Guild Wars 2

I mean come onnnn. Do I really need to type paragraphs & paragraphs of why? The living world is only good as long as people are waiting for an expansion. Otherwise it just gets boring and old. Alone, it’s not sufficient and it doesn’t stand a chance against these new MMOs coming out.

Arena Net needs sometime to advertise. Something to make some real profit on. The gem store is not going to suffice in the near future. I guarantee it. If you’re active in the community you can tell that people are getting more and more bored and talking more and more about these other MMOs coming out.

This game needs some real new to it. Real content, real story, real endgame…I could go on and on. It needs a real reason to keep the player’s interest in the game, other than just to hold them off until these new MMOs come out. I played Guild Wars for 6 years until this game came out, then I switched over. I was always a huge fan of the lore, style, and philosophy, but now I’m contemplating switching to something new from the direction this game is heading in.

Get it together, Arena Net. This game needs an expansion.

Post-thoughts on Tower of Nightmares/Nightmare Within:
Concerned

On the topic of an expansion: An expansion would be to hook new players in, or rekindle interest in people who bought the game but didn’t get into it, right?
I say this because I think we have forgotten how hard it is to get into the game! I and 4 of my friends bought GW2, played it for a few hours, and all but me put the game down after that. Not having a quest system results in a lack of structure that is fatal for new players coming from games with older/classic leveling experiences trying to acclimatise to a new game experience.
And that is just the beginning! There is a whole bunch of stuff that is (imo) borked about the game on the ground level (traits, restrictive skill system, combat being terrible or unintuitive for small group-play) and before they fix all that, an expansion would only have the effect the Living Story has right now: It keeps players taht are already invested in GW2 in the game (for a short time) but fails to expand its reach.

Traits, skills and combat are challenging, due to the fact you CAN’T choose every skill you want, like with wow. I have to disagree on you with this Ninjachris.. Anet did a mighty fine job on the gameplay and combat system. Not having a questsystem makes GW2 stand out among other mmo’s, use the quests as a guideline to get you through an area, don’t use them to lvl up.. What I am bugged about, is the fact that the living story makes no sense, I didn’t play gw1, though read the lore. A LOT more interesting then what’s going on now, with scarlet..

On topic: expansion not needed tyvm sir, as long as Anet keep adding living stuff and one or more areas for endgame stuff. Lets face it: gw2 is not more not less then a money maker machine that will be self-sufficient if people keep buying gems with real money as they have kept till now, witch isn’t hard since gw2 lives from real life events like haloweens, Xmas, easter, etc, there will always exist an excuse to put a new skin on sale or a new mini-pet or w/e.

Offtopic: Trais/skills/combat system are pure garbage imo, since we can not chose your own skills to play, the combat mechanics are basic, and the important skills to avoid are, sometimes hard to percept. Gw1 combat system was a lot more interesting, a lot more challenging and, in most cases, the important skills were extraordinarily simple to percept by the players. Its not hard to see that the core stuff from gw1 were lost forever in detriment of stuff a lot more pve community oriented… Its a pitty, but ho well lets us play the best MMO on the market at atm and keep hoping it imporves in the next life…

I agree with the expansion. We could use a quest system, the hearts aren’t cutting it. As for the combat system, it’s great, but the skill and trait is extremely lacking. There is no diversity and the little diversity that IS there, is useless, cause all you need is Zerker gear and a zerg. This game has no need for true teamwork and coordination.

Jeff.4680:

I mean come onnnn. Do I really need to type paragraphs & paragraphs of why? The living world is only good as long as people are waiting for an expansion. Otherwise it just gets boring and old. Alone, it’s not sufficient and it doesn’t stand a chance against these new MMOs coming out.

Arena Net needs sometime to advertise. Something to make some real profit on. The gem store is not going to suffice in the near future. I guarantee it. If you’re active in the community you can tell that people are getting more and more bored and talking more and more about these other MMOs coming out.

This game needs some real new to it. Real content, real story, real endgame…I could go on and on. It needs a real reason to keep the player’s interest in the game, other than just to hold them off until these new MMOs come out. I played Guild Wars for 6 years until this game came out, then I switched over. I was always a huge fan of the lore, style, and philosophy, but now I’m contemplating switching to something new from the direction this game is heading in.

Get it together, Arena Net. This game needs an expansion.

Post-thoughts on Tower of Nightmares/Nightmare Within:
Concerned

Unless expiation come from the living world new areas and new dugions real permenit content. Can even be under the guise of an explore exploring the unknow wilderness.

I am really sure that Arenanet will expand the content of GW2 steadily. There are high chances getting all expansions for free. Arenanet will announce next year where the journey will go.

Dragsooth.4071:

I agree with the expansion. We could use a quest system, the hearts aren’t cutting it. As for the combat system, it’s great, but the skill and trait is extremely lacking. There is no diversity and the little diversity that IS there, is useless, cause all you need is Zerker gear and a zerg. This game has no need for true teamwork and coordination.

What would an archaic quest system add that hearts don’t? Quest require you to kill X or collect Y, hearts do the same thing with less redundancy.

Zergs will exist as long as there are other people doing the same thing in the same place, if you don’t want zergs, don’t play an MMO.

Phy.2913:

What would an archaic quest system add that hearts don’t? Quest require you to kill X or collect Y, hearts do the same thing with less redundancy.

Wait what?

Think of how many of the quests between missions in GW1 worked. It provided an in-the-world continuation of the overall story and as such helped immensely with the overall atmosphere of the world and connection between the world and the story. GW1 had it right in how the story worked. GW2 personal story instead feels extremely disconnected.

Kill x number of things/collect x number of things until heart bar is filled up. That is every single heart in the game. At least in GW1 you had some VERY interesting quest lines. The heart system is an extremely casualized implimentation of the worst quest type in existance. And msotly have no impact or relation to the overall story. Orr at least worked a bit better because instead of hearts you ahd events that revolved somewhat around the story.

