Guild Wars 2

If you work, you only have 2 week-ends + a few evenings (maybe) to complete the whole thing. That’s not enough.

Old topic. The playerbase seems torn between the following views:

• More content, faster. PLayers, naturally, want more new things to do in less time. Sadly, players go through content than it can be produced. This is basically like grabbing ArenaNet by the shoulders and shout at them: “GIVE ME UNPOLISHED CONTENT NOW!” A bad mentality overall, even if understandable.
• Too much temp stuff in too short a time. The non-hardcore gamers don’t have time to do all the content – and before it gets mentioned (presuming I’m not ninja’d), this is content they want to do so don’t bother with the overused BS excuse of “you don’t do have to play all the content.” And on the flip side, hardcore gamers are starting to be burned out, and I’m seeing more and more folks mentioning leaving or being tempted to leave. ArenaNet’s starting to fix this… but they still fail in those limited time achievement categories.
• The content is too unpolished or lacking depth. A result of point 1, really. ArenaNet’s pumping out content so fast that they can’t – or won’t, it’s not very clear which – put proper depth and polish to the content. This results in content that feels… unsatisfying.

It’s a song sung many-a-times. ArenaNet’s starting to head into the right direction. Sadly, after Flame and Frost, they really took a huge step back. They need less temporary content – especially in regards to achievements and item skins – and more time to polish.

Let’s be honest with ourselves here. We don’t hate the 2 week content update schedule. We love it. What we don’t love, what we hate, is the quality of said content and, worse, we hate the amount of temporary content and arbitrary achievements that we feel are necessary to complete for the rewards (we, as players, have been conditioned into loving those rewards, and they give rewards for accumulating rewards, giving us more reason to go after them).

So people, stop saying “2 weeks is too short” – start saying “2 weeks is too short for temporary content.”

Konig, you’re pretty much right with that. Maybe copy it to e-mail and send to every Anet adress you can find =)

Although I would still be fine with dropping to once per month if it means more polish and variety in each of the releases. After all you can just put in both of those 2 week patches into one patch, with the advantage being that the one that would’ve come first gains 2 weeks of polish and fine-tuning.

I’m pretty sure everyone would be fine with monthly over bi-weekly. After all, that’s still fairly fast updates compared to most MMOs that only update content with expansions.

Though I don’t think combining them would do much. Sure you can look at it as “the first update gets 2 weeks more” but on the other hand – and in the long term (e.g., after the first four months) – it just becomes “the second gets two weeks less.” Rather, it’d be better, IMO, to push that second one to the following month – like how Flame and Frost was (so think F&F pacing but more content to do).

The thing that really makes me mad is temporary content.

I took a break from GW2 when I bought Skyrim for PC, I took a break during basketball season, and also I took a break when I got burned out from grinding a legendary.

Anyway, it would be nice if when I came back to the game, I could experience all the new content that had been released in the last 7 months, but no… all I had to do was ONE little patch(the scarlet invasions), and that was fun, but what is the point of spending time making Flame and Frost, Sky Pirates, The Bazaar, Dragon Busters.. Queens guantlet, etc if you only have a very short time to experience them?

Why can I not return to the game and play through that content?

Since I have been back from my break, I have done scarlet invasions, Teq has been upgraded, and now there is a new path in TA. That is barely anything. There is no story here…

What made me like this game was the rich lore, the story behind the elder dragons, saving tyria from dragon minions, the class mechanics, and a few other things.

Well, I feel there is no story now, there has been nothing released that has to do with the elder dragons, or any other storyline that directly involves me as a player or tyria as a whole.

Who the hell is Scarlet? I dont even know this even after doing the invasions.

Konig sums it up well. I personally do have time to complete temporary stuff before it disappears but I’ve noticed that it starts to feel more like work rather than enjoying myself.

SAB world2 tribulation mode is good example for me because I really love the challenge and did complete it but there was clock ticking behind me reminding ‘’you have only 2 days to complete storm peaks before it’ll go away’’ so that end up giving little bit of stress.

I’m a LOTRO fan as well and really love the concept there that nothing is temporary except seasonal holidays like summerfestival etc. All the achievements, dungeons, regions, little things, introduced in that game will stay there for you to complete in your own pace. In my server people get together do stuff introduced long ago if they missed it back then or started playing later on.

I don’t really get it with the temporary content. If it would be permanent or at least stay longer before disappearing I think that would have much more positive impact to community than what it does now.

Quality = quantity. Story should play big role in game like this and if a villain like Scarlet comes into game and many months later she doesn’t have any story besides the blog post…

I know Anet competes against companies like Blizzard, Bioware, whatnots but they should maybe take influence from those guys how to introduce lore into a game and make 2d stories into 3d.

I’m not a completionist so the pacing is perfectly fine for me. Say for example, SAB, not a big fan the 8bit retro gaming trend so I didn’t even bother with it. Now imagine without the other content to fill that month and all there was to do for LS was SAB. I would be bored frankly.

The only things I would have left to do was log on once a night and do the temple run and log out. With constantly changing environments and events and things being added, there’s more chance for me to find one that I like to do.