Guild Wars 2

Kaaboose.3897:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

‘(Feel free to sub in any Show/Book/Game/Media/Etc. if you don’t like Game Of Thrones!)’

I would like to insert ‘EastEnders’, ‘Days of Our Lives’, ‘All My Children’ or any other soap opera. They were pretty successful back in the day with that model. =)

This is the only reply so far that brought up any positive light on temporary content actually working! I can see the slogans now: Guild Wars 2! The soap opera of MMOS!

But seriously, Claiming temporary content is good because it makes people play it just highlights the point I made about creating a sense of urgancy to make the content seem more compelling. If a developer can’t make a mode that can hold a players interest then maybe it’s not that good to begin with.
I could be wrong since I’ve stoped playing WoW but I’d wager players still do Warsong Gultch and Alterac Valley, Mode that were put in 8 years ago.

Sure but WoW doesnt release new content every 2 weeks. How many players were playing Warsong or Alterac in the first 2 weeks of MoP release?

I think its only natural to expect players to try new content and if you’re releasing content every 2 weeks essentially you have new content all the time!

I mean think about it, if they’ve kept all the content released in game, how likely would it be for you to play in the mad king’s labyrinth today, or tomorrow or the rest of this week?

nirvana.8245:

I’m a little perplexed. My understanding of the living world was they were introducing new content as a means of showing how the world was changing and evolving. But by removing that content after a short period of time aren’t we just reverting to what the game was before and showing how it is not changing or evolving?

quite the opposite… take the frame and frost storyline.

an alliance of Charr and dredge invaded the Norn and the Charr. This cause refugees to flee the affected areas which resulted in camps setup around tyria to take on those refugees. At the same time the players set out to destroy the molten alliance. The final battle had us storming the alliance HQ which we destroyed. When the event ended the world was set to the state it should be to indicate the destruction of molten alliance. The refugees were still refugees since the molten alliances burned down their homes. The molten alliance no longer invade because they were beaten. The dungeon which was the molten alliance HQ is no longer available cause well it was destroyed. Now I dont deny the state of this is quite similar to how it began but note there are some important differences. Refugee camps still exist and are still scatered around the world and this was important because it was essentially what triggered the next phase which was the mystery of southsun cove.

Those same refugees basically were offered a contract by the consortium who would give them housing on southsun in exchange for work. The consortium basically is falling behind schedule in converting southsun into a beach resort.. but anyhow. Due to this agreement southsun found itself more developed with new villages and new outposts built by these refugees etc.. by the end of that living story even though the refugees have been allowed to leave southsun the constructions remain. So you can see how the world did change in various ways even indirectly by the events of the first living story (the invasion of the motlen alliance)

Temporary content was removed because the story evolved in a way that deemed that content should no longer exist (molten alliance destroyed), Canach captured, Mai Trin captured and Horrik killed etc…

Nick.6972:

Did 12/12 Sky Pirate Achievements and 15 min Dungeon Achievement in less than 3 hours.
I never bothered doing any other silly achievements because they’re pointless, plus, after first time of completing the dungeon, I never bother going back to it.

I find it hard to believe how someone could get more than maybe 5 hours game play out of the LS updates.

Depends on how you play really. If you did it all in 5 hours its clear you did it to finish it rather then to enjoy it. Take the lighting of effigies for example. Thats content that you can finish in like 15 – 20 mins perhaps if you want to rush it. It will cost you around 2g – 3g in waypoint fees and be 20 mins of pure bordom.

I on the other hand opted to walk from one effigy to the next and do dynamic events along the way. All in all I think it took me like 15 hours that one simple achievement. I had fun and probably did around 2g profit rather then spending 2g – 3g

Then there is the jumping puzzle. Did it on most of my alts too. That took a few hours too. Not sure how much didnt count it. 3 – 5 hrs i would assume. Even did it on an alt that was a whole 18 levels underleveled with a group from my guild. We had lots of fun fooling around and they had to baby sit me a lot of course ressing me each time I died and I died a few time (just so people know if you’re 18 levels underleveled beware you get one shot by everything)

Then there were the caches… some of those jumping puzzles are still nasty even after finishing them a few times. I would say around another 5 hrs there. Then I spend a bunch of time running around the world farming chests off the holograms (not strictly speaking sky pirate content though I did kill a few pirates doing that.) All in all I barely had time to continue leveling my mesmer … so yes its possible to get more then 5hrs of enjoyment out of these patches, its easy just dont rush them

I never world transferred but I believe it uses gems no? so you could buy the gems necessary with in game currency right? it will cost like 30g but it will be kinda free

Vayne.8563:

I think that getting people back into the world is important but I don’t think it’s so important that it’s all you do. Whenever any new map opens up, it’s going to be widely used when it opens up…until the next thing.

The important thing is to keep areas jumping by having lots of people in them. You’re not going to be able to beef up 12 slower zones all at the same time, because that would mean dividing the playerbase 12 ways and it will show.

What Anet is trying to do is traffic control. Drive people to where people are. Some months there’ll be people in the open world and some months there’ll be people in new instances.

I don’t even know if this new instance is permanent, but it looks like a lot of fun. And I for one can’t wait to try the racing game. That looks like a blast.

The thing is, the Living Story is going to get us grouped together wherever this is. I’m certainly all in favor of new zones, and they shouldn’t not make new zones to keep people in old ones.

As long as the Living Story can keep traffic flowing, I don’t think it’s such a bad thing.

Exactly and I would add a bit to this. This is a tricky thing for Anet, if they release a new permanent dungeon that has better rewards then anything before it, players are going to mainly play it and nothing else. IF they release a new permanent dungeon that doesnt have better rewards then players are going to play it a few times and then move back to the most profitable content.

This might be another reason for temporary dungeons to avoid reward creep if you want. Like this they’re free to make a very rewarding dungeon (1g for the last dungeon which is possible to complete in 15 mins is very good!) sure it was difficult but everything becomes easier with practice. Took me 2 hrs to finish the clock tower for the first time. By the end of the event I was rarely failing it at all. Same here. If that dungeon was allowed permanently in game people would be finishing it in less then 15 mins easily and it will get farmed to death. Hence if it were a permanent addition there is no way it could have a 1g completion reward which will result in players complaining that every new dungeon is pointless because older dungeons have better rewards so why play the new ones?

The living story is trying to solve the problem fairymore states. By having the content temporary its not creating increasingly better rewards that will ensure players never set foot in a lower level zone ever again because it would be so unrewarding to do that. Achievements are designed to have players play in every zone. With this months content that will mean new interesting skins that can be used as many times as people wish on as many alts as they wish. They can keep adding skins to the system release after release there by ensuring people have a good incentive to pursuit these achievements thus indirectly stimultating play in all zones.

Win Win imho

Fairymore.8609:

..snips
Below I have attached a map of the world and I have colored the areas which I feel could use some attention. 12 areas that I never visit, at all. After World Completion these areas might as well have dropped off the map. I was pretty generous too as I only went to Blazeridge Steppes tonight to help guildies with the world boss, I go to field of ruins because its usually empty and i can farm coffers, and I put Southsun Cove because I went once to check out the new content but I havent been back since.
snips…

Actually Dragonbash, Skypirates and even the bazaar had content specifically designed to get you playing those areas.

Dragonbash had the effigies for example. Now how effective that is depends on the players of course, in my case it was the most effective content at having me play around cause I ended up walking through many zones I would otherwise not visit in a single playing session. But thats the key most players too the effigies like they were a chore to complete. Teleport to the nearest way point press F repeat. I am sure that wasnt whats intended on so many levels. For starters why do the vitality buff they did if they thought players would teleport around ? Why have the achievement at all if they expected players to just teleport around, its not like there is anything fun with pressing F 150 times and watching that dance 150 times. And finally while spread them in all zones? Nope I am sure their intention was for players to walk from one to the other and just enjoy themselves on the way. I personally had a blast but it ultimately depends on the player.

Sky pirates had the pirate caches hidden in different jumping puzzles in different zones and achievements like those same caches and killing x amount of pirates in various zones.

The bazaar will have the stolen kites which are again hidden all around tyria.

Thing is this issue rests mostly with the players I believe. If players keep treating the game like a job there will always be this issue nothing Anet can do about that. If players are always in a hurry and not willing to slow down they can do as many incentives as they want in any part of tyria, players are going to swarm that content and move on. In turn those players will complain calling all these incentives money sinks because they’re being forced to teleport so much. In turn that will force Anet to make the situation worst.

If the effigies for example were meant to provide content for about 15 hrs (I estimate thats how long it took me give or take (3 days playing at about 5hrs each day) and these people finished it in 30 mins because they teleported around, next release they’re not going to reduce them to make it easier on players like me, they going to increase it so that it will be impossible to finish in just 30 mins. Worst yet, Anet will be bashed because they’re designing the game around the gem shop because they’ll claim obvious the reason for the effigies was so that people loose 3g or so in teleportation fees there by forcing them to convert real money into gems. Finally they will complain there is nothing to do because 30 mins and they were done.

What can Anet really do to combat that?

Devata.6589:

And yes some of the now F2P still have a “premium” subscription tier but they had to move to that system because the subscription system failed.

I think you’re taking this a bit too black and white. You dont switch business model just because you failed, its a good idea to switch if you believe the other model will be more profitable. Take Swtor as an example. They said 500k subs would still make it profitable. Then look at EvE 500k subs is phenomenal for them. So what about rift? I am sure they had around 500k subs as well perhaps it was going down sure but that doesnt mean they failed.

At the end of the day people tend to underestimate the profit potential of f2p. Per player you might get less but f2p can attract big big numbers which in some cases more then makes up for it. Look at DC universe online for example when they switched to f2p they net profit increased by 8x going f2p.

Thing is most of the time MMOs that opt for P2P are just hoping to hit the holy grail which is matching WoW’s success. But WoW’s success isnt really the number of players it has, other games match and exceed that. We know League of legends is played by 12 million players on a daily bases. World of tanks claim 60 million accounts. Perfect world International claims 50 million accounts etc.. WoW’s success comes from the amount of money it makes 8m regular subscribers exceed the revenue generated by 12 million players who can opt not to pay anything month after month. But as with everything in the commercial world there is a break even point. I dont know what it is and in anycase it will vary depending on how successful your mmo is but lets say for the sake of argument its 1m subs. That means that if your MMO has more then 1m subs then its making more money then if it were to go f2p. However if you have less then 1m subs it means going f2p will make you a greater profit. However still as long as you have more then 100k subs you’re still profitable. So if such a company decides to switch to f2p once it hits 600k subs does it mean it failed? not really its just making the smart move but it is not really a failure until it hits that 100k point.

Devata.6589:

Well my point with the south sun cove example was that they can make a nice story that indeed has temporary events but they can keep dungeons, items and achievements available. I would prefer that and I think many people do.

This thread however is about not getting an expansion and why do I think they go for this option? To get people to buy gems. So if we got expansions there would be no need for that and they could still have temporary events but keep content like achievements, dungeons and items available forever.

However, even if they would change this, if they will generate income with gems and not with expansion I am afraid they will start doing yet something else to try to get people to buy gems that might be bad for the game.

With an expansion I have believe the decisions they will make are less likely to be bad for the game because there focus is.. make a good game, not get people to guy gems. Even if they may be connected.

At the end of the day it all boils down to trust. If they wanted to focus just on money why not have it both ways? Do the expansion, sell it but still have the weapon skin of the month and sell that from the cash shop?

If they were really all about the money first and foremost, why make chests loot-able in game and not have them just in the cash shop exclusively like we had during halloween? We could take it even further why allow ingame money to be traded for gems?

Of course Arenanet is a business and as any business it definitely wants to make money but I just dont see them focusing only on the money. For starters I am pretty sure a lot of people never buy a single gem using real money those will still get a ton of content for free where as if they had an expansion they would be forced to pay for it (and nothing is precluding them for keeping the same cash shop strategy with an expansion)

Honestly I dont see the greed you seem to be seeing. The content they’re releasing for free every two weeks just keeps getting better and better. Tomorrow we’re going to get one jam packed patch with lots of nifty and free stuff. Not just that but once again they listened to people’s feedback and the rng boxes include tokens that once you earn enough off you can exchange for the real deal if it doesnt drop for you. We’ll see if they keep this up but I honestly feel that they definitely earned the benefit of the doubt at least!