On topic:

Yes an expansion is needed at some point. Not even necessarily to bring back Cantha or Elona yet, but when are we going to see places like the Crystal Desert? Isle of Janthir? Ring of Fire? Charr Homelands? So far living story has not been very ambitious in providing any permanent changes to the world (the exceptions being invasions and Southsun), and in my opinion so far do nothing to advance the overall story of the world. LS is a fun, but temporary distraction. Tyria as it is right now is getting a little old. I would love to see some of the other areas we had in GW1 Tyria, and have a new sotryline that answers a lot of questions and delves deeper into the overall lore of the GW universe.

Fafnir.5124:

Jeff.4680:

I mean come onnnn. Do I really need to type paragraphs & paragraphs of why? The living world is only good as long as people are waiting for an expansion. Otherwise it just gets boring and old. Alone, it’s not sufficient and it doesn’t stand a chance against these new MMOs coming out.

Arena Net needs sometime to advertise. Something to make some real profit on. The gem store is not going to suffice in the near future. I guarantee it. If you’re active in the community you can tell that people are getting more and more bored and talking more and more about these other MMOs coming out.

This game needs some real new to it. Real content, real story, real endgame…I could go on and on. It needs a real reason to keep the player’s interest in the game, other than just to hold them off until these new MMOs come out. I played Guild Wars for 6 years until this game came out, then I switched over. I was always a huge fan of the lore, style, and philosophy, but now I’m contemplating switching to something new from the direction this game is heading in.

Get it together, Arena Net. This game needs an expansion.

Post-thoughts on Tower of Nightmares/Nightmare Within:
Concerned

Unless expiation come from the living world new areas and new dugions real permenit content. Can even be under the guise of an explore exploring the unknow wilderness.

They won’t! Because they cant! It’s impossible to add expansion like content with live game. And they’ve prove it this year! They’ve added a bunch of stuff but when you sum it all up it’s nowhere near an expansion worth of content.

Updates like the last two are MAX what one living world team can develop in four months. So how in the world can they make something like Orr this way?! I mean three areas with numerous jumping puzzles, a dungeon with four paths, dragon fight, numerous boss fights and dozens de’s that are a bit more then: “kill the carrot that just spawned”!

I still don’t get why they give us this huge map area, but we can only go to fifty percent of it after more than a year in release. Having Scarlet living story releases sucking manpower from something interesting like expanding the world has been a real downer.

eds.2081:

Traits, skills and combat are challenging, due to the fact you CAN’T choose every skill you want, like with wow. I have to disagree on you with this Ninjachris.. Anet did a mighty fine job on the gameplay and combat system.

Don’t get me worng, I don’t want 6 hotbars filled to the brim with skills. 8 to 10 skills are enough, but with the restrictions of skills being tied to weapons you basically can only choose 3 utility skills freely. Plus, the game encourages playing aside one another (no mob tagging, more loot) more than playing together with one another because the combat system is so unstructured, planned group play is frustrating. Compare it to the original, where there were basically endless group/skill combinations, in Gw2 you can drop a combo field if you really want to, but most of the time it’s easier just to drop it directly on the mob.
Removing the Holy Trinity and targeting allies directly basically means that GW2 combat devolved into a DPS race, nothing more. I don’t want the Holy Trinity back, but during development AN was talking about their “new trinity” of control, damage, and support. If they actually made this theory more pronounced and revamp the skill system accordingly, 5 man content could actually be engaging, instead of an ungodly mess.

Not having a questsystem makes GW2 stand out among other mmo’s, use the quests as a guideline to get you through an area, don’t use them to lvl up.

That’s exactly what I’m looking for, as well. No quest Hubs, just story driven questlines that lead you through the world.

/inb4krallsaysallpostsareinvalid

I agree with the original poster on the top level. I made the warning several months ago about the looming “burnout” that was steadfastly coming due to the overload of content updates.
It happened for me at Halloween. I was wholeheartedly excited for the Halloween content and played the first opening instance. I enjoyed it and was eager to find out what was next. I then came to the realization that to continue the story line I had to grind out all of the achievements. I closed the game and have not updated since. I feel rushed to complete objectives and puts pressure on me as a player.

HiddenNick.7206:

They won’t! Because they cant! It’s impossible to add expansion like content with live game. And they’ve prove it this year! They’ve added a bunch of stuff but when you sum it all up it’s nowhere near an expansion worth of content.

Updates like the last two are MAX what one living world team can develop in four months. So how in the world can they make something like Orr this way?! I mean three areas with numerous jumping puzzles, a dungeon with four paths, dragon fight, numerous boss fights and dozens de’s that are a bit more then: “kill the carrot that just spawned”!

You are right. A LW-team is not able to produce a whole zone with dozens of DEs, vistas and POIs. This work has to be done by a separate team. What a LW-team can do is to provide the right stage to introduce the zone. The LW-team is like an event planner designing the opening ceremony for a restaurant, supermarket or opera. It is not his job to build the objects too. At the moment there is nothing big to introduce via LW. Maybe the coming three fractals are the first example. I doubt one team can design three fractals at once in fore months.

You people always complain about there not being an expansion yet but do you understand how long it actually takes to make one? Look at WoW. The Burning Crusade didn’t come out until 2007. The game was released in 2004. Just because Anet had a quick release schedule for Guild Wars 1 with the campaigns doesn’t mean it is the same for this game. This is a much more advanced and much bigger game. Be patient. Enjoy the free content you are getting now. Stop complaining about everything. Your expansion will come. And if they have it in the works, which they probably do, they will announce it or hint at it after the Scarlet storyline is over. Give Anet a break for once. They ARE human. Companies generally don’t pop out an expansion this short in.

World of Warcraft was released in 2004. The Burning Crusade came out in 2007.
RIFT came out in March of 2011. Storm Legion was released November 2012.
Star Wars: The Old Republic came out December 2011. Rise of the Hutt Cartel was released April 2013.

You guys are being unrealistic when it comes to your expectations of Anet. These things take a lot of time. So once again, be patient and enjoy the free content that we are getting now.

