Guild Wars 2

Well, I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I saw this news post. After reading it, I can safely say that I’m sorely disappointed. Nothing meaningful was said, apart from that there will be plenty more Scarlet next year.

I really feel that the Living Story has killed this game for me. We’ve barely had anything actually added to the game this year – it’s all been washed away after a few weeks of being released. Instead of going forward, the plot has gone diagonally downwards-backwards-to-the-left, in a wiggly line, with occasional breaks in said line. The idea of achievement points has gone from ‘an indication of how much of the game a player has seen and done’ to ’who’s joined the zerg in the latest two-to-four week Scarlet-fest’.

Even the Living Story itself has got worse – going from at least trying to tell a story to one or two lines of plot piled with a bunch of achievements tied to content that’s already in the game.

I know that the many, many loose ends still need to be tied up Anet; but please: scrap the Living Story as it is after we’ve reached a conclusion of any sort. ‘Scarlet did it’ isn’t the answer to every lore-related question. Throwing achievement points, a back piece and the occasional title at people for zerging or redoing old content isn’t interesting – it’s lazy. I’m not asking for the Crystal Desert and Cantha to open up immediately and for all the dragons to wake up from their Living Story-induced comas – but please, give us some actual lasting content which people want to play because it’s actually fun.

‘On behalf of everyone here at ArenaNet, thank you all for an amazing 2013. Without your collaboration, feedback, dedication, and love for the world of Tyria, Guild Wars 2 simply wouldn’t be the success that it is today —nor could we reach the lofty goals we’ve set for the future.’ – This was the bit which got to me and convinced me to make the thread. As much as I love this game, 2013 was not amazing. Our feedback is only selectively considered; although dedication and love have definitely kept people playing – as opposed to the Living Story. And, lastly and sadly, I can say that I’m genuinely worried about these ‘lofty goals’. More grind being added to a game that was supposed to focus on fun over grind? More Living Story since it was such a ‘success’?

Please – step up your game Anet. I’m not sure how you measure how well the game’s doing (although I presume it’s some sort of effort:money ratio) – but 2013 really hasn’t been a success from where I’ve been looking. I’ve seen my friends list and guild lists become more and more inactive; players feeling they have to grind and join zergs; and the game reaching a point where you have to play the new, temporary content (or old content with a new, temporary carrot dangled in front of you) when Anet tells you to – otherwise it and any rewards are gone forever. How fun.

Anywho, semi-rant over. I’m not particularly sure what purpose this thread will really have past this post, so feel free to tell me my opinion is wrong and to quit.

Opinion can’t be wrong, that’s why it’s opininon.
But I reacted completely the opposite way you did. The post made me kinda happy. I really don’t mind the pause, and I trust ANet that they will really work on those four releases. I never hated Scarlet, I just wanted to know what was behind her. And I hope it will be answered.
What is going to be after Scarlet’s done? I don’t know why, but I just know it’ll be great. And if it won’t be, then I will say for the first time, that ANet failed. For me, 2013 was learning year for them and I believe that they have learned.

Opinions aren’t wrong unless they entirely lack basis. You do have a basis for your complaints. Don’t quit unless you want to, though.

I do disagree with you here and there. Sure, the game hasn’t quite been what it started out to be or what it could be if Shriketalon-style plots were used. It’s still been a lot of fun, has kept me firmly playing and given me a lot of stories to fuel RP. The LS plot has only been a springboard rather than an engulfing fact of my character’s lives, yeah. If a story’s going to “rock Tyria to its core” then it needs to be something my characters can’t ignore. They can’t just scrap the story now, that would be like the book The Architect of Sleep by Stephen Boyett. It’s the first part of the story, just stops mid scene at the end, because he never delivered the rest of it due to a dispute with the publisher. Even a bad story needs to have an ending so the reader can move on (that book was a phenomenally GOOD story, though, making it more painful). ANet works 4 months in advance, right? Well, 4 months ago they had a lot of these complaints … so the -next- four months might well show a response and a change in pacing, quality, and so on.

Here’s hoping the finale delivers on the promise in the blog. Meanwhile, there’s still fun to be had in them thar Tyrian hills.

I’m on the opposite side of the spectrum for this.

I was very interested in one aspect. The teaser that after the last 4 updates for this Season 1 of LS, the next round of major features will be bundled together into a large “feature only” release that will come after the first season of the Living World 2014 has finished. That has me excited.

Also, there is finally an end game announced. That is good to know.

