Is this good enough source?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1bee69/lets_show_arenanet_that_we_want_sab_to_stay/
OMG, a grand total of 1000 people out of FIVE MILLION. That is clearly a very massive part of the player base!
Yes, people want SAB back. Yes they should bring it back (and they most likely will). No, claiming that a very large part of the player base is not, based on actual supplied facts, even remotely true.
Heck, I doubt even a large part of the player base even care about SAB at all.
It’s not the petition what you should be looking at(But that’s also cute). This post is on the first page of the most upvoted posts of all times in the /r/Guildwars2/ subreddit. No living story episode , feature patch or anything released in the past managed that
The comments below also worth reading. It’s very rare you have to look for negative comments in a thread in order to find one, but this is one of them.
Obviously this is not the only large thread about SAB, but I think it represents the community’s stance about the matter quite well, that’s why I choose to link this. I’m quite sure you know about the numerous SAB “events” since the last release both in-game and out game… considering all of this, I think it’s obvious a large portion of the playerbase wants SAB back , not to mention a large part of the current playerbase haven’t had the chance to try it out yet
Yea what a waste of resources to re-implement something that would make a large portion of their player base happy. Nope, wouldn’t want that. I mean, why even waste the time when they could come out with more gem store weapons and outfits….
Source for bold statement?
Is this good enough source?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1bee69/lets_show_arenanet_that_we_want_sab_to_stay/
Don’t get your hopes up. As much as I’d like to go back to Cantha or Elona, it won’t happen anytime soon if ever. It took more than 3 years (assuming HoT comes out this year – I’m sure it’ll be after the 3rd year anniversary) for the first expansion, where we will get like 2 zones. There are other places we may need to visit, if we are serious about killing Elder Dragons. Far Shiverpeaks – Jormag, Crystal Desert – Kralkatorrik, Ring of Fire – Primodrus, and the Deep Sea Dragon as well. Considering the pace of things right now, we are approximately 5 (real life) years away from killing off the Elder Dragons we know about. Getting a new continent would be a miracle at this point. Sorry for the not so positive tone.
I find this more positive than negative…. with HoT we might or might not kill the second elder dragon….. there are already rumors that mordermorth kill won’t be included, just with an additional living story season. But if we do kill him in the expansion and we count with one elder dragon every 3 year thats still 12 year for the remaining 4 left. But if we kill him after 1 year of living story, that number could go up to 16 years.
Also considering the expansions in GW2 looks, well, lets say significantly smaller than we are used to ( Region vs Continent) , getting Cantha could require about 3-4 GW2 expansion meaning if we do get cantha after the last elder dragon, getting full scale Cantha would be in 2039 in the earliest
(edited by Scipio.3204)
1 year later…..GW2 the Mist Dragon includes GW2 heart of Thorns + The Mist Dragon expansion. We offer it as a bundle for new players….
1 year lol, you’re quite optimist.
Seriously though, I think that would be the right thing to do, removing barriers from new players so you can play any content with them is great.
Oh come on, leave the humans alone ,they already suffered enough.
Destroy the black citadel instead or if you really want to destroy DR give us another human nation
I want the skins, but I want them in red. I want a red focus for my necro and red daggers for an ele I still have yet to make. Unfortunately red is World 3.
If they’re going by order of rarity color, red (magenta) will be world 4. Orange should be next.
They are going by the Bauble value color scale.
I want the skins, but I want them in red. I want a red focus for my necro and red daggers for an ele I still have yet to make. Unfortunately red is World 3.
Lucky you. I started a mesmer back in 2013 just because I heard there will be purple versions
I feel like a lot of people misunderstood OP. What he(/she) asks doesn’t increase the value of bag slots; he simply asks that you should have the ability to move already purchased bag slot expansions between characters, this way if you want to delete a character with expanded invectory that doesn’t go to waste.
Seems perfectly reasonable for me
Well that’s sort of my point too. It DID get that reputation and that’s what drives some of us TO this game. That’s the game some of us play. You can’t go now mid stream and change that reputation.
It’s like a restaurant that gets a great name as having lots of great vegetarian dishes, and suddenly advertising steak. Even if all the vegetarian dishes are there, vegetarians might well be turned off by the change….even though they don’t plan on having steak. The more meat dishes you serve, the more you kitten off your vegetarian clientele.
