Guild Wars 2

Oh please. This has nothing to do with the holidays. Thats a hilarious joke. I came back to the game over a month ago and every week I’ve been surprised to see how T1 now feels like mid tier WvW 1 or 2 years ago.

WvW is hemorrhaging players. Its not a symptom of the game as a whole either. The PVE and PVP population are certainly not like they are at the launch of the game, but they are certainly stable. WvW is not.

Those of you who play in WvW and deny that Anet has neglected this gamemode as if its an unwanted child are only further harming it by not speaking up.

Seriously, no one who has consistently played WvW could actually say claim “No no, its just cuz muh holidays”. Its clearly more than that, so stop bsing about it.

The server linking was a big change, and so were skirmishes, but those only happened recently. They are good changes and Tyler has done a good job so far, I like the direction he’s taking it.

However, this should have been done a long time ago by people capable like Tyler. Even though the changes are a step in the right direction, this is very little progress for 4 years.

There are only 4 tiers in wvw right now and all of them are quite empty relative to what they used to be.

The main reason they eventually linked them is because the bottom half of wvw was a ghost town. T1 right now, even with server linking has the same activity level of t4 or t5 did 2 years ago from my memory.

The core problems have never been fixed. Score, population, and rewards. Its a mode that has been flawed from its inception because there has never been any incentive to win a match, because population dictates match. That also means you cant reward winners of the match.

If that could be fixed it would also be good.

If they want to save this mode they need to do something drastic and announce big PR for it as well. No covering stuff up. Whether it be completely redoing the mode or something, its the only chance theyd have at bringing back players.

I sort of doubt theyd do it though, because there may not be as much profit incentive even if a large amount of previous wvw players came back.

I know people have said for a long time this is a dead game mode, almost memeing it at times. But right now, it seriously is on a lifeline.

Servers have been linked and even in T1 where im at right now, things are pretty empty most nights. There are incredibly empty for T1, a tier that from my experience has always had nonstop activity.

It makes me incredibly sad to see this in WvW. Its always been my main gamemode in this game but Anet is going to have to make a decision very soon to do something very very drastic, I mean big changes to the game mode to fix it, or just call it quits and say we can’t carry on it with it anymore.

I can’t help but say this is completely their fault. They’ve done so little for this gamemode of such massive potential in 4 years.

haha such a gemstore endgame Anet move right there.

lordkrall.7241:

See? This is a great example as to why they don’t tell us anything until it is more or less ready.

As for the near future comment, that might very well be past already. Near future is not more than a few months after all.

And we HAVE seen new names that very well might be new PvP-maps/modes in the dat-file quite recently, so I would think they are coming quite soonish.

Thats not the point. The point is sPvP is developing way too slowly. Let’s take a step back. Its been a little over 2 years since the game has launched, and sPvP still has 1 game mode….1. The last time a map for our only game mode was over a year ago. What the hell is going on over there should be the question.

Transparency isn’t the only problem at Anet. Its how long they take as well. Its like they have 1 or 2 people working on sPvP. Its also probably because of how much they iterate on their work.

IF ANYTHING, they should tell us what they are working on completely, because like many many times in Anet’s past, they work on something for a very long time and then reveal it at the last moment upon release, and then there is some fundamental flaw in the system. Look at the new trait system, look at the new player experience. Two big endeavors that have many problems with them.

im sure we’ll get a reskinned gemstore release soon.

lol @ yaks bend. yaks is only a slightly more stacked server than the rest of those in the top of silver tier whose leaders have encouraged a toxic style of gameplay to win the game, aka bunkering in towers for 16 hours a day with 45 arrowcarts.

its probably the worst possible side of wvw because of how passive the gameplay style is. it removes all aspects of pvp from wvw whatsoever.

Mjgander.1905:

Ofcourse this games PvP is dead. Literally everything about SPvP in this game is terrible except for the combat.

One game mode, really? That promotes skill less aoe spam and tanks playing a silly king of the hill mini game.

The rewards being freaking awful, we have one, ONE armor set that is PvP unique, LOL. The reward tracks are horrific, just loot boxes full of absolutely useless junk.

Balance – Need anything be said on this?

Matchmaking, yeah never seen anything this bad in a game with a ranked mode, pretty much ever. It’s mindblowing in the skill ranges of players in one single game. Matching high end rank 1-10 players against people who can’t even break onto the leaderboards or completely new players? Seriously? Most matches I play are complete blow outs. 500-200 games all the freaking time, it’s no fun, it’s not competitive, soloq is nothing but a giant gamble when you hit that join now button, your gambling on who gets 4v5 or the ‘stacked’ team, seeming most games are stomp fests.

And the 4v5s, don’t even get me started. Soloq has been in the game for how long now? And over 6 months ago a dev commented they was working on way to solve this. SIX MONTHS, and they CAN’T ADD A READY BUTTON UPON QUE POP, LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

thats true for most of the game tbh, what you said there in the beginning, about the combat system. its the reason a lot of wvw people played. the combat system in this game is absolutely amazing and fluid. tbh, if you honestly think about it, the reason most people play this game, despite what part, is because of things that have already been there since launch. spvp/wvw/dungeons. other than that its like a completely different team has been working on the game post-launch.

seems that as of the last few months and even with the patch recently, the numbers i see in hotjoin and the que times i have are so much worse. there are like 100 people in hotjoin sometimes, let alone my stupidly long ques for solo que. 400 people watching tol 2 a month or so ago? ded game? whats going on gais.

gvg war here. its a really poor choice to sacrifice dote over some extra power and toughness you get from another point in defense. there is a very noticeable difference in damage when you don’t have dote. in any organized gvg setting, the enemy melee consistently has 6-7 boons which is around 20% more damage output from yourself on average.

