Guild Wars 2

I can’t count how many times I see a post that assumes the living world updates are developed on a two week schedule. I was just reading some guy’s post on another thread in this very forum where he said “You don’t really think they took 3 months to develop the first episode, right?”

Here’s my response: No, I don’t think that, because going by what they have said themselves, it’s four months! They have multiple living world teams which each work on upcoming updates. Whilst episode 1 is being developed, so are episodes 2 through 8 as well. I understand if you never read what ArenaNet said about it, but… come on. I cringe when there’s no following post correcting it.

Perhaps these people came in a while after ArenaNet’s comment about it. I mean, if I remember correctly, it was a little less than a year ago (correct me if i’m wrong about that) or so, which is a long time. But still.

Or perhaps i’m wrong and this post is pointless. If so, feel free to /facedesk.

Thoughts?

Earlier it has been 4 teams each with 4 months per 2 episodes.
This season stuff may or may not have changed.

No longer 4 teams rotating. Now it is just one team of 20 Devs. No idea how long the lead-time is for Episodes. I hope they will inform us how it works now.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

No longer 4 teams rotating. Now it is just one team of 20 Devs. No idea how long the lead-time is for Episodes. I hope they will inform us how it works now.

wtb source

Deli.1302:

wtb source

A member of the Dev team talked about it in this thread

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Enough-of-your-GMPC-please/page/3

As the Angel stated the team is smaller now so there is little they can do with their current limits.

I’m not sure that it’s actually 20 developers, I’m pretty sure the 20 includes all parts, designers, writers, developers and managers. Meanwhile, they transitioned some developers off of the living story into working on other projects.

Devs…as in those who work on the game. Red Posts. Dev Tracker.

Not Game Developer as a job description. =)

Sorann Peace.9056:

Here’s my response: No, I don’t think that, because going by what they have said themselves, it’s four months! They have multiple living world teams which each work on upcoming updates. Whilst episode 1 is being developed, so are episodes 2 through 8 as well. I understand if you never read what ArenaNet said about it, but… come on. I cringe when there’s no following post correcting it.

It’s one team actually. As Angel said, it’s meant to make the Seasons have a more cohesive narrative as opposed to the wish-wash nature of Season 1.

I’m thinking it’s something like Youtube where when you upload a bunch of videos, it puts the later ones in queue that start loading up after the next. In this case we’re on a two-week grace period for each update. Of course they don’t work on the next episode within each of those grace periods, that’s what the whole seasonal break is for, so they can do this stuff ahead of time and queue everything up.

For what it’s worth it’s not unique to Arenanet. People think the same about all games development and even things like hardware. I’ve had similar arguments many, many times with people who seem to genuinely believe a company begins developing a new console when it’s announced to the public (or maybe a week or so before) and the total development time is a year or two.

The funny thing is when I try and explain that it’s more likely they started working on the concept for a new console a few months before the last one was released (e.g. someone at Microsoft will have been discussing the defining features of the Xbox 1 while their marketing team was gearing up to release the 360) more often than not someone will tell me I’m just trying to insult the company and act like they take forever to make a product.

So it’s hardly surprising they believe Anet could make a living world release from scratch in 2 weeks.

My guess, based on my limited experience of games development and similar creative processes, is that the very basic concept of the story arc – that it would lead to the awakening and defeat of another Elder Dragon – has been in place since the very beginning of Season 1. The basic story of Season 2 (which dragon, their rough location, how they’re awoken, how the races react etc.) has been in place since at least last Christmas (in time for them to work it into the Battle for LA releases) and the 3 month break was devoted to fleshing out the story for the entire season as well as similar longer term projects like building the new map.

The way I read Angel’s post in the thread linked above she’s talking about her team specifically, the people she works alongside on a particular release. There would then be other teams working on other releases. Even with the story fully developed I can’t see them reducing the development time for each release to less than a couple of months.

But I assume they also have some people whose job is to oversee the entire project and ensure continuity, and other people who will work in/with multiple teams, like the artists who design the monsters. The same enemies are going to come up in multiple releases so they wouldn’t be tied to a specific team.

Designing the content for a LW2 episode could take around four months. The design of a full fleshed out zone providing the stage for LW2 episodes will take much longer. My Assumption is that the zones, dungeons etc were planned and realised as a major project that runs behind the stage since many months.

If you had a problem with that, why didn’t you also bring up the context in which the comment was made, which was to a person claiming that they should make the living story content malleable based on what the players do with each two week release?

You didn’t have a problem with that?

Also, if you cringed when there was no follow-up post correcting that, why didn’t you post that there instead of trying to mock it more publicly with a new thread?

Also also, I (since I assume you’re referring to the comment I made) was not saying that it took them just a super short time to make the first chapter and all the other chapters will also be a super short time. Again, in context, it was referring to the person suggesting they make content malleable based on what happens from players during the chapter. If you paid attention to the rest of the post instead of taking that out of context, the entire time I held the stance that they couldn’t do that because it would take too long between releases. The comment about the three months was more regarding the story, rather than the development of the maps and such, and the fact that that time would also have been spent planning the direction of the story.

If you were going to try to shame someone’s comments regarding a misunderstanding of time taken, maybe you should have done it to the person suggesting mutable content based on actions taken every two weeks, hm?

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

No longer 4 teams rotating. Now it is just one team of 20 Devs. No idea how long the lead-time is for Episodes. I hope they will inform us how it works now.

Ah, sorry, my mistake then.

Filaha.1678:

If you had a problem with that, why didn’t you also bring up the context in which the comment was made, which was to a person claiming that they should make the living story content malleable based on what the players do with each two week release?

You didn’t have a problem with that?

Also, if you cringed when there was no follow-up post correcting that, why didn’t you post that there instead of trying to mock it more publicly with a new thread?

Also also, I (since I assume you’re referring to the comment I made) was not saying that it took them just a super short time to make the first chapter and all the other chapters will also be a super short time. Again, in context, it was referring to the person suggesting they make content malleable based on what happens from players during the chapter. If you paid attention to the rest of the post instead of taking that out of context, the entire time I held the stance that they couldn’t do that because it would take too long between releases. The comment about the three months was more regarding the story, rather than the development of the maps and such, and the fact that that time would also have been spent planning the direction of the story.

If you were going to try to shame someone’s comments regarding a misunderstanding of time taken, maybe you should have done it to the person suggesting mutable content based on actions taken every two weeks, hm?

I don’t even remember who said it exactly, but i’m pretty sure it was the OP of the thread that I was disagreeing with since he was the one assuming it was two weeks from what I remember. Your comment was something I just used rhetorically.

1. As for your first point regarding context, the reason I didn’t bring it up is because it had zero to do with what I wanted to post about.

2. As for your second post regarding why I posted here instead of in that thread, I did so because it was a new topic. That thread dealt with something different from what I wanted to talk about.

3. I was told i’m wrong anyway, so what’s done is done and the point is a moot one.

EDIT: Want to add that I never actually quoted the guy who assumed it was two weeks for development, for clarity.

Sorann Peace.9056:

I don’t even remember who said it exactly, but i’m pretty sure it was the OP of the thread that I was disagreeing with since he was the one assuming it was two weeks from what I remember. Your comment was something I just used rhetorically.

Fair enough. Your use of the wording of my comment while arguing the other person’s thinking just made it seem like you were attributing the argument of it being quick development to me.

So 1 LS2 Team and the others working on different projects? Cantha confirmed

Sounds like people were confusing “release” schedule for “development” schedule. They might release patches every 2 weeks, but it certainly takes them much longer than that to make the patches.