There are people, a lot of people, who have a negative associate with raids in general, fairly or unfairly. There’s the elitist mentality people who feel raids would make people less friendly and open to helping new players, again fairly or unfairly. It’s a perception that’s not likely to change.
So yes, you’re right, this game had a certain reputation that attracts certain people. And now you can’t go and change the reputation to get other people without rocking the boat.
I’m pretty sure the majority of the vegetarians wouldn’t care what other people get to eat, as long as their menu doesn’t change at all.
Right now, anet is putting a lot of resource and time into a project we barely know anything about; but we know that whatever they are doing, they will try to sell as much as possible and in order to achieve that they have to widen their target audiance. There is a reason “Challenging group content” was a highlighted feature of the expansion next to things like specializations or guild halls.
What do you think will happen if it’s made really hard? Or content is introduced that most people will never play? How does that really benefit the game?
One word: reputation.
Not long after release, a large amount of players started complaining because of the lack of endgame, but there was endgame, but it was different. I think it’s reasonable to think that what they actually missed was hard, rewarding content. Anyway, word spread fast and GW2 quickly became “the MMO without endgame”, and not in a good way. This quite obviously affected the game sales too over the years.
By creating hard content they target a quite large audience: the ones who left the game because the lack of it, and the ones who never bought the game because it didn’t have any. The purpose of hard content isn’t to let as much player complete it as possible; its there to challenge the players to buy the game and try to beat that content.
(edited by Scipio.3204)
I only bought gems occasionally , when I actually liked the content they released with the items, or I liked the direction of the game. I’d say about 50-100 €, but definitely not more than that.
Two wrongs don’t equal a right, but right now the scores are even at one genocide a side, and I’d really rather the war stopped there rather than cause any more.
Except the charr didn’t stop at ascalon. Thanks to the charr orr got destroyed & Kryta was taken over by the mursaats and the white mantle.
You forgot one very important detail why Evon can’t be trusted. Because he is a charr. No charr can be trusted. Why you ask? You should know by now. Because charrs are…. Dragon Minions.
After we defeat Mordremorth , we’ll learn there isn’t only six elder dragons… there is seven. The Fur Dragon wakes not long after our victory above Mordi… and we learn his agents are already amongst us: the charr.
Evon, the Fur Dragon’s greatest champion was already working to bring victory to his master : his plan failed to lure tyria’s champions into the fractals and close the portal behind them forever (We learned about this ability he has already), so to weaken the enemy’s forces he used a different method: he dressed up as ally and he sends us to fight in dresses and costumes to be easily slaughtered by our enemy, gives us wood and glass weapons to have no chance to strike back.
When the time comes, he will be ready to strike and thanks to his efforts, we’ll be weak and vulnerable. You can’t trust Charr, they will belong to the dragon.
Guild Wars 2: Claws of Fur™
Why do I mention this. Because it does show how many of those who defend any complain are clearly doing it out of a love and for them it’s like somebody is saying something negative about their baby. In the end however it does not matter much what Anets throws at them, as long as long as they add in an ‘excuse’ why it’s ‘oke’.
Okay but I never mentioned how long WoW took to make an expansion. Not once. I did mention how little content WoW provides between expansions though and I did provide context that there are people in my guild who play WoW for a short period of time after an expansion and then return to Guild Wars 2, all of which is pertinent.
Regarding the other MMOs release little content before expansions argument, I have to add what other MMOs (or at least the ones I played with) do better than GW2, which is cycle reccuring events. Since WoW is the example, there is around 10 recurring festivals in addition to a festival that occurs every month , not mentioning things like fishing contests.
Another great example is GW1, where the amount of festivals wasn’t that many, but instead they had a bonus every weekend which promoted certain aspects of the game by adding increased drop rates or double rewards.
In GW2 what do we have? Only a few things come to mind, like queen’s gauntlet , festival of the four winds ( which isn’t really possible to bring back atm) , holidays, SAB and dragon bash… and I think that’s about it. Even those only occur once a year max.
I don’t really like the minimum 3 years between expansion either , but I do believe anet learned his lesson regarding living story and won’t make temporary content in the future. Also we shouldn’t ignore things like china release and much needed fixes like culling removal or megaserves, so I think it’s reasonable to expect the second expansion two years after the first one.
What I still don’t understand is why would anet call the Living World the company’s focus, when only about 5-10% of the company actually worked on it, which is true for both LS1 and LS2. In the future I hope the living story will serve only one purpose and anet will be open to say it: to serve as a bridge between expansions.