Gudradain.3892:

ShadowStep.3640:

If GvG ever wants to reconstruct itself, it should do so on a lower tier server. That’s why GvG failed, because they choose to house it in tier 2 instead of tier 5 or 6. By housing GvG in a lower tier, you can GvG all you want without much pressure to ppt.

This.

Time to give up on this fail T2 GvG experiment that is destroying the game for everyone. Destroying it for yourself, like we can see with Mag currently, and destroying it for all the other server that you drain of their WvW guilds.

Better to spread out evenly in silver league. That way you will get different server to fight every week.

It wasn’t a failed experiment lol neither of you have a clue what you are talking about. GvG imploded for a lot of reasons, none of them are what you listed. The most primary one is that the guilds that had been gvging in that tier (ep, agg, ns, hope, ek, pyro, ark, others) simply got bored with the game after playing for so long. Its not like members from those guilds don’t still play. Some do, some left for AA.

They will just join new guilds and the scene will revive itself slowly. T2 was perfect for gvg. If you mvoe to bronze tier for gvg, you will be bored as hell. GvG guilds generally want to do more than gvg. Zergbusting is included. Spreading out guilds over silvier tier is probably the worst possible idea. If you do this, you will have a better chance of ending up in stale matchups where you have no one to fight. T2 was nice because you knew youd get good fights each week.

Reset 6 gvg guilds on a map was the best. LOL at your destroying the game comment. Maguuma did this bad during Season 2 as well because they don’t have the man power. The broken ppt system is whats wrong with WvW. Maguuma gvg folk could ppt all they wanted and still not get 1/5th of the ppt that JQ has.

Its also the fact that WvW is dying out so badly because of the lack of update to the mode.

Guys lets be serious. These are only talks, they don’t mean anything. We talked for more pages than we have now about commander tags back like 9-10 months ago, and look at the progress of that. Do you really think they are going to do that much more work on this? Something as big as a WvW revamp that we’ve needed for over a year probably won’t ever come.

Sorry but I can’t take the devs seriously until they do more than talking. Once I see a major update I will change my mind.

Tbh it annoys me to but the game isn’t for people who don’t liek the living story. You can draw this conclusion by constructing a theoretical priority list that Anet has, where the first 49 spots are living story, and the 50th is spvp/wvw/dungeonfractals.

So this time around we have content and features split into separate releases. My question is, would something like a new spvp mode along with maps be considered content or features or both? Because I think aspects of both are in them.

The reason I ask is because we’ve known for a few months now that they are working on a new spvp mode, and im curious as to whether or not is will be released in 2014. I don’t see why not as knowing it has been in the works for awhile, along with the fact that we’ve datamined it recently, and that the game has been out for 2 years.

Vayne.8563:

Lissaere.7096:

Vayne.8563:

Lissaere.7096:

Vayne.8563:

Yet the game listed achievements for Fractals for the longest time under the category dungeon. So you should listen to the game. The game is telling you Fractals are a dungeon. Or it was. Not in game right not to check if it’s still true. But it’s been true before the recent patch for the longest time.

Currently it’s listed under general so not true anymore.

Doesn’t work that way. They made it, and listed it as a dungeon and sub categories got taken off in the reorganization.

That means you’re saying it was a dungeon a month ago, but isn’t a dungeon now. That doesn’t wash. Clearly Anet considers it a dungeon, but a different type of dungeon than the original dungeons.

Hey I just used the phrasing that you used in the last two sentences. (Made them bold). However I will concede to the subcategory point cause it is after all quite logical that Category: Dungeon Subcategory: Fractals are not the the same as Category: Dungeon Subcategory: Tyria. So I guess we are arguing subcategories when arguing if fractals are dungeons now?

Dungeons in most games are just challenging, instanced, multiplayer PvE content, with less people than raids.

That’s always been my definition anyway. But there’s definitely differences between how dungeons are presented in this game and how fractals are presented.

On the other hand, Aetherblade Retreat and Molten Facility were both considered dungeons, and now they’re in Fractals.

I think we should just call them something else entirely. Like IHTOWs (instances harder than the open world).

Think it will catch on?

Thats your own definition of a dungeon vayne. In guild wars 2, there is a very obvious definition of dungeons that can be constructed simply by looking at all the dungeons we have. They all have a storymode, they all have 3-4 explore paths. Fotm is not that yet that doesn’t mean it doesnt’ have content to compete with a normal dungeon.

Fotm is definitely much different than a dungeon because it offers the devs a new way to put in content instead of creating an entirely new dungeon. They can just put in small bits of instanced content instead of an entire path.

The devs have even distinguished between dungeons/fractals in a recent interview. They even its preferrable for them to put in new fractals(2 years from now probably) compared to putting in another path or an entirely new dungeon(which they have never done). This interview obviously sparked enormous uproar in the dungeon community but thats irrelevant.

Zodiaci.3218:

I’m not “Making stuff up”, bloomin’ tossehs.
I never said the endgame was “Just added.” I said it “Opens up” when you reach 80.
Orr, Southsun, Drytop. Areas.
Fractals, (Say what you wish, I don’t care. They are dungeons, it’s really not hard.)
I’m not sure where you’re getting this “Dungeon Grinding” kitten from, I don’t do that very much, but different strokes, different folks, I guess. (Although since you hate it, maybe you shooouuulddn’t dooo it?)
Living World, it’s a new story campaign, I really don’t know how to be more clear.
The endgame does not kittening start at level 1, that’s just some sort of marketing thing, that does not count as endgame.
“Raids”. “Why do you raid?” “To get the best items.” “And what do you use those items for?” “TO RAID WITH”
I’m sorry. Clearly I’ve asked the wrong question, you all clearly view games as a set of features rather than an experience. You must get bored very easily, twitchy twitchy. What else did I expect from gamers?