Devata.6589:

Well I don’t. There is more stuff I do not like….
I don’t blame any of them on the payment model. Some things are, some things aren’t.

You might not but I have personally seen people say the game has a lack of mounts so that people use teleporting which costs money and forces you to buy gems for example.

but staying on you personally its like I told you in the last post. you mentioned difficulty to make gold and temporary content. Dont get me wrong, its possible that you’re right and their intention is to drive gem sales but like I explained there are also legitimate reasons why things are the way they are.

Devata.6589:

It’s a very nice idea but thats not how the marketing people think. They basically say.. Create a feel of urgency and way more people buy. Without that urgency less people will buy it if if you keep it in for longer.

I know about the concept and important of creating urgency to drive sales but its not a silver bullet to be used everywhere. Creating urgency makes sense when you want to ensure a client doesnt think too long about the purchase as to avoid the risk they end up buying a competing product. It also only makes sense when whatever you’re selling is something that is bought once or only a few times. If you go try buy a car you’ll get sales persons telling you to hurry cause they have other clients interested in it etc.. etc.. and that makes sense. You’re not going to go to say a super market, or a green grocer and get the urgency sales pitch because it will be counter productive. If your green grocer tells you to be quick about buying those apples because they’re about to become scarce and they dont know when they will be able to get more apples to sell all they will really end up with is one next customer when they come next time and see an abundance of apples and feel cheated. Same here, I dont think urgency will help in the grand scheme of things. I mean lets think about it. Lets go with fused weapons cause they’re nifty. If you want to get say a set of 3 fused weapons urgency or not you’ll buy chests until you get those 3 fused weapons. All Arenanet can gain with the urgency tactic is they get 50 sales this month (assuming 50 chests lead to 3 tickets) as opposed to 20 sales this month, 20 sales next month and 10 sales the month after if they remained on the market. IF you want them, you want them it doesnt matter if they’re available for 1 month or forever yo’re not going to buy more then 50 chests if thats what it takes to get the tickets you want. Further more this is offset by a number of drawbacks. One being what we called the greengrocer factor. because people think they’re being manipulated some refuse to spend any money at all. Further more people on a budget will not spend more then their budget urgency or not If I only have $10 to spend this month thats all they can get. I could spend another $10 next month but alas there are no more fused weapons and the new set of skins doesnt match the look I am going for so no money for anet.

Bottom line urgency makes sense when you either want to beat your competitors by making sure potential customers dont get enough time to shop around. It also only makes sense when its an object that is only going to be bought once. In this case none of those criteria apply imho.

Devata.6589:

It’s not just hard to get money.. it’s hard to get mats. … But now if people want for example an legendary they will need money to buy the mats giving and they can get the money with gems. When people could get the mats easier it the need for money would be less. So it has not do to with the amount but with the need for it.

I dont think thats really it. The problems experienced in an economy isnt just inflation, there is also deflation. Gw2 suffers a bit here cause most things are completely worthless. If mats were easy to come by they’d be sold for nothing and your economy will suffer cause nothing in your game will be worth selling at all. Its a balance. On one hand you need to make sure that gold is limited so that people will not be able to drive price up and up but on the other hand you need to make sure that stuff is valuable enough that people will not give it away for free (like they do with any gear sub rare tier)

The thing with legendaries is they’re meant to be long term goals. Its by design that it should take a players months of game time before they can afford it. The problem with people converting real money into gems is to get around that intended barrier.
Honestly the problem there is people are able to do it rather then its required.

Devata.6589:

First of all it is still ‘fake’.. The content is not based on what the players do. If it was then the influence from payers change the world. Like if they introduce an event and if players defeat the enemy then that area will forever become friendly territory else it will forever become hostile territory.

Anyway, You can still have persistent change without the temporary dungeons, achievements and items (and thats what people are complaining about). Remember the introduction of south sun cove? There we shaped the land by cutting down tree’s. These tree’s are still down. But there where no achievements or skins attached to that specific thing (cut down x trees).

With MF the story could be to defeat the new enemy and then keep them away.. keeping them away could then be done with the MF dungeon. Keeping the dungeon in forever (we need to keep them away forever), Make achievements for that dungeon (so they will also be available forever) and because the enemy is still there (not on or land) you can also keep the items in, they can then just drop from the dungeon and so on.

So it’s perfectly possible to have persistent change without the temporary skins, dungeons and achievements.

The reason they have it temporary is not because people asked for it but it is purely because they want people to buy stuff from the gem-store and to do that they try to give a idea of urgency. The oldest trick in the marketing book.. next to giving an idea of scarcity.

Yes and no. Its a theme park so yeah there is an intended conclusion and its a game so its all fake of course. The intention is not to have real change, you’d need a sandbox for that but to have “believable” change. Going with your southsun cove example, that too had temporary event which made it more believable. If the karka kept invading lions arch every 15 minutes players beating the karka on southsun itself would have been a gimmick so to speak. Just like cutting down the trees resulted in persistent cut down trees so beating the karka resulted in no more karka invasion of lion’s arch and so did beating the molten alliance result in no molten alliance dungeon. That being said we dont really have to loose the dungeon forever. I agree with you that such a situation would be a pity. Luckly we have FotM, I am hoping that perhaps the friendly asura there will perfect his device where as it will not be just random fractals which you can do but perhaps even choose more recent event so we can get the dungeons in their entirety and not a fractalize version. That would be nifty and can still carry forward the story.

I think you’re misunderstanding the situation. Its not that anything in particular is required to have story or persistent change, its what makes sense in the specific context. For example if they were to create a dungeon which is say I dont know a section of the underworld that holds lots of treasure its okey to have that permanently. Sure it still has the issue of why do enemies keep regeneration but its just a question of make believe its not driving forward any story. Its kinda like why we get story mode dungeons and explorer mode dungeons. Story mode are meant to run once as they drive the story forward while explorer mode arent tied to the story thus its not as much a big deal that they’re repeatable. Thats also another option for other dungeons they could do a story mode / explorer mode too.

You might have a point with urgency but I am not entirely convinced. Urgency might give them a few extra sales sure but a longer period of sale will give them sales from new players, players with new alts, players who stick to a monthly budget etc…

morrolan.9608:

But its not meaningful. In the world of the game I inhabit it is in fact completely meaningless and out of sight given that SS is deserted again because they didn’t meaningfully change the zone enough to keep people going there in sufficient numbers.

See this is a misreading of the situation, people don’t want the events to be purely once off so now they aren’t which is great they don’t necessarily want those events to be permanent. What people want to be permanent are things like the dungeons or as I said above permanent events in zones like Southsun. Its not like being able to run other dungeons over and over again affects immersion.

Southsun is a good example. The same events that made it popular during the last living story based there are still in game. The crazed karka still attack, the karka queen still comes around wrecking havoc. The only thing thats missing now is the canach and null instances (not exactly a great loss lets be honest), the crab toss mini game (I enjoyed it to be honest but not many did) and a few story driven events. The meat and potatoes of that event are still playable today. Yet while going during the event was nearly always a guaranteed overflow now you dont see many players there. Is it because content was taken away? or is it because content was introduced else where?

I think its cause content was introduced else where and if thats the case its another reason why this release model is a great idea. At the end of the day if we got an expansion what would happen? lets assume the game started in cantha and the main game (IE Tyria) was an expansion, we’d have waiting a year – two years to get it and in 2 – 3 months people would have finished it all and fallen back to their usual pattern (Ie what they do now once they finish with the living story of the month) Then it would be another 1 – 2 year wait for the next expansion. Like this content is getting pacing too. Instead of having 3 months of stuff to do and then 9 months of trying to figure out what to do while waiting we get new stuff to keep us occupied a couple of weeks. Even if the content is not something one might enjoy it will likely occupy them for a couple of days just to try it or perhaps force themselves to grind their way to that release reward. After that they’d just need to endure a week and a half of wait until something else comes out rather then months.

I am sure a lot of people dont know what they want themselves so you can imagine how hard it is for a 3rd party to figure out what it is said people want. I mean lets focus on Dynamic Events again. People didnt specifically say what they expected only that dynamic events arent dynamic and that they dont change anything cause 5 – 30 mins they’ll repeat. If you were put in charge to fix that what would you do? cause they only thing I can think of is one time / temporary events.

Actually yes you do see people unhappy with some continuity issues, like if zaithan is dead why doesn’t Orr sink again or why the risen keep on regenerating or wasn’t the land cleansed etc…

Its not easy to find the perfect balance, the only thing you can do is experiment with different styles and see what players like best. Thats whats happening here. Going forward it seems to be a ratio of repeatable and temporary content like you suggest. We’ll see if that will make people happy.

Devata.6589:

Galen Grey.4709:

Thing is what they’re saying they plan to do is just shift the release model. Its not that they dont want to release the stuff that one usually finds in an expansion, its just that instead of bundling everything together and release it all at once its being released gradually.

And so change there income / payment model, and so change / ‘improve the game-mechanics to fit this model’ and so might ending up making a game that is not as good as they would have had if they made money with the expansions.

What people like me here are talking about is that the way they release content is more then just the way they release content. And one may might be better for the game itself then the other.

This is a reply to the previous post as well.

In my experience people like to pin everything they dont like on the payment model. Not just on this game but on all games regardless of payment model. I’ve seen things argued that games that have micro transactions like gw2 gives you limited storage space as to force you buy extra storage. yet nearly every p2p game I played from WoW to Aion to Rift to Tera (when they were still p2p) still had expandable storage which you had to spend a lot of play time to expand fully.

What I am trying to say is its easy to pin whatever you like on the gem shop so you have to be careful to ensure there really is a link.

For example you mentioned that you believe temporal content is a result of the gem store. What link do you see there exactly? how is the gem store benefiting from temporary content? In my opinion its actually hurt by it. If I wanted to design the game around the gem store I would do it quite differently. What I would do is create the same nifty weapon skins. Ensure that like it happened in flame and frost mobs would be carrying them so that players can see how great looking they are. Have two chests like we had in dragon bash, one that drops from the mob and one thats purchasable from the cash shop. Have the one that drops, drop only for as long as that living story is going on say 2 months. After it ends the content remains in the game, the chest doesnt drop anymore but can still be bought from the gem store. That way people can still play the events and see how great the weapon skins look which will make them want one and the gemstore would be their only option at least for a while (might do an event with the same weapon skins again in the future). Dont you think this will definitely generate more money then temporary content? because I think it would for multiple reasons.
1. New players that join the game later can still spend money on past weapon skins
2. Not all players will like all the skins. I might think Fused weapons are amazing but sclerite weapon skins just dont fit the look of my character so while I would buy chests that might drop fused weapons I will not buy ones that drop sclerite
3. I might take a break from the game join again in the future and really wanting a fused weapon skin thus if it was available for sale I would throw money at it.
4. people generally have a budget. I am sure some do. I might not be willing to spend more then say $20 in a month but that might not be enough to get all the weapon skins I want. If it remained in game in subsequent months I might be willing to spend more to get that skin I love.
5. Alts. Certain skins go well with certain professions. The sclerite weapon skins are great on a necro but dont see them fit a mesmer much. When the sclerite skins were available I might not have owned a necro character but now that I finished to level all my other character I decided to start one. If the skins were still available I might be willing to try to get one as it would fit my necro’s look perfectly.

As for your other point the gold driven system I will agree its not as clear cut as temporary content is. I personally think the main reason why gold is hard to come by is to control inflation which you have to admit this game does very VERY well. Its got one of the most stable economy systems I’ve seen in any game in terms of inflation. You can only do that if you limit how much money characters earn. Of course you’re also right in that a side effect of that is people are more willing to convert real money into gold. If thats the main purpose or if inflation control is the main purpose its hard to tell. Even if there was no RMT in game I would still hope they’d done things the way they are. Having good inflation control is not only good for alts but also new players that join the game.

minbariguy.7504:

Galen Grey.4709:

I dont understand why people dont think this is an awesome idea provided they make it work.

