Guild Wars 2

Introduction

With the news that the upcoming Halloween event would be named “Blood and Madness”, many have speculated that it might be a repeat on last year’s Halloween event, and have expressed disappointment with that. I just want to make sure we all remember what the complaints were back then, since, the way I see it, them repeating it would merely be a logical response to said complaints, which were as follows:

A Flashback to the Past

On October of 2013, Blood and Madness arrived. Many players who participated in the Shadow of the Mad King event were outraged by the fact that a lot of their favorite Halloween activities were removed, such as the Ascent to Madness dungeon. Now, unfortunately, by the time this happened, it was already too late.

Some people noticed however that pretty much most if not all the wintersday 2012 content was in-fact in wintersday 2013. Many speculated this could be in response to the complaints about Blood and Madness and how it removed a lot that was part of Shadow of the Mad King.

Conclusion

To be honest, it is to be expected that ArenaNet would try to stay in line with the previous Halloween given the complaints before. And unfortunately, you can only pick one or the other, or else it gets confusing. And Blood and Madness is the “latest” in the lore, therefore I can see why they picked it.

This is not to shoot down anyone who is disappointed with this. I certainly am as well, but I often see people type on the forums without a clear understanding of context, and I hope to clear that context up before the update rolls around and complaints do or do not start happening.

Thank you for reading.

I didn’t think 2013 was bad, but yeah didn’t like that we didn’t get the 2012 dungeon back or some of the activities. I don’t mind them adding a new story instance or two, but I don’t like them removing content. I guess it’s possible to have too much content (although at the rate that some player go through content I’m not exactly sure if that’s the case), but at least include Ascent of the Mad King (I need to get me some of those skins :P ).

New stuff should be in addition to old stuff, like they did in GW, not a replacement for old stuff. Also, mobs in the Labyrinth should drop loot once in a while.

edit: fixed my pre-coffee tortured english.

I’m sure anet is tweaking things for this Halloween.

China will not allow exposed bone, so enemies have to be reskinned. So, at a minimum, new foes & a different mini pack.

Also anet dumped a lot of candy corn in the form of candy corn nodes that people farm daily, dropped candy corn again in the scarlet living story, and gave everybody the ability to get a node if they didn’t get one last year.

A new sink for candy corn is likely coming, and new craft able weapons are overdue.

A lot of people loved the 2012 Halloween instance and actually hope for a repeat of that.

The problem with them removing the 2012 Halloween stuff last year was mostly that they didn’t really introduce anything to replace what they removed.

They removed the scavenger hunt for the backpiece. Replaced it with… I guess a small grind for the mini?

Removed Ascent to Madness, a fairly enjoyable mini-dungeon / boss fight with a chance at Halloween loot at the end, replaced it with a less fun solo story instance / boss fight with static loot.

Cut down on the loot in the Labyrinth.

Made the Halloween weapons much, much more expensive to craft and removed them from the loot tables to boot.

Removed pumpkin carving, removed Reaper’s Rumble, removed the little things like the temporary weapon skins, nothing added in place for those.

If their solution to the problem is just to copy-paste last years to avoid those complaints, I’d say they’re missing the point. There wouldn’t have been nearly as many complaints if they had added more and had better content to replace what was being swapped out.

If they’re going to copy/paste a holiday from a previous year, they’d be much better served to choose the 2012 version. At this point it would almost be new, not to mention most people preferred that year to last year. Better yet, combine 2012 content with 2013 content. If they only repeat 2013, they will get the exact same complaints from that year: loss of Reaper’s Rumble, loss of loot in the Labyrinth, and the biggest complaint – loss of Ascent of the Mad King. There was just so much more to do in 2012 than there was in Blood and Madness, and there was a greater sense of cooperation.

I’m skeptical at the idea of it being a copy paste, would be a very odd thing to do. Obviously many elements will be carried through but I would imagine there would be some new stuff as well.

Golgathoth.3967:

Better yet, combine 2012 content with 2013 content.

+1, come on ANet we want it all!
Bonus points if you give us 2012 + 2013 + a couple of new things (even if they’re just things like pumpkin carving).