P.S. If you are this bored of the actual game, then why are you going on a website that you do a kitten ton of reading related to the game on? That makes no sense.

Yes, I know, “It’s been there” isn’t really helping my case… but… IT HAS!
IT’S BEEN THERE SINCE LAUNCH!

It’s not the GAME’S fault that you got through it all, “There is none” and “I finished it.” are completely different things.

No, I’m not “New” to the game in any sense.

What a story.
So I asked on the forum “Why do you not consider this endgame” and half of them said that the things that I listed, which open up after level 80, do not count, and others just proclaimed I was “making them up”.
Others tried explaining to them why it does count, to which they can only respond with “No it doesn’t.” Or quote what THEIR definition of something is, rather than the actual, literal definiton.
They thought that since the things I’ve listed have already been done by them, I was making it up, and again, they put words in my mouth.
Apparently, since their definition of “endgame” has been done in OTHER games, it is automatically boring here, as they’ve done it already. It appears I was wrong to judge this game as an individual game, and should rather have judged it as an experience they’ve already had before in something entirely different.

This doesn’t need to be argumentative but when nearly everyone on here is telling you that you are wrong and exaggerating the state of endgame, then you should be persuaded to look at changing your opinion.

Yes, I agree, there are endgame zones. 3 zones in 2 years? Especially when one has already existed? Thats very subpar even for a game without a subscription fee. Just look at gw1.

No, a fractal is not equivalent to a dungeon no matter how you put it. This isn’t semantics, its the fact that dungeons as we know them consist of a story mode + explore paths(3-4). Fractals as a whole could be considered a dungeon yet individual paths are not.

I’ll reiterate what others have said on here. Its not that orr/drytop arn’t endgame zones or that fractals isn’t a source of endgame, its that these places of the game have been updated so poorly within the last 2 years. Fractals has been updated once since its release…ONCE! What does that tell you about the priority list of Anet? Along with the fact that we’ve had 2 small sized zones in 2 years. It tells you that they have almost everything besides the Living Story on low priority. The same goes for sPvP and WvW.

The still haven’t hit gold with the living story as endgame either. Temporary content didn’t work, and these living story instances won’t either simply because their replay-ability value isn’t anywhere close to that of say a zone or a dungeon(raid/etc)

rfdarko.4639:

It’s incorrect to say there have been no new dungeons since launch. And when you argue from a hyperbole, people are going to focus on that and tear it apart. So let’s stick to facts.

About 2 months after gw2’s launch, fractals of the mists were added. Whether or not you want to call it a dungeon, it fills the roll of challenging instanced 5 man content with unique skin rewards. This was an excellent addition, and made me incredibly excited about the direction endgame pve was headed.

Then the living story began. Over the course of 2013, 3 new dungeon paths were added. 2 were temporary, but they were cannibalized into fractal shards. Most of the dungeon content added during that year still exists.

Towards the end of the year, however, there were a number of decisions that soured the dungeon community. The biggest disappointment arguably was the fractured patch, which did not open up any higher tiers and reset personal level progression. Despite this, hard core groups rushed to the new 50 to compete for spots on the announced fractal leaderboard. This leaderboard still does not exist. The mistlock instabilities, which were touted as the reason for the overhaul, proved to be an annoyance at best and progress preventing at worse when certain instabilities and shards were combined. Few if any instabilities provided interesting, tatics changing challenges.

The second blow was the aetherpath, which promised to be permanent, but also replaced an existing dungeon path. We found out that forward-up would be deleted less then 24 hours before the patch went live, from a tangential remark in a dev post on a minor sub forum. This really soured the reception of the new path, which combined with some other problematic design decisions (I have a post about here) has made it one of the least popular dungeons paths.

Fast forward to 2014, through the conclusion of season one and the first chapter of season 2. So far, we have seen no new dungeon content. In a recent interview from a developer, we also learned that there are no new paths currently in the pipeline.

What we have here is a decline in focus on 5-man content, and seemingly a loss in connection with the desires of the dungeon community. We went from the promissing addition of fractals a mere 2 months into the games launch, to 2 good but temporary new dungeon paths, to 2 controversial reworks of existing content, to a 9 month dry spell with nothing to look forward to.

This post was a lot longer then I originally intended, but I don’t want the legitimate frustrations of dedicated pve players to be lost in exaggeration and hyperbole. Dungeon runners aren’t leaving for no reason, the trend is there and this past year has been a huge disappointment.

^ thank you for your wisdom.

Kaz.5430:

Zodiaci.3218:

I’d sincerely like to know where this rumor originated. No endgame? Is a new story campaign, giant map (and completion), crafting, a new set of dungeons, obtaining legendary weapons, and 3 new areas of the map opening up just not enough for you?
Really, where did this originate?

There seems to be group who are vocal on the forums who suffer from selective amnesia and denial.

For example, since the game has released there have been quite a few additional dungeons added, at least they would be considered dungeon in most games. However many players selectively chose to deny the existence of them, they consider a new dungeon path to not be a new dungeon (even though it would be if it had it’s own entrance), and of course Fractals of the Mist (and each individual fractal) is also “not a dungeon”.

