Guild Wars 2

With me reading up on the small buzz on the forums and with me experiencing the Halloween events in prior years it looks like it’s going to be been there, done that (And I’m not talking about map completion). Why is it that we can’t get new content and we just get a re-hashing of the same event from years prior? It’s almost like they take their same file, change about 10% and call it all new. ANet, my one recommendation to you as your consumer and a loyal player is to be Avant Garde. You’re not going to make amazing revenues be beating a dead horse. This Halloween and Wintersday, me and a lot of other players want to log on and say “Wow! This stuff is really all new and I don’t remember them having anything like this last year, and completely different from the past events.”

Flip the tables and make it all new. Turn around our expectations and produce never before seen content. Make us have no objections to dropping any kind of money or gold because we will know that this will all be exclusive to this year and it will never come back (events and items). And please don’t just re-hash your old event files; don’t be a broken record.Thanks

i would prefer that winters day not change, its the strongest in game event we currently have.

Halloween would have also been fine going unchanged but setting up for a “story” about the Thorn blood line and history and discovering more of it each year is now an expected precedent.

You’d be better off asking anet to not start what they don’t intend to finish, but that request has been ignored since the days of Beta..

ANet spent a lot of effort on making the first Halloween because they intended to repeat it every year with some new content. So sorry, but it’s not going to change radically and neither are other seasonal events.

Seasonal events in the GW universe have always been more or less the same year after year.
In GW1 we basically still have the same Halloween event as we had 5 years ago.

They also made it rather clear that they would build a bank of seasonal events during the first year or so and then focus on new stuff instead of having to take time off teams to work on new seasonal events every year.

Another thing to keep in mind is that when they actually changed the Halloween event between Year 1 and Year 2 people were raging like mad about it being changed.

That’s because Halloween 2013 actually REMOVED content from 2012. Reaper’s Rumble was gone. Ascent to Madness was gone. The 2012 skins were no longer attainable. Titles from 2012 like Pumpkin Carver were no longer achievable despite the fact that pumpkins were still around and carvable.

In its place we had an OK (but a bit short) story involving the Bloody Prince, but despite the build-up, all the Bloody Prince and King Thorn do is sit in the Labyrinth and trade insults.

Farming in the Labyrinth also seemed to have gotten a major nerf, and that meant that once players got their achievements, they abandoned the Labyrinth in droves. (Players inevitably only stay in a map if it’s rewarding to be there. See the collapse in popularity of the Crown Pavilion after its return for another example.)

To make it worse, Halloween 2013 cranked up the sinks for Halloween items to an insane level. 1,000 Candy Corn for a Cob? And 10 of those for a mini or a bag?? It made players very angry that what was supposed to be a fun, “treats for everyone!” festival had turned into a grindfest.

Zaxares.5419:

That’s because Halloween 2013 actually REMOVED content from 2012. Reaper’s Rumble was gone. Ascent to Madness was gone. The 2012 skins were no longer attainable. Titles from 2012 like Pumpkin Carver were no longer achievable despite the fact that pumpkins were still around and carvable.

Yeah that was sad.

Zaxares.5419:

In its place we had an OK (but a bit short) story involving the Bloody Prince, but despite the build-up, all the Bloody Prince and King Thorn do is sit in the Labyrinth and trade insults.

I kinda liked the insults actually…

Zaxares.5419:

To make it worse, Halloween 2013 cranked up the sinks for Halloween items to an insane level. 1,000 Candy Corn for a Cob? And 10 of those for a mini or a bag?? It made players very angry that what was supposed to be a fun, “treats for everyone!” festival had turned into a grindfest.

Yeah, ANet seems to be balancing difficulty towards the hardcore of the player spectrum. Undoubtedly there was a lot of players to whom 10,000 candy corns were barely a challenge to farm. However for us more casuals it was kinda unreasonable… In fact a lot of content (particularly RNG) seems balanced towards the insane hardcore farmer players…

In fairness, game economist said the candy corn thing was a miscalculation. There was a lot of candy corn in people’s banks, but he got the distribution wrong, meaning he thought there was more available than there actually was.

CureForLiving.5360:

I kinda liked the insults actually…

Oh, don’t get me wrong. The dialogue was hilarious, but it felt… insufficient? The Bloody Prince is supposed to be a violent psychopath who even the Mad King felt was out of control, but he just… yells threats at his father once he’s actually out? I felt there should have been more, like the Labyrinth periodically turns into a zone-wide PvP thing where players choose sides between the Mad King or the Bloody Prince, and then try to launch attacks on each other. It eventually culminates in one side or the other storming the other’s stronghold and allowing the King/Prince to fight it out with player assistance. Whoever wins temporarily takes over the Labyrinth, with the loser disappearing for 30 mins and vowing vengeance.