Honestly, it’s because some of us don’t think they are making it work. When an expansion is released for any other MMO, they don’t remove content and achievements after a certain number of weeks and then say, “Oops, sorry, you’re too late; we took it out of the game.”

I actually do like the general idea of adding story content every 2 to 4 weeks that builds a continuing story. A Living World storyline that you can play through on your own schedule without it being pulled out from underneath you would be fantastic. But that isn’t what they’re doing. They are intentionally creating content on a timer so that we have to play on their schedule or miss out. That’s a total deal-breaker for me.

They already said they’re going to change that going forward. Funny thing is this all came about due to player request those same players that now are hating it.

In a game like an MMO change is a tricky thing. You can either have contextual change or temporal change. Most MMOs go with contextual change IE you’re given a quest to say save a village, you kill a few of the whatevers that are threatening that village but nothing really changes except you’re told you saved the village by the same npc that ask you to save the village. GW2 went with temporal change, you actually save the village and things actually save but only temporary. In a few minutes things are going to repeat. A lot of player rejected that change, they called it gimmicky, they called it fake some even called it nonexistant because of that repetition.

So Anet improved on that by making the content itself temporary. Change such as we managed to beat the molten alliance became factual the moment all the events / dungeon were removed from the game. No one can call that change a gimmick, fake or nonexistant because the events happened and left their mark on the world (refugees, the changes to southsun etc…) but at the same time the molten alliance no longer attacks every 30 minutes even though we’ve beaten them.

Anet only gave us what we wanted. Meaningful persistent change. However like the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. Those same players who complained about changes happening on a schedule realized they wanted that change to happened on a schedule after all so now Arenanet are going to move towards there again.

This was all an evolutionary process. Remember the first time we got one such update, the november release, lost shores the situation was a lot worst. Events happened only once and never repeated. Again people didnt like that so Anet changed it to a repeating month long event. People still dont like it so Anet promised more persistent content going forward.

Thing is what they’re saying they plan to do is just shift the release model. Its not that they dont want to release the stuff that one usually finds in an expansion, its just that instead of bundling everything together and release it all at once its being released gradually. Of course some stuff takes a lot of time to develop and so they do need a bit of “fillers” and thats what we’ve been getting in the living story so far mixed in with the good stuff.

Think of it this way… imagine we’re at release and there is a planned expansion which will feature the crystal desert and the fight with Kralkatorrik. In addition it has some extra features which are, Guild missions, 5 new sPvP maps, new dailies, new progression based mini Dungeons (FotM), a raid like system with content for 5+ players, a new professions (Dervish).

So all of this content has a varing degree of effort required. Lets say in total it would take 1.5 years to complete. Now instead of having 1.5 years with nothing but some holiday event every few months they’re gradually releasing the stuff from the expansion together with a few themed stories. 1 Month we got FotM another we got Guild missions in another we got a PvP map etc… In some months they just dont have anything substantial completed so we got small updates, I have no doubt the first flame and frost living story release was such a month, instead of releasing nothing they just gave us a little something to do. They keep releasing one thing at a time until they finish the bulk the of the work which would be the Kralkatorrik storyline. When they’re done they start 1 month with a living story event designed to stir the narrative towards that direction. Some Elonian dervish warriors show up to warn us of an escalation by Kralkatorrik minions and soon after the dragon minions invade. The Dervish is made as a playable class, the next month 3 zones open up as we start to invade Kralkatorrik domain. The month after that another 3 zones followed by another update where the faceoff with the dragon is unleashed.

I dont understand why people dont think this is an awesome idea provided they make it work. I can understand people are skeptic and think that Anet might not manage to deliver but if thats the case why would an expansion change things in anyway? It all boils down if Anet can create the content or not. Whether its packaged in an expansion or released gradually doesnt change anything really. If they were developing an expansion they’d still finish some content before other. an sPvP map requires much less effort then creating a zone and populating it with tons of events. Instead of sitting on it for 12-15 months until everything else is completed they’re opting to release it when its done. Thats great imho cause we keep getting new stuff to enjoy month after month.

Devata.6589:

..snip

My bottom line is. In both case they need to have people playing but with the expansion way they need to do that purely by having a good game while for the gem-store they also need to make people to really buy the gems and while doing that they might make the game worse in the progress (also resulting in not having people playing).

Btw it’s not totally the truth that they just need to have people playing. For the expansion part they just need to have people playing, for the gem-store focus they just need to have gem-buyers playing.

Sure but who are gem buyers? arent they just a subset of players? and what do they enjoy out of the game? For your statement to be true what they’d need to enjoy is buying stuff off the gem store without any particular love for the game itself. Do you really see that? What I am trying to say is buy putting stuff for sale and neglect the actual game play they’re not going to retain gem-buys any more then they’re not going to retain players who will never spent a single cent on gems. Which brings us back to square one. The first important thing they need to focus on for this to work is to have people playing the game regularly and thats not going to happen without making sure the game is fun for as many people as possible.

Devata.6589:

..snip
But it is an commercial and they need to make money, one way or the other. Using the living story means they will need to make money with the gem-store and that means the story will become commercials for new gem-store items including with a lot of other bad decisions purely based on the idea ‘how do we get people to buy gems’.

And I personally think… and already see in the game, that that way of thinking is not good for the game.. If they would focus on expansions then there question was not “how do we get people to buy gems” but “how do we get people to buy the expansion” and I think the answer to that second question results in a much better game then the answer to the first question.

I dont really think the difference is as much as you think.

Sure with the living story approach the focus is to have people buy from gem store while with the expansion approach its how do we get people to buy the expansion. That being said those two scenarios share an important commonality. For people to buy stuff from the gem store they need to be playing the game and for them to be playing the game they need to provide content those people enjoy. If they shift their strategy in a way to make it all about the gem store players will get bored. Selling nifty weapon skins is great and all but if you dont play the game at all why would you buy the weapon skin? hence they still need to make their player base happy so they keep playing. Actually I would say its probably more important to keep their player base happy with the living story approach then it is with an expansion. Because an expansion gives you a grace period so to speak. If player get bored for a few months and quit the game they may still decide to give an expansion a try if they enjoyed the game before then and thus Anet would still get their money. On the other hand with the living story they get no grace period, if players get bored and stop playing they’re not going to get a single cent while they’re not playing obviously but not just that if at some point in the future those same players decide to give it a go they’re going to be cautious. Think about it, if you come back after say 5 months of not playing the game cause you were bored, would you spend any money on skins when you’re not sure if you’re going to be enjoying the game enough that you’ll keep playing in the longer term? If no compelling content was released in the interim cause based on your assumption they focused too much on the gem store rather then making the game as best as it can be the answer will most likely be those players will again be bored and quit for another longer chunk of time without anet earning anything.

Just look at this threat for proof, the main argument against the living story is people are afraid its not going to keep them interested in the game because they’re afraid there will not be any longer term engaging content like an expansion would have. I assume all those people who’ve been asking for an expansion do so because they want one and they’ll all happily buy one if its ever released. Yet their fear is the current release strategy will make them wanna stop playing in the long run. Making an expansion would be nearly sure money (obviously it still would need to be good enough) where as if they stick with the living story they need to have releases that are so good that they’d convince the skeptics that there is long term value in the game even without expansions.

Bottom line while they’ll obviously do what they can to insentivize people to buy stuff from the gem shop they also need to ensure people are happy playing the game and to do that they still have to make quality content even more so then an expansion most likely.

mrstealth.6701:

IndigoSundown.5419:

“But those teams are “a fraction” of ArenaNet’s massive development force as a whole. Zadorojny told me that the same number of people work there as they did when the game launched (upwards of 250), and they’re all focused on Guild Wars 2 – he indicated that there was nothing else in development."

It definitely raises some questions. Unless the rules of the ITP competition have changed drastically in the last several years, the artwork had to be from a game that is at least in development. Either the art submission was not legitimate, the interviewer grossly misunderstood Zadorojny, or the information given to him was incorrect.

If it took 250 people (fairly sure the team was smaller at the start) 5 years to make all of GW2, I’d think more would have been done if that 250 were still working on the game for the past 10 months. Maybe they really are working on something massive, but I certainly have my doubts about that. I would assume the full team would only stay on if they were working a large expansion that would require all of the positions as a new game project. Without a project of that scope, there would almost have to be a number of people who’s talents just weren’t required any longer.

Everything is possible. The rules you posted included “art that was used in the creation of the games”. Seem to me the same 2 published or soon to be published would still apply but perhaps it means that concept art for a game in early stages of development still apply? Cause if this is still in early stages of development then it might simply be a small team working on it. Also Daniel doesnt just work for Anet but is also ncsoft chief art director perhaps this has nothing to do with anet at all. More wildy perhaps we’ll be getting a time travel living story were we get to move 1000s of years in tyria’s future… okey thats too crazy scratch that <— joke

Anyhow back on subject… I am sure the living story team isnt made up of 300 people but like they told us multiple times the past week, the living story is just part of the gw2 work force. Other teams are working on longer term stuff. A good number of people might be working on new zones moving the personal story forward towards one of the other elder dragons. I am sure it would take such a team a long time before they’re done so its entirely feasable that big number of developers / artists / other disciplines are working on stuff we know nothing about. For instance its been revealed there is work being done on a raid like system for gw2 and dungeons/content for more then 5 people. Up until last month we knew absolutely nothing of this so its quite possible there is other content that takes much longer then 2 months to develop thats being worked upon in the background that we’ll know nothing about until much later. Perhaps things will get clearer when they release the “roadmap” post they promised this month about whats planed for the next 6 months.

mrstealth.6701:

Galen Grey.4709:

Well if you follow a certain link: http://www.arena.net/ and scroll down to the section called careers you’re see they’re currently recruiting people in 27 different positions. Just to be clear we’re not talking 27 people but 27 different disciplines. If you research a bit you’ll also see Arenanet had 250 employees when they developed Gw2 and since launch the team has increased to above 300 employees.

It’s worth noting that GW2 is not the only project on ArenaNet’s plate at the moment. There was a piece of concept art by Daniel Dociu from an unannounced ArenaNet/NCSoft game in this year’s Into the Pixel competition.

I didn’t see any recent requirements for submitted artwork, but press releases on the ITP website list rules for previous years’ contests, including this one.

“Submissions must be art from published or soon-to-be-published computer and video games, or art that was used in the creation of the games.”

The piece is obviously more than just some random concept art he had sitting on his desk, and Anet/NC were willing to attach their names to the contest submission. They are working on something, and it’s definitely not related to Guild Wars 2.

Edit:
I feel the need to clarify this.
I’m not attempting to imply that this project is somehow taking away from GW2’s development, nor am I willing to claim that has no effect. I mention this because its existence means that at least some of Anet’s staff are not full-time members (or members at all) of the GW2 team. I never assumed that the entire 200+ member development team would continue working on the game after release, and this project appears to prove (or at least strongly support) that idea.

mmm wasnt aware of that. Looks amazing then again it Daniel Dociu, of course it looks amazing That being said Daniel Dociu is not just an Arenanet employee but also ncsoft chief art director: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dociu
Could this be something another studio under ncsoft is working on? If according to the rules it has to at least be a game thats soon to be published it would imply its been worked on for years ! But we’ll see. Part of me is kinda loves the idea of cyberpunk game/MMO and both Arenanet’s games are my 2 top favorite MMOs so there would be a lot of win there.

Also as off january Arenanet employeed 300 people. Many of those job listings specifically state the job is for Gw2 so in any event there is definitely more investment being made in the game.

Zacchary.6183:

After skimming through a few pages, I am realizing more and more that NOBODY knows that the Gem Store only feeds NCSoft who gives Anet money at their discretion. They aren’t supporting the game, they are supporting paychecks.

Well if you follow a certain link: http://www.arena.net/ and scroll down to the section called careers you’re see they’re currently recruiting people in 27 different positions. Just to be clear we’re not talking 27 people but 27 different disciplines. If you research a bit you’ll also see Arenanet had 250 employees when they developed Gw2 and since launch the team has increased to above 300 employees. I have no idea how much ncsoft is pumping into Anet but I think its safe to assume its more then just paychecks.

