Is living world taking all the dev time?

Is living world taking all the dev time?

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Posted by: Kalan.9705

Kalan.9705

I think it’s great that living world exists, even if I’ve never seen any relevance to myself at all as a WvW player. I am however concerned that there is so kitten much spare dev time that living world content can be made every 2 weeks and thrown away as disposable content and yet….

There’s been no new content in WvW for nearly a year.

No! fixing horrible bugfests after months, like culling bugs not displaying 70% of your opposition and allies, is not new content.

No! disabling rather than reworking a major mechanic like orbs (partly because it was exploitable, and also detrimental to fun) is still not new content.

No! still having massive skill-lag bugs that can leave one unable to activate some or all skills for minutes at a time is not in any way new content, even if it ever gets fixed.

No! adding horrible vertical power grinds that make one have to replay the same content (for decades apparently) to not have massive disadvantages like 2.5k less hp, isn’t new content. It’s just an endless grind to repeat the same content. (Also doesn’t it contravene the whole design promise to have skill matter more than grind?)

No! Having a few of the armour options finally available to wvw players, and many still entirely unavailable, this isn’t new wvw content.

Why is there no new art in WvW in a year?
Why is there no new zone in WvW in a year?
Why is there no new subzones or meaningful changes to existing zones?
Why is there no new NPC’s or environment changes?
Why is there no new objectives or mechanics?

Why is WvW, which is such a popular game mode I frequently have long long queues to even enter it, treated as ‘dead-world: no new content’ by A-net? Is no-one in design & art working on WvW at all? Couldn’t you spare even a single 1 of the now bi-weekly updates to do anything for WvW players?

Is living world taking all the dev time?

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Posted by: lordkrall.7241

lordkrall.7241

I love how people keep complaining about WvW (no wrong with doing that since it is lacking in areas) but for some reason always seems to ignore or “forget” all the stuff WvW have actually gotten since release.

WvW have gotten stuff in more or less every single release these last few months, some bigger and some smaller stuff, but they have gotten stuff nonetheless.

Krall Bloodsword – Mesmer
Krall Peterson – Warrior
Piken Square

Is living world taking all the dev time?

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Posted by: Lethalvriend.1723

Lethalvriend.1723

lordKrall I think you are missing the point of the OP. While there have been bugfixes and improvements to the system, there has been no actual ‘content’ added to WvW. The maps are still pretty much identical as a year ago, which is what the OP wants. I think ANet is currently spread fairly thin amongst their features and such that they are trying to implement. It’s probably going to take quite a while before we see a large scale content update (if at all) or something like more WvW maps.

Is living world taking all the dev time?

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Posted by: Kalan.9705

Kalan.9705

I love how people keep complaining about WvW (no wrong with doing that since it is lacking in areas) but for some reason always seems to ignore or “forget” all the stuff WvW have actually gotten since release.

WvW have gotten stuff in more or less every single release these last few months, some bigger and some smaller stuff, but they have gotten stuff nonetheless.

Wrong! None of it was new content.

That would be like me saying that all living world content should cease because bugfixes or achievements happen for PvE. I would never say such a thing. I’m just asking for any sort of balance of effort at all.

Is living world taking all the dev time?

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Posted by: lordkrall.7241

lordkrall.7241

Wrong! None of it was new content.

That would be like me saying that all living world content should cease because bugfixes or achievements happen for PvE. I would never say such a thing. I’m just asking for any sort of balance of effort at all.

Hm?
I would say Breakout events are actual content.
And you have to keep in mind that stuff take different amounts of time. Just because you want something ready now doesn’t mean it will be ready now.

The amount of dev time needed for the WvW changes could very well be as high as for the PvE content as far as we know.

Krall Bloodsword – Mesmer
Krall Peterson – Warrior
Piken Square

Is living world taking all the dev time?

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Posted by: Kalan.9705

Kalan.9705

Adding some WvW skins would take exactly the same time as pve, arena mode or gem shop skins for just a few examples.

Is living world taking all the dev time?

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Posted by: lordkrall.7241

lordkrall.7241

Adding some WvW skins would take exactly the same time as pve, arena mode or gem shop skins for just a few examples.

So skins are suddenly content now?

Krall Bloodsword – Mesmer
Krall Peterson – Warrior
Piken Square

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Posted by: Kalan.9705

Kalan.9705

Adding some WvW skins would take exactly the same time as pve, arena mode or gem shop skins for just a few examples.

So skins are suddenly content now?

Not really, but I haven’t seen the art departments do anything for wvw in the past year, except possibly some icons / UI to see ones grinding of the same content.

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Posted by: Axiom.6137

Axiom.6137

There are some developers who work on new features for the game. I’m fairly happy with that side of things. Reportedly, a portion of the studio is working on “more long term projects”, while they insist they aren’t working on an expansion. (One can only hope they aren’t working on ways to produce even more “Living Story”).

These developers aside, yes, it seems everyone else is now working on this gag inducing Living Story content. Four teams, working on creating an overload of content that many of us would rather had never existed.

How about one team working on this Living Kitten, I mean Story, released every other month and the other three working on livening up the game zones via evolving Dynamic Events? Or, better yet, just recycle the repeatable festivals, drop the rest of the Living Story entirely and have each of the four teams focus on Dynamic Events in a given region of the world, so that every two weeks we get new content in one of the four regions?

“But, Dynamic events are too haaarrdd”…

Well, they produced over 1600 DEs in 5 years. One would assume that their methods and tools improved during that time. One would also assume that now that they are no longer creating all the rest of the content that made up the game at release, they could devote a lot more development time on Dynamic Event creation and modification. 24-48 new/improved DEs every two weeks doesn’t seem at all unreasonable.

(During Development, there was one interview where a developer explained how efficient their Dynamic Event creation tools were. Supposedly, a single developer could develop and tune a basic DE in a day, an event chain in a week. Even if that was an exaggeration, it still points towards the “DEs are too hard” excuse not being quite above board).

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Posted by: pownguin.9205

pownguin.9205

No. Living World and WvW teams are separate.

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Posted by: Raine.1394

Raine.1394

The living world has certainly not taken all the dev time. If it had, we would have seen the living world as a focus and would have witnessed its evolution. To date, we’ve seen things like the SAB which have only emptied the living world. It’s not the LW that is preventing WvW from moving forward, it’s the mini-games, platformers, and temporary filler that is taking all the development time away from the game.

Is living world taking all the dev time?

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Posted by: Kalan.9705

Kalan.9705

No. Living World and WvW teams are separate.

I think the issue is if living world has 150 people across art, code, design, testing qa, lore/dialogue then wvw only appears to have some intern for 2 mornings a month to come up with the latest mastery crap that will require decades of grind, and be yet more annoying and detrimental to skill-not-grind play and enjoying more than one character.

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Posted by: LanfearShadowflame.3189

LanfearShadowflame.3189

As I have said, and others have said…..different teams.

Yes, living world has 4 teams. We do not know how many people are on them. We do not know how many each has individually.

WvW has its own team. We do not know how many people they have. Anet has said that this is one of the teams that has recently expanded / hired more people. We do not know what all they are working on, in terms of WvW content. People wanted some ‘progression’ in WvW, so they came out with all the mastery lines, to make play a little more interesting. They have come out with traps to make things more interesting. They split the jumping puzzle into its own map, so its population would not count toward the total population of EB.

I am sure there is more to come. Just have some patience.

Don’t look at me like that. Whatever you’ve heard, it’s probably not true.