Lotro release 2007. Mines of moria 2008 and after that 4 more expansions and 7 updates. There are devs who make expansions almost every year and those who do not. Look how much new stuff have come whit LS. It could have been an expansion but we would not have LS then. Anet desidet to do LS so we do not have expansion for a while. Maby in next 2 years comes 1

Personally, I think living story is a great idea in concept. The execution however has not lived up to what it could be. Yes it is pretty darn amazing how fast we are getting things to do, but it is 95% temporary. I am also enjoying the tower right now, but it is getting old really fast as well. I think most people are dying to have something that sticks around and becomes fully part of the world. like new races, skills, classes, zones and so on.

Of course the examples I gave are pretty much expansion type content. But who says we can not have a series of living story events that lead to us entering the Crystal Desert, we all know they can add new zones they have proven it time and time again.

As for classes, skills that is all about balance and such and it is far beyond my understanding, but I do think the could add them some how.

New Races on the other hand, I actually think could work in the gem store. I know I am prob in the minority in this. But 10-15$ for a Kodan could not be all that bad. I mean for sure they would have to link the race to what ever new zone they added so it would make sense. Again I know there is more tech type stuff that goes into Races. Armor, Voice acting etc… but you know players would pay and enjoy, but at the same time it would not be forced on you. Totally up to the player if the want to play a new race they can.

Now this is just all my point of view and I know haters are going to hate, and in the end we all want the same thing. We want Guild Wars 2 to be “our home” for a long time. Or why would any of us be posting on here. ..well maybe some might post to troll.

This living world is almost the same as the smaller updates in other MMOs. I honeslty can’t see a big difference than maybe they occur every two weeks instead of maybe every month. That’s why we need an expansion or an expansion coming with one or more updates – same content.

The game needs new areas, skills and dungeons………It’s what players want in a MMO.

Living story is ok, but…………..

embarbarada.2096:

The game needs new areas, skills and dungeons………It’s what players want in a MMO.

Living story is ok, but…………..

Totally agree!
living story is nice and all, but its more from it alrdy exists in a big proportion in gw2: GRIND!

If we only could get more areas, challenging ones, where we could get more skills and situations where could use those skills to be effective, it would be way more interesting! way more!

The Living Story is ok. Just ok. Some is entertaining and some is an attempt to force us to play parts of the game we simply are not interested in. Having absolutely no interest in fractals, I’ll be skipping most of the next couple weeks.

An expansion would create content for those not interested in what A-net wants us to do. That is why there is no expansion.

This game has been superb value for money and I would be happy to pay for an expansion. I am not going to spend real money on the vanity items the gem shop is full of, but significant new content would open my wallet instantly.

Eve Online is lightyears ahead of Gw2 in terms of being a living breathing universe, even though all of it is player driven.

Turbine made efforts to overhaul some of the classes in LOTRO early after release, because they realized some of them just didn’t work they way they intended, which is something Anet is unwilling(atleast publicly) to do with the Ranger for example, where it has been known that pets and the class in general are not really working like they should, and quick dirty band-aids (like increased health) keep getting applied instead of fixing the root of the problem.

Almost all MMO’s add new areas regularly, and keep them in the game, but Anet adds new areas, then takes them away a month later in almost all cases. That leaves player’s scratching their head wondering is that is what Anet is claiming, “that’s what makes the world living!!!” Also, Even offline RPG’s like Skyrim and Dragon Age are ahead of Guild Wars 2 in terms of the ingame Lore and story.

Speaking of Story, most MMO’s release several living story releases worth of content in a regular update patch, or in one large expansion every year or two, and they don’t need to embellish it with “Living World” just to get players to come back to see what is in it.

Even Blizzard has seen the need for adding content to its game faster, so people will actually come back and play it more often, instead of “New Expansion, play for month, leave. Come back in 2-3 years”. Guild Wars 2’s model isn’t much better, since its “New Release, play for 1 day, leave. Come back in 2 weeks”.

The only thing Guild Wars 2 has going for it, is its quality voice acting, and the fast paced combat system. The living World is starting to get better, and my opinion on it is going towards that as well, but, its not getting better very fast. And even though those threads pointing out all the “promises Anet made and they aren’t here yet” seem ridiculous, they do have a point. It seems at times like Anet has made more promises, than actual content.

I agree we need an expansion, or at a bare minimum, new area that doesn’t disapear after a month of being in the game, just, you know, not forgotten like Southsun Cove was.

Completely agree. I think that we may have to wait until Wildstar releases though. NCSoft may not want them competing like that.

jazzllanna.1278:

Completely agree. I think that we may have to wait until Wildstar releases though. NCSoft may not want them competing like that.

Speaking of Wildstar, they Made a game that took the best parts of World of Warcraft, and cut all the fat out, to make a lean, mean, WoW killing machine. Then they said “Screw that! We need some fat!”, so they took some ideas from Eve Online and several other MMO’s, then they took a look, and said “MOAR!!!!!”, What we have now is a monster of a game rolled into a giant greasy Bacon Burrito-Pizza with cake icing and chocolate syrup on top. The Size of that game kind of worries me though.

I can agree that a boxed product for GW2 with additional marketing behind it would benefit the game in more ways that one.

However, a traditional expansion will not benefit GW2 in any way. By traditional I mean 10 or so new character levels (never going to happen, because of power creep issues) and handful of new zones and a dungeon or two.

Why? Because like it or not that model is inherently flawed it only creates ghost towns of old content (which we have already in my opinion) and after a while introduces one of two things, either a skip to 80 scroll or the nerfing of existing content and devaluing any items from that content by result although less so when we are talking about cosmetics which is pretty much all there is aside from the newly added utility of legendaries (and their never to be the second best guarantee).

As much as I want to see new zones and even new continents if they are made available in the traditional ways it will simply thin out the playerbase even more and by proxy feed into some of the other things I mentioned above (although it was not entirely without sarcasm, for ArenaNet that touts on innovation, I really don’t see them giving into those problems).

In short: substantial landmass additions no, more content yes. If they want to add landmass then they will have to do it in a way that does not reduce the original game into essentially a single player venture.

