from those visions, but they don’t seem to be that great at sticking to a vision in the long-term.

Nailed it, and an excellent post overall.

I think a lot of what we see is a consequence of “iterating”, which is a development model that supersedes any single game element, or even the grand vision of the game itself. It’s a core philosophy of ArenaNet that is both a blessing and a curse for the company, the game, and the players.

The very nature of an iterative approach eschews long-term stability in favor of short-term agility. If an idea works, they run with it. If it doesn’t, they may commit to another pass to fix it, but they might just as well drop it altogether for something entirely different — and hopefully (but not necessarily) better.

Inevitably, what results is a patchwork of different ideas, each chosen for its own merits, that reflects a process of experimentation and evolution more than a faithful execution of a single coherent plan.

The Living World exemplifies this, both in terms of its delivery, which has changed with each season, and its narrative, which has become increasingly subordinate to the mechanics of the game.

They had to change course with the Living World, because they are still recovering from the lavishly disastrous decision to literally throw away tons of Season One content and leave players both old and new with little more than old memories and smoldering ruins to show for it all. In this case, iterating was necessary to save the game from an ignominious end, and that ability to abandon a bad strategy even after going all-in illustrates the strength of the iterative model.

The weaknesses appear in cases like Heart of Thorns which, though enjoyable in itself (my opinion) is somewhat unceremoniously grafted onto the core game in a way that has left a large percentage of players cold on a wide range of fronts. There are a lot of new directions encompassed in the expansion, but it’s a jarring arrival for the community overall and alienates enough paying customers to become a costly Faustian bargain if left as is.

The day can be saved, however, with a relatively modest pass or two to address some of the more glaring issues players have raised, but action must come quickly enough to smooth things over before attrition becomes critical.

Season Three of the Living World appears to embody a grand design that ran out of time. It does seem story hooks were created to allow for a more thematic introduction to elite specializations, but what materialized was effectively “here you go: get to work and start doing hero challenges.”

Many other threads are left dangling, but those may well be dealt with as Season Three continues.

The overall effect of the iterative model is something of a roller coaster ride for both developers and players, with highs and lows at every turn, and that’s not always an easy thing to deal with. But there is a silver lining.

With each iteration, ArenaNet does learn important lessons, does apply them to future endeavors, and they do seem to be getting better at it. As the process matures, the net result may well end up being better than any single grand vision could yield.

Or it may end up being a big, untenable mess.

Here’s hoping elegance eventually arises from the turbulence.

Well said and fair points about iteration.

Arius.7031:

Jasper Defthand.3018:

I agree pretty much everything woodenpotatoes has said as well of the rest of you. I’ll contribute my own bit to this i suppose.

My over feeling about the expansion is how I feel about just about everything as a whole that arenanet does. They come up with a GREAT idea, they start working on it, then realize “OH kitten, this is gonna be so much work, and we are so under staffed cuz our business model doesn’t make kitten for money, and its all on me and my meager pay check that barely feeds my family and i gotta make this deadline. I guess I’ll cheese kitten this kitten, make it look pretty and cool to disguise the fact that theres no real depth and the underlying mechanics and engine are shoddily build and held together by bandaids.”

GW2 is the second biggest earning product at NCsoft lol. Where on earth do you come up with their method not making money?

Maybe it’s more like they’re acting like it’s not making them enough money?

Which, of course, is even more unacceptable, if it actually is.

UnitedChaos.8364:

What do you guys think? Do you agree with some of his major points?

I think if anyone is going to make a review or video about anything you need to make your points clear, easy to digest and short to effectively get the other party on board. No one has the time to watch an hour and half review on an expansion. Many wont make it past 10 minutes and I wouldnt expect an anet employee to either.I felt this was the case eith Woodenpotatoes with this video. It has plenty of good intentions and points but, his rambling causes the majority of his points to be missed.

I sat through the entire video, but I think it could have been better edited. I agree with a lot of points he made but think some things could have been explained better. I left feeling a bit confused over all.

