Guild Wars 2

Ticky.5831:

Well, raids are pretty much the only thing MMOs(in general) are expected to come out with between expansions.

So by the general standards, either it’s not a content drought, or MMOs in general are in a constant state of content drought.

I don’t think you can apply those general standards to this game quite so easily. At least not yet.

ArenaNet themselves have been setting certain expectations in the past… most notable success story of which is their no downtime updates. GW1 had in 7 years total downtime that could be measured in a handful of days. GW2’s track record is equally impressive, although slightly behind in terms of raw numbers.

The other, not so successful expectation was the expectation that we would be getting frequent content updates in the truest meaning of the words. I can see that this is not sustainable because for the entirety of the old LW cycle some part of the company was in permanent pre-release crunch for their 15 minutes, or two weeks, of fame.

Those expectations are still present, even if the content model is changing. With a single expansion pack it definitely hasn’t changed yet. Once they get the second expansion out the door we will have something to form an expectation on “what to get between expansions” or what their expansion cadence is like for GW2.

The general MMO standards are hardly applicable as is to this game, especially when they added their first raid wing mere months ago. All the more when ArenaNet considers themselves somewhat of a pioneer with varying degrees of success.

What we are in now, definitely qualifies as a content drought in the context of this game. During the pre-release period of HoT people were okay with it, because most of us wanted that expansion style drop of content. But we are past that now, and those old expectations are creeping up on us… with no pre-release “hype” to keep us occupied.

Jhoul.6923:

BTW, when a miracle occurs and ANET adds new weapons to the game… PLEASE add nunchucks.

While I 100% agree on the nunchucks bit… unfortunately I don’t think it is going to happen.

I mean, they iced legendary weapons, which could mean any new weapons are not getting any. Even if they hadn’t done that and a legendary for a new weapon type was on their famous table the number of skins plus that potential legendary weapon really makes new weapon types seems as extremely cost prohibitive type of content.

People are craving for more armor skins and they told us that is cost prohibitive because of the five races thing… think about how many skins on average weapon has and on top of that a legendary weapon with precursor crafting… I just don’t see it.

Ticky.5831:

— they had changed their minds regarding the HoT open world content at some point; as they did increase the difficulty to it in response to the feedback from the beta(IIRC; 1st weekend was super hard, second weekend was super-nerfed, 3rd weekend was in between but closer to 1st then 2nd, and then they nerfed it slightly at release, and then nerfed some hero points after release).

I suppose you are right. However, also if the April update does what it is supposed to do we might just see another set of nerfs when it comes to open world PvE in HoT zones.

I mean they want to increase pickup play where you can achieve things in relatively short time. I doubt they will change stuff like TD or Tarir metas, but there really isn’t that much they can change other than lower the general difficult and unlock adventures to aim for the goal they set for themselves. I mean the maps were designed from the ground up in a way that makes this goal difficult to reach.

I think Dragon Stand in particular could be at a risk of being totally butchered if they try and change the time scale the events take place in.

Ticky.5831:

They also got it with the increased difficulty of the HoT zones.

Not really, yeah Chak Gherent qualifies sort of, however, I believe ArenaNet specifically said about challenging group content before launch that they do not consider anything in the open world to be a part of that.

So by their own definition, the only challenging group content in HoT is raids, and 50-100 fractals, but that is a little sketchy because the content itself isn’t really new, just slightly reworked.

Ticky.5831:

As of the quarterly update announcement last week, there is very little reason to suspect it’s being scrapped entirely. Unless new information came out since then.

I guess if you are optimistic, however, it could just as well be that the fixes to desert borderlands they will be trying with the April update (before bringing Alpine back) is only happening because those changes were already either finished or almost finished by the time they decided to ask the community instead. Let me put it this way, there is at least not any word on it actually coming back either.

Linken.6345:

Why should you not have any characters anymore did you delete them?

I am curious about this as well tbh. The only reason to do that (after putting your stuff in bank of course) would be for a free server transfer.

He might have done it for posterity, if he though he wouldn’t play anymore I guess.

Ticky.5831:

Agreed. People only seem to talk about what they don’t want, rather than explain what they do want.