If you look at the dungeons page on the Wiki, there are 9 dungeons in the game (including Fractals of the Mists). Those dungeons containing 42 different paths. Of those 42 paths, 10 of them (23.8%) didn’t exist at launch, but you’ll still hear people shouting that no new dungeons have been added.

This is true for “End Game” content in general, there has actually been a fair bit of End-Game content added, but you’ll never get some of the people on here to admit it. When you point it out to them you get a bizarre response, generally along the lines of “That doesn’t count because it should have been there since launch”. It might not have even been imagined at launch, but it should have been there anyway, so is not new.

You need to understand that the Living Story is not ‘New Storyline’, any new areas added are not ‘New Maps’ and any new words bosses are not ‘New World Bosses’. I’m pretty sure that anything added at all – unless it comes in the form of a boxed expansion – wont be considered new content by some people here, regardless of what it is, and even if it does come in a boxed expansion, there will probably be a group that denies it’s existence because “it should have been there from the start”.

My advice, would be to just enjoy the game, and not try to “understand” these forums.

Again, don’t sugarcoat things. Acting as if dungeons/fractals are actually an area of Anet’s interest is false. You can’t act as if one fractal is equivalent to an entire dungeon either. Thats flat our lying. Saying things like new dungeons have been added lol. I’ll give you the history of permanent content fractals/dungeon we’ve had in this game.

November 2012 – Fractal
October 2013 – New dungeon path(also erased one to make room)
November 2013 – Fractals update with new features and 3 new fractals and 2 new boss fractals.

Thats 3 updates to the entire area of dungeons/fractals in 2 years. Ye, thats real dedication to the endgame. The point is, Anet has many different avenues for where endgame could be developed, but they only focus on one. The living story tv show.

With the current state of the show, its nice to stop by each week and get yourself caught up with each episode, yet you find yourself usually watching each episode to see the cliffhanger at the end anyway. Then by the time you are done, you find no real reason to watch the episode again. Maybe when the season is finally finished you will decide to watch it from start to finish, but who knows when that will be.

You say things like there has been a decent amount of endgame content placed in game yet fail to back up these claims, or make them sound bigger than they actually are.

Zodiaci.3218:

I’d sincerely like to know where this rumor originated. No endgame? Is a new story campaign, giant map (and completion), crafting, a new set of dungeons, obtaining legendary weapons, and 3 new areas of the map opening up just not enough for you?
Really, where did this originate?

Why did you proceed to lie about what has actually been added to the game? A giant map? new set of dungeons? 3 new areas of a map?(which is dry top. The new areas are very small and looking at finished dry top as a whole, the entire map is the smallest in gw2 I think.).

Why did you mention legendaries as well? Thats been here since launch. You have no real argument here. The problem is half of what you listed doesn’t really constitute for endgame. Anet has tried to do something different for endgame has hasn’t found anything that has as much longevity as the normal endgame.

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.2098:

@ vayne

They(especially WvW) used to be much bigger but have gradually gotten smaller over time. Thats why they make up a smaller populus now. Archeage is actually killing WvW right now, I can say that because I play WvW actively and actually see a lot of people leaving. I don’t know if the players will come back but its the first time ive seen an exodus this large.

Eotm is a pretty enormous fail and exactly what its used for in game is quite ambiguous nowadays. Its main purpose is a map for people to stay in while queued for WvW but the map is so kittenous now that no serious WvW player would go there to play in the meantime while they wait. Its a very poor representation of WvW.

It became more of a place to karma train. Basically run around in circles for 8 hours capping keeps and avoiding the enemies. People did it to level, not because it was fun. not only is that incredibly boring, but its completely counter to what WvW is about. They could easily fix this by nerfing the exp and rewards you get in EOTM, yet that could give the zone almost no purpose whatsoever. Who knows.

Theres nothing wrong with putting an emphasis on PVE in the game, but Anets way about developing PVE content hasn’t always been good. Temporary content was a fail. They spent a year on that, the majority didn’t like it. Permanent content this year was better but has come at an incredibly slow pace(look at the first half of season 2 and how long of a break we have). Collections are fine. Its Anets way of getting people to go back and play the game theyve already explored 10 times within the last 2 years.

I strongly suspect that not being able to cast while moving will hamper a lot of people’s enjoyment of Archeage. The limits of the game for free players means most PvPers will end up having to subscribe.

It will definitely appeal to a certain type of player. But I suspect that a lot of people will fine it disappointed in the months ahead. I personally think it will end up pay to win and any serious PvPer will leave at that point.

I don’t think Archeage can actually replace wvw/gvg though. The main reason a lot of really dedicated players in wvw/gvg played was the combat system. Its not stale like other games tend to be(archeage). A lot of sPvPers stay for the same reason, a smooth combat system .

@ vayne

They(especially WvW) used to be much bigger but have gradually gotten smaller over time. Thats why they make up a smaller populus now. Archeage is actually killing WvW right now, I can say that because I play WvW actively and actually see a lot of people leaving. I don’t know if the players will come back but its the first time ive seen an exodus this large.

Eotm is a pretty enormous fail and exactly what its used for in game is quite ambiguous nowadays. Its main purpose is a map for people to stay in while queued for WvW but the map is so kittenous now that no serious WvW player would go there to play in the meantime while they wait. Its a very poor representation of WvW.

It became more of a place to karma train. Basically run around in circles for 8 hours capping keeps and avoiding the enemies. People did it to level, not because it was fun. not only is that incredibly boring, but its completely counter to what WvW is about. They could easily fix this by nerfing the exp and rewards you get in EOTM, yet that could give the zone almost no purpose whatsoever. Who knows.