Honestly if they announced an expansion, by that word alone users have certain expectations… ones which ArenaNet might not want to meet (power creep and invalidating existing zones by adding more and more landmass). Or maybe they do… but I don’t think anyone likes seeing content they spend years making be reduced into an empty wasteland by comparison to what came after.

There is a reason why they like temporary stuff and it is not only to keep players coming back for all patches (because if they don’t they miss it) but also to avoid there being more content than the playerbase can populate same reason why they went with rotating activities.

Crise.9401:

I can agree that a boxed product for GW2 with additional marketing behind it would benefit the game in more ways that one.

However, a traditional expansion will not benefit GW2 in any way. By traditional I mean 10 or so new character levels (never going to happen, because of power creep issues) and handful of new zones and a dungeon or two.

Why? Because like it or not that model is inherently flawed it only creates ghost towns of old content (which we have already in my opinion) and after a while introduces one of two things, either a skip to 80 scroll or the nerfing of existing content and devaluing any items from that content by result although less so when we are talking about cosmetics which is pretty much all there is aside from the newly added utility of legendaries (and their never to be the second best guarantee).

As much as I want to see new zones and even new continents if they are made available in the traditional ways it will simply thin out the playerbase even more and by proxy feed into some of the other things I mentioned above (although it was not entirely without sarcasm, for ArenaNet that touts on innovation, I really don’t see them giving into those problems).

In short: substantial landmass additions no, more content yes. If they want to add landmass then they will have to do it in a way that does not reduce the original game into essentially a single player venture.

Honestly if they announced an expansion, by that word alone users have certain expectations… ones which ArenaNet might not want to meet (power creep and invalidating existing zones by adding more and more landmass). Or maybe they do… but I don’t think anyone likes seeing content they spend years making be reduced into an empty wasteland by comparison to what came after.

There is a reason why they like temporary stuff and it is not only to keep players coming back for all patches (because if they don’t they miss it) but also to avoid there being more content than the playerbase can populate same reason why they went with rotating activities.

Temporary stuff is not going to keep the majority of players’ interests. Player base is helped through expansions in two ways. It keeps old player by renewing their interest in the game. And second, by giving something new to market that will likely draw in new players.

Guild Wars is not built on increasing levels or armor stats. I find this a pointless topic to mention. What an update would entail for GW2 would be new areas, armor skins, weapon skins, races, skills, traits and maybe finally just moving the story along… They mentioned they did not want to introduce new professions but I think that is at their disadvantage.

If you think anet is going to keep the majority of its fan base with monthly content, when new games start coming out you are foolish. The living story is basically filler and very few people make nice comments about filler. Even if it’s good filler.

One last thing the game is already a single venture with the exception of dungeons. And that’s not really a bad thing anyway, it’s nice to have a choice.

Fey Zeal.7032:

Guild Wars is not built on increasing levels or armor stats. I find this a pointless topic to mention.

I did basically imply that most of that was sarcasm (I am pretty sure I even said it), the point was that mainstream has an extremely specific idea what an MMO expansion means as such an expansion might not create the desired outcome of bringing in new players once the internet does its thing (precisely for the reason you stated). Thus a boxed expansion might pull players in once but it wouldn’t work a second time if the usual expectations for an expansion are not met and GW2 expansions end up with bad rep. They have exactly one chance to make a boxed release that will work, and get a real benefit out of it (which is new and returning players far more than existing players currently playing the game).

Boxed releases have the catch that they cost money and are a barrier to experiencing new content. Realistically they can not keep the living world initiative ongoing and have a large boxed expansion, even if they could afterwards this filler content as you called it would be available only to the owners of said expansion. Then we are in the situation where the paywall to play the game at all, for a new player, becomes higher and higher over time unless they do expansions which always include all previous expansions to date. Let’s not even talk about the implications an expansion exclusive profession or set of profession skills would have to the way GW2 handles PvP outside of WvW.

Fey Zeal.7032:

— the game is already a single venture with the exception of dungeons. And that’s not really a bad thing anyway, it’s nice to have a choice.

Actually that is a bad thing, because number of people in an area directly impacts how many events spawn. Which directly impacts a new players experience due to the fact that it seems nothing is going on (launch day week in Queensdale vs now in Plains of Ashford). If GW2 had standard quests then it wouldn’t be such a problem but it does not. Because in traditional MMO’s the absence of other people does not really affect your leveling experience (the contrary even with kill stealing and all that good stuff) like it does here.

Fey Zeal.7032:

Temporary stuff is not going to keep the majority of players’ interests. — If you think anet is going to keep the majority of its fan base with monthly content, when new games start coming out you are foolish.

Expect that it is bi-weekly content especially as of late where the patches two weeks apart haven’t necessarily been having anything to do with each other. Besides the current living story patches that have had permanent additions perfectly demonstrate what would happen if GW2 came out with an expansion that added a bunch of new zones. Only it would be several times worse. Most people including myself seem to have more issue with the subject matter, the pacing of the content and how disconnected some of them seem than how much of it there is or the fact that some of it is temporary… less and less as of recently.

In terms of pure content and features we have definitely had an expansions worth by now… but because we don’t have 5 new permanent zones, three new dungeons one new race or profession or a new weapon for existing ones (or any combination thereof) people don’t see it as such. Which brings us back to the perceptions about expansions that are so vital for its success in the mainstream gaming media.

In terms of story once Anet solves how they are going to handle progression of time in Orr, then we are at a point where we can start talking about dragons again, in my opinion. Besides Zhaitan fight is still abysmal I don’t want another dragon to be like he was. As a matter of fact I haven’t beaten him yet because of all the bad rep Orr got at the time I was ready to move there. I haven’t even set foot or seen the Orr related zones at all (just the Zhaitan fight second hand), when it comes to level 80 zones I am Frostgorge Sound all the way.

So yes you could say so far Elder Dragons did not seem like anything to write home about, for me Personal Story stopped being interesting after Trehearnes vision quest to Orr at level 50 something (I did up to 62 or so afterwards by forcing my self to go through with it… then I stopped). So I am definitely in the camp where new zones and new content but no more dragons if Zhaitan was any indication. Something like the new Teq mechanically maybe… but really I am fine if they went back to sleep.