Thing is you’re right, all money payed on the game goes to ncsoft which is fair enough considering that ncsoft payed for everything while gw2 was being developed and got nothing in return for years. BUT that doesnt mean they hold on to everything. You need to spend money in order to make money. Gw2 in the words of ncsoft themselves exceeded their expectation both in terms of box sales and cash shop sales. Its in the best interest to ensure they keep the momentum going. And they are doing just that which is why in most cases MMOs lay off people after the game is released and they switch from development to maintenance mode yet in case of Anet they actually hired at least 50 more people and are hiring more. I think people are being a bit unfair on NC soft here they dont see as evil as people are painting them at all.

ozma.3498:

Rhysati.4932:

I’m not going to slog my way through the whole thread, but my main issue with these ideas of not doing an expansion is that…well…the updates we have gotten have been ridiculously lackluster.

Now, I know what some folks are saying. They are saying that we shouldn’t be expecting an expansion worth of content already. Well, I got news for you guys. We aren’t. Well, at least most of us aren’t. We just want meaningful updates rather than weak little mini-events like the first phase of the first living story. It was a total waste of time, little plot to speak of, and had us simply running around clicking on things until we did it enough times.

That isn’t a quality addition to the game. And with this silly Living World setup, the new ‘content’ we get is taken away just as quickly.

But, I could let all of that go if it weren’t for this: We were told back at the beginning of the year that we would be getting the equivalent of a full-fledged expansion in three patches. We got our patches, but I don’t think anyone is arguing that it was an expansion’s worth of content.

And yet, they advertised the game again with the statement that they had already released over a full expansion’s worth of content for free.

If you were to ask me, we’ve not even seen a fifth of a full expansion in updates since release. But, Anet seems to feel they have. So when they say they don’t need to do expansions because they can just release them as they go…yeah….I’m not buying it.

Exactly.

I don’t even want an expansion. I’d much rather have proper updates every 3-4 (even 5-6) months with new explorable mode dungeons, new fractals, and real stuff to focus on rather than some meaningless grinds loosely connected to a mediocre story, with the occasional story mode dungeon that will disappear after a couple of weeks.

I sometimes wonder if the people in ArenaNet’s PR department have ever played an MMORPG, or if they just think their players won’t notice when they say things that are grossly inaccurate (or make promises that are simply never mentioned again as if they never happened, as the fluff updates continue to be shovelled out).

You do realise you’re getting that already I hope! if you’re really happy with such content every 6 months I would point out you got 9 fractals, A substantial number of guild missions as well as 2 dungeons with some fluff in between. isnt that double what you suggest would make you happy? or does the fluff in between somehow negate the content you like?

aspirine.6852:

The cash shop doing 180 million a year? Get real.
Also in the original gw1 they started almost right away with the expansion, factions was there in a years time or so after the game’s release. -It makes no sense to hve a full gaming company capable of doing complete new games to fiddle around with the living story part alone imo.

I have no idea how much the cash shop is doing. I know the box sales of gw2 did at least 180 million. by deciding to go biweekly updates rather then expansion they’re essentially choosing cash shop over boxed sales. Why would they do that if the cash shop profit wasnt at least comparable to the boxed sales?

It makes no sense because you’re assuming every update will have the same scope of every living story update we had so far. Its been already pointed out several times the living story teams is just a fraction of the development going on. There is longer term content being developed as well.

Its not like we’re not going to get content that you usually find in expansions like new classes, new professions, new zones, new storylines etc… its just they’ll be released when they’re ready rather then all at once, one time per year.

Nick.6972:

Ah, well, who knows, maybe NCSoft is too busy investing in Wildstar since GW2 isn;t doing that great.
I’m not saying its true, just “What if”/“Maybe”.

Who says Gw2 isnt doing that great? at least 3m copies sold (probably closer to 4m by now but lets say 3m…) lets assume all those 3m where the basic $60 version lets forget the $80 deluxe and $150 collectors edition… thats $180m… now consider that they’re not developing another expansion that might earn them something close to another $180m in a year’s time (assuming 1 year to complete the expansion) which means that probably the cash shop itself is ranking in more then $180m in a year most likely…. but even so.. consider that EvE online does $90m in a year .. 500k subs x $15 × 12. so even if gw2 does $180m in a year its doing twice as better then eve online and people consider eve online is doing great!

But thats not all… keep in mind that if the cash shop is doing $180m in a year this year Gw2 will have made $360m ($180 for the box sales and $180 for the cash shop)… thats like 4m subs! which short of WoW this year would make Gw2 the most profitable MMO ever probably. Hmmm Nope I have a feeling Gw2 is doing Great actually.

Kichwas.7152:

So another thing we’re missing that an Expansion gives: a Plot.
We have a story, but it has no plot.

We got a lot more then what you listed.

You missed the super adventure box, The 2 PvP maps, the flame and frost dynamic events (the invasions, the weather effects, etc..) all of the Guild missions and a couple of additions to it in subsequent months, the story instances of Braham and Rox. the mini games like crab toss, WvW progression and the dragon bash storyline events.

But even so you’re forget the most crucial part. These living story updates is not all that Anet are doing. They are also working on long term updates. We’re using WoW as an example so lets plug WoW itself instead of Gw2 and fact it against WoW. Okey thats complicated but bare with me.

So Lets say we’re comparing WoW A against WoW B
WoW A is a ficticious WoW thats 6 months old after the catacylsm release. WoW B is the real WoW from start to finish. We’re saying that WoW B released a huge expansion 2 years after catacysm that had a lot of stuff more then 4x what Gw2 released so far… fair enough. But lets look at WoW B what did WoW B release in 6 months. 1 zone and 1 raid. Comparing WoW B to WoW A you’ll get the same thing you get in Gw2 (well worst really) WoW B released less then 4x what WoW A released and thats crucial because content release is not linear not in WoW and not in Gw2.

Back to Gw2, you seem to be ignoring the fact that living story updates is not all we’re getting its just short term content we’re getting. They also said multiple times now that the 4 living story teams are just a fraction of the work they’re doing on Gw2, their task is to release stuff every 2 weeks, they’re not gonna be huge updates obviously there is so much one can do in 2 months time of work. But lets not conveniently forget the other teams that are working on long term stuff like gw2 answer to raiding. I mean and this is me just speculating now if they have 4 teams working on living story and 4 teams working on long term stuff. the 4 living story teams release stuff like we’ve been getting the past 6 months every 2 weeks and the 4 long term teams work on stuff that takes 2months + to produce. We know for sure, its been confirmed now, that one of those teams is developing on gw2 take on raiding / content for more then 5 players (source: in game talk by a developer and this week’s guild cast). The other 3 teams (there might be more teams or less teams again we dont know the real number, I just made it up but 4 teams is realistic I imagine) would be working on other long term stuff like 2 teams might be working on 3 new zones each and the last team might be working on guild halls for example. Now lets imagine the raiding is completed after 11 months, the new zones are completed in 16 months and guild housing in 14 months. In such a scenario we’d be getting the updates we’re getting up until end of august and in September we’d get something like raiding and some 10 – 20 man dungeons. then we’d get other living story updates like the once we’re getting for November, December and January. We’d get guild housing in February. more living story in march and April and then a 6 new zones with a new story line and tons of dynamic events in may 2014. (once again just so there are no misunderstanding this is all fictitious except for raiding and 5+ man content I personally invented the content just as an example.)

Wouldn’t that be amazing? Would it be a lot better then waiting 16 months and getting an expansion with everything and nearly nothing in between?

Whats important is lets not make the mistake to assume releases like dragon bash or flame and frost is all we’re getting. They already said multiple times, including in this very thread that the 4 teams working on living story are just a fraction of the effort on gw2. those 4 teams work on short term content that each team releases every 2 weeks (so the development frame of those teams is 2 months max) there are other teams working on other more meatier content that takes longer then 2 months to develop.

mrstealth.6701:

Galen Grey.4709:

I farmed so many stone elementals out there, there is no way you’d get 1plat worth of stone in 5 – 7 minutes. I had a 30 minute route I did solo in hard mode and got maybe 2 stacks of granite slabs by the end of it. Thats like 800g max.

You must have been doing that at an entirely different point in the game’s life than I was. Even selling to the NPC trader, 10 granite got you over 200g. A stack of it sold to another player was 6-7k.

Sure exotic drops are pretty rare but like gw1 before it the nice thing about gw2 is you play any content you like then convert that to any reward you want. 100 dynamic events = 1 exotic weapon bought with karma. 2 Dungeon runs = 1 exotic weapon bought with gold. a few of hours of gathering = Craft your exotic weapon. Same in Gw1, you didnt get your weapons through drops. You bought them and sticked on the them the right inscription.

I think I bought maybe 10 weapons through the 7 years I played GW1. Almost every weapon I had was either a drop for me or a friend. It was fairly common for a small group of us to trade weapons among each other, but most weapons I used were my own drops. I did buy some rare skinned weapons from others, but even most of my rare items were dropped for me from chests/mobs.

I dont have a single ascended gear item on any of my characters and can enjoy the game just fine. Once I tried to play the game without a single piece of armor and accessory worn and I could do level 80 events just fine as long as I paid attention. Thing is until content is balanced for ascended gear, ascended gear will remain a nice to have just like WvW upgrades really. Its a goal to work towards nothing more. I honestly dont see it as something that makes the game alt unfriendly.

I have most of the currently available ascended jewelry on one character, and that’s not something I really plan on working on for any others. Somewhat because most of the stat combos I would need to replace existing gear are not available, but mainly because it’s such a massive time sink to get it. I do see exotic/ascended/whatever is highest at a given time gear in a game like GW2 as “needed” from a player’s perspective, even if not required by the game itself. A lot of players (likely the majority) want their characters to be as powerful as they can be. Not meaning min/maxing stats like only using full ’zerker gear (I will never build a char like that), but simply having the highest tier available.

Whether or not most get that gear is very dependent on how the game goes about making it available/accessible. Right now, ascended gear is considerably restrictive and very much timegated in comparison to exotic. The timegating becomes much more of issue as the number of alts increases.

yes thats what I was thinking too, we probably just played in different times.

I know what you’re saying by people feeling they need the best gear. You’re right, I’ve seen it plenty of times myself. That being said there isnt really a solution there. Thing is this is gw2 and gw2 is trying to provide content for multiple play styles. Ascended Item are intended for the person who wants progression. Those who want to grind and have a long term effort to get the best gear. Problem here is the crowd who doesnt want that but would rather have easily achievable gear feel they need that gear. Gw2 does the only thing possible which is allow those players to have an easy time living without that gear. What else can they do? if they make it easily achievable so that the casual multi alt player can easily earn it for all their alts then the hardcore I want to work for my best gear player loosing their content.

I truely believe as is now is the best solution but the casual multi alt player has to realise this is gw2 and not [insert other mmo here]. Here things are different you work toward what you desire. If you dont want to grind/have a hard time to get your equipment then you should steer clear of Ascended gear. You can live a nice happy life without it. I can personally vouch for that.

mrstealth.6701:

Galen Grey.4709:

You’re saying gw1 open world is more rewarding then gw2 open world? If you play a low level area in gw1 like say the area around sardelac sanitarium (or any other open world zone really) in hard mode it will take you an hour if not two and selling drops together with the reward you’ll get 3 maybe 4 plat if you’re lucky.

As for gear, what useful gear drops do you get in gw1 when you fully equip yourself from a vendor the moment you level up? both games are not about the gear power, they never were. They’re about cosmetics and you could kill as many mobs as you wanted in the open world in gw1, no mob would drop you a piece of vabbi armor or any other armor set.

I could easily get 1-1.2k in 5-7 minutes in that same area. Just from killing the stone elementals right outside of the town. A bad run would still usually get at least 500g. And I had a better chance of getting a useful weapon to drop than I’ve ever seemed to in GW2. I had over 2000 hours played before I saw my first exotic that wasn’t from map completion. Max stat weapons were practically raining from the sky in GW1 compared to GW2.