Theres nothing wrong with putting an emphasis on PVE in the game, but Anets way about developing PVE content hasn’t always been good. Temporary content was a fail. They spent a year on that, the majority didn’t like it. Permanent content this year was better but has come at an incredibly slow pace(look at the first half of season 2 and how long of a break we have). Collections are fine. Its Anets way of getting people to go back and play the game theyve already explored 10 times within the last 2 years.

Vayne.8563:

Fernling.1729:

Vayne.8563:

Fernling.1729:

Very minor nitpick, but it would be 3rd on xfire. World of tanks as far as I know has always been considered an mmo. Not sure I would label it as one, but everyone else seems to. Its even won well known awards as being best mmo etc.

Your point still stands. As far as mmos go, its popular and far from dead.

MMORPGs are quite different from just MMOs. I use the abbreviation because it’s tiring to type MMORPG> World of Tanks is an MMO but it’s a completely different genre of game than WoW or Guild Wars 2, and really can’t be listed in the same list.

I know it’ll happen again, but I know I’ll forget the RPG when talking about MMOs. This is part of the problem with playing these games for a long time. It’s easy forget there are new types of MMOs out there.

I completely understand and agree. I didn’t really think of It like that.
Probably why its hard for me to call it an mmo. I typically think of mmorpg being the only type of mmo.
Wot is definitely not an mmorpg.

As gaming moves forward, I think we’re not only going to see a lot of new types of MMOs, but we’re going to a lot of MMOs that cross genre boundaries. Star Citizen is set up to be a space flight simulator and an MMO with some RPG stuff in it as well. I’m terribly worried it’ll be pay to win, though.

On topic: I’m really having trouble seeing how anyone can think this game is dying. Not as successful as it might be…maybe. Not as successful as WoW, definitely. Not mainstream? Sure. I would consider this a niche game (for a fairly large niche) Not successful?

I don’t understand how people can come to that conclusion.

I know certain areas of this game are dying and have been progressively(wvw/spvp). The recent announcements about no plans for future dungeons alienated more of the community specifically the dungeon runners. Its honestly surprising this game is doing as well as it is, especially as of lately.

I don’t think it will ever have a huge drop in population, but that it will be gradual. At least if guild wars 2 keeps heading in the direction is now. After 2 years you can’t keep saying “no they have something big planned just watch”. You have to be realistic, any player since launch would be. There absolutely no reason to believe anything expansion sized going on in the background.

Galen Grey.4709:

MFoy.3284:

What’s bothering me most is Diablo got an expansion, ESO got an expansion, Aion got an expansion, Rift got an expansion, EverQuest got an expansion, ArcheAge is getting an expansion, Wildstar is getting an expansion etc. What do we get? a couple of weeks in a new zone the size of a coat closet and a Feature Patch that breaks all kinda game play. To top it off about 80% were “features” no one asked for. Like all the nerfs. Again. As usual.

Moreover, lately we get a steady drop off of new items in the Gem Store. Add to all this ArenaNet only seems to pay lip service to providing players with some kinda roadmap for the future of the game. It kinda makes you feel as if all they’ve got up their sleeve is their arm. Pretty much all the talk we get from them is a form of “Smiling and Nodding”. You should go over to http://massively.joystiq.com/ to see Guild Wars 2 in perspective to other games and the companies supporting them.

Now, before you jump all over me with the banal “..but but Living Story” and “Why do you still play?” replies let me point out: that doesn’t answer the question.

Where are we and where are we headed?

we dont know if we’re getting an expansion or not, they’re not saying anything either way.

also some corrections… Diablo is not really an MMO and their only revenue stream is expansions.

Also as far as I know and I am pretty sure about it but please feel free to correct me if I am wrong most of the games you mentioned, mainly ESO, Wildstar and Archeage have so far not announced any expansions at all.

Its not so much an expansion as it is expansion like content. Anet has promised things from the LS, many things that have not been delivered? What would an LS with expansion like content look like?

First, an ideal expansion would have -

New zones(say 4), New content for the places like fractals/dungeon/guildmissions, a New Class or Race(preferrably Class imo), New world bosses would be interesting, New skills(utilities for the first expansion), A new weapon combination for each class(thieves get axe, ele gets shortbow, ranger gets rifle, etc).

This would be the content side of things. The featues(big features like april feature pack but still bigger features could be done like guidl halls) are for the feature pack which would rotate with the living story.

Ideally, the living story lasts 12 releases(6 months of releases) over the period of 1 year. They would have 1 break that wouldn’t last 3 months long. This means we’d have 6 releases on each side of the break, so all the expansion content I mentioned would span that time period.

As for the break, I hate breaks yet if you want a feature/content cycle, there needs to be one. Also I think holidays/wvw seasons are not and will never be a valid excuse. Like I said, if thats true, then its going to really screw up your content schedule. Anyway, as for the break, I think 2 months is a very reasonable period of time if the content cycles each time had a few more releases and actually provided more content.

The problem with this break is that the break is too long for the amount of content we got. Tbh we didn’t get that much content the first time around. We’ve seen bits of expansions, but not a living story cycle that continuously pumps out prepared expansion like content.

The first release of the second season was the biggest release they had BY FAR. That should be par for every release. Im not saying every release needs a zone but something on par with that amount of effort or around there is ideal.

Scandi.5693:

Dawdler.8521:

You know a raid isnt a guild raid if its a pug raid. That’s generally why guild raids dont work together with others.