While I’ll agree that Mini’s and back skins are becoming way to abundant in the reward category, it is a reward. At the end of the day, you don’t need to go for the achievements or get those rewards if you don’t feel the need to. It’s very simple to experience the LS content without the grinding feeling of Achievement hunting and then continue your normal GW2 play.

To say we haven’t had anything added to the game this year sounds misinformed to me. At least in my opinion.

-Ascended Gear
-PvP rewards
-New Fractals
-New Tequatl
-New Runes/Sigils
-New Skills
-New events in Southsun Cove

I mean.. that’s just some things I could think of off the top of my head.

Was everything implemented this last year perfect? Nope. To me, it was satisfying though. Every few weeks I had something new to look forward to and something that kept me playing. When i got bored with that, I just went on to the other hundreds of things I can do in the game.

I honestly hope u make the finale of your arch as biblical as possible. So intense and huge it will make me prairie-dog it till it finishes….otherwise it would be the nail in the coffin for me atleast.

Aye, it was indeed a rather interesting post, and it does seem like my guess that “the end of Scarlet” will be in March is correct. More specifically 4th March.

Also nice to see that they actually talks about stuff that didn’t make it, instead of just ignoring them and hope people had forgotten about it.

The feature only release does seem quite nice as well, looking forward to it.

Please Anet, 2014 should be the year for new areas, new dungeons, new skills, new endgame.
Living Story is fun……but only for one or two days………….. Don’t waste your time.

I don’t hate Scarlet, and I think the most annoyed I’ve been is during her “die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die” rants. And to be fair I’ve liked most of the releases this past year (even if they were temporary or reoccurring). But I think more recent patches have strived to have more lasting effects instead of 2 weeks and done patches. Hopefully, they will continue this down the line.

I think my major complaints are the massive gold sinks that the past couple of releases have been (which were introduced because of the previous massive farms they introduced). So really I only have 3 major gripes with the past year:

Ascended gear was not handled the best it could be (what is so wrong with it being easy to get the best gear and have it available through multiple options). And it just hurts the average player trying to craft to 500. I’ll also throw the insane prices of getting AR with the new infusions.

Luck/MF removal was another massive sink. I still don’t think I’m back to where I was with my open world PvE magic find armor.

The Teq patch changes. I hate this change most of all. It introduced content that requires 120+ people to be organized with voice software and special items/gear/trait set ups. I will be very sad when they change claw and kitten to also be unbeatable without massive time/prep investment. Plus, throwing in timers for all of the world bosses are tedious and are just dps checks. If I want to spend 20-30 min to solo a world boss at off hours I should be able to.

And my guess is for the Large Feature only patch will contain new skills (and hopefully traits). Heck I can dream and maybe I’ll finally get my swapable weapon skills (and maybe heading towards a new dragon or continent)! More realistically, I assume that’s when precursor crafting and the new legendaries will make their appearance. Still I’m looking forward for that in March.

As long as they let us kill Scarlet once and for all as part of the last four releases of “Season 1” I will be happy and ready to move on.

Maybe I will even manage to forget the sluggish storyline progression of 2013 and all the meaningless running around of Scarlet (I will call it meaningless until I have seen in-game a meaningful purpose and intent to all her actions and “collaborations” ).

And I want to be able to hit her and see her body dead as well: no crap like Zhaitan. I want to see my character hurt her, and I want to be sure she is really dead.

Sounds awful, I know.

Scarlet brings out the worse in us… not because she is such a great evil genius, but because she is such a poor character…

“Rock Tyria to its core” makes me think that Scarlet plans to wake an elder dragon. Possibly Primordius? Maybe we’ll get Dwarves as a playable race? I would LOVE to explore below Tyria again.

redux.1502:

“Rock Tyria to its core” makes me think that Scarlet plans to wake an elder dragon. Possibly Primordius? Maybe we’ll get Dwarves as a playable race? I would LOVE to explore below Tyria again.

If I recall all of the Dwarves are now stone, so that’s somewhat doubtful. Though it would come out of no where for a playable race (compared to most people for Kodon or …crud…. those underwater assassins).

But I do hope it means another dragon and/or more areas opening up.

IMO WvW and leveling a few new toons are the only fun things left. The living story has been horrific, abysmal and boring (kitting stupid covers it too). The current arc can’t end soon enough. If new zones don’t show up on the horizon soon, it’ll be time to find a new game.

Chameleon Dude.1564:

‘On behalf of everyone here at ArenaNet, thank you all for an amazing 2013. Without your collaboration, feedback, dedication, and love for the world of Tyria, Guild Wars 2 simply wouldn’t be the success that it is today —nor could we reach the lofty goals we’ve set for the future.’

