Guild Wars 2

Other than paragraphs, let’s say you get the chance tomorrow to ask a dev a question… do you think asking them something like “do you really care about your players or are you just trying to test how much we can resist before we dump this game once and for all” would really foster change and discussion about the game, or put them on the defensive and/or just consider the post to be a troll or flame baiting and just ignore it completely? (I’ll bet the second one is the most likely reaction on their part)… which isn’t good, IMHO, because your feedback and your complains are 100% valid, but presented in a way that will most likely get the whole post ignored, if not outright deleted.

You say that you hope that post and more like those help change the way things go inside Anet, but TBH putting myself on their shoes, posts like that would just instead foster a “us Vs. them” mindset instead of a “let’s all work together” one.

Personally, I think it’s as good time as any to revive an old post by Josh Foreman:

1. It’s most helpful if you state your request or actionable item at the top. Then your reasons below. This helps us find and reference your post, pass it around for discussion, etc.

2. Don’t assume the reason that things are the way they are due to developer incompetence, laziness, apathy, stubbornness, greed, selfishness, lust or any of the other deadly sins. There are other possibilities beside developer personal defects. “Just” changing one thing usually has ramifications on other things that are hard to anticipate. An MMO is an incredibly complex web of interdependencies, and tweaking any individual part runs the risk of breaking many other parts. That’s why we don’t typically jump to instant ‘fixes’ (even though it’s tempting!) and why things that seem like obvious problems can take a lot longer to address than many would intuitively think they should. There is no MAKE IT WORK button that we refuse to push out of spite. Even if that were the case, it just doesn’t make sense to insult the party you are requesting something from. In what part of the real world does that ever work? No one wants to ‘slap you in the face’ or make the game less fun. We love you guys, and are thrilled that people play our game!

3. Don’t assume that we can just rearrange resources to work on your particular issue. Most of our teams are very specialized. It takes a long time to build the experience necessary to be a good productive member of the PvP, Story, Systems, or any other team. Just because we have X programmers working on bug fixes and Y working on Gameplay improvements, doesn’t mean we can arbitrarily move those numbers around. It’s just not that simple.

4. Please stop calling us liars when we fail to implement something we intended to months ago, but for some technical, balance, or other reason found it to be untenable. We can’t be very open about our plans if every word we say is taken as a contractual obligation. Imagine if every word you said to your friends were recorded and played back at the most inopportune time in order to make you look like a fool. You’d probably clam up pretty quickly. Making an MMO, especially one as experimental as GW2 requires… experimenting. Requires making plans, following through, finding dead ends, back-tracking and trying something else. Sometimes that means that we will state a clear goal, test it internally and find out it just won’t work. The idea that this means we don’t have a clear vision is wrong. There is a difference between a core vision for our design principles, and the implementation of specific systems. We are very clear about the mountain we want to scale, but whether we do it in 4×4, on foot, with a grappling hook, or a hot air balloon are all contingent on the terrain we discover as we progress.

5. You are not “all players”. Please stop saying “Players want X” just because you want X. The fact is that players want X, Y, Z, and the rest of the alphabet, and most of those desires conflict with each other. And I guarantee you, anything that the vast majority of the players want, we (as players of our own game) also want. If you don’t understand why something the vast majority of players and the devs want is not implemented, see the above points 2-4. I have a people-pleaser mentality, so this is one of the hardest pills for me to swallow as a developer. I want EVERYONE to be happy. Unfortunately, the rules of the real world make that impossible.

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Collaborative-Development/page/20#post3007420

Mark, I have a friend who works as a lead at a major MMO company. It’s his third MMO company (not his fault the first two folded). He designed the game mechanic I most love in the current MMO, which I felt that way about even before learning it was his baby! I’ve heard enough to know just what you have to put up with and how hard it is to soldier on in the face of constant attacks on something you’ve poured your heart into.

So yes, please know that some of us out here know you’ve worked insane hours for the pure love of it, and cared about the quality of all pieces big and small of your product. I may not agree with parts of it coughRNGskinscoughcough but I will never question your dedication or hard work. As I’m not a game designer and even suck at any attempt to min-max a single character, I can’t claim my disagreement with parts of your implementation has nearly as much merit as your choices in how to make it all work.

Thank you, and all your colleagues. You’ve put out a kick-feline product and any other MMO I’ve tried since has had some good parts but a lot of frustration when it doesn’t have the GW2 good parts.