If I wanted more personal story it would be something similar to what it was up to the end of the Orders arc, because that in my opinion was the point where it stopped feeling personal entirely.

Crise.9401:

In terms of story once Anet solves how they are going to handle progression of time in Orr, then we are at a point where we can start talking about dragons again, in my opinion. Besides Zhaitan fight is still abysmal I don’t want another dragon to be like he was. As a matter of fact I haven’t beaten him yet because of all the bad rep Orr got at the time I was ready to move there. I haven’t even set foot or seen the Orr related zones at all (just the Zhaitan fight second hand), when it comes to level 80 zones I am Frostgorge Sound all the way.

Thats 11.1% of all dungeon content (1 out of 8 dungeons + 1 fractal), and 11.5% of all the PvE content in the entire game total (3 out of 26 zones). Why should I, or anyone else take anything you post seriously about Expansions and living story, if you refused to even try that content yet?

i dunno why ppl keep on being so stubborn but Anet knows how to release new places and expansions, just because you see things happen doesn’t mean they are doing nothing about an expansion.
when factions was released we had no idea we got another chapter only half a year later, it was only speculation until they released some info about 2 months before release.

if they are working on an expansion they will not say anything until they are sure to release correct info, we already have signs that points to an expansion and until they have something to show you, you will hear nothing.

I’m kind of surprised at how many people don’t seem to realize:

You are constantly getting the expansion. You are always getting the expansion. Every two weeks you get another chunk of the expansion.

Last week? Chunk of expansion.

Next week? Chunk of expansion.

You are asking for something that you are already getting. The difference is that ANet is giving you the pieces as soon as they are ready, rather than making you wait until the whole thing is ready.

Agreed in all, this LS is just killing this game…

Chrispy.5641:

Thats 11.1% of all dungeon content (1 out of 8 dungeons + 1 fractal), and 11.5% of all the PvE content in the entire game total (3 out of 26 zones). Why should I, or anyone else take anything you post seriously about Expansions and living story, if you refused to even try that content yet?

Nice math there, but entirely irrelevant, also incorrect. They may have been the numbers originally but with the living story patches they are no longer correct the fact that some content is no longer accessible is not the same as if it never existed. Also it is funny that you separate dungeon content and PvE content as far as I am aware dungeon content is a subset of PvE.

If Living Story is filler, ergo unrelated to the content that I opted not to play, it means that my opinions about living story are entirely justified. As for my opinions about expansions, they are opinions about the model of boxed expansions and of the kind of content progression we have seen in other games (again in no way is experiencing Orr required for this).

Personal Story, above level 64, is the only type of content that I can not have a first hand opinion on (and I don’t pretend to), my statement of Zhaitan fight being abysmal (which is the only opinionated statement I made about the content I did not play myself, the lack of time progression in Orr is a fact) is entirely based on second hand accounts, the general popular opinion and some video footage. Now if you are going to go ahead and argue that the Zhaitan fight was good then be my guest.

Just because I did not play everything does not mean my opinion is any less justified or valid when it comes to living story or expansions. There are people who don’t play fractals or who did not play Super Adventure Box (as there probably are people who have skipped one or more of the living story patches) and yet you probably wouldn’t devalue their opinions about the state of the game.

jsduke.6537:

I’m kind of surprised at how many people don’t seem to realize:

You are constantly getting the expansion. You are always getting the expansion. Every two weeks you get another chunk of the expansion.

Last week? Chunk of expansion.

Next week? Chunk of expansion.

You are asking for something that you are already getting. The difference is that ANet is giving you the pieces as soon as they are ready, rather than making you wait until the whole thing is ready.

I want to Bold Print and Highlight something for you. I will even capitalize it so you and anyone else can read that as clearly as possible….

jsduke.6537:

I’m kind of surprised at how many people don’t seem to realize:

You are constantly getting the expansion. You are always getting the expansion. Every two weeks you get another chunk of the expansion.

Last week? Chunk of expansion.

Next week? Chunk of expansion.

You are asking for something that you are already getting. THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT ANET IS GIVING YOU THE PIECES AS SOON AS THEY ARE READY, RATHER THAN MAKING YOU WAIT UNTIL THE WHOLE THING IS READY.

I take issue with that, because, Anet does not release some of these living story releases When they are ready. Anet relies on a very strict two week release schedule, and they give their different development teams 4 months to work on them. The problem with that is, is that some of the living story releases werent just broken and riddled with bugs on release, they were sometimes broken in spectacular fashion.

Want an Example? During the Queen’s Jubilee, in the Queen’s Gauntlet, there were lots of bugs, I would say legions of bugs, a nice army waiting to pounce on Anet’s perfect game when they got the chance. I would say my favorite one was the Deadeye Triple Threat!

That bug triggered when there was a large number of Deadeye Dunwell’s on the map in the various cages. I would be fighting one deadeye, and then suddenly, when it comes time for his teleport, he would switch places with another deadeye, and I would be fighting someone with a completely different health amount that I didn’t before. It was actually kind of funny one time, because all the other players died except me (which was a miracle, since I had to take down his healthbar past 150% because of the bug), and they all teleported away to my ring, where I revived them all.

That bug aside, there were also oversights too, such as when fighting that boss, my pet would sometimes spawn next to me, and the mine that was next to me would go off, taking away some of my health at the very start of the match (thank god that was fixed!). And all the Mines and Bombs, and teleporting Deadeye weren’t in the same position in all six rings. The Locations of everything in some rings were offset a little from the others, so while certain tactics would work in one ring, like flanking, they utterly failed in another, because the boss would port to the very edge of the ring instead of a couple meters from the edge like normal. This also happened when Fighting Liadri the Concealing Dark, where it was worse in my opinion. Those white circles you had to stand in, wouldn’t always spawn the same distance from the edge of the ring. Sometimes it would be good, and you could still manipulate the camera so you could still see the shadow clones, and lead them into the circle. Other times, the camera got so bad because of the location, that, you couldn’t even see them at nearly all camera angles.