That being said this is the most Alt friendly game I have ever seen including Gw1. There are multiple zones per level bracket so you can play an alt in zones you havent played yet. It is trivial to fully equip a character with good gear ( I mean rare or exotic) 1 – 2g to fully equip a lvl 80 character in rares and you can earn that in 1 day easily. Rare is good enough for any content in the game. There is shared bank space and even a brand new alt can be played in WvW even at level 1 if you so desire.

I do agree that GW2 is still the 2nd most alt-friendly game I’ve played (GW1 being the first), but that is in comparison to games where simply reaching max level can take months and months. Quite a few of the update since release have been detrimental to the game’s alt-friendliness. It is still alt-friendly, just considerably less so than it was at release. And it’s already known that more alt-unfriendly changes are coming in the future (more ascended gear for one).

I farmed so many stone elementals out there, there is no way you’d get 1plat worth of stone in 5 – 7 minutes. I had a 30 minute route I did solo in hard mode and got maybe 2 stacks of granite slabs by the end of it. Thats like 800g max. But even so keep in mind our kind of farming isnt exactly playing the open world, its just grinding a mob. in 5 minutes you’d experience less then 0.5% of that zone

Sure exotic drops are pretty rare but like gw1 before it the nice thing about gw2 is you play any content you like then convert that to any reward you want. 100 dynamic events = 1 exotic weapon bought with karma. 2 Dungeon runs = 1 exotic weapon bought with gold. a few of hours of gathering = Craft your exotic weapon. Same in Gw1, you didnt get your weapons through drops. You bought them and sticked on the them the right inscription.

I dont have a single ascended gear item on any of my characters and can enjoy the game just fine. Once I tried to play the game without a single piece of armor and accessory worn and I could do level 80 events just fine as long as I paid attention. Thing is until content is balanced for ascended gear, ascended gear will remain a nice to have just like WvW upgrades really. Its a goal to work towards nothing more. I honestly dont see it as something that makes the game alt unfriendly.

Lane.3410:

mrstealth.6701:

Who in their right mind would buy those dragon coffers from the gemstore when you can easily get hundreds of the droppable version for free? Unless the chance to get a ticket from them is 50% (or at least 30%), they simply are not worth bothering with. And if items are made exclusive to gemstore boxes, the player backlash is brutal…and rightfully so.

Really? Because not nearly enough backlash occurred when they added that Dragon Revelry Starcake recipe only to Rich Dragon Coffers. Exclusive recipe to the gem store only available through RNG boxes. Personally, that crossed the line in terms of the gem store being “cosmetic only”. I’m particularly concerned that this is part of a new strategy to sucker players who aren’t interested in skins into buying the RNG boxes anyway by stuffing things like recipes into them.

This is fair statement and I agree with you. That recipe shouldnt have been exclusive to the rich dragon coffer. Having a higher chance to drop then regular coffers yes, but exclusive, I am unhappy with.

mrstealth.6701:

Ithir Darkleaf.7923:

TL;DR: Keep the Living Story going on, but don’t make it the main focus of development, so you can bring us expansions which probably will make almost everyone happy and you will earn more money.

This is what I’d like to see happen. Maybe not the same pace of living story content that is now planned, but keep it coming like it has been. Even though I’ve not been a big fan of the stories they have added, this type of content can be a good thing. And even if the quality doesn’t improve, it’s still a filler/time waster in between other larger expansions. It just shouldn’t be the main/only content we see.

from what they said this is exactly whats going on.

killcannon.2576:

So I asked you to list what has changed…and you listed:
1.Couple of Grawl npcs in LA
2.The refugees who were not there before the living story are no longer there…shocking!!!
3. A broken Lighthouse
4. Southshore is still a dead zone…which they were supposed to fix but didn’t do too hot a job at.

Three things that have zip to do with gameplay, and another failed attempt to make SouthSun worthwhile. Thanks.

Dont twist my words please. You asked me what impact those events left on the world. I was answering specific this statement of yours in a previous post: “Tyria is much the same as when I started, I can see little to no evidence of any “Living World” that the devs have spoken so much about over the last 8 months.”

I listed 3 off the top of my head that I knew were in game off the top of my head. There are more. Even subtle ones like you can still see the disturbed land where the camps had been in hoelbrak. I mean areas without snow, scorched land where the camp fires where etc..

anyhow back on subject. Like I said in a previous post if you want to have a moving storyline you have to do this. If all the events/instances in flame and frost remained in the world how could you ever say the conflict was resolved? Would it make sense to have the story say we destroyed the molten alliance, the threat is resolved but then in the open world you’d get the alliance attacking the outposts still? or refugees limping along the road?

Think of it in real world terms. If there is a major conflict anywhere in the world, while its happening you see a lot of activity, soldiers fighting, tanks, planes etc… right after the fighting stops things will start to return to normal, you’d see some distraction, people rebuilding, refugees etc.. Fast forward more and you’ll be left with some subtle hints nothing more. More time passes and everything will disappear. If today we visit london or berlin we wouldnt be able to tell those 2 cities where prime targets in a world war. That doesnt mean world war 2 never happened. Same here the effects of the molten alliance are starting to disappear sure but thats to be expected.

Also what do you mean the refugees appeared out of no where? when the flame and frost saga started you could see the refugees walking from the center of where the alliance was attacking up to hoelbrak and the black citadel. Week after week the refugee settlements grew and grew and more refugees joined them. Thats like unheard of in an MMO, what more did you want?

mrstealth.6701:

I don’t need any more incentive to do this.
snip…

I know what you’re trying to say but be honest in a typical game session how many zones do you play in? I dont care about getting the best rewards, I dont care if I play in Orr or in queensdale yet in a typical session I barely visit 2 or maybe 3 zones. I let the daily guide me in which zone I play and thats it. Thanks to the effigies I ended up playing in a lot more zones each and every day. Not only that but because most of the time was spend enjoying the journey between one effigy to the next it wasnt any more tedious then it is tedious pressing F in order to loot a kill.

Yeah I agree with you that an expansion size release was a bit of an exaggeration but they really didnt release a bunch of stuff. What we got was a pvp map, an improved daily, selecting which dailies to do, laurels and their rewards. Guesting. New infusions and new ascended items, New guild missions (quite a few of them), preview of items in the trading post, they two story instances, some cutscenes, WvW progression, a few dynamic events, Elimination of Culling in WvW , the leader boards, a really good dungeon, Customer Arenas and spectator mode, 30 new guild missions, guild themed siege weapons and banners. Not an expansion size of stuff no saying it is, but it wasnt that bad and more then that it was their first attempt, the fact they delayed it twice is good indication that it didnt go as smoothly as they hoped.

Sorry, I did a Typo, I meant new full fledge zones is not something that can be completed in 2 months. I didnt want to imply they already did it before, just thakittens a long term project which I personally hope is already in the works. Also Southsun cove is a bit understimated, its the only zone that is at least a little challenging, its very beautiful visually and its a great farming spot. Its not as lackluster as people imply imho.

You’re saying gw1 open world is more rewarding then gw2 open world? If you play a low level area in gw1 like say the area around sardelac sanitarium (or any other open world zone really) in hard mode it will take you an hour if not two and selling drops together with the reward you’ll get 3 maybe 4 plat if you’re lucky. Doing a mission like Auspicious Beginnings will net you at least 2 plat if not 3 in 5 minutes flat. Thats about 24plat in an hour which makes it 600% better at best conditions 1200% better at worst. And if you’re lucky farming ecto can give you even better returns than that.
In gw2 there is nothing thats 600% more profitable as far as I can tell. An hour playing in queensdale can easily earn you 1g. Farming lodestones can earn you maybe 3 times as much but not more. Thats on a material side but what about on an enjoyment side. What is there to do in the open world in gw1? just killing stuff and farming, perhaps capturing some skills but you’re not gonna get the same experiance you get in gw2. Dynamic events make the open world much more enjoyable. Not saying gw1 is a bad game, its my 2nd favorite so far! I personally enjoy the open world a lot more in gw2 though. As for gear, what useful gear drops do you get in gw1 when you fully equip yourself from a vendor the moment you level up? both games are not about the gear power, they never were. They’re about cosmetics and you could kill as many mobs as you wanted in the open world in gw1, no mob would drop you a piece of vabbi armor or any other armor set.

Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry are closer to spvp then WvW in my opinion. They’re short objective based areas rather then a long term large scale unbalanced battle like WvW. Anyhow… why would it be alt hate just cause these are not account bound? Its not like you cannot play an alt that doesnt have any of these upgrades right? They’re really nice to have no doubt but it will not be the end of the world if now and again you play an alt that doesnt have them. That being said I agree with you that it would have been better if they were account bound, dont get me wrong am not disagreeing with you. I suppose they did it this way so that hardcore WvW players who want progression and max out one character can work on an other if they want?

That being said this is the most Alt friendly game I have ever seen including Gw1. There are multiple zones per level bracket so you can play an alt in zones you havent played yet. It is trivial to fully equip a character with good gear ( I mean rare or exotic) 1 – 2g to fully equip a lvl 80 character in rares and you can earn that in 1 day easily. Rare is good enough for any content in the game. There is shared bank space and even a brand new alt can be played in WvW even at level 1 if you so desire.

killcannon.2576:

I take back the things that were in at launch, I misread and didn’t see you specify only three of the mini dungeons.

All the supposed “new game features” were talked about before launch.

And if you were not here for the temp content or were on sabbatical for whatever reason, the content did not and does not exist.

Removing content from the game may be “So what” to you, but not to many others, I assure you. If it’s gone then it may as well have never even existed.

Tyria is much the same as when I started, I can see little to no evidence of any “Living World” that the devs have spoken so much about over the last 8 months. Go through your list again and only keep what is still in Tyria. Tell us how it’s changed.

Tell us where the last 8 months have gone, because GW2 is going to need all the help it can get in the coming months.

Smoke is here and gone, much like Anets content. Ephemeral and fleeting. And all because they can’t make content that makes people want to log in on it’s own strengths. They have to use the temporary gimmick.

I am not going to contradict you, but honestly the only new feature I heard talk about before launch was the guesting. The crafting materials accessible from the game was requested by players afaik, they never even talked about it before one day poof it was made available. Guild missions and WvW progression were also stuff added based on player feedback afaik. For the rest I dont know but honestly never heard talk about them before launch and I followed the game extremely closely.

If you were not there, you’d miss it true but if you were not playing you didnt need new content to play either. I mean if I start playing today would it make sense to complain no content was released the past 9 months? like wise if I missed 1 month out of those 9 months, is it a problem i got 8 months worth of content in the 8 months I played? The most important thing imho is that when you’re playing you have fresh content to play.

Thing is ironically I would bet the reason why content is temporary is preciesly to give us the change you’re asking for. One of the biggest complaint they got for the manifesto is that they promised change. Specifically “if you save a village it remains saved” Now in my view what they meant is the change would happen as you play not eternally. I mean in other MMOs there would be no visual change or just an instantaneous change. For a save the village quest there would generally be no change at all. you go kill stuff that respawn nearly instantly and nothing else will change except the npc who gave you the quest will not give it any more. In other times like with an escort quest, you can see stuff change but as soon as you finish the quest it instantly resets as it was before with again 0 change. The village staying saved they refer to in the manifesto I am pretty sure was temporal. In the sense that you save the village and you experience it saved but for a time period. This is key because otherwise you’d either have to phase every dynamic events and with 1500 events that have 2 possible outcomes that would mean there would an unbelievable big number of phases more then players playing the game meaning that you could expect never to meet another player ever! (not doable) either that you do 4500 million dynamic events so that there is 1500 events for every player who bought the game. Both are completely impossible. However players felt that since the change was not permanent it was not a change at all. Temporary content is the solution to that problem. by making say the molten facility temporary you cant say that no change really occurred. The flame legion and the dredge made an alliance, build a secret base we went that and destroyed it. Because of our effort it is no longer there, we removed it off Tyria completely. If they had left it there people would go back to the dynamic event arguments that they effort have 0 effect because despite winning against the alliance their hq is still there.