And if people cant stand alone and fight for their guild… they probably have no reason to play the game anymore. Fighting for your server may sound nice and all, but I’m guessing most peeps are in it for the glory, not the server. There’s a reason why guilds jump all over the place.

A public map with limited slots is not the place to conduct guild only raids, it hurts everyone else on the map. If a guild wants ‘guild only’ events, they should do it elsewhere.

Yes it is. They bought the game, they can do what they want. They arn’t violating the contract of the game in anyway. Thats the way they want to play WvW. They play for fights and challenge themselves as a group to get better. Until something is implemented in game to make this possible without affecting PPT, they have every right.

Vayne.8563:

2014 included some of the best and most popular content updates since launch in my opinion. The only problem is they’re no longer in the game.

I don’t find the year disappointing. However, I do acknowledge that due to the release of China, we have less stuff. Large undertakings like that are good for the game long term, but people need to be more patient, because no company can take on a big project like that and keep up the release pace from the first year. I don’t feel it’s reasonable to respect them to.

Since China what you’re seeing is all catch up. Things like the mega server and the NPE are necessary, at least in Anet’s mind, the move the game forward.

I hope most players aren’t that impatient, because my gut instinct is that it’s going to get much better moving forward.

Most players who have been here since beta/launch have a reason to be impatient. They have waited 2 years and a lot of the time its riding the hypetrain with little return. With the long hiatus of season 2 and this feature pack, I think people have more than enough reason to be upset.

What upsets me most is how much this feature pack was hyped. We literally had a section called “Improvements Galore” which listed 3 or so minor changes to the game that could have been snuck in any living story update.

Mike O Brien.4613:

I know some are concerned about whether ArenaNet is communicating with you and listening and responding to your feedback. As you saw with yesterday’s announcement, we do. All of us at ArenaNet play the game with you, chat with you and read your forum posts, and work on the things that we think will most delight and entertain you.

We’ve set a clear policy in the past year: we don’t talk speculatively about future development. We don’t want to string you along. Creating fun is an uncertain business: sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t; sometimes we go back to the drawing board over and over before we get something right. If we make optimistic promises and then can’t deliver on them, everyone suffers. So when we attend a trade show or give an interview, we’re there to talk about what we’re getting ready to ship, not to speculate on what we might ship someday.

Don’t read that as meaning that we don’t want to talk with you about the longer-term roadmap. The intention of the CDI threads is to talk with you about the roadmap. We want to talk design philosophy with you and hear how you want to see the game evolve. When those discussions trigger development, we’ll work internally until we have something we’re proud of before we’ll announce it.

A lot of the questions I’ve seen posted this week are as simple as this: does ArenaNet have an agenda to never do something? That’s almost never the case, and if it is the case you deserve to know and we’ll make sure we get more clear. In general the simple truth is this: when we’re not currently working on something, it’s because we’re working on something else instead that we think is more important for the game and community.

Our developers post on these forums on a voluntary basis, and in addition to developers, we have a community team who can clarify and be the bridge between players and developers. They’re ready to engage you on these topics. And I know it’s hard for the community team to engage players across all the forums and sites where these questions are being discussed, so I’m going to support the team in consolidating and focusing as necessary, so that we can be clear to the community where you can go to get a response.

See you in-game,
Mike O’Brien

Personally I think the policy you’ve set in place is having repercussions that are hurting your game immensely. Mainly that when you shelter us from what you’re developing until its nearly released, you are sheltering yourselves from the criticism/assistance we could give you on its development.

What happens right now is that a big system/features is revamped/released and its not exactly pleasing to the community(like the new trait system in the april feature pack of the NPE in the september feature pack) and then its too late to make the big changes you need to the system because its nearing release for it. Then what follows is the community being stuck with the poorly designed system for months and months and months until its fixed again. Thats a very poor way to go about things imo.

zeromius.1604:

Well this all boils down to wanting content produced at a faster rate. You have to consider that regardless of whether ArenaNet releases content bi-weekly, monthly, or even bi-monthly, the rate at which they produce this content does not change. If you wait longer then you do get more content but it would have been the same amount of content had you waited less. The only caveat is that you get smaller chunks of it. Let’s say ArenaNet releases 30 hours worth of content in patch that takes 3 months to develop.

• If they release a patch every month you would get 10 hours of content each month
• If they release a patch every 2 weeks you would get 5 hours of content every 2 weeks
• After 3 months, regardless of how they choose to do their releases, you still end up with 30 hours worth of content
• The question now is, are you willing to wait for it?

Of course, your issue is that you want ArenaNet to do more in a given amount of time. I wouldn’t say that’s unfair but you should consider that content doesn’t just grow on trees. There is a lot of time and effort that goes into producing it. More time has to be spent on actually making it just right. I’m sure you feel that it is your right to expect more but until you put yourself in the developers’ shoes you won’t understand that a product can’t be made with the snap of your fingers.

I think overrall so far, if you compare season 1 to season 2, at least for when bi-weekly updates started for season 1, that we got more content within the time period now since season 2 elapsed in season 1 than we did in season 2(sorry if thats confusing I worded it bad maybe). The difference is that the content during season 1 was predominantly temporary. The problem now is that we receive much less content, yet its permanent, yet it doesn’t have a lot of replayability value to it.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Four “biweekly” episodes of LS every six months.

From july to what would be(at least my guess) the end of the season in mid december, yes, pretty close to that.

For me, I really liked the beginning of season 2. I like having new zones(finally) and at least some form of permanent content. The biggest problem I have is the lack of replayability of Anets newfound permanent content(living story instances). They are exciting to do once and even in the 3rd chapter which wasn’t that well structured, the only reason I did it was to see the ending. The easymode achievements and poor rewards don’t make it any better.