This was the bit which got to me and convinced me to make the thread. As much as I love this game, 2013 was not amazing. Our feedback is only selectively considered; although dedication and love have definitely kept people playing – as opposed to the Living Story. And, lastly and sadly, I can say that I’m genuinely worried about these ‘lofty goals’. More grind being added to a game that was supposed to focus on fun over grind? More Living Story since it was such a ‘success’?

This blog post can be seen by anyone, not only the ones who have already bought GW2, did you seriously expected that they would bash their own game saying things like “we dropped the ball multiple times” or that “for quite some time we had no communication with devs”?

To the other parts of your post, yes I do agree that they should step up a bit more. For me this “Season 1 LS” was more like a test, to me we were actually playing a beta of GW2.

That’s why I’m hoping, hoping they’ll actually read more feedback and learn from Season 1, God help they don’t do anything to the Dragons like they did with Scarlet.

Am I the only one that didn’t quite understand the “feature only release” part? As far as I understood it means bundled content but its too general to understand what kinda content. I’m also hoping for new utilities, elites, traits and HOPEFULLY swappable weapon skills.

I’m glad to see some constructive discussion taking part on this thread, as opposed to typical forum responses (hence the part in my post about my opinion being wrong; as several of you have said, it can’t be – but it’s the sort of response normally given if opinions differ).

Something did catch my eye though:

Delvoire.8930:

-Ascended Gear
-PvP rewards
-New Fractals
-New Tequatl
-New Runes/Sigils
-New Skills
-New events in Southsun Cove

Yes, these have been added, but without meaning to attack this little list… I do want to expand upon why I’m not particularly impressed with any of these.

• Ascended Gear – The skins were nice, I’m always up for more customisation. But all this tier of gear has done is force grind to be competitive (grind which just recycles the same content at that, and in the case of bloodstone dust/dragonite ore – encourages zerging about in either champion or world boss event chains) and give us more access to the Agony Resist stat – which I will go into more detail about. Many games have had a stat which exists purely to gate content; and many games have then removed it years later due to feedback since it’s a horrible gating mechanic. Sadly, all Ascended gear really adds to the game are stat increases only needed to fight other people with those same stat increases in World vs World and have more access to Agony Resist. Not really that helpful to the game, apart from adding a grind.

• PvP Rewards – When this system is fully released next year, I can see it being a nice way to integrate PvE and PvP – along with removing a lot of clutter and making some weapon and armour skins more accessible (and since people can just pay for dungeons to be ran for them – no harm is really done). I don’t really have anything to say against this one, apart from that it won’t do much until next year. Again, I’m not someone who demands everything to happen right now, but it can’t really count for this year.

• New Fractals – To be honest, I feel that everything apart from the Thaumanova Reactor should’ve been left in the game as dungeons. Sure, it wouldn’t make sense chronologically, but neither does completing story mode more than once in any dungeon. They’re nice to have, but they never should’ve left in the first place.

• New Tequatl – Great on paper, but there were so many problems when it was actually implemented… and they haven’t been addressed at all. Empty servers just give up, unless some large guild forces it to happen; large servers still have overflow problems and usually can’t make it happen anyway without a large guild’s presence; and the fact that the encounter requires the turrets to be used perfectly isn’t exactly great since once person can near enough ruin the event single handedly. Then of course, there are the lovely overflows to take into account. It was a nice attempt and (hopefully) a learning point for Anet, but they need to revisit it.

• New Runes/Sigils – Yeah, they’ve happened. I can’t bury my head in the sand with these. Pretty small and simple, nothing too major – but they’ve happened.

• New Skills – Again, these have happened. The toxin-related heal was pretty forced and tied to specific content, but the other heals will be a bit better. It’s a shame some of them completely outclass their counterparts though.

• New Events in Southsun Cove – I’m sorry, but that zone is another thing on the list of ‘added, but needs revisiting’. Good for resources, good for the Karka Queen event (since people feel the need to farm the world bosses) – that’s about it. The zone is a deathtrap of artificial difficulty.

After all that, I really feel I need to say sorry for being so cynical… but I’ve really not felt this year to be that amazing. I actually felt that more was done in the end of 2012 than in the whole of 2013.

ghost.3208:

This blog post can be seen by anyone, not only the ones who have already bought GW2, did you seriously expected that they would bash their own game saying things like “we dropped the ball multiple times” or that “for quite some time we had no communication with devs”?

Did I expect it? No.

