Guild Wars 2

See Living World in Guild Wars 2

What do you think of this pace? Is it too fast or just right?

IMO, I don’t feel the pressure with the regular achievements because I can always get to them later, but these temporary achievements and rewards are really making GW2 seem like a job, especially the recent ones that have been thoroughly discussed on these forums. This is especially bad for people who have, y’know, real jobs and may not be able to play for a week or two, this system is really marginalizes them.

Contrast GW1, where events brought quests and activities that could be time consuming, but if you didn’t have time or patience you could just buy a stack of tokens, get your headgear, and not feel guilty for being left out of any rewards. You weren’t pressured to stay in the arena for X number of games to get something, you played till you got bored and left. No AFK title seekers, everyone who is there is there because they want to play.

So IMO this can get fixed several ways:

1. Focus LS less on achievements and more on quests and dungeons.

2. Let each LS persist for a full month like parts of Dragon Bash currently do, even while another LS starts on top of it.

3. Go back to a monthly or slower cycle, which would put less pressure on the devs, allowing them to release more meaningful, complete content.

i’m okay with monthly release actually.

2 weeks feels very rushed.

+1, especially when part of the content is time consuming and not promoting gameplay: running around smashing pinatas and shooting fireworks for hundreds of times or parking on caches.

1. Its nice to have items for achievements.

2. I understand your concern. If the achievement tiers are way too high for casual players these momentary achievements give too big fore-start.

3. They shouldn’t add new “content” this often but to focus on what we have and add few well designed dungeons. (like molten dungeon, it started to have potential but why an earth it was removed?)

I would like to see Dynamic events have some meaning again. They should make DE bosses like they were in beta. Remember fighting fire shaman who wiped 6-8 mand squad out and you had to request help. Add in laurel or piece of x that will make ascended items. (no need for this stupi daily grind)

Every two weeks? What a coincidence! I get paid every two weeks!

• insert random zoidberg gif *

Wait a minute…

Two weeks does seem rushed. A month seemed like forever, and I liked it. At a month I could do other things still and not feel pressured into a set. I wouldn’t even mind a break every so often.

I think if they spread the releases out more, they might be able to pull better content.

ikiturso.4026:

1. Its nice to have items for achievements.

I think so too, in fact the guaranteed rewards from them are a very casual-friendly concept. The achievements just need to be less mind-numbing. They need to do away with any temporary achievement that involves numbers over 40.

Too much for my liking, unless we’re going to move away from the grindy achievement-based rewards being the end goal of these things. Quality > Quantity.

Monthly was far better. ArenaNet still have an actual game underneath the living story stuff, and as someone who only plays usually twice, maybe three times a week, it’s hard to progress with that and keep up with the LS. I know the same teams don’t work on LS as they do the fundamental game world, but it would be nice to see more subtle, non-gemstore-promoting changes to the basic world occasionally (changes in dynamic event chains for players to discover, for example, without all the fanfare) so that when you’re doing Map X for the 10th time, it’s shaken up a bit.

My general progress on ‘completing’ the game has slowed due to wanting some of the LS rewards and needing to go out of my way to get certain, often grindy achievements or wanting and being frustrated with RNG rewards. I’ve enjoyed some of the LS, but on the whole it’s not quite there for me yet. I just think it’s a bit sad that ArenaNet don’t seem to have enough faith in their core game that they need to keep dazzling us with SUDDENLY, NEW LIVING STORY CONTENT.

I’ll take slightly bugged releases every 2 weeks any time.

Let’s wait and see if updates every two weeks feels rushed instead of calling it rushed before we even know.

I think it’s too fast for temporary content, but I’m fine with it if it’s more permanent so long as quality doesn’t suffer.

Add more permanent content like maps, dungeons and solo dungeons, bosses, puzzles and so on instead of festivals and achievements! That’s the way to go imo.
What about increasing lvl cap?

I would rather be rushing to get things done then waiting around for a while with nothing to do, plus, they will probably lower down the requirements for the achievements now with the 2 week cycle so don’t expect it to be like, play 4 hours everyday to get them haha.

Please keep 2 week cycles!!

I’m beginning to get a very strong feeling of GW2 being a case of quantity over quality.
They’re rushing to release new shiny stuff as quickly as possible, all the while ignoring key issues with the game.
And a lot of the new stuff feels rushed too, with a distinct lack of quality assurance going in to it. After all, how can you realistically and thoroughly test content if it’s being released every two weeks?
The Aetherblade outfits are a prime example of this, with yet again no provision for Charr tails.
All the while, we still have culling issues in PvE, condition damage builds are ineffectual against static objects, AoE is still broken after being quick-fixed and limiting ALL AoE to 5 targets, crowd control skills are of limited use in PvE thanks to Unshakeable / Defiant forcing players to focus on DPS weapons, etcetera, etcetera.