Tbh if there are new rewards, I don’t really mind.

It’s not going to be copy paste. There was a tweet some time ago from a dev where he sort of complained about remaking assets for an holiday event. Woodenpotatoes mentioned it in one of his videos. There is a very big chance that this holiday event is halloween becasue it’s the first holdiay event since that tweet. If they even took time to remake the looks of halloween the chance is also very big that Anet took the time to update the whole halloween event.

(sorry for my english)

Halloween 2013 was a disapointment in my opinion.
Great premise, lackluster payoff.

The bloody prince could have been an interesting character or mechanic (like, letting us choose between him and the mad king), but all it ended up was a little side story, with some unfunny snark against the mad king, which was gated behind an archievment wall.

I personally was disapointed with the removal of features, instead of building on the foundation of the great 2012 event.
While I liked the tweaking, I did not understand the substraction.

btw. I want a continuation of the Mad King Book ;)

Truth: People don’t really want the ascent to madness mini-dungeon, and whether or not you fight the Mad King wont make a difference in your overall enjoyment of the dungeon.

The only reason people played the Mad King dungeon over and over and over again, was for the shot at free gemstore items, black lion keys, and the Halloween weapon skins.

I mean, granted, the fight was a really cool boss fight, the reality I remembered was that player got bored of it really quickly when they repeated it.

I’m not saying to remove the Mad King boss fight permanently. In fact, I think that, like GW1, it should be added to the checklist of Halloween quests. However, don’t get nostalgia cloud your judgment.

I would be very disappointed if Halloween were a mere repeat of 2013 , as I think that events must be the most easily planned, have the longest possible development time available, and for a large part have a set theme, and can re-use a lot of assets already in the game that relate to said theme.

Due to the traditional nature of these kinds of events, there are certain key elements that just have to be in it, most noticeably the Mad King Appearances. Some of the other activities are a set challenge (the tower), or provide a specific form of gaming (dungeon).

This leaves room for changes in very specific area’s:
- A dungeon path addition or change, possibly reflecting story additions
- A PvP map (which could change every year, or one added every year)
- A PvP Holiday format (Which might be a nice way to test new formats, it could change every year, or a new format could be added when created, and offer different formats to choose from every year).

This then leaves two area’s of the game that most players will be confronted with.
- The Story , the way GW2 is advertised and how development is relayed to the players, as well as how the community has responded to development, seem to leave no room for anything but ‘ADDITION’ to the story of Halloween . As putting in reflections upon recent world events (unless they are here to stay indefinitely) will seem out of place the following year. (One could intermingle events, for the experience of the players, but that part of the content might not be suitable for next year, still though, the one time event things could be a key feature of GW2, as long as they do not take up more than say 10-15% of the actual content released – if they can be large scale yearly repeatable events that would be even better, or if they could be scaled down for repetition, or used as footage for cinematic to provide context in the repeatable portion of the content. )

Halloween would also be a nice event to deepen racial lore, as LA is a multi racial city. Obviously Raven would have a few things to say about Halloween to the Norn. The Madking obviously poses some questions to Sylvari. Sure, for Charr and Asura the Halloween event would offer a bit less, but for the Asura the Madking would obviously be part of the Eternal Alchemy. So ok, the Charr might luck out, but that’s only due to a very obvious link not being there, which could be solved by some fantasy … so more then enough angles to add more to Halloween for various years.

- The Farming
Currently the farming is confined to the ‘Madking Maze’ and drops in the world. Obviously adding new drops to lists is an easy way to litter the world with the Halloween Spirit.

The maze though, well apart from a foe addition it hasn’t seen much change, it would be really cool if the floor would collapse in certain area’s, or a wall would cave in and the maze extended. In this regard one could point at the ‘Tower of Madness’ content that (from my p.o.v.) was well received by the community. Additions to the maze do strike me as a fairly easy way to keep content around and still add to it.

- The Rewards
Here again one could say that additions are fairly easy, seeing we have only seen a small selection of Halloween weapons, additions to the list of rewards would be a strait forward addition to the event. Yet I doubt anyone would consider it some form of content, then again it would be a nice and welcome (maybe even an overdue) addition to the reward structure for the content around.