I’ve been watching this debate with some interest. Like many of you, I wish there were more content in the game. By the same token, I think those who think 2 week updates and an expansion can be maintained at the same time are fooling themselves.
I don’t really see why. In the past two year about 10% of the company worked on the living world project, meaning the rest was working on what we seen in the past two year other than LS, or on not revealed stuff. Now since we got biweekly-ish updates, it’s understandable that the expansion takes longer than it should, but the vast majority of the company had plenty of time while the living world team kept us occupied.
It’s not like arenanet didn’t divide their resources effectively in the past before. Like you said, they managed to create a very large amount of content between 2007-2012 in GW2, yet they had a small team creating content for GW1 til the GW2 beta testings(2007-2012) and as far as I know the company was way smaller then.
However, those aside, I’m talking playable content. Even gw1 had more to do for its 10th anniversary just these last two weeks than gw2 in the past 2 months. Anet’s own old, discontinued/automated game!
Eh, they added a few quests (that were basically doing stuff that have been available for almost 10 years) and some new items (which were mainly either re-skins or items that were also slated for release in GW2).
Which is basically what we have been getting here as well.
I don’t consider items acquirable through content or ingame store lottery the same, and I doubt many people do.
It was way more than character slots.
With cash you could buy all the skills in a campaign at the start, instead of having to play to unlock. This included PvP. You could unlock all the skill and items with cash and play your first PvP game with all skills and items instead of having to play to unlock more than the starter skills/items. You got access to better starter weapons. You got a fire imp that followed you around in PvE and leveled up to 20 with you and fought beside you (and didn’t take up a party slot). You could also buy bonus missions with exclusive weapon skins as a reward for completing. Rangers could pay to unlock all the pets. You could buy mercenaries. These were your level 20 alts who you could fully gear up and give skills to who would fight beside you.
Try doing your first PvP match with only basic skills and equipment against someone who had all the skills and items bought from the ingame store and tell me if that’s not ptw.
I can’t really comment on the PvP skill pack, because at that time I didn’t even know about it yet I unlocked all the skills in a relatively short time….. but don’t say it like there is nothing similiar in GW2 because there is even if it is not that visible.
People seem to forget that everything you can buy with gold you can buy it with cash. A new player can open his wallet to unlock every trait and get a decent gear just right after he reaches lvl 80, meanwhile another player struggle to get those in weeks. Also if they want the most prestigious items in the game? Can be solved by spending a few hunder $ and they look like they have been playing for years by day 2. I don’t really see how this is better.
I miss the game, but I can’t get myself to play it anymore. I would still play PvP, but most of the modes are empty. On the PvE side, no one I knew back then is active, and I already completed everything I could…. and I just can’t enjoy it as much knowing the game has zero future.
The point being that just because they re-release content related items into the store, doesn’t mean said content is going to return shortly.
As the live picture shows us…. but IMO reoccuring content related gem store items should come only when said reoccuring content returns. It’s also extra mean 1,5 year after said content not returning.
Right now SAB is the only reoccuring content with associated gem store items without a release date.This is why I can see why people are mad about the minis.
If they re-add the Wintersday mini’s in July, does that mean we’re getting Wintersday in July?
I don’t get it… is that supposed to be an unreasonable expectation?
I think that no matter what they do, people will not be content until it is back. And even then I doubt people will be fully content.
People will never be fully content, but that’s cool, it would be bad for the game if they were. Imagine if everyone was fully content with the game… there would be no need for expansion, no need for next SAB , no need for fixing stuff…. no need for anet.
You make it sound like it’s bad when people complain , and in a lot of case it is, but in this particular case, aka SAB, I think it’s pretty much justified. Almost two year without the second return of SAB , which was advertised as reoccuring content …. the damage has been done. Silence won’t undo it for anyone. “It will come back” was great to hear when Back to school ended, but not two years after.
They’ve said that they have plans to bring SAB back. That post on the French forums stated it would be after the expansion which makes sense. My advice to everyone is that’s upset about this is to never buy anything that is only temporarily available.
I don’t think they said anything like that. If they did that’s quite saddening, not because we don’t get SAB, but because they do have information about the topic, but they refuse to state it to the larger audiance.
as i said in an earlier post, buyers remorse is a thing, if you bought something that you don’t like that’s not the devs fault. you bought a convenience item of your own volition and did not think of the consequences of your actions in the long run. I bought the bath outfit and wings like everyone else and i regret spending that money, do i deserve a refund? no, i bought them i have to suffer for my actions.