Actually there is quite a few fallout off the living story. Tokk’s mill in LA still has Grawl refugees who didnt move to Southern cove. The norn and the charr refugess are gone because you guessed it they can be found on southern cove. Talking of southern cove, the refugees build a few outposts while there and these are still there. Going back to lost shores the light house that was destroyed in the karka attack is still broken.

killcannon.2576:

Some of the stuff you listed was always in the game and just had achievements attached to them.

Some of the stuff you listed has since been removed from the game.

Some of the stuff you listed was ease of use features or things that were always supposed to be part of the game, it just took them months upon months to add.

People have enough companies trying to blow smoke, it doesn’t help when the fans do it too.

Not really, none of the stuff I listed was in the game at launch, I made sure of that. Feel free to point out what it was that I listed that was there at launch will be happy to double check for you.

Sure, lots of stuff I mentioned has been removed from the game but so what? does that mean it never existed? does it mean it was never playable?

The only thing that I listed that was supposed to be there at launch was guesting. 1 item out of about 950. Perhaps you’re right and it shouldnt be there since it was promised at launch, then again I didnt list other stuff like AC revamp, new models for various mobs, the decorations and reskin of LA with each event etc.., I think it balances that one thing out.

What smoke exactly? did any of the content I listed not really exist?

ozma.3498:

Galen Grey.4709:

MoP had a ton of content sure no doubt. Provided none of that content was in development before the release of that previous campaign you’d still be comparing 10 months of gw2 releases with 24 months it took blizzard to complete MoP. Thats 2.4x more time MoP had. If we multiple what we got so far by 2.4x thats also A LOT of content wouldn’t you say?

Well, you have to consider that WoW also gets content patches. While much less frequent than GW2 patches, generally when they add stuff it is the “meaty” content people keep referring to rather than fluff. Sure, there’s fluff too, but it’s not the main attraction. You typically get a new raid, new daily quest zones, and sometimes two or three new dungeons – plus all the fluff.

I dont play WoW so I am not replying out of experiance. Please correct me If I am wrong. MoP expansion hit on august 28 though it didnt go live until a month later. Prior to that the previous content release was 8 months previously on november 29 and from what I can see what was added was a new zone Darkmoon island (cant say for sure but seems to me smaller then southsun cove) 3x 5 man instances and a raid

the instances seem to take 30 mins to complete while the raid about 2hrs from some research i did.

So far we’ve gotten a lot more content than that I would say. in the same 8 month period.

Now it all depends what large updates if any will bring us. Personally I would rather have new stuff to do each month than a little content to repeat over and over again for months before a big payoff especially if we’ll still get a few large payoffs too every x months.

Fairymore.8609:

mrstealth.6701:

Hell Avenger.7021:

Let’s put it bluntly. The living story is only holding people’s interest for NOW. People are waiting, and once they cannot wait anymore. They will move on to the next thing.

I’m tired of waiting, and I’ve had more than enough living story. It just feels like we’re bouncing from one random, completely unrelated story to the next. None of it matters, and none of it has anything to do with the rest of the game’s world or story. Random steampunk flying pirates show up out of nowhere to crash an already somewhat silly celebration…I feel like I should be watching this from the back row of a theater while a man and his two robot friends heckle the screen.

mrstealth your words in this comment and your previous ones, encompass my own feelings about the current state of the game.
The Living Story Project is not delivering a story as well scripted or acted out as what we were given from lvl 1-80. We do not hear our characters talk, we do not get to make choices as them, and we do not see their personalities which we chose influence their decisions. Not to mention the story they are involved themselves has no impact on them or the world.
1. Dredge and Charr unite to fight the world and spawn mute refugees out of thin air. They are defeated after one of their facilities is blown up…never to be heard of again. (dungeon removed)
2. Mute refugees are moved to previously abandoned island and tricked into a binding contract. They rebel and we punch them in the face. (dungeon removed)
3. Speaking of punching, lets Bash some Dragons! You remember the dragons right? Lets celebrate how they aren’t a threat anymore (since we wont see an expansion anytime soon lol)
4. Sky Pirates attack festival! Turns out not only are they able to steal airships from the army that conquered Orr and slayed a Dragon but they can also create a fortress within LA itself without anyone noticing! Good thing they aren’t very smart when it comes to putting a lock on their front door! (Dungeon soon to be removed)

This is a very fair comment. I do however ask you one simple thing. Do you think a long story arch where you get to make choices that matters, that has multiple actors all voice acted and with enough story to move forward a story like the personal story is something you do in 2 week time frames? What you’re asking for is undoubtly long term stuff. Lets please make a distinction between short term content, the living story and long term content, stuff that is as of now still under wraps because its still being worked upon.

you just contradicted yourself. first you said the story has no impact on the players, characters or the world and then you go on and describe how each story effected the next.

1. Dredge and charr unit and drive refugees out of their homes
2. now the dredge and charr are defeated but refugees are still homeless so what effect does this have on the world? They need a new place to stay
3. Consortium is a nice profit venture that sees nothing but profit. If one reads some of the reports scattered around southsun they’d find out they’re falling behind schedule so what better solution then to get a new work force by offering housing to these refugees in return? of course like all marketing people they kinda oversell the thing
4. the refugees have been tricked thus they’re not very happy about it.. that leads to stuff happening
5. the lines between law and whats right are blurred. Law compels us to move against the refugees but you know thats not right hence why the ending was as it was.

One thing affecting the other.

“they can also create a fortress within LA itself without anyone noticing! "
This might sound preposterous but then again, where are major crime organizations situation in real life? out in the middle of no where or right there in the heart of the cities?

mrstealth.6701:

Hell Avenger.7021:

Let’s put it bluntly. The living story is only holding people’s interest for NOW. People are waiting, and once they cannot wait anymore. They will move on to the next thing.

I’m tired of waiting, and I’ve had more than enough living story. It just feels like we’re bouncing from one random, completely unrelated story to the next. None of it matters, and none of it has anything to do with the rest of the game’s world or story. Random steampunk flying pirates show up out of nowhere to crash an already somewhat silly celebration…I feel like I should be watching this from the back row of a theater while a man and his two robot friends heckle the screen.

I can’t seem to avoid repeatedly referencing GW1…but someone at Anet needs to take a look at GW1’s living content (even though it wasn’t called that at the time, it’s essentially the same thing). The War in Kryta was a story told the right way, and it had more playable content than what we’re getting now in GW2. And it was based entirely on established game story/lore that had existed since the beginning.

The thing is, players shouldnt be waiting, players should be playing and enjoying the game. I honestly cannot understand why people are like if its not a major release then its like it doesnt exist at all. You seem to like action packed content, fair enough, there wasnt a ton of that true but there were action packed released as well. FotM, mini-dungeons, the 2 living story dungeons, the flame and frost storyline instances, The labyrinth, some of the released dynamic events, AC revamp etc..

You mentioned War in Kryta, I hope you realise how long they’ve been working on that. Cant Say for War on Kryta specifically but between War on kryta and hearts of the north as well as Winds of Change, 7 months and 8 months passed respectively. War in kryta was good no doubt about that but it had no where near as much content as we got in Gw2 so far… besides if one of those other teams outside the living story were working on something of that scope it would be releasing right about now or in the next few months (I would imagine they needed a few months to recover from release before they started working on long term stuff) so lets be objective here and not expect too much.

Also why is completely unrelated stories a problem?
how was nightfall related to prophecies or how was factions related to nightfall? How was war on kryta related to nightfall for that matter? it included the same players but the story was totally different.

mrstealth.6701:

Galen Grey.4709:

But like I said in my previous post because content releases happen so frequently if there is nothing for me 1 month its not a problem. With an expansion I’d still need to wait 1 – 2 years for new content anyway.

For many of us that 1 year wait is coming up in 2 months. A lot of people hit their “what do I do now?” point months ago…I’ve hit mine recently. snip….

what now really changes month to month.. Of course it depends on how much one plays and what they enjoy doing but the nice thing about this biweekly updates is even if you finish everything there is to play in gw2 (and there is a lot!) every 2 weeks you got either new stuff to enjoy or in some cases a reason to revisit old content. It mostly depends on how you play really. Like lets take the effigies. They can either be the most boring achievement in the history of achievements if all you do is teleport to the closest way point, press f and move to the next. 30 minutes of pure money skin where you end up a few gold poorer and 5 achievement points. Or you can use them as an incentive to enjoy the open world a little bit, walk from one to the next, no teleporting and allowing yourself to be distracted by dynamic events along the way in which case you’ll enjoy a couple of days of gameplay be richer by a few gold and get the 5 achievement points without getting bored.

I think you misunderstood. We are not told this is all we get. We are told this is the release mechanism they’re currently adopting. The living world content that we got so far is being produced by 4 teams. We are told those 4 teams are focused on short term content (each team should release their stuff every 2 weeks so every team works on their stuff for 2 months) Those are however a fraction of the overall gw2 team. Other teams are working on longer term stuff that take longer then 2 weeks to develop. We dont know what those are yet. We got a hint from a developer talking in game that one such thing might be gw2 answer to raiding. It could also be other stuff like new maps, new races, new weapons etc… They can develop an entire zone and populate it with evens in a 2 month time frame so such an endevour would not be part of the living world team but they’ll still tie it in there. For example the next living story might deal with an invasion of undead on settlements in fields of ruin. These undead would look different then the risen though, not deep sea like undead but rather deserty. For the first month it would be events fighting against these assaults, fortifying, helping people etc.. but then the long term content by teams other then the living story would have completed their task. its time to take the fight to the enemy, the crystal desert is open. We’d get say a 3 – 5 new zones and then the story evolves as we take the fight to Palawa Joko in his bone palace for example.

The thing I loved about Gw1 compared to other MMOs is that it didnt have you play the same content over and over until the next piece of content is released. there was always stuff to do, achievement, a particular armor set, whatever. Gw2 takes that to the next imho Even though Gw1 had you do lots of stuff you’d still do it in a few different zones. There was really no point in playing most open world zones more then twice and now and again if you wanted to do a Zaishen Vanquish. The zones just werent rewarding enough. Well not even the Zaishen Vanquish really. Gw2 fixed that or well lets say they made it much better. There is still a ton of achievements to do, 415 of them so far counting also the temporary content some like crabtacular require quite a bit of persistence to earn.

gw1 didnt have wvw how can you state that gw1 achievements where account bound in a category that doesnt exist? gw2 has some achievements that are account wide too! in the end why does it even matter? play what you enjoy. Your original issue was there is not enough to do in gw2, you stated you’re happy with long term stuff like some achievements in gw1 that required a huge effort. Why is it now a problem to build achievements on multiple characters in WvW if you enjoy doing that?

ozma.3498:

Galen Grey.4709:

I have a feeling that the monthly content release makes it hard for people to judge how much content is being pushed out. Its not even been a whole year yet and we already got the following stuff since release:

- 139 New Achievements
- 62 New Dynamic Events
etc.

Thanks for posting the list Galen, although it has to be said that a lot of the content we have seen so far is extremely light-weight stuff that isn’t engaging and is largely superficial. Also, if listing things like the number of minis, recipes etc. separately the WoW list would (again) completely dwarf the list of what we’ve seen in GW2.

We’re getting the “side dish” but not the “main course” – all the new dynamic events, mini-games etc. are nice but they’re not compelling content. I’d say Fractals of the Mists has been the best addition we’ve seen so far, but that had been in development for years (you see some of it on the manifesto video) and I suspect it was intended to be in the game at launch but didn’t get finished in time.

My point in comparing GW2’s content to WoW was not to say WoW is a better game, however – it’s not (any more, at least). It was merely to correct somebody who stated we’re getting roughly the same amount of content as an expansion but spread out over lots of small updates, which is obviously not the case.

Compelling content is a tricky subject. Gw2 has a disadvantage there in thakittens trying to cater for a wide range of players. From casuals who like that they dont have to have a commitment in order to play the game for whom festivals and their minigames are perfect content, just log in, have some fun and thats it. To more hardcorish players who want goals and challenge such as FotM. For that reason I dont think its entirely fair to judge the content by how much its compelling. I understand that at the end of the day its what counts. If there was an MMO that had an infinite amount of content which I dont enjoy it would be worst for me then an MMO that had just 10 hours of content that I love. But like I said in my previous post because content releases happen so frequently if there is nothing for me 1 month its not a problem. With an expansion I’d still need to wait 1 – 2 years for new content anyway.

