Guild Wars 2

The last episode of the Living Story released August 12, and the next episode is to come November 4… am I the only one who’s upset at the lack of PvE content that’s being released?

As I’ve ranted discussed before, each episode is getting cleared in about an hour and has zero replay value (at least for this player). Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the content we do get and it’s because of this that it irritates me we don’t get more per release.

Instead, we get grinding. Achievement grinding, item grinding, equipment grinding, collectible grinding— all of which is exacerbating the elitist meta (profession exclusions, gear requirements, AP requirements, etc). For the game, when it was in development and upon release, touted as eliminating or at least minimizing the grind it appears the precise opposite is coming to fruition.

Now, before fanboy logic kicks in and tosses civilized reasoning out the window, I must state I classify myself as a casual gamer. I’m only able to log in for an hour or so every couple of days. This alone should substantiate my argument for more in-depth content (being able to clear release material on a stringent schedule and asking for more), but it probably won’t. I want content so in-depth that it creates a backlog for me. I want more than 5 (average) quests and a metric ton of grinding filler material every two weeks— I want new armor or armor skins, new weapons or weapon skins; I want new dungeons with multiple paths and bosses; I want new regions with dozens of renown hearts and points of interest. Finally, I want meaningful achievements instead of this grind-fest we have now. I don’t want just to play, I want immersion. And this much I can be sure of: while I may be the only player who’s been outspoken and passionate about this topic, there are many others who share this point of view.

Arena Net, I enjoy this game, this franchise. I’ve stayed with it because of its originality, creativity, and desire to go against the flow of traditional MMOs. However, with the massive break in-between content releases, I’ve lost motivation to stay any longer as the game no longer tries to be enjoyable, for lack of better words. Sure I’ll be back to clear the new LS releases, for what they’re worth, but an hour or so every two weeks cannot be counted as a comeback. Furthermore, with less time spent online, the less likely I am to visit the gem store (which I have done on multiple occasions, in moderation), which brings the cycle full-circle back to you: with such shallow content, your players won’t be playing as much and thus not spending as much.

I realize the type of story releases I want would not fit within a 2-week cycle. It’s because of this I ask for you to re-consider the entire bi-monthly method in its entirety; the lack of content in the releases reeks of burn out and hearkens back to the original Guild Wars, where releasing a new campaign every 6 months was proving more and more difficult. Cut the LS cycle to once-a-month, if not every 2 months, but give us enough material to last. Learn from your competition in this manner and don’t be ashamed to emulate them, I can assure you they have already emulate much of your methodology already. If not, look back at what made GW1 so great and give us more of that.

TL;DR: LS is all filler, no killer and GW2 overall feels like it’s alienating it’s player base by reneging on its charter belief of minimizing the dreaded grind.

While I am usually one to defend what ArenaNet does, and I do believe firmly that there have been a lot of situations where ArenaNet should be defended even though the forums seem to cry out with rage, unfortunately I am, as of late, losing the ability to defend them.

With the recent feature pack that has come out, I don’t think the leveling process is necessarily ruined, but I fail to see how they can consider it an improvement by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, unlocking weapon skills by level is easier, but it lacks the uniqueness of actually using a weapon to unlock skills, which is something most MMOs don’t have.

I recently tried to level an alt and died at level 3. I received no downed state, and I was literally thinking to myself “This has got to be the most ridiculous idea ever thought of. Why in the world do you restrict downed state to level 5? Just why? What difference does the level it unlocks at make to a new player? It will still be confusing either way!”

But i’m going on a bit of a rant here now. While I do think the living world content that is released each update is plentiful enough that i’m fine with it, I agree that this several months long break feels close to insanity. By November 4, 90% of the build-up and suspense that was created in episode 4 will be lost, and people, rather than being excited by episode 5, will simply think “Meh… took long enough.”

The developers seriously have to realize build-up and suspense do not last an eternity. It will eventually fade given enough time. I’ve already lost 60% of the interest I had in episode 5 by now, and i’ll likely lose more of it before it actually releases.