The difference is people like the infinite coin , they just can’t use it. That’s not the player’s fault no matter how I look at it.
I still stand by the official statement, which is in short saying “not now”. the SAB is a small corner of content that people like, but its not the only one where people are suffering, PvE, WvW, and PvP haven’t been updated with any content for quite some time and more people have been begging for that for much much longer.
SAB is small compared to the main 3 modes that have received responses such as “we’re working on it” and they’ve sat by much much longer than all the SAB fans have. Asking for an immediate response and unlocking of content by Anet is stepping on the core game modes. we cant always get what we want. id love another WvW tournament right now, but they wont simply add that easily placed content into the game without having to work on it in some capacity.
it’s not unreasonable to ask people to simply wait. PvPer’s have waited since launch for a new map type, PvEer’s wanted “raids” and hardcore content, and WvWer’s wanted new maps that aren’t EoTM. If they have to wait SAB lover’s have to wait too. It’s only fair.
I can agree to that, but some of those complaints will be resolved by HoT. And it’s also true that SAB is small compared to other game modes , that’s exactly why I don’t undestand why they need years between releases considering they made tribulation mode and a world twice as large as the first one in less than five months. People even complained on the lenght and I expect w3 to be smaller.
It’s not like this is the first time SAB has been bought up. There was a rather big “ragefest” back in august, so anet knew players wanted it back. Also anet probably knew there is going to be a rather large timegap with no content at all. If there are no resources to create w3 because of the expansion then fine I can accept that, but w1+w2 is better filler than nothing and more than half year should’ve been enough to fix the issues people had with them back in 2013.
they want to release it with new content, and that’s their choice on the matter. aside from that what about the bugs and issues that would show up because an old instance is broken or an exploit is found and people complain as they inevitably would, and even if it was an old instance people would still not be happy.
Further more what about translating it for the asian clients? that doesnt come easy, along with removing anything that would be “offensive”. if they do release it and one of those bee dogs offends a government official for whatever stupid reason they would have to fix it to appease them. nothing is ever easy.
They can always make up excuses if they want to. Sure, “an expansion is coming” is the best one , but there was no excuse for not releasing it in 2014 other than “doesn’t fit living story”. They already talk about living story as a filler between expansion, so after HoT’s release will we be back to excuse number one?
Regarding chinese client, I don’t remember too much dialog, if I remember correctly even the text bubbles had new krytan
@ Test
I think John Stumme still works at arenanet … at least I didn’t hear about him leaving. And I think the main reason anet feels so different is because Jeff Strain & Patrick Wyatt left during the development of GW2
@ Just a flesh wound
I think you misunderstood. I wasn’t comparing GW1 to GW2 , I was comparing GW2 to GW2 , to be more precise the five year of GW2’s development and the last 2,5 year since GW2’s release.
We KNOW it is coming. It have been confirmed in this very thread.
No we don’t. We know they said it’s coming, that doen’t mean it’s true. I’m not saying they were lying , but anet has a tendency of not delivering long term promises, which isn’t lying, but miscalculation. Out of all people you should know
Just to bring up one example https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Achievements-are-unrealistic/first#post2461671
So in short, as long as anet doesn’t say SAB will be back in [Timeframe] , we won’t know it will be back or not.
But then at least we’d have kittening silence about it.
Of course not.
We will just have demands that they release new worlds and such for it.
And it wouldn’t be a reasonable complaint after 20 month, right?
ANet seems to be consistent in saying that the revenant calls upon legends-not quite the same thing as spirits. What that actually means is open to interpretation, but we can’t take it as proof positive that Jalis or any of the other chosen beings are actually dead.
I know I shouldn’t build a lore theory on a article introducing a new profession’s mechanic, but in this
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/revenant-the-master-of-the-mists/
they say, I quote: “A revenant can select from a pool of legends—epic characters from the past that you can invoke power from—and slot two different legends at a time.”
The important part is: “characters from the past” , which, (in my interpretation) means they are not in the present, in other words they are not part of this world anymore.
So for a while now we knew about the revenant and it’s ability to channel spirits. Jalis was one of the first examples used to illustrate the revenant’s unique profession mechanic, channeling spirits. However if Jalis’s spirit can be channeled, does that mean he actually died? And if so, what does that mean?