The other problem I have is Anets apparent denial to do any other form of permanent content. See, content can be permanent and not necessarily have replay-ability. Fractals/dungeons have an enormous amount of replay-ability yet we all know Anet’s position on that….

Overrall I don’t think anyone expected to have such enormous gaps/fillers between content releases. Its what makes season 2 nearly as kitteneason 1 in my opinion. If they took only one break like they did in season 1, I think overrall this season would have been a major improvement.

Behellagh.1468:

… sigh …

Jan 21 – Apr 14: End of LS1
Apr 15: First Feature Pack
May 20th – Jun 30th: Festival of the Four Winds
Jul 1 – Aug 26+: LS2 Part 1
Sept 9: Feature Pack 2

You really shouldn’t make up stuff that can be so easily disputed. 3 month breaks? 4 to 5 months between living story?

First off, I said new content, not rehashed content or features. So features packs nor rehashed festivals/holidays don’t count. The first feature pack was quite good, the 2nd was no doubt smaller.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

I don’t know if I agree with the op….. but the one place where gating really should be implemented, PvP, has no gating whatsoever.

Why are players being gated in pve so much….. when someone who has an account that is minutes old can queue for ranked tPvP or sqPvP?

Doesn’t Anet realize that peoples’ ratings are getting destroyed in ranked pvp by little Timmy who just got GW2 for his birthday gift?

If you are going to put up gates where they aren’t needed….. at least put them up where they belong, first.

/rant

In response to your comment about PVE. Its because in order to create a sense of progression, its easier to gate content that already exists, than to create new content. I don’t agree with it at all but its something thats been done a lot in gw2.

So the entire year of 2014 has been full of more rehashed content and breaks than actual content. After the departure of living story season 1, we waited something liek 4-5 months for the next living story, when it only ended up lasting around 6 weeks? 4 updates only. After this, we’ve had a smaller sized feature pack and another 3 months break.

Holidays like the upcoming halloween which is roughly 2 months after the midseason break or other events(WvW tournament) are not valid reasons to stop putting out new content. If this is true, then for the rest of gw2’s history, the majority of the year will be obstructed by breaks, holidays, and wvw tournaments. How was this not foreseen when scheduling the living story?

Speaking of holidays, if im right, we can expect the 2nd(most likely 2nd half) of the living story to only last 4 releases as well. Because 6 weeks after we return, there is another holiday(wintersday).

If thats the case, I don’t and hope there won’t be a season 3 and if there is, it desperately needs to be restructured because of the lack of content we get in seasons.

warriorjrd.8695:

SkylightMoon.2098:

dancingmonkey.4902:

SkylightMoon.2098:

Is not so much their rapid fire, but their stupidly strong autoattack. All long, medium, and short range, they are all too strong. Im not too opposed to keeping the long range damage “similar” to what it was before, but the medium and short range needed no buff. They should have stayed the same or have been nerfed actually.

There is no reason for autoattacks on any class to hit 2-3k on average. Thats broken. Especially for a skill that is an autoattack and fires so fast.

define too strong ???

By the way, where did you come up with that number? I can do 2k+ auto attacks on every profession in this game with the right weapon. So if every profession is equally “broken”, as you claim, what is the problem?

SkylightMoon.2098:

lol so many rangers running to defend their broken class. okay ill let you enjoy yourself until next patch.

Actually I have leveled all professions to 80 within the first 6 months of release. My rangers is probably 4th or so on my list of time I play it. It is not a matter of rangers running to defend there profession. As I see it, it is the informed running to educate the uninformed. For example, complaining that a auto attack damage level is over powered, when it is a level that any profession can obtain on an auto attack, seems very uneducated to me.

autoattacks that hit that hard are broken, at least when they do at nearly every range. other professions can hit that hard if they are full glass but not at every range, only ranger. its the combination of speed, damage, and distance that make the autoattack over powered. one of them needs to be nerfed.

Funny thing is, is that before patch you would maybe do 500 damage less. The buff to lb AA was minimal, in fact, they didn’t even touch the damage at max range. So I find it funny that people are only complaining now, when lb AA did the same damage at max range. I guess bad players will always have something to complain about, because god forbid it’s actually them that’s the problem.

lol. They buffed damage at short ranged and medium range, which wasn’t necessary.

dancingmonkey.4902:

SkylightMoon.2098:

Is not so much their rapid fire, but their stupidly strong autoattack. All long, medium, and short range, they are all too strong. Im not too opposed to keeping the long range damage “similar” to what it was before, but the medium and short range needed no buff. They should have stayed the same or have been nerfed actually.

There is no reason for autoattacks on any class to hit 2-3k on average. Thats broken. Especially for a skill that is an autoattack and fires so fast.

define too strong ???

By the way, where did you come up with that number? I can do 2k+ auto attacks on every profession in this game with the right weapon. So if every profession is equally “broken”, as you claim, what is the problem?

SkylightMoon.2098:

lol so many rangers running to defend their broken class. okay ill let you enjoy yourself until next patch.

Actually I have leveled all professions to 80 within the first 6 months of release. My rangers is probably 4th or so on my list of time I play it. It is not a matter of rangers running to defend there profession. As I see it, it is the informed running to educate the uninformed. For example, complaining that a auto attack damage level is over powered, when it is a level that any profession can obtain on an auto attack, seems very uneducated to me.

autoattacks that hit that hard are broken, at least when they do at nearly every range. other professions can hit that hard if they are full glass but not at every range, only ranger. its the combination of speed, damage, and distance that make the autoattack over powered. one of them needs to be nerfed.