People seem to focus on the changes that support their point of view:

• There are major balance changes to all 8 profs. Everyone would like more, but frequent posters in the prof subforums seem pleased with a lot of the changes.
• There are changes to sPvP. I don’t play, so I can’t speak to how good they are, but they don’t sound like simple fixes.
• There’s a new combat log that is supposed to cover everything. That’s huge, in my opinion, and not any sort of simple change.
• Siege Disablers and Golem Mastery will have a big impact on WvW, although not anything that will change the current “coverage uber alles” meta. The new tournament forum is a lot different from those we had before, so that might be great and might not be. OTOH, it’s only four weeks, so we’ll find out more quickly this time.
• Changes to commander. I agree that was overhyped by ANet — account bound and new colors will be really helpful, but that won’t change the game. It will add a lot of untried commanders and it will make it easier for stellar leaders to shine, but it hardly constitutes “big changes.”
• Megaserver Guilds: this is huge and people have asked for it since the world-bound influence system was introduced. Improving the experience for joining g-mish and destroying unpopulated maps is also big. (Perhaps the OP was submitted before this was announced.)

There are a lot of important changes coming down and we don’t even know half of the ones that will be covered on the main website, never mind all the other stuff that we’ll find in the feature build.

Now, that might not be the content that some people want and it might not address individual concerns, but I, for one, am really happy about these, especially considering I don’t have to pay a cent to get them.

Flytrap.8075:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Tada, and we see yet again just why the devs won’t (can’t) talk to us.

Good job guys! Keep it up!

Someone has to counterbalance the white knights.

A term to inaccurately describe those that don’t agree with you, nothing more. Gotta love the way people label others ….

Tada, and we see yet again just why the devs won’t (can’t) talk to us.

Good job guys! Keep it up!

minbariguy.7504:

tolunart.2095:

Players have a tendency to take an offhand comment from a “red” post and turn it into a guarantee carved into the side of a mountain in fifty-foot high letters.

Hyperbole.

Some people do take comments as “promises”, I’m not disputing that. But I would argue that it is not the majority of players that do this. In fact, for every post by someone who mentions a “promised” feature, there are often four or five responding posts that point out that nothing was promised. This leads me to believe that this problem is not as insurmountable as people would like to imply.

Bottom line is that if someone interprets general information as a “promise”, that is their own problem. Neither the devs nor the rest of us are responsible for that. That is not a good excuse to have a company policy that hinders the developers’ relationship with the majority of the player community that is perfectly capable of understanding the difference between a preliminary overview of a developing feature and, as you put it, “a guarantee carved into the side of a mountain in fifty-foot high letters.”

Slight exaggeration, sarcastic humor. I try to avoid taking these things too seriously. When I do that, infractions tend to follow.

However, a year and a half after an offhand comment about a “precursor scavenger hunt” that was never guaranteed to appear, people still post about it as though the company betrayed the players or something. Today in one of the “red” posts I read that blogs about upcoming features were discontinued because of this kind of behavior.

Those who dare to point out the obvious are attacked and insulted, labelled “white knights” and company shills for daring to contradict the ignorant, and the average player still doesn’t know what’s going on despite specific announcements shortly before content is released. Most players ignore the forums, trolls and serial complainers are drawn to them like moths to a flame, and a few individuals who try to maintain a reasonable balance are vulnerable to character assassinations.

Going back to the way it used to be is just throwing more wood on the fire. It’s not going to make the trolls go away, it won’t make players who ignore the announcements suddenly start paying attention, and it won’t calm anyone who is upset when their pet peeve is not addressed quickly enough for thier liking.

as a player who is, for the most part, quite happy with how the game stands currently.

I have my problems with the core game, some of the stuff that’s been added in the past, and some of the things that have happened in LS2. But for a long time now, I think that everything that has been implemented into the game has been, overall, overwhelmingly positive.

So, I feel the need to state this because the community is going absolutely bonkers right now, and I’m afraid that they’ll cause a kneejerk reaction that I don’t want to see:

• I don’t want expansions
• I want more temporary content mixed with permanent content and the continuation of the living world as the main feature of the game throughout its lifetime
• I want more zones (and dungeons and stuff!) just like what we’ve seen in Dry Top, which has been 100% fantastic. Season 2 in terms of the quality of the content has been stellar.
• I don’t mind if the devs are quiet. When they DO deliver things, they are usually good.
• I still trust in the GW2 and ArenaNet ideal to be innovative and to stick to your guns when it comes to good ideas. The Living World is going to have a huge impact on the MMO industry, but only if it continues for GW2’s entire lifetime.