I might be wrong, but I think the last thing we know about Jalis and the rest of the remaining (deldrimor) dwarfs is that they are still fighting in the depths of Tyria up to this day to keep the destroyers and Primordus at bay, but if Jalis is dead does that mean their line is broken and there is nothing between primordus and us?
I am much more interested in Stronghold than Conquest, and I don’t want to have to dodge queues in order to play it exclusively.
Thanks for your time.
Look it’s more than that when you compare this game to Guild Wars 1. If you add up all the missions and quests in Guild Wars 1 from Prophecies through Eye of the North, all four titles, there are less quests/missions than there were dynamic events in Guild Wars 2 at launch. It doesn’t count the different races. It doesn’t count different starting zones. Or 30 jumping puzzles. Or Guild Missions. Or minigames. Or hearts. Or personal story (and there’s a lot of that) or living story.
If you want to compare dungeons, Guild Wars 1 eventually came out with about 16 dungeons, but there were 33 dungeon paths in Guild Wars 2 at launch and fractals were added soon after.
There was nothing like WvW in Guild Wars 1.
In fact, the FREE content added to Guild Wars 1 after launch was Sorrows Embrace and maybe hard mode. The rest of it was paid expansions.
We’re only getting our first paid expansion now, in a true MMO that is more ambitious than Guild Wars 1 ever was. And that doesn’t take away from GW 1 being an amazing game for its time. It was tremendous. But it doesn’t have the same expectations about it this game has. 1500 dynamic events at launch. More quests and missions than all the paid Guild Wars 1 games put together.
But by saying GW2 had as much or more content at release compared to all of GW1, you also say anet managed to create as much or more content between 2007-2012 compared to 2002-2007 even though GW2 is a lot more complex.
Doesn’t this prove that anet in fact can and did produce just as much content in the same time period in a more complex game?
And you could kill the lich lord with a ritualist in GW1, or shiro with a dervish. This is a common “issue” in MMOs.
But I dont find it impossible that anet made a new storyline for revenants, just like WoW made one for death knights.
If I have to guess, we didn’t get SAB in the last 1,5 year because Josh was working on the two new zones, also since we’ll be getting “new ways to explore” (aka gliding) I guess they want to include that to world 3 as well.
I think it would be cool to experience the new mechanic in SAB before they release HoT it could also work as an open beta test
Raising level cap is something I really dont want to see in GW2 and not because I worry about geargrind. They could make ascendeds & legendaries stats increase as you level up, so I dont think that would be a problem.
What would be a problem however is what happens to already existing zones, dungeons and WvW. If they increase level cap that would devalue everything you get in already existing zones.
Dungeons & fractals , if they increase the level cap that would really complicate things. If HoT is an expansion and they increase the level cap you can imagine what will happen. Arah& fractal parties would only look for people who owns the expansion with a higher level cap so the run will be faster & easier. Also I can’t imagine how would WvW look like.
That being said, this only applies if HoT is behind a paywall.
I am not saying that it can’t be the title for Season 2 as a whole.
But I don’t really see the connection people like Wanze make with their “It is the name for Season 2, cause Heart of Thorns is exactly where we went in Season 2”.
And how exactly did we do that? That would be a terrible name for Season 2. We never got to the heart of anything, we went all over the place, did all sorts of unimportant things, survived many terrible cliffhangers etc etc.
Well, the last episode comes out today and we will probably get access to that flower thing we saw in the 5th(?) episode. Thats where the vines come from around silverwastes so in a way its the “Heart of Thorns”.
I agree, but that ship probably sailed long ago. The more you think about it the worse it gets.
My favorite complaint about this game is when people bring up the “everything they loved about Guild Wars 1” line, because we knew a LOT of GW 1 stuff wouldn’t be making an appearance long before launch, including second professions, huge numbers of skills, instanced areas, and heroes. We knew it. To go and take that line literally after knowing that feels a lot like wishful thinking to me. I knew it wasn’t going to be the same game.
There are loads of reasonable complaints about that line too, just to name a few: no gear progression, weapon dyeing, alliance system, Guild halls/GvG , elite endgame zones , progressing title system. When they released the manifesto, we didn’t know for sure if these thing will be still present, and not all of us actively followed the next two year’s development. I can understand why some ppl got kittened up by this line.
