I, like a huge amount of other players, have felt extremely scorned by ANET over the past year. We have received very little enjoyable content over the past year and the reason ANET said this is was “Heart of Thrones”. Before you stop reading this is not a HoT bashing thread, this is a thread about how I feel ANET has wrong me (and other players in general) and how they can fix it.
Since the end of Scarlet’s terror and our living story episodes there was a major drop off in content. Many people speculate this was due to the development of the Asian servers but I’m not entirely sure myself. After the Asian servers were launched we received a slightly revamped recycled Queen’s Jubilee.
After Queen’s Jubilee we received nothing but the usual recycled events with slight revamps attached to them. Arguably the only completely new content introduced since January 2015 was the Maguuma Wastes maps and Heart of Thrones expansion. So effectively for 1 year and 4 months we have received no actual content updates including festivals or one time events such as the Karka, Marionette, or Dragon Bash.
To add insult to injury PvP and WvW have both received very little in the way of support and development. We will start with PvP, at launch the game came with 4 PvP maps: Legacy of the Foefire, Raid on the Capricorn, Forest of Niflhel, and Battle of Kyhlo. We received more maps in subsequent updates including Skyhammer (July 2013), Spirit Watch (February 2013), and Temple of the Silent Storm (October 2013). Since then we have had Raid on the Capricorn be completely removed from PvP. Eventually it came to pass that Skyhammer and Spirit Watch both were deemed too gimmicky to be considered for competitive play so you are left with four possible maps for that game type.
Since the maps mentioned above have been released we have received two more maps, Courtyard (Team death match) and Stronghold (moba type map). Since their release Courtyard has been deemed to be a non competitive map and Stronghold is in the same boat. So for any competitive PvP player we have been left with the same maps since July 2013. I could go off on a tangent on how pvp balance has flip flopped back and forth from being good and bad at times but this is not the time/place.
Next we come to the WvW scene. It was launched as part of the core game and had no delays (that I remember). The maps were Alpine Bluffs (since retired with the launch of Hot) and Eternal Battlegrounds. Since the release of the new WvW maps (Desert Borderlands?) the WvW scene has nearly dyed off completely. It was originally viewed as a highly competitive place for servers to prove their metal in an all out 1v1v1 battle. Although due to lack of rewards, updates, and development many players have stopped playing the game type (myself included) and many even left GW2 altogether.
Now I have gone over very generally on why I feel let down by PvP, PvE, and WvW. I could have went into much deeper detail on why I feel let down by all three fields but I want to keep this as short as possible.
Here are my proposed fixes for some of these shortcomings. Firstly, start going back to monthly or bi-monthly festivals and events for your PvE loving fans. Many Players including those that prefer PvP or WvW still enjoyed those events and many people play across all three game types.
Secondly for the PvP players, look at your PvP maps that are not able to be considered competitive such as Skyhammer. If those were brought into line with the others we increase our current available maps and help improve map diversity. I would also deem it necessary to support only a single game type until it is decided it no longer needs to be improved upon, we do not need more than 6~8 conquest map types. Once we have enough conquest maps you could then expand into the Team Death Match type maps or MOBA maps like Stronghold. We do not need the developers spread across too many fields at once.
Third and last WvW changes need to be undone. To put it simply almost all your hard work on the Desert Borderlands is considered wasted by the mass majority of the WvW community in GW2. What needs to happen is a revival of the Tournaments. I can’t recall a single point in GW2 where the maps were so full and had such a long queue time (other than launch). The tournaments were so great they would even inspire two servers to work together for it’s entirety to make sure their larger and stronger competitor did not win two seasons in a row. It offered unique rewards via Mistforged weapons and other items sold by the vendor.
If you made it to the end I’d like to thank you for reading.