I wrote this because the people who are losing their minds over an interview are being extremely loud right now, to the point where one might think the entire playerbase thinks that way. This is not true. Those of us who enjoy the game and have been enjoying it for years are still in-game. And we do not want to be forgotten. We want the game to keep improving in the direction it has been going in the past year, not changing course to the old, stale industry standard.

And so I am going to leave this post here and go back to playing the game instead of arguing about it.

Nerelith.7360:

I think this is the OP seeking and finding numbers to back his personal desire. That he is Playing a popular game.

This sounds to me, a lot like you are projecting what “you think” is my motivation, in order to fulfill your need to be right in your debate with Vayne.

Unfortunately, you are wrong on both counts.

One of my respected colleagues in the industry posted the original article on LinkedIn, without specific reference to any of the games on either the Raptr or Overwolf lists.

I am a fan of Guild Wars 2, and as Vayne astutely observes, quite sick of wading through streams of anecdotal insults which have become “fact” about the game, by repetition and not by truth.

He is also correct in his assumption that I posted this, not to justify my own interest in the game, but to spread some positive “fact” about the game.

The forum falls to the lowest common denominator because of the bullies who keep repeating their BS drive the pragmatic contributors to give up and come back only to read patch notes.

This is why it has been stated repeatedly by developers, in this forum, that the apparent public consensus in the forums on any particular topic does in no way guarantee representation by the broader audience. There is a clear bias.

There is a clear bias in the"Overwolf" poll: it does not reflect games which do not lend themselves to a need for conference-call communication tools.

As for the other various attempts to discredit the information I offered up… i’m rolling my eyes.

Wait, so posting a lot on an internet forum for a game and arguing in favor of that game makes you a suspect for being an undercover employee? What exactly are “fans” then?

Not that Vayne even sounds like some kind of “fanboy” to me. I see what he’s doing and I understand it because I’ve done it before; he’s fighting for an ideal (in this case, treating people like people and being realistic). He probably doesn’t have any investment beyond that. One doesn’t need any investment beyond that.

What you guys are doing by saying that he is an undercover Anet employee is called “Circumstantial Ad Hominem.” Rather than addressing his arguments independent of his motivations, you’re trying to destroy his credibility, so that his arguments will be destroyed in the process. It is asinine and childish.

If his arguments are incorrect, you need only demonstrate how.

So I never come to these forums, and I am not a regular player. But I gotta leave a thank you here to Arenanet and all the people that figured out how Season 2 was going to work and how it all came to fruition.

The releases so far have been some of the most fun I’ve had playing in any game for a long time.

While Season 1 had really nice ideas behind it, i think a lot of people can agree it just didn’t ‘work’. It felt rushed and it was always arguably unfair if you couldnt get it done in time. The story wasn’t well paced either.

But so far in season 2 we are getting a crazy good amount of content. Each chapter has so much great dialogue and story in it that I’m actually enthralled finding out what happened. I’m so much more in the story of the world now. I was expecting it to end at every turn but it just kept going and a new story section would keep me exploring.

The new map Dry Top is unique and beautiful as the rest of Tyria and the method of drip feeding the players the unfolding world story is I think a brilliant solution to a ‘living world’.

I know many MMOs struggle finding the balance of levelling content and end game. And GW2 honestly felt like it was one of those MMOs. Once you finished the story, this game didn’t feel as well designed for end game (in my opinion). But with season 2, we now have ‘levelling content’ as a PART of our end game. I think it’s amazing that the developers can achieve that and I hope it stands as an example for many more games in the world to try and copy.

GREAT job Anet team. You’ve come up with an amazing system and amazing content and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

tldr;
Season 2 has solved nearly all the issues I had with Season 1. It has an amazing level and quantity of content in each story stage and it’s well written so I am more interested in the lore. I think the developers need to hear a thank you from me. So, Thank you Thanks for making such an awesome game that gives so much more to the players than other games do

This argument is like arguing over how much you hate Burger King’s fries, but everything else is delicious.

They’re called dynamic events in game. Whether you believe that or not is irrelevant. It is one part of a very large game. I enjoy them for the fact that I’ve been playing since launch and there are STILL events I’ve come across that I haven’t seen before.