I would really like to think that as a company with almost a decade or a decade of experience ArenaNet can read into the feedback they get. Most people don’t generally sing praises when they do good. Because they are happy they have no reason to expressly voice that opinion, they would rather spend the time playing instead.

Meanwhile a person like me, who has very little to do in the game would either be playing a different game (if it weren’t for SAB that would be the case) or talking kitten on the forums.

That crowd even is also just a minority, basically any feedback they get is not entirely representative sample of the general opinion unless they pick a decent chunk of random players and send surveys or something out. This or they dedicate some customer support reps into hanging around in the actual game reading chats and writing reports.

Ticky.5831:

I think that’s largely why the expansion turned out the way it did. The people who wanted challenging group content were more specific in what they wanted than the majority of the people who are now complaining that they didn’t get what they wanted.

Even the group that wanted challenging group content only got it after the expansion technically. Yes it was probably, actually definitely, in development in tandem with the expansion.

However, with their delivery I think the issues with the expansion are only being made worse… I mean if I was a cynical person I would probably say that the HoT story and general PvE content was shafted by raids and WvW borderlands development. Bringing the latter up because I find it extremely amusing, in an ironic and sad way, that it is now being scrapped entirely, while being one of the major advertised features.

I mean they basically hit all the same issues as they did when the core game launched. To the point that it isn’t even funny. Just as with Arah story mode, the Dragon Stand has huge unused areas that were presumably cut out due to time constraints. I mean the ending wasn’t as bad as the core game, but it was if nothing predictable and basically an ending that puts a tremendous amount of pressure for the continuation of the story. The evidence of cutting corners in the expansion due to time is just pretty obvious all around.

Thinking on the expansion the few things they delivered on time and mostly without a hitch are the PvP leagues, everything else was either actually slated to launch after the release of the expansion or is still present in its absence. The few successful systemic changes that we actually got in the expansion are either stagnant or on ice completely (masteries, fractals, legendaries… etc).

Sorrow.4765:

You can do the bauble achievement in w2z2 without the rainbow bridges. I know because I did it recently. There are some clouds that go around the bits where you can’t jump the exact same path backwards.

I figured that might be a possible solution (in retrospect the idea of those achievements only being able to be reliably completed in infantile mode to begin with seems strange), however, my main point was that they are not being consistent in their treatment of infantile mode in regards to this new changes.

ROFLMAO (is there any longer letter abbreviation to express amusement?)

This is gold, and I am having a bad cough right now so thanks a lot for making me feel like I am going to throw up my lungs :P.

Whisperer.1584:

Thanks for reply, tho i would love to hear about eotm from someone so i can decide what to do as i want to start with new character…not sure if i even have any other characters now lol.

I can’t really help with that to be honest, personally, while EoTM might have been the optimal way to level at one point, I always found it very boring exercise in favor of some of the other options.

While there are a few reasons to speed to 80 now (raids namely), they aren’t going anywhere and even if you level fast the ascended gear will slow you down at the end, unless you have a group of friends.

When it comes to leveling, once you get to a certain point you will have so many free level up tokens from login rewards etc. that you basically will never have to manually level a character again if you don’t want to. That having been said, I find that these days using a single method to level your character probably isn’t the most fun (namely because you still have to run around getting waypoints, and potentially hero points if you own the expansion, for them anyway).

Ticky.5831:

Crise.9401:

FrizzFreston.5290:

And I’m saying the game is crammed with content right now. Which is where your argument falls apart.

Is it really, there is very little content that retains its value after you are done leveling your first character.

Now that they have map rewards, most of the level 80 zones have value. You just have to keep an eye on what they are for the week.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Map_bonus_reward/profit

Fair enough, if you are going for gold… there is still places to go. However, personally apart from it being nice to have a lot of gold right now I don’t really see a massive reason to focus farm for profit. You can craft your precursors for “free” (it will not be a huge one time investment of gold that is) and get Ascended gear for laurels and through fractals or raids.

Unless you really want to minmax on all your characters I don’t really see a huge reason to aim for pure in-game wealth right now.