But since I may only play through the personal story once on my main, I doubt I’ll bother with any alts. I hate repeating things if the outcome will be the same with different player choices, which is the impression I got on this.

But I think everyone needs to take any reviews with a grain of salt. Most reviews are done from “that” player’s perspective and may not align with your own if you experience the same play through.

Tigaseye.2047:

Maybe it’s more like they’re acting like it’s not making them enough money?

Which, of course, is even more unacceptable, if it actually is.

In what way have they acted like they’re not making enough money?

Jasper Defthand.3018:

My over feeling about the expansion is how I feel about just about everything as a whole that arenanet does. They come up with a GREAT idea, they start working on it, then realize “OH kitten, this is gonna be so much work, and we are so under staffed cuz our business model doesn’t make kitten for money, and its all on me and my meager pay check that barely feeds my family and i gotta make this deadline. I guess I’ll cheese kitten this kitten, make it look pretty and cool to disguise the fact that theres no real depth and the underlying mechanics and engine are shoddily build and held together by bandaids.”

I’ve been feeling this way lately also after seeing how unfinished Druid was, Rev underwater skills still being missing, Fractals getting recycled levels and weapon skins, etc. I initially gave Anet high praise for HoT but the more I dig into the expansion, the more I’m noticing how hollow/unfinished it feels.

This is Anet’s first expansion so I’m hoping they can use this as a base to learn and build upon.

Leodon.1564:

Jasper Defthand.3018:

My over feeling about the expansion is how I feel about just about everything as a whole that arenanet does. They come up with a GREAT idea, they start working on it, then realize “OH kitten, this is gonna be so much work, and we are so under staffed cuz our business model doesn’t make kitten for money, and its all on me and my meager pay check that barely feeds my family and i gotta make this deadline. I guess I’ll cheese kitten this kitten, make it look pretty and cool to disguise the fact that theres no real depth and the underlying mechanics and engine are shoddily build and held together by bandaids.”

I’ve been feeling this way lately also after seeing how unfinished Druid was, Rev underwater skills still being missing, Fractals getting recycled levels and weapon skins, etc. I initially gave Anet high praise for HoT but the more I dig into the expansion, the more I’m noticing how hollow/unfinished it feels.

This is Anet’s first expansion so I’m hoping they can use this as a base to learn and build upon.

They’ve been talking about building upon and learning from things for the future for 3 years… And I will give credit where credit is due, they learned how to deliver good story and came up with some really interesting technology, great music, many of the elite specs are fantastic and just in a mechanical sense they did great things. Let’s be real here, I think we are at the future now, it being 3 years since release and it seems Anet just refuses to have the conviction to make use of what they have learned. All these tools were not made use of well as the story was honestly kitten, but well excuted with great visuals and voice acting. There were tons of great points to build lore off of but went completely unused, characters with great budding story arcs that could have been followed but were abandoned. A whole universe of relevant lore went near or completely untapped. For a company that made huge boasts right up until launch talking about lore and story, they didn’t put hardly any lore and story into the game they were advertising.

I from now on will take every little thing anet says with a grain of salt. I will also not recommend the Guild Wars franchise to anyone I meet because i refuse to put anyone else through the frustration of falling in love with a franchise only to be let down continuously by a developer who seems dead set on butchering a universe of great lore.

The only reason I even play this game anymore is because I have so much of my time and memories invested into it since way back when guild wars prophecies was first launched all those years ago.

Majic.4801:

What Goes Around

Labjax.2465:

Anet is great at having visions and making things from those visions, but they don’t seem to be that great at sticking to a vision in the long-term.

Nailed it, and an excellent post overall.

I think a lot of what we see is a consequence of “iterating”, which is a development model that supersedes any single game element, or even the grand vision of the game itself. It’s a core philosophy of ArenaNet that is both a blessing and a curse for the company, the game, and the players.