CureForLiving.5360:

Yeah, ANet seems to be balancing difficulty towards the hardcore of the player spectrum. Undoubtedly there was a lot of players to whom 10,000 candy corns were barely a challenge to farm. However for us more casuals it was kinda unreasonable… In fact a lot of content (particularly RNG) seems balanced towards the insane hardcore farmer players…

Even the hardcore farmers thought that 10k Candy Corn was a ridiculous ask. The only way a player could actually obtain that many Candy Corn within the Halloween period was to buy extra supply from the TP. In fairness to ANet, I can see what they were trying to do; they wanted to provide a massive sink for candy corn that would take it all out of the economy, but to the players, they saw the situation (and it certainly felt like it) as a “these items are only for the rich TP barons who can buy whatever they need. If you’re casual, tough luck!” snub.

wwwes.1398:

In fairness, game economist said the candy corn thing was a miscalculation. There was a lot of candy corn in people’s banks, but he got the distribution wrong, meaning he thought there was more available than there actually was.

Not exactly. His exact words were “we made the sinks too hard to interact with”. Meaning that they’re not backing down on wanting something to take out the millions of Candy Corn in the game (and again, from a game developer perspective this is the right thing to do), but the extremely high amounts needed meant that each individual player felt discouraged from even trying.

One possible way they could have gone about it is instead have small sinks that consumed, say, 25 Candy Corn in exchange for a Trick or Treat bag (or a special version of it for 100 Candy Corn). That bag, in turn, has a loot table that can range from small amounts of Candy Corn (10) to more expensive goodies (Cobs, Halloween recipes) to stuff that’s really valuable, like the 2012 Halloween skins. I’m willing to bet my Ascended mat stockpile that players would consume Candy Corn by the tens of thousands to gamble for stuff like the Greatsaw again.

The worst part of last year was when the nerfed the already existing recipes for things like Gift of Thorns from 100 cand corn to 10 candy corn cobs (10,000 candy corn).

All of this extra cost for something older players already had.

Personally I loved the first year’s halloween – the dungeon was attractive and had good rewards and could be done with friends. The second year’s halloween was terribly dull in my opinion with nothing but a cheesy daily grind. If anything has to be repeated it could at least be the mad king bursting outta statues and us dealing with him – his son is fine as a 1 year party but the mad king is tyria’s halloween not his children!

“This coming Tuesday, October 21, the Mad Realm returns with our annual Halloween release. On December 16, we’ll release our usual holiday-themed festivities with Wintersday. Both of these releases will feature the same content as last year but with refreshed rewards, giving you fun new festival-themed items to earn.”

So, no hope in Year 1 events like Reapers Rumble or Ascent to Madness returning. I had really hoped they would listen and at the very least bring RR back..

It feels really cheap. Hopefully they use that time to polish upcoming LS.

ArtemusHunter.9521:

“This coming Tuesday, October 21, the Mad Realm returns with our annual Halloween release. On December 16, we’ll release our usual holiday-themed festivities with Wintersday. Both of these releases will feature the same content as last year but with refreshed rewards, giving you fun new festival-themed items to earn.”

So, no hope in Year 1 events like Reapers Rumble or Ascent to Madness returning. I had really hoped they would listen and at the very least bring RR back..

Disappointing. That said, you need to understand the ANET mentality on a lot of things. Most players liked year 1 more than year 2. The logical thing would be to bring back year 1. ANET doesn’t think like that though. In their mind, they want to bring back year 2 to see if people like it better this time.

Makes sense? No.

style.6173:

ArtemusHunter.9521:

“This coming Tuesday, October 21, the Mad Realm returns with our annual Halloween release. On December 16, we’ll release our usual holiday-themed festivities with Wintersday. Both of these releases will feature the same content as last year but with refreshed rewards, giving you fun new festival-themed items to earn.”

So, no hope in Year 1 events like Reapers Rumble or Ascent to Madness returning. I had really hoped they would listen and at the very least bring RR back..

Disappointing. That said, you need to understand the ANET mentality on a lot of things. Most players liked year 1 more than year 2. The logical thing would be to bring back year 1. ANET doesn’t think like that though. In their mind, they want to bring back year 2 to see if people like it better this time.

Makes sense? No.

After I wrote out my last comment, I realized a possibility as to why RR never came back, as well as why it might not come back again ever. They might of been working on the China Client back during year 2 and it’s possible they wanted to make sure the event would be fine to run over there, without any issues from the authorities over there.

Skulls, Skeletons and some other things are Taboo in China, and what is Reapers Rumble full of? Skeletons. That might be why we won’t see RR.. :/