Should they have admitted that they’ve made some mistakes this year and attempt to reassure their playerbase that they’ve learnt from them and have bettered themselves from the experience – even if it was just a lie? Yes.

Xukavi.4320:

Am I the only one that didn’t quite understand the “feature only release” part? As far as I understood it means bundled content but its too general to understand what kinda content. I’m also hoping for new utilities, elites, traits and HOPEFULLY swappable weapon skills.

Realistically I assume it means the few things that didn’t make it into this year:

Craftable precursors
New legendary weapons/items

I hope gameplay wise it means more skills and traits, and yes I’m with you on swappable weapon skills. Content wise, it could be the start of the next “big” thing: another dragon, new zones, Cantha or Elona, etc. Possibly also the start of WvW season 2.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Xukavi.4320:

Am I the only one that didn’t quite understand the “feature only release” part? As far as I understood it means bundled content but its too general to understand what kinda content. I’m also hoping for new utilities, elites, traits and HOPEFULLY swappable weapon skills.

Realistically I assume it means the few things that didn’t make it into this year:

Craftable precursors
New legendary weapons/items

I hope gameplay wise it means more skills and traits, and yes I’m with you on swappable weapon skills. Content wise, it could be the start of the next “big” thing: another dragon, new zones, Cantha or Elona, etc. Possibly also the start of WvW season 2.

They did say they were gonna add more skills to the game. I hope they meant more than just healing skills, especially since some of them are really lackluster. I honestly haven’t been following the LS arc at all other than reading about it. It never really caught my attention. I do hope that it ends with Scarlet either waking up a new dragon or using the knowledge she found to reveal the 6th dragon. Who knows maybe even Bubbles will be finally revealed.

I’d love to know how they think Living World is successful when the players are resounding in their dissatisfaction. Can you explain that ArenaNet? Can you please explain why you feel this direction is right when the forums are echoing cries for something different?

I wouldn’t mind Living Story if they can solve two things:

Somehow make it relevant to the personal story.
Make the content permanent or at least accessible in one way or another.

The idea of doing the dungeons through the fractals was a good start.

Destai.9603:

I’d love to know how they think Living World is successful when the players are resounding in their dissatisfaction. Can you explain that ArenaNet? Can you please explain why you feel this direction is right when the forums are echoing cries for something different?

Because:
1: Not everyone on the forums dislike it.
It seems to be around 50-50.

2: The forums is not even close to the whole playerbase and thus making decisions based solely on the forums would be rather stupid.

I’m crazy excited for next year. Nothing’s been perfect, but I do feel like the teams have been listening to feedback which has paid off for them down the line. Like, less LS rewards taking up useless space in inventory (and more taking up space in your home instance), replayable story instances (Tower of Nightmares opening instance, Fractured story instance, etc), better ways of handling drop-tokens (making them combinable like the aetherblade keys, or elements buyable like the colored keys) etc. There are still things to improve upon but that’s true of everything for ever.

Basically, when I look back at the last year, I think of the aetherblade dungeon, the molten facility, fighting people from my Personal Story in the Tower of Nightmares, finally feeling like I could venture into Fractals, the freaking awesome Zephyrites and their Labyrinthine Cliffs…. Some content was better than others but it was all fun for its freshness, even if only for a little while. I feel like I genuinely am becoming wrapped up in mysteries and characters, especially lately. Even the zerg-like events were fun for getting to see friendly server faces, esp towards Tower of Nightmares where it was more possible to do with just a group. And then they bring back some of those temporary elements later for fractals or as daily activities, which is even better because it still feels like past contents’ repercussions are being felt.

I’m very much looking forward to the end of Season 1 (how can I judge the storytelling of a complete story arc without it having even reached its apex yet? I admit to being a little ‘meh’ on it so far), and am throw-up excited for Season 2. If there are genuinely no expansion plans, then I foresee dragons and Cantha in the living story, which delights me to no end.

I’ve seen my old guild die off, but most of it is because 1) hardcore regulars abandoned our dying server altogether for one of the top WvW servers, and now never rep us or mark themselves as invisible, and 2) school is back in session for many of our more casual players, and they just don’t have time. Summer’s always the busy season for a big guild, in my experience.

This “feature only” release session he hints at is exciting to me, too, because after a year of story-centric updates it makes sense to step back and look at the fundamentals to make sure they’re still in line with where the game has gone. Seems like a nice counter to the sheer volume of content they’ve managed to put out.

eta: I’ll agree that I want WAY more personal story elements brought back, but I have faith that could happen over time.