The very nature of an iterative approach eschews long-term stability in favor of short-term agility. If an idea works, they run with it. If it doesn’t, they may commit to another pass to fix it, but they might just as well drop it altogether for something entirely different — and hopefully (but not necessarily) better.

Inevitably, what results is a patchwork of different ideas, each chosen for its own merits, that reflects a process of experimentation and evolution more than a faithful execution of a single coherent plan.

The Living World exemplifies this, both in terms of its delivery, which has changed with each season, and its narrative, which has become increasingly subordinate to the mechanics of the game.

They had to change course with the Living World, because they are still recovering from the lavishly disastrous decision to literally throw away tons of Season One content and leave players both old and new with little more than old memories and smoldering ruins to show for it all. In this case, iterating was necessary to save the game from an ignominious end, and that ability to abandon a bad strategy even after going all-in illustrates the strength of the iterative model.

The weaknesses appear in cases like Heart of Thorns which, though enjoyable in itself (my opinion) is somewhat unceremoniously grafted onto the core game in a way that has left a large percentage of players cold on a wide range of fronts. There are a lot of new directions encompassed in the expansion, but it’s a jarring arrival for the community overall and alienates enough paying customers to become a costly Faustian bargain if left as is.

The day can be saved, however, with a relatively modest pass or two to address some of the more glaring issues players have raised, but action must come quickly enough to smooth things over before attrition becomes critical.

Season Three of the Living World appears to embody a grand design that ran out of time. It does seem story hooks were created to allow for a more thematic introduction to elite specializations, but what materialized was effectively “here you go: get to work and start doing hero challenges.”

Many other threads are left dangling, but those may well be dealt with as Season Three continues.

The overall effect of the iterative model is something of a roller coaster ride for both developers and players, with highs and lows at every turn, and that’s not always an easy thing to deal with. But there is a silver lining.

With each iteration, ArenaNet does learn important lessons, does apply them to future endeavors, and they do seem to be getting better at it. As the process matures, the net result may well end up being better than any single grand vision could yield.

Or it may end up being a big, untenable mess.

Here’s hoping elegance eventually arises from the turbulence.

+1 Great thoughtful post.

Majic.4801:

What Goes Around

Labjax.2465:

Anet is great at having visions and making things from those visions, but they don’t seem to be that great at sticking to a vision in the long-term.

Nailed it, and an excellent post overall.

I think a lot of what we see is a consequence of “iterating”, which is a development model that supersedes any single game element, or even the grand vision of the game itself. It’s a core philosophy of ArenaNet that is both a blessing and a curse for the company, the game, and the players.

The very nature of an iterative approach eschews long-term stability in favor of short-term agility. If an idea works, they run with it. If it doesn’t, they may commit to another pass to fix it, but they might just as well drop it altogether for something entirely different — and hopefully (but not necessarily) better.

Inevitably, what results is a patchwork of different ideas, each chosen for its own merits, that reflects a process of experimentation and evolution more than a faithful execution of a single coherent plan.

The Living World exemplifies this, both in terms of its delivery, which has changed with each season, and its narrative, which has become increasingly subordinate to the mechanics of the game.

They had to change course with the Living World, because they are still recovering from the lavishly disastrous decision to literally throw away tons of Season One content and leave players both old and new with little more than old memories and smoldering ruins to show for it all. In this case, iterating was necessary to save the game from an ignominious end, and that ability to abandon a bad strategy even after going all-in illustrates the strength of the iterative model.

The weaknesses appear in cases like Heart of Thorns which, though enjoyable in itself (my opinion) is somewhat unceremoniously grafted onto the core game in a way that has left a large percentage of players cold on a wide range of fronts. There are a lot of new directions encompassed in the expansion, but it’s a jarring arrival for the community overall and alienates enough paying customers to become a costly Faustian bargain if left as is.

The day can be saved, however, with a relatively modest pass or two to address some of the more glaring issues players have raised, but action must come quickly enough to smooth things over before attrition becomes critical.