@DeceiverX.8361
What I mean to get at is that the current format for living world doesn’t seem to include a lot of the big things that expansions have, like new races, classes, skills, weapons, maps, dungeons, end game, etc. The format has been far simpler.
Each episode consists of:
- one section of a new map
- a small handful of story instances totaling 1-3 hours tops
- an armor piece OR backpack OR weapon skin
- a new type of enemy
- some dynamic events
- some achievements
I talked about this with Vayne the other day, but I don’t see things like races, classes, or dungeons fitting in to the scope of this format. I can MAYBE see a single new skill OR weapon being added through this format, but it’s unlikely because everyone is just terrified of possible balance issues. It’s sad that everyone ignores the fact that balance can be addressed with further patching.
Races are even less likely because they would need a whole story arc (multiple episodes) dedicated to them, and new animations, and a laundry list of new armor skins to fit their body, etc, etc. These are things that are beyond the scope of a single episode of the current format, and it would simply make more sense to do a whole expansion to accommodate all of it as a cohesive package instead of a hodge-podge of separate episodes.
Only a small team is working on the current season. And we see the maximum of content it can provide. Assumed much bigger teams are working on the big projects – let us call them season 3 and 4 – it is easily possible to deliver larger quantities of content: bigger maps, skills, new weapons etc.
If Arenanet fear balance issues caused by new skills we will never see them – not via LW and not via X-pac. If it is too much work to design gear and animations for a new race the reace will never be released.
There’s absolutely no reason to believe Anet has a secret team working on an expansion in the background. And you have no idea how big the living world team is. Maybe you’re right, but maybe you’re wrong. All we know is there is no official statement on an expansion, and they seem to be going ahead with the current living world model full steam.
Anet said there are 20 people on the living world team now and they said the rest of the team is working on longer term bigger projects. They even said as one big project gets launch they work on the next ones.
Where did they say that?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Enough-of-your-GMPC-please/page/3#post4193277
Here. If it is really true that only ~ twenty people works on the living story releases that , including the maps & dynamic events that would mean most of anet’s resources is spent on something else, however the twenty people on the LS team could mean only the story part of the releases…. also they mentioned “Big background projects” numerous times, but we don’t know what they meant, perhaps we already got them with the new zones, megaservers or china release.
That’s very interesting. I was under the impression that they had far more than 20 people. I mean during season 1 they said they had 4 different living world teams, each with around 20 people, which would bring it to about 80 people in total working on living world. That still leaves over 200 people, around 300 total working at Anet. But I still feel like Anet’s idea of “big background project” is something like the wardrobe or the NPE, not a full blown expansion.
Maybe I’ll be wrong. Maybe the reason Anet has been so quiet and slow to talk about an expansion is because they are working on a stand alone GW2 side-quel just like they made Factions and Nightfall. Maybe its taking them longer than a usual expansion because it needs to be a full stand alone game.
I do believe if anything major will happen to GW2, it will in 2015. GW 10 year anniversary is coming and the three old year characters will get the title “Faithful” … but most likely I just read signs that do not exist. But if nothing major will happen in 2015 I’ll take my suspicions of anet working on a completely different game confirmed.
Also creating a new campaign shouldn’t be longer than creating an expansion, nightfall was a stand alone yet they released it 6 month after factions (and before anyone jumps in, yes, I know they are different games ,but expanding a game should be much less time than creating one, no matter what game we are talking about. )
@DeceiverX.8361
What I mean to get at is that the current format for living world doesn’t seem to include a lot of the big things that expansions have, like new races, classes, skills, weapons, maps, dungeons, end game, etc. The format has been far simpler.
Each episode consists of:
- one section of a new map
- a small handful of story instances totaling 1-3 hours tops
- an armor piece OR backpack OR weapon skin
- a new type of enemy
- some dynamic events
- some achievements
I talked about this with Vayne the other day, but I don’t see things like races, classes, or dungeons fitting in to the scope of this format. I can MAYBE see a single new skill OR weapon being added through this format, but it’s unlikely because everyone is just terrified of possible balance issues. It’s sad that everyone ignores the fact that balance can be addressed with further patching.
Races are even less likely because they would need a whole story arc (multiple episodes) dedicated to them, and new animations, and a laundry list of new armor skins to fit their body, etc, etc. These are things that are beyond the scope of a single episode of the current format, and it would simply make more sense to do a whole expansion to accommodate all of it as a cohesive package instead of a hodge-podge of separate episodes.
