Temporary content = temporary players

Temporary content = temporary players

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Posted by: Silent The Gray.3091

Silent The Gray.3091

Let me start by saying that this game has had a few great improvements throughout the past year,

~The wallet (genius idea)
~The ability to buy more vault space
~Magic Find now being account bound
~Cool new skins which aren’t obtainable in just 3 days (ascended weapons)
~LFG Tool, though extremely delayed
~Many others that have slipped my mind currently, but I am grateful for

The downside is I’ve had this feeling since the living story content was first mentioned that we’ve been treated as temporary and so it would seem most people are coming to play the game only temporarily or not at all (myself doing the latter). What are the chances you guys will change this to make the content available at the same time each year? That would be awesome, I don’t want to feel as if I’ve missed out on content because I cannot complete it fast enough which is exactly what has happened in the past months.

I feel like longer/more entailed content such as Super Adventure Box should be a semi-temporary event or just make it permanent and instead of releasing full blown expansions for the entire game you could release mini expansions each year for this content that was still doable, expanding on content rather than depth.

I’ll be honest in saying that the fact that you added a ton of depth to Super Adventure Box this time and then factored in the two-week time period to complete the achievements before new bi-monthly content was released, this feat really makes me not want to play Guild Wars 2 ever again.

I thought that “Living Story” once mentioned that this was content that would leave a permanent impact on the world. This is everything but the truth. Some things I would like to see:

~Living content can be temporary as long as it is replayable in the future (yearly @ said time of year would be preferred)
~Permanent traces of each bit of content, Things like the jumping puzzles in each release should stay in the game permanently, people who enjoy the jumping puzzles don’t want to see them go away, and please stop making them part of the meta-achievement, many people do not want to have go through them as they are extremely difficult, I have compassion for these people regardless of my love for jumping puzzles. Dungeons from these living stories should also stay in the game, because that molten alliance one was just fun as heck!
~I’m still thinking Super Adventure Box should be more permanent somehow. Worlds 3 and 4 are planned I know, but I think enough people enjoy it that you could go beyond that, but you have to allow us time to enjoy the content you make, and I think that will be resolved once we get off this living story turn and burn scenario.

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Posted by: Silent The Gray.3091

Silent The Gray.3091

Moving on to Fractal of the Mists.

Truth be told it’s a nice gesture, but needs some serious work, you have thrown us the bone, but not all of us can chew it. Fractals is a frustrating mess with some clear bugs in it still that need worked out. A few suggestions for Fractals:

~We’ve had the content for close to a year now and have had the same few fractals, some variety would be greatly appreciated
~It would be nice to be able to choose 2 out of the 3 fractals (via party-wide vote) and have the 3rd fractal you do be random instead of just having them all be random, then there would be more consistency and people would have to spend so long “rolling” for a fractal. Your third fractal would be random and could not be rolled, but you could choose the first two, balancing these out so they are equally challenging would be nice as well, the overly long/challenging ones: Underground Facility, Uncategorized (at higher levels) and Volcanic could be toned down a bit while the overly easy ones: Swampland, Urban Battlegrounds, and Aquatic Ruins could be made more difficult.
~Expanding the variety of rewards you can get from the fractal chests would help immensely, people doing high level fractals have done it plenty of times and to be honest it gets very boring and uneventful to continue getting the same ascended ring every other time that you cannot use anymore, I’m not saying these have to be ascended items, I would gladly take a guaranteed rare from the chest or heck even something unique like an everlasting tonic that you can only get from the fractal chest, a minipet, something, add some spice to the mix, we love that.

Moving to dungeons, dungeons have a few issues:
~People only do a couple of them
~There is one path done for those select dungeons
~The other dungeons are ignored for the most part
~Dungeon armor is far too easy to obtain

On a side note I think the storyline for all of the dungeons are very good, especially the explorable paths

It would seem people focus entirely on Honor of the Waves or Citadel of Flame both which have paths that can be done in a short period of time and for that reason alone, people do them. There could be others, but these are the two I have witnessed. My question has always been, why don’t people do these other paths? They take too long, or they are too entailed is the response I usually get. I think dungeons could use a serious balancing. Not in the sense of AC, but rather making them all equally doable in about the same period of time for about the same amount of effort.

The only other thing I have about dungeons is that the armor is extremely easy to obtain. I can easily deck out a character with dungeon armor in 3 days, easily, I don’t even have to play but a few hours per day doing dungeons. While I enjoy this, and I enjoy being able to have dungeon armor on my characters, I think it’s time that tiers be introduced.