Season Three of the Living World appears to embody a grand design that ran out of time. It does seem story hooks were created to allow for a more thematic introduction to elite specializations, but what materialized was effectively “here you go: get to work and start doing hero challenges.”

Many other threads are left dangling, but those may well be dealt with as Season Three continues.

The overall effect of the iterative model is something of a roller coaster ride for both developers and players, with highs and lows at every turn, and that’s not always an easy thing to deal with. But there is a silver lining.

With each iteration, ArenaNet does learn important lessons, does apply them to future endeavors, and they do seem to be getting better at it. As the process matures, the net result may well end up being better than any single grand vision could yield.

Or it may end up being a big, untenable mess.

Here’s hoping elegance eventually arises from the turbulence.

Very well said.

Jasper Defthand.3018:

They’ve been talking about building upon and learning from things for the future for 3 years… And I will give credit where credit is due, they learned how to deliver good story

I thought they’d learned with LS2 being an improvement on LS1 but if anything the HOT story is worse than LS1.

smekras.8203:

As usual, he assumes several things that have no grounding on what actually happens in game

So, you assume it does? -.-

morrolan.9608:

Jasper Defthand.3018:

They’ve been talking about building upon and learning from things for the future for 3 years… And I will give credit where credit is due, they learned how to deliver good story

I thought they’d learned with LS2 being an improvement on LS1 but if anything the HOT story is worse than LS1.

I probably should have worded that better, what I meant was they have learned how to deliver story well, but have completely forgotten how to come up with a good story in the first place. MEANING their voice acting, music and visuals are at an all time high, but the story itself was worse than a botched circumcision. Its started out amazing until you get past verdant brink, then the story starts to feel rushed, and by the time you get to tangled depths and do the rata novus part its like they just said kitten it.

Jasper Defthand.3018:

morrolan.9608:

Jasper Defthand.3018:

They’ve been talking about building upon and learning from things for the future for 3 years… And I will give credit where credit is due, they learned how to deliver good story

I thought they’d learned with LS2 being an improvement on LS1 but if anything the HOT story is worse than LS1.

I probably should have worded that better, what I meant was they have learned how to deliver story well, but have completely forgotten how to come up with a good story in the first place. MEANING their voice acting, music and visuals are at an all time high, but the story itself was worse than a botched circumcision. Its started out amazing until you get past verdant brink, then the story starts to feel rushed, and by the time you get to tangled depths and do the rata novus part its like they just said kitten it.

It felt rushed even in Verdant Brink. One of the things I liked about LS2 was that you could talk with your companions and get their perspective on things. Now it’s like they’re mute setpieces that are incapable of saying anything beyond their voiced lines. It’s like an emotional moment happens, you walk up to your companions to read some further dialogue about what happens, you press F and they just stare at you in aggressive silence.

Arius.7031:

Tigaseye.2047:

Maybe it’s more like they’re acting like it’s not making them enough money?

Which, of course, is even more unacceptable, if it actually is.

In what way have they acted like they’re not making enough money?

Just a lack of everything.

They don’t work on things that need work, because they aren’t a “priority” for them.

Even this forum, with all its problems (including the notorious forum bug) is an example of that.

They reduce the rewards from existing content (which they haven’t provided a direct replacement for), so if people want to buy something they are more likely to have to spend real money.

All this seems like penny-pinching, to me.

Penny pinching gives the impression of either a genuine lack of cash, or (perhaps falsely) pleading poverty, to most people.

Tigaseye.2047:

Arius.7031:

Tigaseye.2047:

Maybe it’s more like they’re acting like it’s not making them enough money?

Which, of course, is even more unacceptable, if it actually is.

In what way have they acted like they’re not making enough money?

Just a lack of everything.

They don’t work on things that need work, because they aren’t a “priority” for them.

Even this forum, with all its problems (including the notorious forum bug) is an example of that.

They reduce the rewards from existing content (which they haven’t provided a direct replacement for), so if people want to buy something they are more likely to have to spend real money.