Only a small team is working on the current season. And we see the maximum of content it can provide. Assumed much bigger teams are working on the big projects – let us call them season 3 and 4 – it is easily possible to deliver larger quantities of content: bigger maps, skills, new weapons etc.
If Arenanet fear balance issues caused by new skills we will never see them – not via LW and not via X-pac. If it is too much work to design gear and animations for a new race the reace will never be released.
There’s absolutely no reason to believe Anet has a secret team working on an expansion in the background. And you have no idea how big the living world team is. Maybe you’re right, but maybe you’re wrong. All we know is there is no official statement on an expansion, and they seem to be going ahead with the current living world model full steam.
Anet said there are 20 people on the living world team now and they said the rest of the team is working on longer term bigger projects. They even said as one big project gets launch they work on the next ones.
Where did they say that?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Enough-of-your-GMPC-please/page/3#post4193277
Here. If it is really true that only ~ twenty people works on the living story releases that , including the maps & dynamic events that would mean most of anet’s resources is spent on something else, however the twenty people on the LS team could mean only the story part of the releases…. also they mentioned “Big background projects” numerous times, but we don’t know what they meant, perhaps we already got them with the new zones, megaservers or china release.
Okay, so let’s recap.
Let’s pretend it took 4 hours to finish Sorrow’s Embrace instead of 3. And Sorrow’s Embrace was the dungeon. The dungeon was the new area. The quests all led into the dungeon. So saying it’s a new area and a dungeon is quite disingenuous since they’re one and the same thing.
Now, Anet sold Factions which is a whole game onto itself. That game could be finished in a week, even when it came out. People finished it staggeringly fast and people complained about finishing it fast. The DOA came out, the first Guild Wars 2 product that had no Elite area. DOA was added, but in my opinion it was always meant to be in the game. With DOA, Nightfall had really nothing because it didn’t offer any new PvP stuff either, like Factions did. So Anet charged for an entire game with no dungeons, no elite areas, and then added the elite area after launch.
In the mean time, Fractals is a dungeon, which was added to Guild Wars 2. But we didn’t buy a new game either. And Guild Missions (which most people seem to forget about), was something added to Guild Wars 2 including 3 guild puzzles. Not so Secret and Deidre’s Steppes were added. Southsun, the Karka Queen and Triple Thread were added. Tequatl might as well have been added since the new fight is much more involved than the old one. And yes, I’d definitely count the new TA path as added since it’s longer and probably better designed than most of the other dungeons. Fractals wasn’t only added once. We had 9 fractals originally and 5 more fractals were added. Sanctum Sprint, Southsun Survival were added.
There were also a bevy of things I played and experienced that are no longer in game, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Most notably of these was the Nightmare Tower, the Marionette Fight and Escape from LA.
The new zones that were added for free aren’t just new zones. They’re new zones with dynamic events and some of the bosses have unique attack and the AI for the creatures your fight are both better and harder.
I should also say SAB came out too, even though it’s not in the game right now, but I had a couple of months playing around in there.
This isn’t a full expansion worth of content, that’s 100% true. However, not everyone is a dungeon runner or a PvPer and for my money, the stuff I’ve played is better than any of the stuff added to Guild Wars 1.
Sorrow’s embrace was six quests, then, which took you through a dungeon. What it wasn’t was an entire new zone with a couple of dozen quests and new achievements and a new JP with new hard to get goggles.
It was a dungeon, and the quests took you through it.
I don’t quite understand this wall of text here , I’ve just corrected the mistakes you made … you’re welcome. But you’ve made a few this time too. Firstly I take you’re talking about Sorrow’s furnace, not embrace. Secondly, it was a new area AND a dungeon, unless you count GW1 areas as dungeons which would be a fair point.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Grenth%27s_Footprint
but in that case it was two new dungeon. Also you first said it can be completed in two hours, not three.
“The DOA came out, the first Guild Wars 2 product that had no Elite area. "
This is where I would like to raise a point. I suppose you meant NF. It did not have an elite area at release, like you said, but you often say something like this: “It’s understandable they don’t work on hard content since such a low percentage of player bothers with it anyway.” If this is true, why did anet feel the need to add an elite area even though they didn’t start with one? Also “Nightfall had really nothing because it didn’t offer any new PvP stuff either” is not true either. Heroes changed the meta for a quite long time and Hero Battle was quite popular .