Tier 1 dungeon armor could be what it is now, rare/exotic armor. A basic armor set that can get you going if you are without armor, easily obtained in a few days time so you are able to get back to the conquest you are doing on that character. This takes approximately 10 days of doing two paths of the dungeon once per day.

Tier 2 dungeon armor could be an alternate version of the tier 1 armor, with some advanced stats that aren’t quite the stats of ascended armor, but are in between. This armor could take two to three weeks to obtain at a reasonable amount of playtime, approximately 20 days of doing two paths of the dungeon once per day.

Tier 3 dungeon armor could be of ascended rarity with the same attributes as tier. This armor would takes you three to four weeks + at a reasonable amount of playtime, approximately 30+ days of doing two paths of the dungeon once per day. If we could get some ascended weapons this way as well it would be very cool, though I don’t know your future plans for that route. Being able to obtain items in different ways is nice, because it allows us the choice of how we’d like to go about it. Saying we have this armor in the game, but this is the only way to get it is frustrating. Legendary weapons being the exception in that we always like having something to work towards that is long term and cannot be achieved easily.

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Posted by: Silent The Gray.3091

Silent The Gray.3091

Finally onto miscellaneous items namely: Tonics & Minipets

~I will preface with, I have no problem spending some real life $$$ to get an in-game item if it is worth it, how do I determine that you might ask? I used to collect mini pets for the game, but realized that some of these minis are obtainable for less time than the living story content is, which seems pretty insane to me. I have mini pets that I would like to go back and get from previous months content, that we have not been told one way or another if you will ever be able to get them again, for a collector this is an issue, and frankly I just gave up on that because I want to have the ability to collect all of the mini pets, even though I may not do it, I would still buy the new ones that came out if I had a “chance” at completing the set.

~Tonics are a huge fail in this game in my mind. In GW1 you guys had it figured out perfectly!!! I want the ability to get an everlasting tonic of something, I don’t want to turn into a moa 1 time for 5 minutes. And if the tonic is everlasting I would like for the ability to use it as often as I can. I have so many worthless tonics because they are only 5 minutes, and I may get booted out of the game or lose internet connection or switch cities to check on something and I am done looking cool after that, please make tonics something desirable because right now I don’t know that many people care and they just seem like filler content until I can have one I can use permanently.

Thanks for listening, feel free to discuss.

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Posted by: ThiBash.5634

ThiBash.5634

A fix for the ascended ring drops could be to make the salvagable and give a (small) chance to turn into things needed for ascended crafting (like say, dragonite ore which you won’t get if you do a lot of fractals and no bosses).

If you can read this then it is proof that ArenaNet’s moderators just, kind and fair.

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Posted by: Silent The Gray.3091

Silent The Gray.3091

A fix for the ascended ring drops could be to make the salvagable and give a (small) chance to turn into things needed for ascended crafting (like say, dragonite ore which you won’t get if you do a lot of fractals and no bosses).

Yes making them salvageable or even being able to mystic forge them, if we could get rid of them and get something in return at this point it would be nice. Anything would be better than nothing, even if it were one dragonite ore per ascended ring, they’d be worth more than they are now.

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Posted by: jsduke.6537

jsduke.6537

TL;DR

Your post would be ten-times better if it were half as long.

Super Adventure Box: I don’t care. Don’t like it, didn’t do it, won’t miss it. But for you, they will bring it back. Enough people liked it and did it, so it will be returning. It’s recurring content. So relax; it’s coming back.

Living Story: LS DOES have a permanent impact on the world. Tequatl is different now. Twilight Arbor is different now. We discovered an Aetherblade base in the mountains outside Lion’s Arch and now it is a new permanent JP! All of those things are permanent content changes from Living Story. Exactly what ANet said they would do.

There ARE remnants of LS events in the world. My bank is full of them! Skins from Bazaar of the Four Winds, Accessories from the Southsun content, new Aetherblade gear skin sets in the Gem Store. You literally can’t walk through Tyria without kicking bits and pieces of the history of recent Living Story events.

I don’t do FoTM, so I can’t comment there, except that I’m pretty sure they DID add a new fractal as a result of the Election LS cycle. If not, it’s on the way. Those things take time, though.

Dungeons are fine. With the new lfg tool, I have no problem finding or making a party to do any dungeon at any time.

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Posted by: Silent The Gray.3091

Silent The Gray.3091

TL;DR

Your post would be ten-times better if it were half as long.

Super Adventure Box: I don’t care. Don’t like it, didn’t do it, won’t miss it. But for you, they will bring it back. Enough people liked it and did it, so it will be returning. It’s recurring content. So relax; it’s coming back.