All this seems like penny-pinching, to me.

Penny pinching gives the impression of either a genuine lack of cash, or (perhaps falsely) pleading poverty, to most people.

I honestly think its that they just don’t make enough money, I looked up the earnings reports for NC Soft for the past 2 quarters of 2015 and Gw2 is one of there lowest earning titles. To put it into perspective, Lineage 1 is there biggest earner by far earning the company around 40% of its total revenue while gw2 earning them roughly 25% of what lineage earns which means that gw2 only brings in roughly 10% of this MMO giants paycheck. Arena net should have started out with the subscription based MMO so that they could afford to keep bringing us new content and ensure that existing content is kept clean and well tuned.

Jasper Defthand.3018:

Tigaseye.2047:

Arius.7031:

Tigaseye.2047:

Maybe it’s more like they’re acting like it’s not making them enough money?

Which, of course, is even more unacceptable, if it actually is.

In what way have they acted like they’re not making enough money?

Just a lack of everything.

They don’t work on things that need work, because they aren’t a “priority” for them.

Even this forum, with all its problems (including the notorious forum bug) is an example of that.

They reduce the rewards from existing content (which they haven’t provided a direct replacement for), so if people want to buy something they are more likely to have to spend real money.

All this seems like penny-pinching, to me.

Penny pinching gives the impression of either a genuine lack of cash, or (perhaps falsely) pleading poverty, to most people.

I honestly think its that they just don’t make enough money, I looked up the earnings reports for NC Soft for the past 2 quarters of 2015 and Gw2 is one of there lowest earning titles. To put it into perspective, Lineage 1 is there biggest earner by far earning the company around 40% of its total revenue while gw2 earning them roughly 25% of what lineage earns which means that gw2 only brings in roughly 10% of this MMO giants paycheck. Arena net should have started out with the subscription based MMO so that they could afford to keep bringing us new content and ensure that existing content is kept clean and well tuned.

And I honestly think that some posters either can’t read or ignore facts that don’t fit their narrative.

Over the last 4 quarters GW2 is only behind Lineage and Blade & Soul in income which means we are ahead of AION and Lineage II. That is insanely better than any other western game in NCSOFT’s stable, ever.

Ignoring royalty income, since we don’t know which games are earning how much of that, GW2 brought in 11% behind B&S’s 14.4% and Lineage’s whopping 44.2%. To be complete, AION is 10.6%, Lineage 2’s 8.3% and all the other games they don’t list individually, which is a lot of mobile games, 9.7%.

Oops, forgot WildStar’s 1.8%. My bad.

Yes, Lineage is their WoW/UO/Evercrack. But the next four percentages are 14.4/11.0/10.6/8.3. It’s not that big of an issue that we only contributed 11%.

And ANet, rule one from day one was no subscription to play. It’s founded on B2P when subscriptions roamed the Earth. So they never would have even considered subscriptions.

Jasper Defthand.3018:

2 things I’m gonna touch on is the Nightmare Court, they seemed to, in there interviews with the story/lore people, push an agenda that they nightmare court was not mordrem and that there would be a defining presence of that or something in the expansion. There was only 1 instance in that this was brought up and that was the short part of the story with Faolin getting killed and they brought back as a vinetooth… thats it.

This was something that WP mentioned several weeks ago, and I also was interested to see how they handled it.

When I first got to that part with Faolain, I was so impressed how it started, where she said the Nightmare Court were not Mordrem and that serving Mordy would be no better than the Pale Tree. I thought, “Wow, they are actually doing this right!”

THEN THEY TOTALLY CHEESED IT OUT and made her a Mordrem. And the Nightmare Court was ignored and will probably never be mentioned again. Or her relationship with Caithe (who was barely there anyway herself).

And don’t even get me started on Malyck (Who? Yeah, exactly). Or the Soundless. Ugh.