I get the feeling ArenaNet are no longer interested in fixing big things that take hard work and are only interested in providing quick, shallow fixes that are more focused on short term profit.

Other recent examples of sloppiness:

Aetherblade jumping puzzle exotic shoulders use recycled skins.

The first Ascended equipment to be produced consisted of trinkets that require no 3D models to make. They’re just stats and an icon.

The exotic armours and weapons that can be attained through the queen Karka event on Southsun again recycle existing armour skins.

Before community outcry forced them to change it, the Consortium Harvesting Sickle had unfinished and poor animations. Even after changing it, they recycled the animation for the Warrior skill Fierce Blow instead of designing a custom animation.

The diving goggle platform in the new jumping puzzle feels more like sloppy texture and model alignment rather than good map design. Why on Earth do we have to jump through an opaque piece of scenery that can’t be seen from below?!

The list goes on. Unfortunately, crap like this will never get fixed with this new “Fire and Forget” development schedule.

Mungrul.9358:

I’m beginning to get a very strong feeling of GW2 being a case of quantity over quality.
They’re rushing to release new shiny stuff as quickly as possible, all the while ignoring key issues with the game.
And a lot of the new stuff feels rushed too, with a distinct lack of quality assurance going in to it. After all, how can you realistically and thoroughly test content if it’s being released every two weeks?
The Aetherblade outfits are a prime example of this, with yet again no provision for Charr tails.
All the while, we still have culling issues in PvE, condition damage builds are ineffectual against static objects, AoE is still broken after being quick-fixed and limiting ALL AoE to 5 targets, crowd control skills are of limited use in PvE thanks to Unshakeable / Defiant forcing players to focus on DPS weapons, etcetera, etcetera.

I get the feeling ArenaNet are no longer interested in fixing big things that take hard work and are only interested in providing quick, shallow fixes that are more focused on short term profit.

Other recent examples of sloppiness:

Aetherblade jumping puzzle exotic shoulders use recycled skins.

The first Ascended equipment to be produced consisted of trinkets that require no 3D models to make. They’re just stats and an icon.

The exotic armours and weapons that can be attained through the queen Karka event on Southsun again recycle existing armour skins.

Before community outcry forced them to change it, the Consortium Harvesting Sickle had unfinished and poor animations. Even after changing it, they recycled the animation for the Warrior skill Fierce Blow instead of designing a custom animation.

The diving goggle platform in the new jumping puzzle feels more like sloppy texture and model alignment rather than good map design. Why on Earth do we have to jump through an opaque piece of scenery that can’t be seen from below?!

The list goes on. Unfortunately, crap like this will never get fixed with this new “Fire and Forget” development schedule.

They actually have more time on their hands now. According to the video, Colin Johanson said:

- There are 4 different groups now working on LS – these groups work in turns – so the actual development time for each update is 8 weeks – which is more that was on previous content
- Some content is already designed – like festivals, they just need to update it and polish it, they don’t need now to start from scratch

These thing indicate, that future updates will be more polished. And I have high hopes, that they infact, will.

Bubi.7942:

These thing indicate, that future updates will be more polished. And I have high hopes, that they infact, will.

Hopefully new updates won’t just be “new enemy of the month pouring out of the Holographic Projectors we added to the game X months ago.”

I wanna see how the teams cooperate with each other. Living story should have some continuality and i hope things don’t just appear from scratch.

I’d prefer monthly or even every other month to be honest. I think its going to be 2 weeks of first part of an event, then the second part. With at least maybe the first part consisting of a month length. Pretty much the way the whole Dragon Bash thing has gone (not that I like the second half being so short).

Honestly I think a month should happen at least so everyone has the greatest chance they can to complete stuff. Rushing through content every two-weeks is going to get old fast. And its a little overwhelming if something happens and god forbid you can’t get on for a month or couple of weeks.

If they do keep up with the 2-week plan. I hope they pay attention to a couple things about what kind of achievements may be better suited for such time lengths. And how the playerbase reacts and completes content to said time-length and achievements.

Though I really enjoy the LS for what it is. Just worried that this content stream may scare a lot of people away. Or maybe its going the opposite route and scaring people into staying that are OCD about missing content. :P lol

Why do people assume that 2 weeks release cycle will mean all content only available for 2 weeks?