The Queen’s Jubilee Living Story was not release by any possible definition of the word Done. Thank that fallen Spider God that Anet got a little wiser, and we don’t see these spectacular game breaking bugs and oversights anymore. My experience playing Guild Wars 2 has gotten much better since then because of the lack of glaring bugs, but, that inability to spot those bugs before release has to me, placed a little bit of a stigma on Anet. I go into each living story release now, fully expecting it to not be done and have those same bugs as it did before. That’s the impression that Anet left on me, and their Totally Awesome, Two Week Release Schedule that gets a Whole 4 Months of Development time!

In that case it wasn’t enough, and the game was not released when it was ready. From then on, I said that 4 months is not enough. If 6 months of development time would have saved us from those bugs, it should have been done.

jsduke.6537:

Last week? Chunk of expansion.

Next week? Chunk of expansion.

I been gone since fractals was introduced, so If I log in now I should see a slew of new areas and stuff to do………….oh wait…. No I wont since all that “chunk of expansion” was temporary.

I was just checking the forums to see if there any reason to come back. This thread just answered my question.

Guess I hold off my comeback to this game for a while longer, maybe sometime in the future I have a reason to come back.

Just my two cents.

Jestersmiles.4365:

I been gone since fractals was introduced, so If I log in now I should see a slew of new areas and stuff to do………….oh wait…. No I wont since all that “chunk of expansion” was temporary.

Not all, the TA dungeon path was permanent, Teq was permanent and right now there are two “chunks” going on, and pretty much everything coming next Tuesday is permanent (or some of old content coming back in as well).

All you really missed was a bunch of festivals and/or recurring content that will be back sometime next year. You might have missed at most a whole hour or two of story stuff that will not be back, note that the two temporary dungeons you missed will be made permanent additions to fractals next week, and most of those two hours outside the soon to be back dungeons weren’t anything truly special (few of the cinematics were pretty cool though).

Right now the only thing that is not truly permanent in fact is the tower in Kessex Hills… we don’t really know when it will be gone or how it will be gone (as it is unlikely that time will simply rewind on that zone). Oh, and then there is WvW season but that is only an achievement list.

an expansion is something like adding the crystal desert or the fire islands, not adding some non-sense event with some left over dungeons……

Crise.9401:

Chrispy.5641:

Thats 11.1% of all dungeon content (1 out of 8 dungeons + 1 fractal), and 11.5% of all the PvE content in the entire game total (3 out of 26 zones). Why should I, or anyone else take anything you post seriously about Expansions and living story, if you refused to even try that content yet?

Nice math there, but entirely irrelevant, also incorrect. They may have been the numbers originally but with the living story patches they are no longer correct the fact that some content is no longer accessible is not the same as if it never existed. Also it is funny that you separate dungeon content and PvE content as far as I am aware dungeon content is a subset of PvE.

1 divided by 9 = .1111

If you multiply that by 100, you get the percentage that 1 is out of 9. So, 0.1111 × 100 = 11.11%, and that was including Fractals into the equation.

3 Divided by 26 = 0.1153 × 100 = 11.53%. And if you want me to include Dungeons as whole zones, and add them in with the other zones (permanent ones, and not including major cities where you do nothing), we get

4 Divided by 35 = .1142 × 100 = 11.42%. I even went to 2 decimal places on these for moar accuracy!

So, my math is right. You might want to go to your local community college and brush up on some simple algebra, or pay attention in math class if you are in high school. You still refuse to play 1 in 10 parts of the game. The ratio of the game you refuse to play (that I know of) is 1: 10. Do you want me to write fractions next? I can draw a cup with water in it to show you as well if you want!

Crise.9401:

Just because I did not play everything does not mean my opinion is any less justified or valid when it comes to living story or expansions. There are people who don’t play fractals or who did not play Super Adventure Box (as there probably are people who have skipped one or more of the living story patches) and yet you probably wouldn’t devalue their opinions about the state of the game.

No, actually I would. Whenever someone tells me their opinion about a movie or game, If their opinion is just too Glowing or too Critical, I ask them if they even watched that movie all the way through, or if they atleast finished the game. Normally I hear them say they didn’t even watch it or play the game, just watched a review of it on youtube or watched someone else play the game (like you said with the Zhaitan fight, you only watched it, but didn’t experience it yourself. I will agree that it is kind of lame, but the dungeon up to that point isn’t, and neither is the rest of that part of the game)…..

I can understand not making it through Super adventure box, or making it past fractal level 2, because you didn’t like it when you tried it. Guess what? neither did I. But outright refusing to do any content in a certain area at all is what makes me not take your opinion seriously. Its like people who say “Call of Duty is AWESOME!!!!” But only ever play multiplayer, and don’t even know if the single player campaign is good or not! You hated something without bothering to try it for yourself. Thats reason enough for me, no matter the ratio.

Chrispy.5641:

So, my math is right. You might want to go to your local community college and brush up on some simple algebra.

Your math is still wrong…. the math you showed just now is fine, but when the basis for your calculations is incorrect then as a whole the result is not credible and as such incorrect. You only counted maps and dungeons visited not content seen or experienced. Not to mention you discounted countless areas and instances that were part of Living Story, things like Guild Mission areas and instances not part of the open world or a dungeon as such.

You say I have seen this and this much of a game and put a number on it, without even knowing how much of the games content is in Gueensdale vs Metrica Province or Bloodtide Coast vs Diessa Plateau. The point is each playable area of the game can not be weighted equal. I disputed your results more than the calculations you used to come to them. If I were to do math similar to yours I could come up with a statement like “People who don’t play sPvP have not seen 33.3% of the content in GW2” which is obviously false because while the game can be roughly divided into three large content types those three are not equal in value (nor are they equal in value to different players).

Chrispy.5641:

You hated something without bothering to try it for yourself. Thats reason enough for me, no matter the ratio.

I did not hate on it… but I did not feel the need to play it. When I lost interest in personal story there was no longer a reason for me to go to Orr and that was made stronger by the popular opinion about Orr at the time. That does not invalidate my opinion about living story or expansions as such, because they are not related to me seeing that content or not.