The biggest shock in my long time gaming career is how Wildstar became a complete dud. When I was in beta there were some confusing things as to direction and guidance, but with some minor polishing and fixes would have been a great game. They’re whimsical, the bunny-eared race is cute, and kewl player housing.

I believe what made Wildstar fail is its unclear sense of direction combined with its sheer file size (was I think 60 GB to download) together with somewhat poor optimizations.

Labjax.2465:

Jasper Defthand.3018:

My over feeling about the expansion is how I feel about just about everything as a whole that arenanet does. They come up with a GREAT idea, they start working on it, then realize “OH kitten, this is gonna be so much work, and we are so under staffed cuz our business model doesn’t make kitten for money, and its all on me and my meager pay check that barely feeds my family and i gotta make this deadline. I guess I’ll cheese kitten this kitten, make it look pretty and cool to disguise the fact that theres no real depth and the underlying mechanics and engine are shoddily build and held together by bandaids.”

Anet does try to do a lot, that is for sure.

However (puts on critic hat) they also waste a lot of time on unnecessary things. It’s the Harry Potter movies syndrome, where there are all these cool details that they have time for, but that they ignore because they see a butterfly and go off in some other direction that they thought would be cool in the moment.

Anet is great at having visions and making things from those visions, but they don’t seem to be that great at sticking to a vision in the long-term. I don’t know if it’s because of staffing, because of money, because of players, because of workplace politics, or a variety of other possible causes… but whatever the case, when Anet revamps a system they go all out and they make it super new in the process. Except they make it so new that it barely fits into the existing structure of the game.

I would argue that Anet’s Achilles Heel is feature creep. They have big ideas and even bigger expectations from players, but they can’t possibly fulfill all of those ideas. And I don’t think it’s just being under staffed as you said. I think it’s more a matter of losing themselves in those ideas to the point that they forget they need to integrate every new feature into the game in a way that is both meaningful and doesn’t disrupt the existing design.

With unlimited time and resources, their game would have every cool feature ever asked for… but it would also be a hodgepodge with very little in the way of centralized design.

In a macabre twist of fate, one of the few centralized design trademarks this game has is the endless grinding for items that have virtually no impact on gameplay. And a lot of people despise it. Probably because, in a contradictory twist of fate, one of the few centralized design trademarks of this game is that most of the content is soloable, with limited investment in skillful gameplay, and a general sense that most of the game is made for whimsically whittling away free time more than it’s made for any sort of competitive seriousness.

These two are at war with each other because anything that vaguely resembles a “grind” is against the whimsical whittling design. There is little whimsical about farming 1,000 Doohickeys to make a Doodad.

With HoT, the design philosophy appears to be leaning in the direction of abandoning whimsical whittling entirely. Which, if true, is probably motivated by monetary concerns more than anything. It’s just weird to me to see a game that seems like Red one minute and Blue the next.

Meanwhile, the playerbase seems to regularly fragment on this contradiction. The one side begging for whimsical whittling and the other begging for more Doodads to make, even if it requires farming 20,000 Doohickeys. Anet cannot fulfill both of these desires at the same time in every kind of content and retain their sanity as human beings.

They also cannot make the game perfect and, in my unprofessional opinion, should take better care in the future to reel in their enthusiasm a decibel or two. Sometimes the best ideas are also the simplest. And sometimes the most fun ideas are not ideas that require years of development, but simply require careful consideration of each detail.

It is easy to run away with ambition and forget that the goal is to make a game that’s fun and will last the test of time. GW2’s history is littered with cool features and temporary implementations that simply didn’t last the test of time. Which is not a shameful thing, but it is something to learn from.

When I play this game, I can’t help but feel at times that I’m a guinea pig for someone’s artistic experiments. I’d rather be a participant in Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, if you get my meaning. Not really into being the guy who bought his paintings when he was moderately good at it.

It just kills me that this game has so many half-finished ideas with so much potential and the bloatedness seems to increase over time, instead of many of those half-finished ideas reaching their full potential.

More people, especially at ArenaNet, need to see this.