Whisperer.1584:

Hi all, i am returning to gw2 after about 8 months and i have few questions while im downloading the game

1. How is the story progression now? Is final part still 5 man dungeon?
2. Money/Xp/Gear wise is eotm still best way to level up then do the zones for 100%?
3. As i mentioned in question number 2, i am willing to craft legendary weapon but i want to know is it easier to craft one now than before?
4. Which EU server is recommended?

Thanks in advance.

1. They changed the final bit of Arah story to be soloable (the ending is still the same as ever though). Nothing points to them integrating group and major story content together anymore either. But we’ll have to wait and see on that until the next set of live story updates kicks off to know for sure (I mean raids have some nice story beats the question is how does that tie into the rest of the narrative content).
2. WvW is pretty dead in general, eotm I dunno about, haven’t been in there for ages… they are pining for this hail mary update to WvW that is supposed to fix things… not sure where eotm stands in that (said updates are coming sometime after major April update).
3. Is it easier, that is very relative, however, it no longer has the RNG element when it comes to precursors. Like I said though, that is still not necessarily easier than farming gold (lot less mind-numbing though).
4. Does it matter? You want to do WvW (see above) check which three are in the top tiers, and you might get some gameplay out of it, but other than that your server choice is inconsequential.

FrizzFreston.5290:

And I’m saying the game is crammed with content right now. Which is where your argument falls apart.

Is it really, there is very little content that retains its value after you are done leveling your first character. They also actively worked against people replaying a huge chunk of that content, ie. dungeons, while saying they did so that people would move to do content that they still plan on supporting.

However, where is this support towards fractals evident… we got an entire single fractal and few bits of re-purposed content, both way before this supposed shift in priorities. Yeah we got a legendary backpiece, except we did not, and we got leaderboards… except we, once again, did not.

This is just one example where what they are saying and what they are actually doing simply doesn’t add up. One of their key tenants for the game used to be content remaining viable as new content was added, yet the entire modus operandi of season 1 contradicted that. The content didn’t remain viable because it didn’t remain at all. Dungeons certainly aren’t viable anymore either, so what if what majority of the people went to them for was financial gain, those people still enabled the few that played them for other reasons to more easily enjoy the content.

I am not sure I like this new, it’s an exploit but we are okay with it because we can’t fix it quickly and/or can not remove the rewards from the accounts that participate, policy you are pioneering here ArenaNet.

You are basically redefining the term exploit for this one instance as it best suits you. I hope you know what you are doing… I am one of those players that will probably never do Tribulation mode and subsequently that is bunch of skins I was never going to get. Frankly though, I did not mind because I knew those skins had something to them that no other skin in this game had.

That was a good thing, too bad you are just writing it off so easily.

Zergs.9715:

MetalGirl.2370:

You cant just get in a game after few years and DEMAND you get what you missed.

I’ve been around since release and I’ve played through Season 1. I know this may sound strange to you, but it was actually selfless suggestion and call for more consistent and more polished experience for ALL.

So maybe people like YOU should stop demanding me to do this or that, from a perspective of baseless assumptions.

Just want to chime in here… I am also someone who was around for practically the entire of season 1. I have played varying degrees of every single update put into this game.

I would still jump at the chance to replay that content, maybe a bit of it is due to rose-colored spectacles at this point, but while the idea of one time things happening in the game world is cool ultimately removal of any content is a disservice to the game.

Thinking back to LS1 model, the updates kept coming thick and fast, and that was cool then, however, the situation was literally devs trying to keep up a breakneck pace for their 15 minutes of fame in the limelight (well it was two weeks, but you get the point).

ArenaNet has a problem though, and that is setting expectations far beyond for what they have actually been able to deliver. I mean, they set an expectation for some players that “there will always be something to do” and now that they have transitioned to a model where this is not as true of a sentiment as it used to be the lack of content hurts people with those kinds of expectations even more.

I don’t agree with everything in this topic, not all the examples are a good fit, however… the sentiment certainly rings true. HoT was supposed to be a solution, not a source of new problems. They were supposed to have finally nailed the direction of the game down. Yet, there haven’t been that many positive things happening after HoT.

The lack of live content that appeals to the majority of the player base keeps going on… before HoT it was understandable and most people were okay with it, but now as the same drought continues mixed with a dose of less than good news I doubt we can say the same.