The only reason I brought up the fact that I did not see all of the game is to give context to why I would rather have Living story as it is than wait months for an expansion with “Personal Story” that if the core game was any precedent starts off really good but ends up very linear and I will most likely loose interest part way through. I would rather have continuous stream of bite sized content updates over a large update every six months for example.

The living story as it is has potential to keep me engaged couple of days every 2 weeks (usually) while a traditional expansion would give me from few weeks to a month every six months. I am not the repeatable content (or rather the carrot on a RNG stick) kind of guy, WvW is about the only repeatable content in the game that I engage in regularly. The PvE instances get at most 2 or 3 runs from me.

If Anet had a living story centered around Orr (say its cleansing or whatever Trehearne is up to), I would definitely play it because it is not like I stay out of those maps just because they are Orr, but because the game doesn’t force/need me to go there and I have no reason otherwise (as in none-of the new content has given any reason whatsoever to go into Orr, most of it doesn’t even require you to go that much south of Lions Arch).

It is not like I don’t want Cantha, Elona and the Tengu… I do, but I don’t want to have to find a new game to play for half a year or more to get them, I would much rather have all of that as parts of the living story coming to us gradually. It’s not like you can dispute that adding a lot of new explorable areas would cause most of the existing content to be abandoned, if this landmass is added gradually with a mix of other content then the old content would not be replaced by the new content but the new content would grow into being part of the old content. I would rather have that than for Cantha or Elona to suddenly replace Tyria.

jsduke,

on terms of content in itself, yes the amount of updates that go into the game data wise could be compared to expansion size. The problem with LS is the pace of the releases. The more content that needs to be released, the less time content gets polished.

I’ve made the point that LS isn’t a bad idea in itself, but it shouldn’t be the sole source of new content. I believe the LS should be a bridge between one major expansion to the next, having two teams versus four, with releases on a monthly term again.

I also agree with the vision to release new skills, more flexibility in weapons to other professions through the patches, but trying to directly tie the to a LS limits the flexibility the skill is going to have.

I like expansions because they release a bulk of content at once. This gives me much more game to explore and items to unlock. Of course some players want to rush this ASAP, but a lot of players will take their time enjoying the bulk of the content. Currently all I see is a huge mass of players hopping from one update to the next, leaving other parts of the game dry and stale. When you have a bulk of content, the mass of players spreads out throughout the content depending on the pace and time of purchase of the player. It’s just a better model for majority of the players in my opinion.

Too Long, didn’t read;
Living Story should contain short storys, bridging the time frame of major releases. Major releases should introduce the “big rock” content.

Respectfully,
D.Rose

The only updates that felt like a living story for me were Southsun Cove and Sanctum.

Sanctum was just remove from the game for some reason I can’t understand. And beside a super hard guild rush, jp and the Karka queen Southsun was left there to be forgotten.

You can’t even play Southsun Survival with your friends! wth

It’s kinda sad when you look at the world map.

Crise.9401:

Jestersmiles.4365:

I been gone since fractals was introduced, so If I log in now I should see a slew of new areas and stuff to do………….oh wait…. No I wont since all that “chunk of expansion” was temporary.

Not all, the TA dungeon path was permanent, Teq was permanent and right now there are two “chunks” going on, and pretty much everything coming next Tuesday is permanent (or some of old content coming back in as well).

All you really missed was a bunch of festivals and/or recurring content that will be back sometime next year. You might have missed at most a whole hour or two of story stuff that will not be back, note that the two temporary dungeons you missed will be made permanent additions to fractals next week, and most of those two hours outside the soon to be back dungeons weren’t anything truly special (few of the cinematics were pretty cool though).

Right now the only thing that is not truly permanent in fact is the tower in Kessex Hills… we don’t really know when it will be gone or how it will be gone (as it is unlikely that time will simply rewind on that zone). Oh, and then there is WvW season but that is only an achievement list.

Well that good to know, thank you for the info.

I’d like to see 5 teams instead of 4 personally. With the 5th team working on something like a quarterly update, which would release a larger chunk of permanent content. Sometimes that could be adding a zone. Sometimes it could be a further piece of the Personal story (maybe not the best idea, just an idea), perhaps a new race, a new real dungeon, who knows? But their focus could be those things that typically define an expansion, and they could just roll them out one piece at a time. It still wouldn’t be the same, but it fits more into what they are doing, and still gives an expansion feel.

Just my 2 cents.

Antara, thank you for your comments.

LS isn’t the only source of updates. Every two weeks we get an update. Usually, the content update is a chunk of Living Story and other features like Wallet, Account Magic Find, Ascended Weapons, etc. Living Story has never been the only source of content. Occasionally, we get updates without any Living Story content, like the upcoming Fractured content update next week.

I do think that there is room for improvement in the Living Story. I’ve actually been kind of a harsh critic of the current Scarlet LS in other threads (and a slightly less harsh critic in others). But the concept of the Living World is absolutely unique amongst all MMOs on the market today, and it is one of the most exciting — and daring — things a gaming company has attempted in years. So I want it to have a chance to achieve it’s full potential.

Not everyone is going to like or appreciate the idea of LW, and that’s okay. But I hope that ANet will stick to their guns on this issue and continue to fine-tune LW until it becomes what it was intended to be.

I understand the appeal of Expansions. I do. I’ve been playing MMOs for almost 15 years now. But ANet is experimenting with doing things in a different way. Some people don’t care for the experiment so far, and that’s disappointing, but it doesn’t mean we should just give up on it. It’s a really cool idea, and I fully support it.

And I absolutely agree that the scope of the current Living Story is too large for consumption. I can’t keep track of what’s going on, and it’s just not making sense the way it’s being presented. But, as I say, they are exploring a new feature that hasn’t been tried before, and I think that it will improve in the coming months.

And if it doesn’t improve over the course of the next year or so, then yes… Yes, at that point, it probably would be time to move to a more traditional expansion schedule.

Crise.9401:

Chrispy.5641:

So, my math is right. You might want to go to your local community college and brush up on some simple algebra.