I have no response to any of the complaints except the anti-grinding part. In the manifesto, the “anti-grinding” was really in regards to leveling or progressing the story. Now, with the recent feature pack, the story progression has slowed down a little. However, leveling up is still pretty much a straight line, in part because stuff like harvesting nodes or reviving allies gives XP relative to your level. I don’t need to grind to get better equipment, or to reach level 80; there’s always something I can do before going on to the next level zone. The skin grinding, collection grinding, etc is all optional. There are numerous ways to get exotic level 80 equipment if you don’t care about skins. The story still unlocks with your level. Crafting is a bit of a grind and always has been, but at least I never had to make 1500 basic daggers before I can make a fine one, filling my inventory with essentially vendor trash.

So, yes, there is possible grinding in the game, and there seems to be more and more of it each patch, but there’s usually some part of the game you can find that’ll still keep you entertained. Just try and hang in there until October with the Hallowe’en event, and soon after that, November 4th arrives and maybe, just maybe, the new map will have something that perks your interest.

Well this all boils down to wanting content produced at a faster rate. You have to consider that regardless of whether ArenaNet releases content bi-weekly, monthly, or even bi-monthly, the rate at which they produce this content does not change. If you wait longer then you do get more content but it would have been the same amount of content had you waited less. The only caveat is that you get smaller chunks of it. Let’s say ArenaNet releases 30 hours worth of content in patch that takes 3 months to develop.

• If they release a patch every month you would get 10 hours of content each month
• If they release a patch every 2 weeks you would get 5 hours of content every 2 weeks
• After 3 months, regardless of how they choose to do their releases, you still end up with 30 hours worth of content
• The question now is, are you willing to wait for it?

Of course, your issue is that you want ArenaNet to do more in a given amount of time. I wouldn’t say that’s unfair but you should consider that content doesn’t just grow on trees. There is a lot of time and effort that goes into producing it. More time has to be spent on actually making it just right. I’m sure you feel that it is your right to expect more but until you put yourself in the developers’ shoes you won’t understand that a product can’t be made with the snap of your fingers.

zeromius.1604:

Well this all boils down to wanting content produced at a faster rate. You have to consider that regardless of whether ArenaNet releases content bi-weekly, monthly, or even bi-monthly, the rate at which they produce this content does not change. If you wait longer then you do get more content but it would have been the same amount of content had you waited less. The only caveat is that you get smaller chunks of it. Let’s say ArenaNet releases 30 hours worth of content in patch that takes 3 months to develop.

• If they release a patch every month you would get 10 hours of content each month
• If they release a patch every 2 weeks you would get 5 hours of content every 2 weeks
• After 3 months, regardless of how they choose to do their releases, you still end up with 30 hours worth of content
• The question now is, are you willing to wait for it?

Of course, your issue is that you want ArenaNet to do more in a given amount of time. I wouldn’t say that’s unfair but you should consider that content doesn’t just grow on trees. There is a lot of time and effort that goes into producing it. More time has to be spent on actually making it just right. I’m sure you feel that it is your right to expect more but until you put yourself in the developers’ shoes you won’t understand that a product can’t be made with the snap of your fingers.

I think overrall so far, if you compare season 1 to season 2, at least for when bi-weekly updates started for season 1, that we got more content within the time period now since season 2 elapsed in season 1 than we did in season 2(sorry if thats confusing I worded it bad maybe). The difference is that the content during season 1 was predominantly temporary. The problem now is that we receive much less content, yet its permanent, yet it doesn’t have a lot of replayability value to it.

Season 2’s story telling is an improvement over season 1 but I’ve never played an MMO that tried so hard to incorporate a single player story before.

I’ve been waiting for new dungeons for over a year, we still have the same 8 dungeons with only minor tweaks (so minor that they forget to list them in the release notes) , one path swap, and a severely botched Fractured update for Fractals.

I had to sit through Scarlet, and to top it off, Anet has said they have no major plans for dungeons at this time.

So yeah be happy with what you have. You’ve been with the haves for nearly two years while the have-nots have been sidelined.