Also, people are expecting the moon from this April update. Too bad there will likely be no actual content in it. While they have said as much to be fair even then people will have unreasonable expectations. I feel especially sorry for the WvW folks. Sure they will get their Alpine borderlands back, at some point, but they have also subsequently lost one of the biggest features HoT was advertised to them with (whether they ended up liking it or not).

We seem to be loosing more things than we are gaining by this expansion pack. I know the developers are trying, but that is just how I honestly feel in retrospect. They said that the expansion was to lay the groundwork for future, however, the two arguably successful systems that we got have remained stagnant and the third was iced with the recent announcement about legendaries.

Signaling Fire.3750:

Well I do have a weird bug, I do not get the option for normal mode or trib mode for world 2, although I did them both when the Back to School came out.

SAB progress is character specific… are you sure you are on the same character as last time.

It looks like a bug because it is a bug. Does that on normal mode too… their hotfix for it during back to school was to move you on top of the scale as well as respawn you there instead of directly on the checkpoint.

Too bad that only prevents the issue sometimes. Digging up a bunny is general advice given to people who get stuck on terrain.

I am not afraid of raiding, I just don’t like how stressful it is, at all. I think its cool content especially as far as the narrative delivery in the instances is done as well as some of the mechanics on display.

However, after my brief experience with raiding when wing one was fresh, I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in doing raids myself. Not that I’d have the time for it either and the time I do have I’d rather spend doing things that are not stressful to me.

By all means contact support… but truth be told I wouldn’t hold your breath.

The operative words in the OP are “ages ago”, have you not also been able to consequently because of this been able to use the boombox for ages… while the rest of us who did not pay 800 gems could not access them at all in the mean time.

To be concise about it, I doubt they want to set a precedent were they will refund items purchased years ago for any reason (they certainly did not want to do it for the Infinite Continue Coin and that was literally useless for years). But hey, you might get lucky and have a friendly CS rep.

Oh, but why would they do this… when they can sell you a new color next year :P

In all seriousness though, it could be that the way those particle effects work doesn’t allow it to be recolored in their current glider system. If memory serves very few particle effect are dyable at all in the game currently (yeah there are a few, but most are not).

General Health.9678:

You keep saying that and it’s still not going to change anything.

It did for Southsun Survival and Sanctum Sprint, or are they not now permanent content.

General Health.9678:

And you’re completely forgetting that anet benefits from this style of event rotation.

I am well aware of the fact that ArenaNet benefits from having festivals they can run when they need to… the only problem with that is it doesn’t benefit the players in any way. It is not like SAB is an actual holiday event, ie. there is no thematic reason for it to be pigeon holed in being an April festival.

We went through a year of festivals what felt like every other month during the first year of the game… unfortunately only Halloween and Wintersday have really stuck around. The irony of the whole situation is because they involved story with those festivals (Zephyrites and the murder of Captains Council member in particular) they can’t really justify bringing them back with minimal effort (well blowing up LA counts too).

Even though Dragon Bash would have fit just fine as a post-HoT festival. Oh but wait they butchered that and made it this dinky little thing in DR for Chinese new year no open world elements like Halloween or Wintersday at all. The sad truth is the only real festivals with any substance from that year are Halloween and Wintersday, BotFW would be decent too, if they found a way to bring it back that made sense in the current story.

I know that SAB as they have laid it out benefits ArenaNet, however, that is no reason for me not to voice my opinion because I am not their advocate.

If you are doing Tribulation mode and are looking for “shortcuts” look for speedruns, they have some skips that exists.

Unfortunately I haven’t seen any for W2 sadly…

KRUSSIDULL.6845:

You are talking about the eagle right? Doesn’t work in Tribulation mode sadly.

No I am not, there is a different shortcut that you walk on the clouds for (has a furniture shop too), however, Josh specifically said that Tribulation Mode paths are intact.

So I doubt it’ll help in Tribulation mode.

If you take it then the game keeps re-spawning you at the new happy face checkpoint at they Yeti even if you do not activate the checkpoint itself.

This keeps happening even if you activate other checkpoints on the frowny side.