MoP had a ton of content sure no doubt. Provided none of that content was in development before the release of that previous campaign you’d still be comparing 10 months of gw2 releases with 24 months it took blizzard to complete MoP. Thats 2.4x more time MoP had. If we multiple what we got so far by 2.4x thats also A LOT of content wouldn’t you say? Not only that but we have no idea on what stuff they’re working on in the background beyond the living story. For example they mentioned they are working on their own answer to raiding which I guess is something that interests you a lot. There might be other stuff too that we dont know about. Gw2 is still young.

And thats not considering this is still gw2’s first year after release. So you have to consider content will be released slower then it would if this was the 2nd year because they’re still fixing issues, putting processes in place and gaining the experience of what issues there are in running gw2 live.

@ozma
I think you said it best here " I’d rather play GW2 than WoW since it’s still new and fresh"

I would say emphases on new and fresh is very important. At end of the day every action you can take in any game is repetitive and boring. The new really hard raid just released? its only great while its new and fresh. Once you learn the mechanics and get a good team it too will become the equivalent of pressing F (only it will be 1 – 10 or whatever keybinds you have) Every content has an expiry date and the way its being handled by having it stay around 1 month or so helps a lot with that imho.

The other enemy of new and fresh is the difficulty level. If new content is trivial it will become repetitive much faster then if its difficult. At least I am very happy here that if the last 2 dungeons we got are any indication of future content the difficulty level is increasing a bit and this should keep content interesting for 2 weeks no problem dont you think?

This is also just the new stuff we’re talking about If today I feel like trying one of the dungeons, a particular jumping puzzle or whatever Dynamic event, I am still free to do it.

What do you mean with nothing new at PvE end-game is being added? Just last month we had the Aetherblade Retreat dungeon, the Not So Secret jp and the achievements. why is that not end-game pve content in your opinion?

I have a feeling that the monthly content release makes it hard for people to judge how much content is being pushed out. Its not even been a whole year yet and we already got the following stuff since release:

- 139 New Achievements
- 62 New Dynamic Events
- 9 New Jumping Puzzles
- 3 new mini dungeons (Forsaken Halls, Vexa’s Lab,Canach’s Lair)
- 2 new story-line instances (Braham and Rox)
- The Diving Goggles Activity
- Costume Brawl
- 3 farming Activity (Halloween (haunted Doors), Wintersday and Dragon Bash)
- 5 PvP Mini Game (Lunatic Inquisition,Reaper’s Rumble, Snowball mayhem, Crab toss, Dragon Ball)
- 4 mini games (Bell choir, super adventure box,Toypocalypse,Moa Racing )
- 510 new recipes (Halloween, Lost Shores, Wintersday)
- 15 new minis
- 98 new skins
- 20 new tonics
- 2 new world event (Skritt Thief and Modus Sceleris)
- 4 event specific dungeon (Ascent to Madness, Tixx’s Infinirarium, Molten Core, Aetherblade Retreat)
- Fractal of the mists (9 new mini dungeons)
- 2 new PvP map (Temple of the Silent Storm, Spirit Watch)
- New Gear Tier
- 2 new maps (Mad King Labyrinth, Southsun Cove)
- 9 new game features (crafting materials accessible through bank,PvP paid Tournaments, guesting, guild missions, trading post preview, selectable daily achievement, Custom arena, spectaor mode, WvW progression)
- 4 new currency ( Pristine Fractal Relics,Laurels, guild merits, guild commendations)
- 3 scavenger hunt (the mad king, Karka scavenger hunt, Marriner Plaque )
- 42 new guild missions
- 1 new meta event (Legendary Karka Queen)

I am sure I forgot to count stuff here but even so there might not have been many new maps or new classes but If all of this was released all at once wouldn’t it be an expansion worth of stuff? Personally I love they’re not lumping stuff up for an expansion. Its nice getting large amounts of content. Someone mentioned a specific expansion of another game (am not a player of that game) but as far as I can tell that expansion took 2 years to develop and in between there were only a few raids released) I personally feel a game keeps me a lot more engaged by providing new stuff every couple of weeks for me to do then a massive amount of content in 2 years time with some repeatable content every few months while we wait. As we can see above we got a ton of stuff. Now I understand the content is not engaging for everyone that’s a bummer no doubt but even so at least its just a couple of weeks / a month before you get new stuff that might be interesting to you, if a whole expansion isn’t your kind of content the time you’d need to wait is measured in years and what do you do in the interm?

I would also urge patience, we’re still in the first year, a lot of time was devoted to bug fixing and improvement which we got a mountain of with ever release and isnt even counted above. As the core gets more robust more resources can be devoted to new content. We already know the 4 living story teams are just a subset working on the game and there is more long term stuff planed. There was already mentioned in an ingame chat with a developer about a possible gw2 style implementation of raiding being already in the works.. I would bet thats definitely one such long term project !

I got nothing against Expansions but if they keep this up I think they’re quite right in that there might not be the need for one. The 4 teams working on the living story can have 2 months leadtime working on content if each team release a piece every 2 weeks. And the long term team can work on expensive features like new zones, classes, features such as housing or whatever which isnt doable in 2 week timeframes and release those once they’re done in 3 or 6 months. I can see this working beautifully personally!

Love the difficulty of this dungeon and its pretty fun too.. keeps you very focused. Hope there will be more like it in the future.

@msalakka

I understand what you’re saying and I do agree thakittens a bummer the skins are account bound but it is not entirely about credit cards in my opinion. Of course credit cards are a short cut like you said no doubt there but there are other reasons. for starters scarcity is important. It gives value and makes things more desirable. Account bound is part of that, if you could sell these skins, you’d make it more about credit cards most likely because they would sell for large sums of in game money due to their scarcity and credit cards would be the only way for most people to afford them.

But I disagree that Arenanets version of non grind is swipe your credit card. I got 2 jade tickets so far and I didnt swipe the credit card nor do I feel I grinded for them. I just did whatever I felt like to farm the coffers. Large part of that was holograms but when that started to feel like I grind I switched to Just playing Events, Personal story, Guild missions and even dungeons. The coffers kept coming in. Others I bought from my profits playing dungeons and guild missions. I also made it a point never to spend more on coffers then what I earn playing whatever content. I enjoyed my time, got 2 tickets. I opened close to 3000 coffers for those 2 tickets so I wasnt particularly lucky either. Still would like another 3 skins, doubt I will manage but I can always hope I get a 2nd chest in a years time when dragon bash happens again.

You on the other hand got 5 skins and from what you said didnt swipe the credit card either and you didnt specifically grind for those skins either.

This isnt that different than what you mentioned for FFXI. How many guild mates never managed to earn their full set before they stopped playing or moved to other content getting bored with that same instance? To get everything you want it requires a bit of dedication. Here you get a time limited that’s both good and bad. I cant say for sure, I have no inside knowledge what so ever but I would be surprised if there was no way to earn these skins next time when there will be another dragon bash festival. If they add new skins they might make it easier to earn the old skins too you never know.

I think this is a very complicated topic. Every mmo by its nature is designed to be played indefinite. its impossible for any developer to produce more content than its consumed because it takes them weeks of work to create a single Dynamic event which takes us a few minutes to complete not to mention some people will skip it altogether. Bottom line at some point stuff has to be repeated.

Now what Gw2 does differently here in line with the “we do not want you to grind” vision is it gives tools to the players by which they can avoid grinding. But ultimately it depends on them. And this is not all great because players have to pay a price to avoid grinding in most cases and thats sacrificing efficiency which some players find very hard to do.

But let me be a bit more specific. Every MMO has to have its players repeat stuff while it is developing new content, its unavoidable. In Your typical MMO that means raids. Players are made to play the same raid over and over again to get a specific tier until they’re moved to a new tier and the cycle repeats. Content in guild wars 2 is designed in such a way so that as much as possible players are free to choose whatever they want to play and still progress towards their long term goal. If today I feel like playing in queensdale I can still make progress towards my legendary. How? Unidentified Dyes counts towards the gift of color. Money towards recipes. Karma towards a whole bunch of stuff. Exploration towards the gift of exploration etc.. etc..

Even if we take ascended gear. Sure it takes a lot of effort to get it but once again I can play whatever content I feel like doing and chances are it can get me closer to ascended gear. If I go to play in Queensdale doing dynamic events there is a good chance I can get my daily done or at least get it to a point where it takes me just a few minutes to finish it off. If I feel like doing WvW I can earn badges do the daily there and use that to earn my ascended gear. If I want to play group content there are guild missions. If I feel like dungeons there is FotM etc…

But like i said there is a price attached to this. If I grind my daily I will get it done in 30 minutes. If I just play whatever I feel like playing it will take hours. Is that a problem though? The other thing Gw2 does to lessen grind is make stuff optional so if it takes me 3 months to get a piece of ascended armor instead of a single month I dont really loose anything.

What I am trying to say is anet cant do miracles (at least I believe they cant) they cant avoid having people repeat content, what they can do and is exactly what they’re always trying to do is give people the choice on what content they wish to repeat rather then force people to repeat a specific thing over and over again. Unfortunately its also impossible to avoid having stuff that’s more efficient than other stuff. So if for example I want dragon coffers I could spend all day farming some dungeon speed run and use the money to buy a ton of coffers. It will feel extremely grindy after a week of that no doubt. But that would be the result of my personal choice. In truth I could have done many many different activities and still earned coffers. The game can give me the tools to avoid grinding but cant force me to make use of them.

I honestly believe if the game is grindy or not depends in most cases on how people choose to play it.

signahead.7281:

Galen Grey.4709:

Reward players for playing what they like? you can get coffers doing anything more or less
Have a way for people who dont want to spend money to earn a skins? thats coffers

I’m not sure that finding a ticket in a coffer is the same thing as earning it. It’s more like finding a $100 dollar bill on the sidewalk. Sure, the prize is yours, and that feels good. But it came to you through luck, not skill, effort, or diligence.

There isnt much difference really at a core level. Thing is there are various ways how you can go about it and all have their pros and cons.

At a core level you want players to spend X amount of time playing the game before you give them the reward. A token system like the one used in SAB is great if you enjoyed the content but completely locks you out for it if you dont were as the coffer system in dragon bash allows you to choose what content to play. But at the end of the day both systems have you fighting through content for a certain amount of time before rewarding you.

As for skill effort or diligence, opening the coffer itself involves non of that you’re right but acquiring the coffer does in most cases. I say most cases cause you could throw money at it and get the coffers with no efforts however the really low drop rate mitigates that to a point.

Thing is no system is perfect. The SAB system is great for us players but presents problems for Anet. Remember the idea is to motivate players to play by offering them rewards to acquire but with SAB the problem was players could go around the time barrier by creating / destroying alts and farming SAB continuously and acquiring the skins in a few days leaving nothing left to play for the remainder of the time.
Coffers on the other hand are immune to that because RNG can be configured to make sure most players will have to play days before getting a ticket. Its not a level playing field obviously in that some people are lucky but then again SAB wasnt a level playing field either because people who owned more character slots had an advantage too in a way.

The advantage of coffers over SAB is also that you can play any content you want rather the specific content. If you want do DE rather then farming holograms you’d still earn coffers for example. Even if you do personal story or dungeons. Not just that but technically you could craft and sell stuff and still get a shot at the skin by using profits to buy coffers off TP.

Bottom line everything has its pros and cons. The skills / effort comes in acquiring the coffers rather then opening them. Getting the skins is the result of luck true but it also means you went though great effort to get enough coffers so you could get lucky. That effort is what earned you the reward. I dont think a single person who’ll get the skin (well perhaps a few really lucky ones) will feel they dont deserve the skin cause they didn’t work hard enough for it.

Csele.1647:

i didnt read all those wall texts.. but this is about the POOR CONTENT of anet.. it doesnt matter if you do it or not is still poor.. there are no new dungeons…. new class? new maps? new armors… somtheing new in pvp? any reward at wvw?? something nice for the interface? no… gem store ugly items.. nerfs.. no rewards.. no improvements in the gameplay.. nothing….

the game is great! but the team or whatever responsble of gw2 updates is just updating like this was “social life” or those games for chat and buy cloths etc.. costumes costumes.. minipets… achievments. fireworks.. i mean those are nice but thats the least important stuff..