Once again, if you are still here, trolling about the “manifesto” and other garbage, you need to just leave.

Obviously you can craft another duplicate legendary to receive the title. But obviously you wont’ do it because you think it is totally not worth it.

So if you think it is totally not worth it to craft a duplicate legendary just for title, why bother arguing against it.

It never was a bad game, so… no?

Comparisons to other games are fine, but they should ultimately stay relevant to Guild Wars 2. Since this has turned more into a discussion about Mass Effect, I am assuming direct control to close this thread.

You know, I get what OP is saying, but is there some kind of MMO out there that I’ve never heard of that has completely new content available every single day?

Because honestly what it sounds like is that OP wants each LS release to fill an entire two week’s worth of content so by the time the next one comes out he can move on to the next one without ever having to go back to old content.

I’ve played pretty much every major MMO and whenever there was an expansion I would play for two-three weeks, hit the new level cap and complete all of the new dungeons save for probably a raid, at which point the next 6month-1yr ends up with me playing the same raids/dungeons/content over and over until the next expansion, which can also be completed in a matter of weeks. That’s how it has been done in every other MMO.

Why is GW2 being held to some ridiculous standard where each partial update needs to completely occupy players’ time for a full two weeks when most full expansions barely occupy people that long—and that’s with a full blown paid for with real money expansion.

To be fair, literally everything added this update i loved.
The epic space time travel seeing everything.. i wish we had a gemstore item to get back in there… i LOVED it.

The weapon department did a fantastic job, I love the black lions ley line skin, And the bug hunting weapons are very very cool especially the way on how to aquire them.

Thanks Anet, Thanks for making me have your game in my playlist.
I will now proceed with trying to find that unidentified bug!

But this really has been a great update.

How are the monocle, adventurer’s headpieces, gas mask, and rucksack steampunk?

Monocles are historically associated with the “upper crust” or wealthy folks. When I think of monocles, I think of Count Von Count and Oswald Cobblepot, actually.

The Adventurer’s headpieces are just plain goggles and a bandana.

The gas mask looks far more sci-fi than steampunk.

And the rucksack is… well, a rucksack. A bunch of bags, a bowl of crystals, and an inexplicable toucan. TBH, it makes me think more of the junk lady in The Labyrinth.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

there’s a bit too many revealing outfits, and not enough practical armors.

Sorry, but I find it entirely ridiculous every time someone uses the word “practical” in this context.

Need I remind you of what we tend to be fighting? People with guns, swords, explosives, and magic, giants, monsters, even dragons.

What kind of armour do you really think is going to be practical?

If the Shadow Behemoth slams his claw down on you, it doesn’t matter whether you’re wearing full plate mail or a bikini. You are going to be a pancake.

In fact, the bikini would be the far more practical outfit in that situation, because realistically, the full plate mail would make it a lot harder to dodge, while the bikini would offer nothing in the way of weight or resistance. A robe would be the least practical of all, because it doesn’t even offer the minor protection full plate mail would offer, and would practically make you trip over your own clothing, putting evasion out of the question as well.

Realistically, if your character is wearing light armour (being cloth) against things with swords, guns, explosives, magic, giant claws, and nasty, big, pointy teeth, the most practical armour would be that which won’t get in the way of your movement, because your best defense would be not getting hit at all (barring an exceptional offense). Tripping over an ankle-lenth robe isn’t conducive to swift, agile movements.

If you’re wearing cloth, the only thing putting on more cloth is practically going to help you defend against is a chill.

Derigar.7810:

Honestly, how many of you would’ve rather seen an expansion pack?

Living story gives us:
- Free updates
- Every 2 or so weeks
- Small amount of content

An expansion pack gives us
- Paid update
- All updates in one big batch
- Massive amount of content

Now, I don’t want to sound like an ungrateful person, but I’d rather have paid for an expansion pack.

If Anet came out tomorrow and said “we’re scrapping the entire Living Story concept and we are going to release an expansion in 2015”, all the Expansion chanters would be here complaining about having to wait 10 months for new content, instead of celebrating getting what they want.

what this boils down to, is that Loreheads over in the Lore section are throwing a temper tantrum because during a discussion about Scarlet Briar’s age being changed, a ANet dev came by and said “What happens in the Game takes precedence over what was said in an Interview.” Which is standard procedure for any MMORPGs lore, and something that should have been understood by all.