KRUSSIDULL.6845:

“Play through World 02 in record time, utilizing brand-new shortcuts.”

Anyone knows if there is any shortcuts in zone 2? It’s so long! I know of one in zone 3 who takes you past cloud 2 if you go left instead of right from cloud 1.

Share you findings here. (if there is any)

The Zone 2 shortcut is right before/after the first bell bit… over the clouds, skips you to the icy section.

Send a ticket, dunno if they have a means to fix it… but in-game bug reports get put in some huge list that they work on very slowly.

I know this, because I reported a trivial bug with some missing text that has yet to be fixed when the NPE was fresh.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

FYI not everyone loves SAB. Many who love it are extremely vocal about their enthusiasm; those who think it’s meh or hate it aren’t posting.

“FYI not everyone loves X” Substitute X for any any piece of content in the game and your sentiment rings just as true. There is no type of content that could ever be universally loved.

For example: FYI, not everyone loves raids. — those who think they are meh or hate them aren’t talking about them.

The fact is, however, that the fact that not everyone likes a particular style of content doesn’t automatically mean it could not be considered as a permanent inclusion to the game. I am sure not everyone loves Southsun survival or Sanctum sprint, yet both of those are previously “festival” content made permanent (yes, they are in a rotation, but they are still permanent as in no-longer festival content).

Personally, if the chances are that SAB will not see future development in the coming years which it really looks like. Then taking a good hard look at whether it should be made more accessible as is for those that enjoy it is entirely warranted. Because, the fact that one player enjoys SAB and another does not in no way takes away from the enjoyment of either player. If SAB were to be permanent, those that don’t like it would not suffer from that fact.

No-one would lose in any way if a piece of temporary content is made more accessible or permanent.

Right now? Logging in daily, see below…

If it is Tuesday and there is an update then check patch notes. If patch notes are interesting then log in else wait til next Tuesday unless there is temporary content in which case log in daily. If the day happens to be Sunday then might do guild missions.

Basically just waiting for interesting update, if it wasn’t for the current update I’d probably not be logging in until LS3.

Infusion.7149:

Crise.9401:

Infusion.7149:

They would need to adjust the ascended weapons being handed out (it’s essentially once every 8 days right now).

No they wouldn’t because the stuff you get once in 8 days is just a skin as far as I know, the ascended weapons only come from the Tribulation mode collections. That said it would probably be in their best interests to slow down the acquisition of those skins if SAB was to be permanent.

Right now the skins are 400-500g…

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kaiser_Snake_Weapon_Box_

Kaiser Snake weapon skins (orange): Earned through completing Course Load or by completing Tribulation Mode collections.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kaiser_Snake_Greatsword —-> Acquisition: Kaiser Snake Weapon Box

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kaiser_Snake_Hammer —-> Acquisition: Kaiser Snake Weapon Box

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kaiser_Snake_weapon_skins

So the skin from Course Load is Account Bound. Besides even if it weren’t it is not like anyone has said that they have to forever remain that valuable.

On the contrary the most unlucky person in the world would have to work until year 2022 to get the orange backback if all the variables remain the same.

Infusion.7149:

They would need to adjust the ascended weapons being handed out (it’s essentially once every 8 days right now).

No they wouldn’t because the stuff you get once in 8 days is just a skin as far as I know, the ascended weapons only come from the Tribulation mode collections. That said it would probably be in their best interests to slow down the acquisition of those skins if SAB was to be permanent.

Seera.5916:

Majority of all Guild Wars 2 players very likely don’t find SAB to be their top priority for what content they want worked on primarily

This is not at all what most people are talking about, sure some information about a potential W3 at some point in the indeterminate future would be nice, however, no-one to my knowledge is saying cancel or push back LS3 or Expac 2 in favor of SAB.

Seera.5916:

— is apparently prone to breaking horribly when they patch the game, it should not be something that is kept around continuously —

This hasn’t actually ever been said verbatim… SAB can break yes and HoT caused it to break a lot, however, same is probably true for bunch of other content pieces. For example, let’s take the activities in game currently. Sanctum Sprint for example or Southsun survival (incidentally both probably use tech that I think SAB pioneered, ie. the run over and pickup style interactions the baubles use). The fact that HoT broke SAB does not mean SAB will break every time they patch the game or even that it would break most of the time.