This month perhaps not but with the exception of new classes and interface changes we got all the rest. New map (southern cove), new dungeons (FotM, Molten Aliance dungeon), new armors (Ascended armor, some holiday based recipes), new PvP (new maps, spectator mode, custom arenas, changes to WvW), rewards for WvW were introduced this month actually, the vendor + the chests you get for leveling up, improvements in gameplay should be coming on the 25th with the trait changes as well as guild missions are improvement in group gameplay i would say.

I dont think you’re being fair.. they’re doing far more then just these skins

Critwrench.8432:

Asudementio.8526:

Tell me what you expected in GW1

Did you not play GW1?

The only monetization in that game was storage space and cosmetics, and I’m not talking weapon or armor skins, I’m talking full-on costumes like the Mad King outfit, the stuff that is ‘town clothes’ now. Whenever they had an event, if it had new skins, guess what? All of those weapons or armors were EARNED in-game. You never had to buy them off of the cash shop (Re: Braham and Rox’s weapon skins), nor did you ever have to “earn” them through a bullkitten RNG.

A good example of this would be the Candy Cane Weapons: The shards would randomly drop in the world (kind of like the Dragon Coffers do for this event), but rather than say, a 0.05% chance of getting the weapon you wanted, you just had to collect 9-12 shards and turn them in at the vendor of your choice. It was simple, it was effective, and everyone liked it.

Compare to now, where you are forced to endure two RNGs (One for the boxes to drop, one for the ticket in the box) if you don’t want to fork over cash for the boxes, and even if you do, you’re still faced with a far from guaranteed chance of getting a weapon skin.

All the players want is the ability to EARN the skins, rather than having to endure this RNG bullskritt. There are people who have opened 7000 Dragon Coffers— that’s over 175 gold if they were bought on the TP, mind— and still not received a single weapon ticket. There are also players who have opened 45 and received three tickets.

If you still think the way things are now is better, you need to take off your blinders.

And what are weapon skins if not cosmetics? Secondly armor and costumes where one and the same, they were sold from the cash shop and there was no other way to get them except buying them. That isnt by definition a bad thing, I am sure some people would welcome the opportunity to buy these skins directly instead of farming them but likewise there are people who’d love to farm them without spending money.

Candy weapon skins isnt a good example… its the only example.. with that singular exception there was just no equivalent of these weapon skins in gw1.

As for gw1 there too you had to endure RNG if you didnt want to buy stuff which meant grind for in game money. For most players it took months of work to get certain armor sets, or days to finally get that weapon skin you’re after to drop for a boss. It was not as different as you’re painting it really. Except for that one singular case of the candy based weapon skins that is. And if you want to focus on that one singular event I would say SAB wasnt that different either though it did require more work to get a sab skin that it did to get a candy weapon.

swiftpaw.6397:

Valion.4638:

The Eternal Grace.3157:

I’m disappointed that Anet thinks a money sinks, some skins, and grinding achievements, are passable as content..

The skins are decent. Most I think are ugly, but that’s why there are already plenty of skins in the game for different options for different players, so I won’t complain about the skins…except it is ridiculous that it’s complete RNG and luck in order to get these skins.

Then the achievements…like 100 fireworks and 150 pinatas…how are those fun? Running through LA to hit “F” a 250 times on multiple characters or multiple times a day? This is not the excitement or content that I saw in GW1, and definitely did not expect from GW2. All of the content releases so far, with FotM as an exclusion, have been mediocre and, for the most part, temporary.

It seems to be all about the gem store and making money, now….much greedier Anet than the Anet I knew from GW1.

i have 6 weapons and about 12 hours spent. dont spend ur money u morons. i dont get why if there is an option to grind and an option to spend money u spend money then complain. kittening idiots.

Not everyone is as lucky as you. Some people are up to 9000 coffers no ticket.
I’m up to 3000 which took me around 30 hours, decided not to pursue it further, but wish I hadn’t lied to myself and thought that the harder I worked for it, the more likely I’d get it lol. The problem is that it doesn’t matter how much time you put in, you can still end up with nothing due to rng.

I agree, I am also disappointed in A-Net, this isn’t the A-Net I knew from GW1, this is the A-Net that is held by the kittens by NC-soft. At least at this point in time, it is just skins, and not gear stats or dungeon cooldown keys.

Maybe we played a different Gw1 I dont know but in that game at least on my version all you got for most holiday events was a single hat. People were pretty happy with that. In this event you get a back item and a hat pretty much as easy as you got that hat in Gw1. There was just no equivalent of the weapon skins in gw1 (excluding the candy weapon skins) definitely not a new set each and every month.

So are you disappointed that this event gave you a hat, the shattered wings and a doll all for free as opposed to just a festival hat? or are you disappointed cause they introduced 12 extra holiday rewards that just didnt exist in gw1 but they’re kinda hard to get?

This is unbelievable, at the end of the day they’re giving you 3x the free stuff they gave you in gw1 in a single event and you’re holding it against them saying they did it better in gw1 just because they introduced new stuff they’re trying to make some money off even though they implemented a system where you can still get them for free with some work in different ways by just playing the game.

Also gw1 had rng and some harsh amounts of it too.. polar bear mini, some skins, some of the heroes armors, some of the rare materials etc..

Never mind the achievements that are all extremely easy compared to the original guild wars.

Question to you normyp.. what possible answer can satisfy you exactly?

I dont think the problem you’re refering to is RNG per-se but rather more an issue of balancing the Odds themselves or perhaps including different methods on how to earn a prize. The method employed by SAB included both RNG and straight up tokens and it was a good sweet spot. Even the effort required was well balanced. By the end of the event I got 5 skins. If I farmed it extensively I could have go them all but definitely not on day one which is good.

But back to the debate, for example the holographic wings are a good example of how taking out rng from the equation doesnt mean you’ll make people happy. You can earn those wings without any RNG at all but it takes accumulating 100,000 Candies. To get 100k candies you’d need to farm 33k coffers give or take. I am not sure this can really be done without spending tons of money in a month! but not only that, how does that compare to RNG in terms of reward?

In 33k coffers based on the odds calculated on the wiki you should have as many as 33 tickets. In this case I would say I’d rather have RNG over the certainty any day. Especially because I am still at about 3k – 5k candies but RNG already gave me the wings ! Thank you RNG. On the other hand I opened over 2k coffers and am still sitting on 1 ticket.. Bad RNG but thats the nature of the game.

What I am trying to say is at the end of the day players dont care so much how you earn something only the effort required to earn something. If weapon tickets had the same drop rate as say fireworks from these coffers no one would be against RNG because they’d be swimming in tickets. On the other hand after the first day getting a coffer drop would be basically no different then getting a rare weapon drop because there would be nothing you particularly look forward to when opening one since you already finished collecting all the tickets yesterday.

I did read your links and there are some good ideas. I like that $10 of cash shop boxes would guarantee at least 1 ticket (you could do that by having a token in each box and have 5 redeem in a full ticket and I would make it so if you get a ticket you dont get a token to be fair.)

but for the most part whats suggested in those posts is already implemented.

Reward players for playing what they like? you can get coffers doing anything more or less
Have a way for people who dont want to spend money to earn a skins? thats coffers

I still think your main issue is with the effort involved to get a ticket rather then it being RNG.

Shiren.9532:

Galen Grey.4709:

what Michael Fejervary says above is very interesting. I would say that RNG is meant to in a way simulate real life in a simplistic way. What do I mean by that. Lets assume in the real life a thief does a hold up and steals money from a store. How much money does s/he get? In real life there is a whole chain of events that dictates that amount, When the case was last removed, how many sales they had since then, how many people paid with cash and how many payed by credit card etc… Now doing something like that in a game would be nuts. So we use RNG to simulate that. And whats the difference really? for the thief the amount of money s/he gets from the heist is random even though there is a non random process of how it got generated.

Further more Games would be extremely boring without any RNG at all. Imagine if each of the weapon skins in this update were a guaranteed drop by a specific mob which is the only way to have no RNG at all. Or imagine if all you had to do is talk to an NPC and take whatever weapon you wanted. 5 minutes and you’d have all that you desire with nothing to strive for.

Now dont get me wrong, not saying things are perfect as they are, there can be a middle road thats more optimal perhaps like SAB for example where you can earn tokens + have a chance to get the skin as a random drop. All I am saying is some people are just too much all out against RNG. RNG is important, it keeps things interesting.

I wrote half a post before I realised you aren’t Gaile Gray.

I don’t see what’s wrong with the token system. It eliminates the issues that people have with the RNG for time limited rewards, it promotes re-playability of the new content ensuring it’s both populated and rewarding (current content is seriously lacking rewards because RNG is the method used) and the SAB method maintains the “fun” of RNG by allowing identical unbound items which have more value to be obtained as well. Power traders can horde them, farmers can farm them and people who like to earn the rewards can opt out of the RNG and play the new content to obtain the new rewards through a clear pathway provided by tokens.

I abhor the current implementation of RNG and the damage it does to the game. It drains rewards from new content and it favours power traders and horders.

Sorry didnt mean to confuse anyone.. Have been using Galen Grey before my guild wars 1 days and before I knew Gaile Grey existed.

I completely agree. I personally like the way it was in SAB a lot better and hope it will used again in future events.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Galen Grey.4709:

People are starting to make it sound as if Gw2 is the only game in the universe to use RNG. Which MMO have you people played that doesnt make use of RNG exactly cause they all do!

Sure its not the most forgiving in terms of RNG, it does have some pretty low drop rates granted but its far far from the worst MMO out there. Every MMO has rare stuff that’s hard to get which you need to struggle to acquire. Believe it or not that’s actually important because without it content would have far smaller longevity.

So, because other games use RNG, that makes RNG ok?

Not sure that’s the best argument.

Try it this way.

“Canada has really high rates for mobile service.”
“Canada isn’t the only country that overcharges for this service, many other countries do as well.”
“Oh, well I guess I shouldn’t complain then, I just didn’t want to be the only one paying too much.”

No my argument is not because everyone else does it, it automatically makes it okey but the fact all cars use round wheels says something about the idea of using square wheels even though per-se the fact all wheels are round doesnt automatically mean only round wheels are good.

You analogy isnt correct. The reality is all MMOs use RNG its not just many of them, its all of them. I am personally not aware of a single one that makes 0 use of RNG. That makes a big difference because if its just a number of games make a certain design decision its one thing, but if all of them do the same design decision than it means all of them came to the conclusion that the alternative is worst.

But enough suppositions. Tell me do you really think you would enjoy the game more if say you could get all the 12 weapon skins in 5 minutes then an average of 1 per week+ Cause I am pretty sure the answer to that is no. Tweaking RNG yes. I fully understand if you feel as it is the odds are too low and that perhaps getting a ticket every 3 days would be better. But no rng at all in my opinion would make the game very boring quickly.

what Michael Fejervary says above is very interesting. I would say that RNG is meant to in a way simulate real life in a simplistic way. What do I mean by that. Lets assume in the real life a thief does a hold up and steals money from a store. How much money does s/he get? In real life there is a whole chain of events that dictates that amount, When the case was last removed, how many sales they had since then, how many people paid with cash and how many payed by credit card etc… Now doing something like that in a game would be nuts. So we use RNG to simulate that. And whats the difference really? for the thief the amount of money s/he gets from the heist is random even though there is a non random process of how it got generated.

Further more Games would be extremely boring without any RNG at all. Imagine if each of the weapon skins in this update were a guaranteed drop by a specific mob which is the only way to have no RNG at all. Or imagine if all you had to do is talk to an NPC and take whatever weapon you wanted. 5 minutes and you’d have all that you desire with nothing to strive for.

Now dont get me wrong, not saying things are perfect as they are, there can be a middle road thats more optimal perhaps like SAB for example where you can earn tokens + have a chance to get the skin as a random drop. All I am saying is some people are just too much all out against RNG. RNG is important, it keeps things interesting.