Game > Books > Interviews. that is the lore Priority of pretty much ANY GAME EVER MADE WITH LORE. Things said in interviews are Canon, UNLESS the Game says it isn’t. If the Game does not say “no that’s wrong”, then it can be considered Canon.

so according to the Lore Forum, every single piece of out-of-game lore doesn’t exist anymore because Anet COULD decide to retcon it in the future. Basically they are discovering for the first time that Santa Claus doesn’t exist and a Video Game’s in-game lore takes precedence over Out Of Game interviews.

So I’m glad the story is written that way! Just wanted to add my own opinion that I’m quite happy the focus is on the tasks at hand, not my reputation.

It’s difficult to incorporate the PC in dialogue because you can’t be voiced, and the NPCs can’t use your name in voiced dialogue. I would rather it be this way because nothing much can come of pointing at the PC other than ego stroking.

For another thing, the teamwork with Destiny’s Edge 2. Compare the opening of LW1, where we were alone and completely in the dark and questioning norn refugees, to the start of LW2 – still confused, following a vague lead about out of control vines, but when we arrive there, we have five characters to greet us. Five characters we’ve been through quite a lot with already, who accept our presence with no big fuss because we’re already friends. And because the LW is time sensitive, we really have met these characters several months ago, which feels like a genuine growth of camaraderie.

They’re your guild, your warband, or your krewe. There’s a reason the different races have their unique words for banding together, it’s an important concept. It’s literally the name of the game, GUILD Wars, massive MULTIPLAYER online. I know it’s not all that great when you dislike the characters themselves, but with the diversity between them, there should be at least a couple you can be fond of.

If you want to be the only character saving the world, go play a single player game. This is not that game and I’m liking it. Picking out your PC to heap all of the praise on them would be immersion-destroying in this big, diverse world. I like that some characters haven’t heard of me. I like that the LW is drawing on the unique strengths of the cast – Kas doing her portals to help everyone, Taimi’s fangirling, and the bits that were just for fun, like Rox being allergic to something (?). These characters are supposed to be my friends, so I don’t want to be elevated above them. Like one of the devs said elsewhere, praise for your character is much better and feels more deserved when it’s done sparingly.

I LOVED that we got some race and class-specific dialogue! I really hope it’s something that continues! It added so much personality to the scene, making up for the fact we currently can’t voice speak. As a sylvari this played out especially well for me. With a number of sylvari gone rogue in the story, naturally my cohorts have questions about how that works, questions I am ACTUALLY able to answer. I noticed this happening a bit at the end of LW1, with Scarlet dead, people were showing signs of overt racism towards sylvari – including me. They don’t necessarily know I killed her, but they have growing distrust towards my kind. I’ve never enjoyed racism so much! It feels natural and pulls me in to the unfolding events. I now want to get to the bottom of everything so I can prove I’m not bad, that my people aren’t bad, and now that Soundless aren’t bad – I’m pretty privileged that the story works this way for a sylvari I know. But THANK YOU WRITERS I’M LIKING IT A LOT THANKS. THUMBS UP! I’m the sole plant hero in a group that may even be growing suspicious of my motives!

Speaking of plants, I still don’t get why people heap so much dislike on Trahearne. I got to have a partner to complete my wyld hunt with. Did I miss something, or are the loudest forum-going players just unable to fathom NPCs with developed goals? The world can’t just sit there inert waiting for you to do something so it can applaud. And with the immensity of the undertaking in the personal story, it would’ve been illogical to do it alone.

I didn’t like EVERYTHING in the update, like, I was hoping to have seen the last of the aspect powers, but I can appreciate how interesting they make an open world landscape. I hate jumping puzzles with really fiddly scaffolding and puddles you can’t see, but the other achievements are straightforward, exploration based, and I think it all came together nicely. The strength of the LW for me really is the addition of new areas and challenging ways to explore them.

The buyable episodes of LW is a fantastic compromise, so now people can play at their own pace but it still has the sense of ‘really’ occuring on the release date. The LS benefits, in my opinion, from being slightly time restricted so we feel like the whole world of Tyria develops gradually. It would lose a lot of impact if every update were simply permanent stuff.