Sorrow’s embrace is not worth more than the entire Living Story and anyone who says so doesn’t remember it. It was four big quest chains and yes, they were good, but… that’s what they were. Four big quest chains.
And that’s most of what Anet gave away for free, until Guild Wars 2 was announced and they started the War in Kryta many years later.
Sorrow’s Embrace I could do a couple of times and it was nice….but Drytop and Silverwastes are free zones (and so is Southsun).
Stuff like Triple Threat, the Karka Queen, The New Jumping Puzzles are all free too. SAB was free. I’m not sure everyone would agree Sorrow’s Embrace was better than SAB even if it’s not in game now.
Picking the one example of content Anet gave for free until it stopped selling new content for Guild Wars 1 is just a bit disingenuous.
Edit: And you could probably finish Sorrow’s Embrace in 2 hours.
There is so much misinformation here…. firstly , SF update wasn’t just four big quests, there was a new area + outpost with a dungeon and not only four quests. 2 Main and 4 “sidequest”. The first is to help four dwarfs and the second is to defeat the forgeman. Also people played this new dungeon not for the sake of completing quests, but to get the new unique items. Also that 2 hour doesn’t sound right to me either, I challenge you to try and complete it in two hours using only what was available that time. (No heroes, only proph skills).
Secondly SF wasn’t the only thing anet added before the release of EN for free. Tomb of primeval kings (PvE) , DoA wasn’t available at release of NF either if my memory is correct, introduction of HM etc.
If I remember correctly, something like this already happened once early this year. Here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Something-big-is-coming-in-2014/first
but instead of “I can’t wait until you guys find out what’s in store this year. People are going to die with excitement/shock” and “Better than an expansion” , we have “They are working on stuff”.
What really saddens me is the state of PvP compared to the prequel. Most of my friends who played the first game for the PvP left months after launch and I can understand them. Before they had a well functioning rank/rating system in GvG , prestige earned via guild capes, HoH notifications, observer, high reward/skill ratio with ingame hosted tournaments and HoH chests…. not to mention the available game mode variety.
PvE is lacking on numerous side as well , my main issue is the lack of challenging content ,but I learned to live with this direction , nowadays I play a few hours a week for the living story, try to ignore the questionable storywriting and log off.
I’m quite sure I heard a deep voice after deciphering the books. Here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2lYEozZmSk&t=39m55s
I can’t make it out what it says though
By the time this mini has been kept a secret already I just belive its the end reward for just completing season 2, which would be also a very symbolic reward as it stands out basicalyl also very much for the game itself, that for Guild Wars 2 on its second year at the end of the second season we would get a Miniature Dragon, i na game, thats so far all about Dragons
Coincidence much? I don’t think so by now.
Given the fact, that I guess, Season 2 will be over in the next 3 episodes, thats something what is easily done until the end of this year as it’s still nearly 7 weeks only, until we have 2015 and in 7 weeks, you can easily put in every 2 weeks 3 more episodes.
So we could have also basically at the end of the year the showdown – the grande finale of season 2 (and in my inner hope also the time for an announcement of an expansion for like fall 2015 most basically at August, when the next Gamescom comes xD – what would be the perfect place and moment to show off an expansion, just like Anet presented also the first time GW2 officially with a Teaser and playable Demos on the very first Gamescom in my hometown Cologne.
Also it would fit so much 3 years after release to come up by then finally with a real first expansion-. Longer should no game developer company let their community wait for one in my honest opinion)Where did they say there were only 3 more episodes in season 2? Seems like there are at least 5 more (if they do one piece of carapace/luminescent per episode).
Hower your mouse over the luminescent armor pieces in the collection achievement, it says which piece when will be available. The last two episode will bring 2 piece each.
Clarifying: The chest farm has zero impact on the story achievements, it only affects the zone achievements which will be there as long as the zone is.
I haven’t seen any massive chest farming maps. I’ve been able to pick which fort to defend (and boss to fight) every time I’ve been there. Just need to kill Gold and find a pile of seraph badges now! And that’s with at most a couple of hours a day in there.
Correction: white mantle badges, not seraph.
On topic: I doubt it’s intentional . I’m not even sure wether it’s exploit or not. I mean earning more here than anywhere else with running 10 meters between chests …
Decent base game experience with interactive story chunk updates. Lacking support to the competitive side (PvP/WvW) . Best game if you have only 5-10 hours a month to play and you don’t like being challenged.