Living Story: LS DOES have a permanent impact on the world. Tequatl is different now. Twilight Arbor is different now. We discovered an Aetherblade base in the mountains outside Lion’s Arch and now it is a new permanent JP! All of those things are permanent content changes from Living Story. Exactly what ANet said they would do.

There ARE remnants of LS events in the world. My bank is full of them! Skins from Bazaar of the Four Winds, Accessories from the Southsun content, new Aetherblade gear skin sets in the Gem Store. You literally can’t walk through Tyria without kicking bits and pieces of the history of recent Living Story events.

I don’t do FoTM, so I can’t comment there, except that I’m pretty sure they DID add a new fractal as a result of the Election LS cycle. If not, it’s on the way. Those things take time, though.

Dungeons are fine. With the new lfg tool, I have no problem finding or making a party to do any dungeon at any time.

The living story content that has stayed is such a minute portion, why would it be so much more difficult to implement all of the previous Jump Puzzles back to the game and to implement all of the dungeons back to the game? I think I may not have been clear I’m aware of this minute amount of content that stayed, but it is so small in comparison to everything they’ve released and taken out that I just don’t understand why they would leave 1 portion of 1 updated in, but take everything else out. The bazaar of four winds was one of my favorite updates, that was a new location with some beautiful scenery, and we may never see it again.

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Posted by: jsduke.6537

jsduke.6537

The living story content that has stayed is such a minute portion, why would it be so much more difficult to implement all of the previous Jump Puzzles back to the game and to implement all of the dungeons back to the game? I think I may not have been clear I’m aware of this minute amount of content that stayed, but it is so small in comparison to everything they’ve released and taken out that I just don’t understand why they would leave 1 portion of 1 updated in, but take everything else out. The bazaar of four winds was one of my favorite updates, that was a new location with some beautiful scenery, and we may never see it again.

Bat4W was one of my favorite content updates, too. But I honestly wouldn’t be going back there right now if it had stayed in the game. Periodically, perhaps. Maybe if I needed to farm up a pile of Quartz Crystals. But not very often or for very long. It would just be another dead zone like Southsun — sparsely populated and largely ignored.

So it wasn’t permanent content. I suspect that Bot4W will be recurring content. For now, it’s part of the history of the game, and I think that’s really cool. I’ve got a couple souvenirs and lots of memories, and I look forward to the next time those wacky nomads pass through.

Right now the game has 3 kinds of content:

Permanent Content, which is pretty much everything.
Recurring Content, like the festivals, SAB, and (I assume) Bazaar of the Four Winds.
Temporary Content, like the hot air balloons and a couple of explorable areas/dungeons.

I really don’t think it’s worth getting worked up over the small amount of content that is gone forever and won’t be back. Most of that content only had limited relevance to the game world and would have been pointless and out-of-place after the event was done.

I think the devs are doing a pretty good job balancing all of this content, and although I understand you are disappointed that some of it is gone, my advice is to relax.

Think of it like this:

There is only so much room in the world for content. Old content has to be put away to make room for the new content. You can fixate on the old content and get stressed out over what you lost, or you can focus on all the awesome new content that is coming out.

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Posted by: Zoltreez.6435

Zoltreez.6435

Old content needs to be put away to make new content ???

WHAAAAAAAAT !!!!!!!!!?????

did you see the map ?

how many zones could be opened ?
you know that all the old LS content could be Instanced sou you could go back do them later and stay perm ?

example Asura creates a time gate where you can go back and play all the LS content that was released.

Anet right now only throwing out money on the window

you cant make a SINGLE real reason why they should not be implemented as Perm in some way.

Stop defending it even Anet sees it and said they working on somekinde of solution for replay value.

-Stellaris
-Total War: Warhammer
-Guild Wars 2

(edited by Zoltreez.6435)

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Posted by: jsduke.6537

jsduke.6537

Old content needs to be put away to make new content ???

WHAAAAAAAAT !!!!!!!!!?????

did you see the map ?

how many zones could be opened ?
you know that all the old LS content could be Instanced sou you could go back do them later and stay perm ?

example Asura creates a time gate where you can go back and play all the LS content that was released.

Anet right now only throwing out money on the window

you cant make a SINGLE real reason why they should not be implemented as Perm in some way.

Stop defending it even Anet sees it and said they working on somekinde of solution for replay value.

Calm down, bro. Relax.

I wasn’t being literal when I said that they had to “make room” for new content. I was illustrating a better way of looking at it. I was saying that maybe, instead of freaking out over a little bit of content that you missed, you could look forward to the new content that’s coming. I was suggesting that might be a healthier, less stressful, way to view the situation.

I can and have given reason why it should not be implemented as perm content, in this thread and in others that you may not have seen. I’ll bring it back around for you:

1. Much of the content that was removed is recurring content and will be back at some point anyway. Just do something else until it comes back. No big deal.