I would take bug fixes on the top 10 bugs over a hundred special / holiday events.
Hopefully we get 2 or 3 bug fixes (on old bugs) every 2 weeks as well. Not just bug fixes on new bugs introduced with the new content.

The 2 week release is too rushed. I like the monthly releases much better. It does feel rushed to get everything done in 2 weeks, especially for those that work full time.

That they release every 2 weeks does not means that they will be working on the content only two weeks.

They have 4 separate teams, each 2 weeks one of the team will release but the other 3 will continue their work. So it is possible for all the teams to be working on content for a month or more, but their work is syncronized so there is release every two weeks.

We do exactly that where I work (no, sadly I don’t work for A-Net)

Soronthar.7236:

That they release every 2 weeks does not means that they will be working on the content only two weeks.

They have 4 separate teams, each 2 weeks one of the team will release but the other 3 will continue their work. So it is possible for all the teams to be working on content for a month or more, but their work is syncronized so there is release every two weeks.

We do exactly that where I work (no, sadly I don’t work for A-Net)

Actually, if I remember correctly from the video, Colin said each team got a month, so each team will do 2 consecutive updates.
So events will probably be a month each, with additional content being added halfway through.

sugaredempathy.5683:

The 2 week release is too rushed. I like the monthly releases much better. It does feel rushed to get everything done in 2 weeks, especially for those that work full time.

As someone said earlier, they have four seperate living story teams working on each two week cycle, thus making each event actually have 6 weeks work put into it, not so much of a rush.

It may not be rushed for the devs, but it feels rushed to many players.

Two weeks is fine for releasing the monthly content they’re releasing. Note what was said, four teams are involved, and they have a months worth of content to do, so four months to get it ready for the public. It’s been delivered already as month long content split in two releases, I expect that to continue, but I expect it to be even better now that the teams will have so much more time to work on their pieces.

How about we try it out before complaining?

Who knows, maybe content stays longer than two weeks.
Anet just said they are going to release not delete every other week.

Other than that, Anet said a team is supposed to handle -one- month.
I’m guessing that every living story part is broken down into two releases/ tiers.

If content were permantent, 2 weeks would be very good.
But right now, im feeling rushed. I don’t have many hours to play and feel like in a rush to complete the meta achievements before the time runs out….this sucks because i am letting the personal story, map exploration, dungeon runs and WvW aside from my gameplay time.

Make events more durable, more rewarding. Or at least less time consuming and with more missions like the one in LA during dragon bash.

2 weeks is way too rushed. Monthly cycles would be much more suitable. I understand that there is a demand for constant novelty from the very regular playerbase, but this is not so good for those of us who can’t log in for a week or so at a time. That’s how I missed the fireworks: got only a couple of hours for 2 days but even though I lingered around the fountain, fireworks were late and I had to log off. Also, just waiting at a square in LA isn’t my idea of quality time in GW.

When this starts feeling more like an obligation rather than a game, that’s when things stop being fun.

It is not rushed. The dragon bash team is already working on content for October and the bazaar team is targeting the November now. There is enough time to create meaningful content. You can complain later in the year, if we get thin content.

They split the content in two pieces each month. Most of the achievements will be completable for the whole month. Enough time to obtain the meta reward.

I dont think we’ve really seen the new way of doing things in action yet. It’s worth waiting to see how it turns out quality wise. With overlapping teams, they should be able to keep the pace without rushing anything.

I have high hopes for the every 2 week cycle. As someone adroitly stated above, I would rather have fresh content every 2 weeks and risk missing something than have content every 1-2 months and end up sitting around with nothing new to do.

In my opinion, two weeks is a bit too rushed for temporary content (unless they were really tiny like the initial months of Flame & Frost, where you could easily complete the achievements in a couple hours).

I’d prefer a monthly/bi-monthly release schedule that consists of 50% temporary content that can be completed in a single weekend, and 50% permanent content.

Belenwyn.8674:

It is not rushed. The dragon bash team is already working on content for October and the bazaar team is targeting the November now. There is enough time to create meaningful content. You can complain later in the year, if we get thin content..

I was talking about things so far. Maybe they’ll organise it all better later in the year, but so far, since the end of F&F, everything has felt quite rushed imo.

Its intresting… No one have ever said thet all o one content will diapear after 2 weeks…. Eve if they create and produce things in 2 weeks it’s not sure it will only last for 2. If it lasts longer and releases every twoo weeks we get an effect of overlapping – wich many wish for as I can understand it.

If u Think its too often, dont play those contents. If u miss something, I promise that u wont die!

I like the every two week realeases! I take part in whatever I think is fun and leave the rest for others to do.