Your math is still wrong…. the math you showed just now is fine, but when the basis for your calculations is incorrect then as a whole the result is not credible and as such incorrect. You only counted maps and dungeons visited not content seen or experienced. Not to mention you discounted countless areas and instances that were part of Living Story, things like Guild Mission areas and instances not part of the open world or a dungeon as such.

Seeing as you yourself said that at the most, there is two hours of story content that other players have missed up to this point, its not alot, and it wouldn’t even put a dent in those percentages I gave. The reason why I left out personal story, is because unless you made all possible character combinations, and played them through to the end of the game, the percentage of content that you haven’t done (that I know of) would be much higher. (and since you haven’t even finished the game by your own admission, I highly doubt that you have that many characters)

So no, a Ratio of roughly 1 in 10 things that you not only not do, but refuse to do, still stands, and I will continue to not take your opinion seriously, until you atleast try those areas for yourself rather than experience them second hand.

jsduke.6537:

I do think that there is room for improvement in the Living Story. I’ve actually been kind of a harsh critic of the current Scarlet LS in other threads (and a slightly less harsh critic in others). But the concept of the Living World is absolutely unique amongst all MMOs on the market today, and it is one of the most exciting — and daring — things a gaming company has attempted in years. So I want it to have a chance to achieve it’s full potential.

In my opinion, its just free updates under a different name to me, and there is absolutely nothing exciting or daring about it. Turbine did it for a long time with Lord of the Rings Online, releasing an entire expansion’s worth of content before they released an actual paid expansion, then released more free content after that (then they changed their business model, and that whole thing with Warner Bros….yeah, lots of stuff changed). Funcom did it for several months with the Secret World, until they changed their business model, because player numbers dropped off. Even Square Enix does it with their online games, but they don’t need any embellishments to the name like Living Story, Books, or Issues. They are just called “Patch 2.1” or whatever….So original!

The only difference between Anet and those three companies, is that instead of slowing down the pace of free updates, Anet has actually stayed perfectly consistent, no matter what the actual player numbers have been. Some of these releases have suffered big time for it (such as the Queen’s Jubilee update which I explained in an earlier post), some, were freaking near perfect, like Cutthroat Politics. Some were terrible, like the Southsun updates. The last three updates have been pretty well done, but because of Anet’s record of content releases, I am not currently expecting them to stay like that forever. While Anet has been consistent with the pace of the releases, the quality, has not been anywhere near the definition of that word.

And no, putting all resources into an expansion is not going to help the quality that much. That’s something Arenanet needs to figure out how to handle, no matter what the release is.

jsduke.6537:

… Not everyone is going to like or appreciate the idea of LW, and that’s okay. But I hope that ANet will stick to their guns on this issue and continue to fine-tune LW until it becomes what it was intended to be.

Fine tune what?

GW2 has only shown signs of life in the TP, Maybe if the Tower collapses across Kessex, and stays that way, then ( in that area alone ) we would be seeing a living world. As for the rest of GW2, its a good looking fair ground ride with regular temporary events. It’s fixed, static, dead as a door nail and just the same as a host of other MMO, except it has no expansions.

For the most part the ‘Living Story’ is hamster wheel content. The players have no effect on anything.

I’m not waiting another half a million minutes for someone to give birth to the Living World.

If they where rolling out one map per month no one would be asking for expansions at all and that is what they are working towards. Living story campaign against the dragons will probably be like that.

Crise.9401:

I can agree that a boxed product for GW2 with additional marketing behind it would benefit the game in more ways that one.

However, a traditional expansion will not benefit GW2 in any way. By traditional I mean 10 or so new character levels (never going to happen, because of power creep issues) and handful of new zones and a dungeon or two.

Why? Because like it or not that model is inherently flawed it only creates ghost towns of old content (which we have already in my opinion) and after a while introduces one of two things, either a skip to 80 scroll or the nerfing of existing content and devaluing any items from that content by result although less so when we are talking about cosmetics which is pretty much all there is aside from the newly added utility of legendaries (and their never to be the second best guarantee).

As much as I want to see new zones and even new continents if they are made available in the traditional ways it will simply thin out the playerbase even more and by proxy feed into some of the other things I mentioned above (although it was not entirely without sarcasm, for ArenaNet that touts on innovation, I really don’t see them giving into those problems).

In short: substantial landmass additions no, more content yes. If they want to add landmass then they will have to do it in a way that does not reduce the original game into essentially a single player venture.

Honestly if they announced an expansion, by that word alone users have certain expectations… ones which ArenaNet might not want to meet (power creep and invalidating existing zones by adding more and more landmass). Or maybe they do… but I don’t think anyone likes seeing content they spend years making be reduced into an empty wasteland by comparison to what came after.

There is a reason why they like temporary stuff and it is not only to keep players coming back for all patches (because if they don’t they miss it) but also to avoid there being more content than the player base can populate same reason why they went with rotating activities.

As i do agree with you on this to an extent, i do not believe that adding more landmass will reduce player base but more spread them out.

Here is my 50 cents, If you ever played GW1 IMHO this is what an expansion should be no extra levels, no gear grind just another story to experience, with the exception of 2 extra classes in each some new features and some different weapon types. There were a total of 3 independent stories, as most are aware these were Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall all taking place on other continents in the world, and independent from each other until you got to the main city then you could go to another one of the other lands and play the remainder of that story, I loved this concept and i played each game regularly though Factions was not my favorite in fact my least favorite but i loved the Assassin Class Fricken awesome. They did release an addon for prophecies which was cool and introduced you to the Asura. This made the entire game replayable for a while, i think if they added a simular concept to this game with all the choice options like in this game it would be so Epic and provide players with alot more play time, but this dont seem like it is ever going to happen..

Now I know ANET said they were not going to follow the same route as the first game which to me was a bitter disappointment as that made it totally stand out from the rest of the Warhammer online clones of the time (yes this includes WoW), with the instanced quests etc this was Epic, though the heroes and henchmen were really stupid at times, I say they should at least learn from the success of GW1 and impliment some of the features they introduced in the first game… buuuut no

it kinda sad that I can’t find any one to do the current LS even though my server is “very high” in population..just saying…