On the bright side…4 more Scarlet releases left…we are nearing the light at the end of the tunnel!

Inb4 Treharne Arc for Living Story Season 2 . . . If that ever happens, I’m just gonna play very sad music on my imaginary violin.

This news has me more excited for Guild Wars 2 than anything since release! Finally and end to Scarlet and an explanation for what she’s been doing, I love how ANet pretty much reiterated all of the questions we’ve had since the beginning of Scarlet in their post today, which means we’ll be getting answers for them

Not only that but something that will rock Tyria to it’s core? I smell an Elder Dragon

Knowing that the main story arc after Scarlet is going to be about another Elder Dragon, I feel like Scarlet has been trying to harness the power of an Elder Dragon for herself, and we’ll see her fail miserably at that and then awaken an Elder Dragon, but we’ll see.

But even if we don’t get an Elder Dragon in the finale of Scarlet’s story, we will at least be closer to a new story arc that will involve Elder Dragons

Avster.1935:

On the bright side…4 more Scarlet releases left…we are nearing the light at the end of the tunnel!

Inb4 Treharne Arc for Living Story Season 2 . . . If that ever happens, I’m just gonna play very sad music on my imaginary violin.

That’s 4 releases too many. Plus, with the break, that means 3 months (break until end of january plus 4 more 2-week releases) until we’re rid of Scarlet.

But the worst part is that the same people who gave us Scarlet will give us the next story — there’s no reason to believe that Anet’s ability to create/vet storylines has improved in any way. My guess: we’ll see storyline that’s just as bad as the Scarlet storyline, just with a different cast of characters.

Xukavi.4320:

I wouldn’t mind Living Story if they can solve two things:

Somehow make it relevant to the personal story.
Make the content permanent or at least accessible in one way or another.

The idea of doing the dungeons through the fractals was a good start.

Actually inside the Tower of Nightmares you had to fight a character based on your faction choice in the Personal Story in one of the instances, if I remember correctly.

So six weeks to the next update and then we will get to suffer Scarlet for another 8 weeks.

kthxbye, check back next spring I guess…

Contrary to the OP, I actuallt liked that post, it gave me a lot of hope and it looks like Anet read our feedback on LS and Scarlet and they decided to change the way LS works.
For that, after months of being dissatisfied with the updates, I have to say: thank you for considering the feedback, Anet. Thank you for bringing the Scarlet arc to its end, thank you for preparing future releases as “big features”. Really looking forward to gaming in 2014.

Don’t know if “feature only” is hinting at an expansion or not, but I’d be on board with that, especially if it gives us new areas / progression in the fight against the Elder Dragons.

Zone.1275:

Xukavi.4320:

I wouldn’t mind Living Story if they can solve two things:

Somehow make it relevant to the personal story.
Make the content permanent or at least accessible in one way or another.

The idea of doing the dungeons through the fractals was a good start.

Actually inside the Tower of Nightmares you had to fight a character based on your faction choice in the Personal Story in one of the instances, if I remember correctly.

That’s pretty awesome, but that’s like one out of the whole living story. More of that would be nice. Also what I generally meant was how does the Living Story continue on the end of Zhaitan and all that. As far as we knew, the upgraded Tequatil was gonna be explained according to the devs. So much stuff has happened with little to no link at all to what we had in the personal story.

hedix.1986:

Contrary to the OP, I actuallt liked that post, it gave me a lot of hope and it looks like Anet read our feedback on LS and Scarlet and they decided to change the way LS works.
For that, after months of being dissatisfied with the updates, I have to say: thank you for considering the feedback, Anet. Thank you for bringing the Scarlet arc to its end, thank you for preparing future releases as “big features”. Really looking forward to gaming in 2014.

Don’t know if “feature only” is hinting at an expansion or not, but I’d be on board with that, especially if it gives us new areas / progression in the fight against the Elder Dragons.

I’m not convinced Anet listened at all. I’d bet Anet’s plan was to end the Scarlet arc at around the time it’s currently slated to end. After all, Flame and Frost began in January — were they really planning on having Scarlet around for much longer than a year?

Anet’s history of spin (eg. “Ascended gear was intended all along” vs. “we expect players to have BiS gear upon reaching level 80”) make it hard for me to believe them this time.

Personally, I was excited at the prospect of what the Living Story has to offer in early 2014.

Everyone should take note that they are breaking from their mandatory bi-weekly schedule. I think it’s worth discussing whether this will make a difference.

I’m excited for the potential the Living Story has next year. I think with the CDI discussions a lot of positive things could come from GW2.