- WvW
I do not think I should let this part of the game out of it. WvW’ers are not particularly fond of PvE additions to their content. But that doesn’t mean that that Events can not travel over to WvW. Some simple changes would obviously be decorations and textures. Other ways to add event content to WvW would be the drops. And one that would also work, is the replacement of current NPCs (friends and foes) by event themed NPCs (f/e Skeletal/Spirit/Undead Yaks, or Skeletal/Spirit/Undead Ogres/Moles/Frogs, Skeletal/Spirit/Undead etc. and more spiders, bats, raven, etc) , as these changes wouldn’t interfere with the natural flow of WvW combat.

Kain Francois.4328:

Truth: People don’t really want the ascent to madness mini-dungeon, and whether or not you fight the Mad King wont make a difference in your overall enjoyment of the dungeon.

Actually, I DO want the Ascend to Madness mini-dungeon back. I don’t really care about the Halloween skins (although I know some players basically want it back just so they can farm for the skins), but I liked being able to slap the Mad King around in payback for his stupid jokes. :P

On the topic of farming, I think it may just be one of those necessary evils we have to have. Players seemingly LOVE to farm. They were out in droves during the original Halloween in the Labyrinth, and again during the first iteration of the Crown Pavilion. Once the farming rewards got taken away in later years, attendance dropped sharply.

As long as they extend the halloween event to pvp with a halloween-themed track i’ll be happy!

I’m not too worried about repeating content, but I’m going to be absolutely crushed if they don’t continue the story. Yes, Tassi said the candy seal wouldn’t hold forever, so that’s the opening to have the Prince bust out again, looking for revenge against the player and having another crack at Mad King Thorn.

But if the story acts like we’re meeting him for the first time and doesn’t follow on from what they set up last year, I’m going to be so disappointed, I’ve been looking forward to more story/character development on them all year.

Last Halloween was quite the disapointment, removal of content/rewards for festivals is a really bed way to go. Worst thing was, Arena Net had no real reason to remove any of it.

Yes we had some new content, but it was less than what was removed. I am not optimistic for this years Halloween, if last Wintersday is anything to go by.

Gaile, if you’re reading, this would be an instance where simply having a yes or no answer to the questions, “Should we expect ‘story progression’ for Mad Kings Day? Has the team been working to develop new features for the Mad Kings Day update or is it just refinements of previous years? Will we see the return of the dungeon?” would be helpful. I know it’s a spoiler and you don’t want to ruin surprises, but since we’re all speculating about this stuff anyway, it’d be nice to have at least some sort of baseline.

I’m a very faithful player. I’ve played since launch and the previous Guild Wars 1. I try my best not to be critical since this is my favorite game but I’m very disappointed in a lot of things I see pertaining to Halloween. Now for the first 2 months of the game since launch before halloween 2012, most of us(including me) where out exploring the world. Doing map completions, discovering the first 2-3 dungeons, trying to get a feel for this game. Once the Halloween update hit that was exciting! Lots of new stuff and comparing things to the old Guild Wars. I did hit a road block when I couldn’t complete the backpiece because it took me to areas I hadn’t even came close to and had no way of figuring out at least then on how to get there. So when halloween 2013 hit, i was excited again yet immediately disappointed when I saw that that event was removed and not re-released. Come to find out most players I play with have the same problem. The other big issue I had where the 2012 halloween skins. In my opinion the best skins ever to be released for gw2. Yet I cant seem to be able to obtain any of them without forking over +1000g. I was hoping at least they would throw them into the vendor like the Black Lion Weaponsmith or the Holiday Vendor. I still have my fingers crossed that our complaints have been heard and that these things will be available again this year. I Hope

Why do they think that they have to remove content to put new content in. There is no such thing as too much content on a short holiday event. More different content there is the less repetitive grind there is, thus less complaints on that.
Sure some will complain that they can not decide what content to do because you get x from there and y from there and you want both 10.000 x’s and 10.000 y’s. There is no pleasing to some people.

But Anet has several times taken the stand that they have to take away to put more. Why is that? Are they running out of storage or system capacity?

I just want the 2012 skins available again…