Any major revision of the game such as expac has the potential to break existing content and it probably does, the fact is that we are in a unique position here because they actually went ahead and told us this was the case with SAB. It does not make SAB special in that respect though if it was made permanent.

Yeah it does some things done nowhere else in game but that applies to number of content that is currently permanent. All SAB being permanent would mean that during backend and infrastructure changes they have to be more aware of its existence. The requirements for normal content creation would likely not change at all or very little because content creators use tools that are specifically built for it and engine capabilities are additive not reductive (meaning that in order for any content to keep working engine capabilities can not be removed only added to, under normal circumstances).

Seera.5916:

Especially when ANet apparently has to postpone content advertised in HoT to make sure they can get more PvE content that appeals to the majority out in a reasonable time frame.

The funny thing is, so far that postponement has shown no visible gains only losses, and they even admitted that due to lead times it would not affect how soon we LS3 or other currently announced content.

Here is something that I know has probably been brought up before (I also know it is about as likely to happen as W3 dropping tomorrow).

SAB could be put in the activity rotation or on a similar rotation of its own (see below). I know this is not much of a sales pitch, however, the only activity I sometimes play is Sanctum Sprint, the rest I just skip altogether. But I know for a fact that if SAB was in that rotation I would definitely play it.

Now I know this is almost certainly a technical impossibility as is because of how the activities work. That being said bringing it up isn’t going to hurt anybody.

As for all this talk about SAB being a danger to the main game and siphoning resources etc. — I think it is indicative of how much confidence ArenaNet has in their game if they are worried that permanently allowing access to a piece of content such as SAB, as is (let’s ignore any potential future development altogether for a second), is going to be such a major detriment to the rest of that game.

Yes keeping SAB functional, if it was accessible permanently, would probably have some effective cost, however, that would be no more than say keeping all of the current activities functional as it is because every single one of those is similar in nature in that they have a set of unique mechanics that are not necessarily represented anywhere else in the game.

Killface.1896:

Next April you can keep unlocking them and maybe we even get world 3

I love that you can be so optimistic after what Josh himself has said… chances are slim that it will happen. I mean I like Halloween and Wintersday as much as the next guy, but they don’t suffer as much for being frozen in time (although I would love some more Halloween story, like in the good old days).

The skins are really nice, so are the decorations, don’t get me wrong there… but once we have found the color variant we like there is little reason to keep at it, unless you are a hardcore completionist. As for decorations, that is cool but it is sort of content that not everyone gets to enjoy, because they might not have a guild which they can be creative with (no permission to decorate).

I can confirm, has happened to me several times actually.

To be honest, it has been so long since SAB was around last that I wasn’t even sure if it is a bug or not — thinking intuitively I guess it is, and seeing as its not consistent either.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

I’m not sure even paying for it is any guarantee of reliability.. given recent events. :/

Unfortunately you got a point there. Personally I am not a huge fan of legendaries, I already have the one I want of the gen 1 legendary weapons, and I might make Twilight some day. The new HoT ones never really interested me. The sweet irony of the situation is that the one legendary we are still to get actually might get me interested as a Thief.

If only that was the only instance though… the fractal back piece is still MIA, so are the leaderboards they promised.

Ranael.6423:

SAB is only a cool feature because it is temporary.

Its temporary nature has two effects for players and neither of them make SAB as content any more or any less cool. The fact that it’s temporary for instance probably does not make the players that do not like it at all like it any more than they would if it was permanent.

On the contrary I would say some of them would be happier (if it was permanent), because it would mean it coming around wouldn’t be such a big deal to those that do like it (makes it easier for them to ignore it, you see).

Secondly, while its temporary nature certainly affects how people play it, it doesn’t affect how they enjoy it.

On the contrary I would say some of the people would probably enjoying it more (as permanent content) if they knew they could go about it at their own pace. Feeling like you only have X amount of time to play some content sucks… as much as I liked the frequency of content updates in season 1, I hated it for making me feel like I had to play now or I would always regret it (well, until Scarlett at least).

