Guild Wars 2

the Good
I like this LS far better than last season. Its much more clear what we’re doing, and the new zone is very well done. All the jumping puzzles, cactus with new recipes, down to the new events that can make the zone feel pretty busy compared to others.

the Bad
However, it dosnt have anything to keep me there. I dont go to Mount Maelstrom to dip around in the mini events and farm herbs. I go there for the MK Golem and COE each day. Zone complete is fun every now and then, but it dosnt keep you. Myself, and many others were hoping this LS would lead to something that keeps us.

I was hoping the LS would be a way to lead up to features like a new dungeon. How hard would it have been to add even a 1 path inquest dungeon in DT? Even a little instance with 1-2 bosses in it that I can add to my daily dungeon train.

I’ve had so many groups of friends quit this game over the past couple years, and this LS stuff isnt bringing them back. Biggest reason I quit MMOs despite any issues I have with them, is its too big a hassle to find new raiding guilds several tiers in. This game dosnt have raiding, so its not quite the same, but its effects are still adding up personally. This game dosnt retain people at all.

the Really Ugly
You spend a couple hours doing this LS once every 2 weeks, then go back to farming the same set of dungeons/fracs/metas/wvw/spvp you’ve been farming for 2 years saving money for new legendaries or something worth saving for, that likely wont come. Im rich but I know my money is nothing compared to what some people have, and none of us have goals for it. Features are nice but they’re mostly balance/QoL stuff.

Wheres the new dungeons with new armor vendors? Wheres the new fracs, with frac lvl increase and maybe new armor there too? WvW is essntially PvE in a PvP setting and most people that are hardcore about it are GvG players without an appropriate venue. Wheres the real GvG? Add a mini dungeon inside forts for controlling players to keep casual PvE players interested in WvW outcomes. Wheres the new sPvP modes? Arathi Basin for 2 years is not an e-sport. Key Farming with moderators would make a more interesting e-sport (not really but.. ya). What happened to adding a new weapon for each profession? You dont have to over-saturate the skills to GW1 lvl but every profession has stuff they need/want and I have a hard time believing theres not some room for a few new weapons or skills. What about races? I would think adding a new race would make perfect sense to get revealed in a LS arc.

Sorry, Im getting ranty. I <3 this game, I just had to voice my discontent as of late.

I’m with you I love the game but gosh it’s just gotten unbearable. The only reason I even still play is the hope that they will fix it.

As much as I’m a fan of LW (and don’t think it should be removed) I think we need a clear separation between LW and other content. Not all new content should be tied to LW, sure we can get a LW themed dungeon or new zones but LW shouldn’t be the primary means of content delivery.
At the start of LW we were told LW was only 1 team working on content (I even looked up the link! https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-outlines-guild-wars-2-live-game-development/). Now not all of them were content producers, but there was a clear distinction between LW, Holiday Events, PvP and Bonus Team (which looked like primarily ad-hoc feature-related team).
However I’m unsure about these teams anymore presently it looks like everything is LW based, for example holiday events aren’t their own thing anymore they’re just a part of the LW.
Now since I don’t know what goes on behind the scene (and ANet isn’t telling us) I’m only guessing here.

I think LW needs to be split up or at least ANet should put together a dungeon/fractal-team whose job it is to refine current dungeons, add new paths and completely new dungeons. Disconnecting them from the LW team means less pressure to sync up the work, allowing content to be delivered when done. Possibly splitting up the LW team into a Narrative-focused-LW (like we have now) and a content-focused-LW (new events, zones, mobs, world bosses etc.) team could also be useful, allowing the one team to still tell the LW story, while the other team slowly expand the world with some new zones, or more likely new events and world bosses.
Although I do know that adding more teams means more difficulty in managing cross team communications (you don’t want multiple content producing teams making conflicting content, or content for the same zones), but still multiple steams of content delivery might resolve some of the issues that people have with the LW only content delivery.

I dont disagree that there should be an actual group of people designing new dungeons/etc; in a perfect world. However, as-is it seems the only semblance of new dungeons has come from the LS team(s) in the past and those were very temp 1 pth events that were later many many many months later turned into tiny little frac updates. Or removing an easy pth of one dungeon to replace with another riddled with unskipable cutscenes and goofy puzzles.

As much as I liked the temp dungeons (and appreciated when they returned as fracs), its barely anything. If their way of releasing content like a new dungeon is through the LS, they need to do it far more often.

Right now we’re 4 chapters in (half the season) and we’ve had 0 instanced party events to do each day. Theres nothing that will keep DT better than any zone after this LS is over; maybe even less so considering its not used for world complete.

I dont think LS is a bad way to introduce new dungeons either. The dungeons DO have story to them. Thats why theres a story version and then explore versions.

I dont understand why A.nets philosophy is “5 person content bad!” or heaven forbid 8-10 person content, but then they add in mega bosses that require special guilds coordinating 40 people and messing around with their glitchy megaserver system. I fear the only major content we’ll get from LS2 will just be another Teq event at the very end.