Oh and kudos on the varied cast of female characters! It’s a delight, it really is. I hope if arenanet happens across any of the “WHERE R THE MENZ?!?!??” posts here it’s just a blur as they scroll past. Being in a hero group with just one man in it (and a sweet and sympathetic one at that) – WONDERFUL.

tl;dr – I don’t want the improvements in the Living World to go without positive reinforcement, don’t listen to the ME ME ME crowd, put in more female characters because they’re great

I thought some people might want to know that Sondar the Seller, the guy who exchanges candy corn, zaitaffy etc. is back in Lion’s Arch.

He’s now standing next to the lion statue, and seems to be offering all the same services he was before his disappearance.

“I want to pay once for free meals at this restaurant for the rest of my life! This food sucks!”

“Ok, sure, we can do that for you.”

“I want every meal to be perfect and new! This food sucks!”

“Umm, we’ll do our best.”

“I missed yesterday’s lunch, it needs to be lunch forever! This food sucks!”

“That doesn’t really seem possible, we need to keep moving forw—”

“NO! All meals, FOREVER! This food SUCKS!”

“Fine, fine. If you just sign in here when you come eat, you can have that meal as many times as you want, into infinity, for free.”

“And what if I don’t? This food sucks!”

“If you miss, that’s okay. We’ll still give you infinity meals for a one-time fee of $2.50. We’ll even toss you an occasional gift card!”

“BUT I HAVE A LIIIIIIIIFE! I NEED EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME FOR FREE ALWAYS!!! THIS FOOD SUUUUCCCKSS!!!”

“Siiiiiigh.”

knyy.6427:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Honestly, they wouldn’t be satisfied if they got a full 6, 8, 10 full maps either if you think about it. They go out, play 8 hours a day. In a matter of days they have consumed the content and the chant “more more more” starts all over again…

well that would be unfair, though i think some ppl would still complain, you are right. but still, i think most ppl anticipated/hoped for at least one normal-sized zone at the release of this hyped season 2.

a normal-sized map with normal vistas/pois/waypoints/events/world boss. i think its pretty bad, that the new map doesnt count towards (old or new) world completion achievement. and its pretty bad that you dont get anything for map completion (though the map is not completed yet, so that may be wrong in future).

Oh, yes, there will always be complaints. Nothing is perfect, but there is a difference between what I’m talking about and what you’re talking about. Beyond the simple, ‘meh it’s not really my thing so I didn’t enjoy it.’ I don’t like SAB for example, and I’ve stated in my reviews that I don’t care for it because it’s not my play style. Outside that though it’s very well constructed and looks fun to play. That’s totally different than like the OP’s (and others on here) “oh this is total kitten, anet doesn’t know wtf they are doing” etc etc.

I have to ask…. what freaking hype? Anet gave us a zone portal, a teaser trailer, 2 snippets of audio, 2 concept art, and a twitch that covered the journal as a whole. That’s it. We got more kitten during season 1! We have made assumptions. We speculated. But there really was no hype on anets part for this. They’ve stated that “season 2” is awesome (or something along those lines) but that’s referring to the whole season… not just the first patch. They really haven’t built it up like they did with prior releases.

I think people would have been kittened if their world completion had been invalidated by the new zone(s). Especially if they have it on multiple characters. So I can understand why it doesn’t count towards the original completion. It’s not really all that different than Canthan Cartographer being separate from Krytan Cartographer.

I don’t mind them doing the map piece by piece, to facilitate the ‘exploration’ feeling. It also forces the content locusts to slow down, and stems the flow of “more more more kittening more” somewhat.

Just wondering, am I the only one here who thinks it totally makes sense that aspect crystals be available around the wreckage of the Zephyrite ships, and that it’s highly doubtful they’ll make it any further into the Maguuma jungle?

I see a lot of complaints about bringing the crystals outside of the Labyrinthine Cliffs, but given that Dry Top is festooned with airship wreckage and homeless Zephyrites, I feel like it would make less sense not to have a crystal here or there. Some of them must have scattered in the crash.

I also see a lot of fears that they will become a regular part of LS2. While I can’t promise anything, of course, I find that really unlikely. They’re already reduced in power, as one of the first NPCs in the area states, and it would be expedient of the Zephyrites to hold onto whatever they can until they can get settled or rebuild or whatever. Unless they made a pass over the Maguuma jungle as they were crashing, chucking crystals in every direction, there couldn’t be crystals in the jungle anyway. They are a creation of the Zephyrites, not some naturally occurring jungle-rock. I don’t think we have anything to be worried about.