The real reason it is temporary content is also twofold, one you get dat HYPE element, and, if they like it, players will play it like they have no other choice. Because they sort don’t, most of us don’t even know what games we will be playing year down the line for sure. Secondly as a temporary festival, it is way more cost effective for ArenaNet, no need to worry if it would break in the interim… instead throw a skeleton crew on it once a year to please the players that do like it.

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

They should let us play SAB for free on April and sell SAB Box for $50 for those who wanna play it permanently whenever they want. Like every April is a free SAB Trail. People who love it like me will BUY SAB Box to play it after April.

You are one generous fellow, SAB is good and I would personally happily pay if it meant guaranteed continued development on SAB that is more than new skins and a few guild decorations (not that I would want them to jeopardize the core game for it).

But 50$, that would be simply too much…. besides it is never going to happen, it is way more cost effective for ArenaNet to keep it as an yearly festival with minimal work put into it. That will probably carry them forward at least a year or two.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Also, since it’s a FESTIVAL now, the odds are extremely high it’s going to come back next year.

Like Dragon Bash was a festival and it comes back every year, except no it does not… the only guaranteed yearly festivals so far are Halloween and Wintersday. They have said it is now an yearly festival, yes… but seeing is believing at this point at least for me.

While I can’t say I am a huge fan of paying for access to SAB, I would do it without a second thought if it meant some guarantees about its future. I mean, if SAB being a free festival means it will no longer get any development time outside the bare minimum which seems likely, yes I would absolutely pay to enable them to finish SAB if that’s what it took.

ZachAttack.3957:

Thanks for the help. To be honest, I tried looking up the location of the chest but could find no results. What do you mean by screw up the log jumping bit?

The lower entrance to this cave is well below the height of the checkpoint on the other side of the water fall in the second to last and last gap between the vertical pillars that split the waterfall.

I normally use it to skip the timing puzzle between the last two checkpoints entirely and just slaughter a bunch of bears instead. If you can reliably get to the last check point using the normal method the easiest way to get to the chest is this: https://youtu.be/jxMb2jbAplA?t=1110 (the entrance I use normally is much lower obviously because I suck at jumping those logs).

Note: because I am cheap, I always do the daily achievements in normal mode so I don’t need to buy the keys… but in infantile mode the top entrance is obviously the one to go for as in the video.

Khisanth.2948:

I paid for the core game. I paid for HoT. Both break between updates. Why would SAB need stricter quality control?

That’s not really what I meant, I mean since it is not a piece of core content they probably don’t want to dedicate any resources to keeping it functional between the times the festival itself is going on.

If they made it accessible permanently in any form they would have to at least be prepared to fix emergent issues as they come up, however, if it remains as a festival they can and only have to do it whenever it is time for the festival to come around.

What I am saying is, it’s more cost effective to ArenaNet to keep it as a festival with limited window of access. Doesn’t make me happy at all, but that is the reality of the situation.

Khisanth.2948:

How about following the other April Fool’s gimmicks and selling an item that gives you access permanently? You can plob down a SAB anywhere and people can iteract with it to go in.

Never going to happen, as nice as it would be, because that would mean they have to make sure the thing never breaks between intermittent updates when the festival itself is not active.

Please prove me wrong ANet? I know it is not going to happen though since this is a whole in-game event area not just some graphical gimmick like bobble heads or aviator.

Why does this game even have “Shortbows”?

Silly you, it has them for us thieves of course, so we can spam 5 while roaming — oh wait, with daredevil and Dash, there is suddenly a good alternative for our darling SB.

Personally, until LW season 3 starts, I have already left HoT far behind me… the only reason I am logging in right now is because there is an update, one that I happen to also like a great deal, but that is just a bonus…

I mean for someone who doesn’t want to raid or do PvP there was literally nothing to do in this game, before this update came along, since I was finished with HoT. I mean sure I could have gone for legendaries but I have the one I want already (and in light of recent news, well legendaries…).

I was actually looking at other games to fill the gap waiting for season 3. But now I am back, at least until the 19th, we’ll have to see what the April update brings us… who knows maybe it’ll change HoT maps enough to make them appealing again.

Yoroiookami.3485:

I’m still unable to rejoin and claim the reward I earned. I don’t think that something to stop it is that hard to implement.