I didnt’ say rangers are overpowered either, they are not. its just certain aspects of the longbow that are. rifle damage is very similar to longbow, in some ways, but there are many reasons why its not viable. the hardest hitting skill that you will consistently land on rifle is volley. the autoattack is awful in damage, unlike the ranger longbow autoattack. killshot and rapid fire are comparable in damage except one is so predictably easy to dodge wihle the other can still hit you for around 2 arrows after you dodge the beginning of it.

lol so many rangers running to defend their broken class. okay ill let you enjoy yourself until next patch.

Halbatros.5173:

Oh…I remember those necro dagger autos for 2.1k every 0’75 seconds… wha? You don’t? I do.

ye and its pretty easy to stay away from a necromancer in that range because of how slow they are and vulnerable to cc. rangers hit like a truck from every range. lol the ranger community will defend themselves until the nerf. enjoy it while you can, because it will be shortlived.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

SkylightMoon.2098:

Is not so much their rapid fire, but their stupidly strong autoattack. All long, medium, and short range, they are all too strong. Im not too opposed to keeping the long range damage “similar” to what it was before, but the medium and short range needed no buff. They should have stayed the same or have been nerfed actually.

There is no reason for autoattacks on any class to hit 2-3k on average. Thats broken. Especially for a skill that is an autoattack and fires so fast.

Lololololol… lol… lolololol. LOL.
Did I mention lol?
The AA gets weaker as closer you are to the ranger. Simply run towards him… shouldn’t be that hard. If you are 600 units away from or closer the AA wont even deal half the damage…

The autoattack hits like a truck at every distance, and it shouldn’t.

Is not so much their rapid fire, but their stupidly strong autoattack. All long, medium, and short range, they are all too strong. Im not too opposed to keeping the long range damage “similar” to what it was before, but the medium and short range needed no buff. They should have stayed the same or have been nerfed actually.

There is no reason for autoattacks on any class to hit 2-3k on average. Thats broken. Especially for a skill that is an autoattack and fires so fast.

A lot of people are still having problems in wvw/spvp. Lots of warping/dc. The ESL cup should at least bring some attention to that if not the hundreds of complaints from WvW. It looks pretty embarrassing when we have no word from Anet on this. A slight acknowledgement of the problem would at least help.

Well the games rated T so your son shouldn’t be playing anyway.

Seriously though. You’re actually using your 12 year old son to gain attention on Anet’s mistakes this patch? Pathetic.

Guys, this is about guild logistics and qol. I see a lot of people suggesting things not related to this whatsoever.

Cufufalating.8479:

@Skylight

2.5s actually. Rangers dedicate a 60s CD utility to produce the short of burst you are thinking of.. which again.. Warriors or nearly any class can do with their burst they just choose not to because they want other things.

nice try but with a trait its less than that. all you really have to do now to be good at ranger to kill any light class or even some medium classes is press 2 and then 3 and then 1. thats it. its the new dummy class.

They buffed ranger into a kitten level class. The power ranger spec is literally summarized by pressing 1, 2, and 3. Rapid fire is broken and not comparable to killshot at all. First, both hit like a truck, except one has a consistent cooldown while the other doesn’t because it requires adrenaline.

Also, its the fact that avoiding a killshot is 10 times easier than rapid fire. There is no windup animation for it, it simply starts and does about 10k damage in little over a second. Thats the definition of broken.

Zopeau.2539:

This new method highly discourages alts. I in know way want to endure this much gated content and hand holding after already leveling my main to 80. I mean I do have the level 20 scrolls, but still, I just don’t see the logic in this new method.

Ye I agree. I have no motivation to go through this process after reading through patch notes and viewing videos of people trying out the new leveling process.

As a veteran player of the game, the new player experience is incredibly alienating. Ive played since beta, and yet I have to go through the exact same tutorial like experience designed for new players because the Devs thought that new players were too stupid to learn simple things like dodge or find vistas?

The entire experience is the absolute opposite of what makes/made leveling in gw2 fun and what makes every leveling experience in any game fun: FREEDOM. This is an incredibly gated, restrictive experience.

Im Mudbone.1437:

Astral Projections.7320:

“….the leveling system was changed to be more friendly to new users. The Forum posters did not like it. They did not like it one bit. But instead of simply going to the options menu and turning the new system off,….”

How do you turn it off then?

^^^^What he said.

^

This much gating in the leveling process is awful. I like the old system because of how much freedom I had.

Its funny because it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Gw2 at launch had no endgame. So even if people made it to 80, they would have quit within an hour. It isn’t much better now, only slighty.

Im really curious to see the results of this poll. There should even be in game polls like this so Anet can figure out what the playerbase wants even more. Looking at statistics of who spends the most time where only tells you so much.

Im pretty confident the poll results will lean in the direction of expansion, other parts of the game need content(spvp, wvw, dungeons), less living story please. Yet I doubt thats enough to convince Anet to make a game the players want lol.

Yes. Less and less people play WvW. A lot migrating to archeage. Whether or not they’ll come back, I dno. Id think so because I dont think AA can replace the feel of WvW in gw2.

However the WvW playerbase deserves much better than what Anet can give it. They say they care about their playerbase but they can rarely be asked to comment on this subforum or actually add content/features in a reasonable amount to the game mode.

EU’s is practically unplayable. Half my raid is dcing several times, along with other servers raids that we’re fighting. Huge huge HUGE warps. I love how transparent Anet is with us on problems like this.