2. The amount of content that was removed and won’t be back is actually pretty small. This content was generally very story-specific content and would be out of place and annoying if it were left in the world.

3. If they did leave the content in, you would do it for a little while, get bored with it, and then ignore it when you were done with it. We would have all this LS content lying around cluttering the place up and people would complain about that instead. Half of the game would be Southsun — abandoned and ignored.

5. Removing content when we’re done with it adds a sense of history and legend to the game that I find very enjoyable. I really like that there are things that happen and then go away, only to be remembered by those who were a part of it. I think that is romantic, and beautiful, and I respect ANet for having the kittens to do something that ambitious.

And you are kitten right I’m going to defend it because this is the content that I enjoy, and I am just as entitled to my opinion as you are yours. I don’t want the temporary content to come back. It’s better this way. I understand why you would be upset about the content that you missed, but if ANet caves in and brings all that stuff back so you can have what you want, then I don’t get the game that I want.

GW2 is supposed to be a different kind of game. GW2 isn’t supposed to be like all the other MMOs out there. If you don’t like the temporary content — if it bothers you so much — then maybe you are better off playing one of the hundreds of other MMOs that does things your way. I only have this one game that does temporary content like this, and if you ruin it for me then I have nowhere else to go to get it.

kitten right I’m defending it because it is amazing, and I love it, and I can’t get it anywhere else.

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Posted by: Zoltreez.6435

Zoltreez.6435

1. me and lots of people aren’t talking about the recurring content

2. could be replayable in somekinde of instanced gamemode not in the world
southsun is not the same that it was and remade it worse that’s why its abandoned.

3. could be replayable in somekinde of instanced gamemode not in the world
yes but would give the returning player a reason to come back for CONTENT
and those players that missed it to get some stuff or just simply see it.

5. personal opinion

how in ANY way would make any difference to you if it would be perm in an instanced place you would still get your LS every 2 week

the only thing i see here is you just don’t want anyone to enjoy or play those content so you can feel unique ?? or something that you was there and got some stuff and archievs. seeing your posts how you totally make out that’s its the PLAYERS fault if they miss it some people have a some serious stuff to do that can even take for a month or more…..

-Stellaris
-Total War: Warhammer
-Guild Wars 2

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Posted by: jsduke.6537

jsduke.6537

2. could be replayable in somekinde of instanced gamemode not in the world
southsun is not the same that it was and remade it worse that’s why its abandoned.

Making that content replayable would destroy the very thing that makes it special. This is the central point. It is good that the content is removed and won’t be back. That’s what makes it special and unique.

3. could be replayable in somekinde of instanced gamemode not in the world
yes but would give the returning player a reason to come back for CONTENT
and those players that missed it to get some stuff or just simply see it.

Same as above. Let it stay gone. It’s better that way.

5. personal opinion

The fact that I enjoy it is opinion, yes. The fact that TempCon adds a unique sense of history and lore to the game is not an opinion. That’s what it does. That’s its purpose, and that’s why it was implemented to be temporary.

how in ANY way would make any difference to you if it would be perm in an instanced place you would still get your LS every 2 week the only thing i see here is you just don’t want anyone to enjoy or play those content so you can feel unique ?? or something that you was there and got some stuff and archievs.

I have NO desire to prevent people from enjoying content. None. I don’t need a video game to make me feel unique. It’s not about me. It’s about this very rare and awesome thing ANet is doing called Living Story. It’s not about me being special, it’s about letting the content be special. TempCon makes everyone who participates special, not just me.

seeing your posts how you totally make out that’s its the PLAYERS fault if they miss it some people have a some serious stuff to do that can even take for a month or more…..

I understand that people have life stuff to do. That’s why I have argued that the pace of the Living Story is perhaps too fast and might need to be slowed down to give players more time with the content.

I do blame the players who left the game because they got bored and then came back and complain about the stuff they missed. That is their fault, and I have no sympathy for them. If you leave the game because you lost interest, then you don’t get to complain about missing stuff that happened while you were too busy not caring about the game.

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Posted by: Silent The Gray.3091

Silent The Gray.3091

This I could agree with, I think this content is/was passed off to the players as casual and it is clearly not that in some parts of it. I wouldn’t mind if it was casual and I think the frustration most people have is merely the time frame if that changed or if the content became more of a casual thing then I think many people would change their opinion on it overall. Even if I don’t like the living story, but I can still play through it each month I would be able to enjoy it, not being able to play through it because you don’t devote “said” amount of time seems very unlike the flow of events they have passed off previously. I’m not saying all of the living story has been like this either, just the past few months.