On paper it isn’t hard, however, this games instances do not track ownership at all, nor do they keep empty instances in memory either. The game used to track the player that created the instance, but it probably does not anymore or if it does that information is no longer used for anything.

It seems easy, but it is actually a bigger change in terms of infrastructure, because they would have to change how instances are retained and what information is kept on record about them. Since a server has limited resources a change like this usually involves some non-trivial math before it is even considered because it directly impacts how many instance a single shard can serve at any one time as well as how much persistent information is stored (albeit only temporarily).

Considering what SAB is, I doubt they will go through the effort to make this change… unless one of two things happen a) it explodes in popularity exponentially or b) some other more mainstream (and/or permanent) content requires similar capacity.

Yeah that is something they added for future… ie. is intended that those kind of walls will be broken using the next more powerful version of the glove of wisdom you get in Z2.

It is the same basic concept that they have with the extra area they added in W1 Z3, in the same release they added W2, which requires the current glove… that you only have after clearing W2 Z2.

In one word: metroidvania. Hope we get to see the future worlds some day, even though if the latest communication from ArenaNet is to be taken at face value, that might never happen.

DoctorDing.5890:

Anyhow, my point still stands. SAB (and the rest of the game) has a dreadful camera system for jumping stuff.

I’d like to point out that the game now has camera collision slider and other camera options it did not used to have. Besides, SAB has the least of these issues compared to the rest of the game anyways. Yeah it is not perfect but the engine was developed for an MMO not a platformer… all things considered it does all right.

Besides where else does one get to play an classic inspired platformer with five people. Or IWBTG with 5 people, because that is what Tribulation mode is, if that is your cup of tea.

Why doesn’t /stuck just kill you and make you re-spawn at the last checkpoint is something I just don’t understand.

If they can retain the quality of Living World season 2 I would very much like a return to that, however, without those breaks of month or two in between halves. If there has to be a break there should only be one per year, in addition to obligatory wintersday/halloween break. However, they should come up with something to do for any break they have in story content.

They have more than enough potential re-usable bits and bobs of content (Labyrinthine Cliffs, Queen’s Pavilion, SAB etc.), just make sure they are in such a shape that they are trivial to put in and take out.

Malediktus.9250:

Does a QA member or release manager even count as a dev? They are not developing anything after all

Well each cross-disciplinary team inside ArenaNet has at least one QA embed, so that is definitely part of any team size they would announce… but that QA embed is sort of like a liaison so yeah it is not like one person is responsible for all the QA for each team.

That having been said though, the fact is that people beyond the core project team will at one point or another be required. Take SAB W1 for instance that was made with a team of ca. 5 people (check their youtube channel for a source on this, too lazy to look it up again). That five people included a QA embed, however, it did not include f.ex. the composers doing the music for SAB or the cinematics team that did the kitten trailer for it.

However, whether they count as devs in there or not… that is sort of irrelevant because at one point or another their involvement is still necessary and they have limited time and as thus are a limited resource within the company.

Either way, I think Josh proved with W1 that even a small team can do something amazing, same applies to the raid team (although I do not raid, so their amazingness is sort of irrelevant to me). However, Josh is also very ambitious… so yeah I have no doubt 6-8 people for 4-6 months or whatever it was working primarily on SAB would be what would be necessary for another world in the same scope as W2. But honestly I would take something less ambitious over nothing at all…

ZachAttack.3957:

Hey guys. I’m trying to get the daily achievement where I have to open the two chests in W2Z1. I managed to find the first one, but for the life of me I can’t find the second. I’ve been searching everywhere, and have been stumbling into everything BUT the chests. Secret furniture shops, hidden caves, the flute shop, et cetera. But the second chest still eludes me. Anyone have any pointers?

It is in a hidden bear cave near just before the last checkpoint at the boss… you sort of need to screw up the log jumping bit (you can get back to the checkpoint climbing up the cave). Protip: bring a torch…

Hope that is enough, but not too much information… another tip, buy that flute if you haven’t… it makes Z3 so much easier once you find the Gatekeeper Lullaby from a secret in Z2.

Edit: props for going at this without using a straight up guide…