Guild Wars 2

Galen Grey.4709:

Xenon.4537:

Scipio.3204:

Xenon.4537:

Vayne.8563:

Xenon.4537:

Belenwyn.8674:

Xenon.4537:

@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.

you’re right that for season 1 they had 4 teams but they never disclosed the team size of season 1. that post states all 4 teams where joined together and are now 20 people so its very possible each season 1 team was made of 5 people but thats speculation on my part afaik they never disclosed that detail.

5 people per team… That’s very far fetched. Those releases required animators, environmental artists, prop artists, character designers, story writers, event designers, producers…. the list goes on. Besides I’m fairly certain I read somewhere they said 4 teams of 20. I just don’t know where I read it. Games don’t just get farted out by a couple guys with a laptop. Not in the AAA industry. There’s no magical “make character” button. It takes many people collaborating, and from what they gave us in season 1, it definitely took more than 5 per release.

The next episode of the LS will be like this:

1. Go meet with Jory at the Priory library. You and her read some books about zephyrite markings or something to open the door. You find out you need something special to open it.
2. You go on a mission to retrieve the thing to open the door.
3. You go open the door and find the spot for the memory seed inside.
4. You use the seed to relive Caithes memory to find out why this cave is so special. At the end you find out Caithe took the egg to Divinities Reach or something completely random and stupid like that. The End.

Then you have to wait 4 months for the season to continue. Meanwhile no questions actually answered, Caithe is still at large with the egg, Rytlock is still missing, Mordremoths giant tentacles continue to spread across the Silverwastes. Nothing is revealed about the fact that all the lost badges were White Mantle. We don’t get to see whats in that room where all the tentacles are spreading from. Etc, Etc.

By the way, I’m calling it now: Whenever we do get back to Rytlock, it’s going to be just like the Caithe memories. We play as Rytlock doing things in the mists, and it’s going to take 19 episodes (each lasting 5 minutes with 2 week intervals) before it concludes.

I doubt Anet has an expansion in the works. More likely they are waiting until they conclude season 2 (if they ever conclude it…) before deciding if they want to keep doing more like season 2, or reevaluate the format before proceeding to season 3.

Eirdyne.9843:

The problems with not doing Living Story when it is out is that I fall so far behind that I end up in “Who… wait… what?” conversations with everyone I know about the Living Story. Then, the ever more pressing issue is finding the time to dump into all that content I held off on doing later. Better to do it right now than have it bunch up and drown me.

Also, if you really want to be disgusted with this style of narrative go find an episode from “the History Channel”. Every single episode from that reads like it was made for Clive Wearing. For the TV show begins by telling you about what the show is about… then there is an advertisement. Then the TV show begins to tell you what it is about… then there is an advertisement… repeat this for 45 minutes to an hour. Random imagery is shown that may or may not have anything to do with what is being spoken about. Usually what is being spoken about is still trying to remind you what the TV show is about. There’s never any narrative. No structure. Nothing informative. Only a bizarre series of imagery and a few repeating motifs of spoken words.

Welcome to what 90% of the entertainment industry thinks we are: Brain-dead piles of meat with eyes. They think we just consume… like cattle… There’s little consideration for our level of intelligence.

Ayrilana.1396:

Xenon.4537:

Ayrilana.1396:

Xenon.4537:

CureForLiving.5360:

Jornophelanthas.1475:

The carapace armor appears to be tied more to the Silverwastes zone than to Living Story season 2.

Who knows, perhaps the season will continue with a new zone after Silverwastes is completed (and a two-week Wintersday break).

After all, Season 2 did not end with Dry Top.

Also remember mawdrey? Still I do kinda feel that we’re getting close to the end of Season 2.

Dude I was expecting Season 2 to focus a lot more on Mordremoth and making actual progress towards engaging him. Instead all we have is a makeshift Pact base, and a bunch of characters running around on tangent side stories with Glint’s egg and stuff. I get that the egg is important, but its a tangential direction for the story to go. How deep does this rabbit hole go? They could have easily just had us catch up with Caithe in THIS release, but no. Instead we have to wait for a SECOND cliffhanger, and who the hell knows if we will even find Caithe next episode? What if they decide to stretch it even further? What if this crap never ends for 7 seasons? Like I’ve said before, this story is quickly becoming like Lost.

In the personal story, how long was it until they actually engaged Zhaitan and the risen directly?

Quite a while I guess, but look at the formatting of the personal story. It was delivered along with the entire game as a whole package. You didn’t have to wait 2 weeks in between instances. Also the story was told as needed, not with 2 week breaks in mind. When you actually plan for a 2 week break, you end up creating unnecessary plot twists, cliffhangers, and stalling. It’s disingenuous story structure.

Then log in every two weeks to get access to the episodes. After the season is over, play through all of them.

You are ignoring the problem of formatting. Even if I waited until the entire season was released before doing it, that doesn’t change the fact that each episode is just a tangent with a cliffhanger. Each of these is just chained together ad nauseam.

If they worked on the whole thing at once and released it at the same time, it would have a more fluid form of story arcs without the arbitrary pauses, cliffhanger,s and cuts.

Well, try to come up with some ideas on how it could have been better.

I for one want to suggest to Anet that they consider increasing the length of the story content, perhaps at the expense of longer breaks between releases. I find it incredibly jarring and frustrating to be charging headlong through a story only to have it just smash cut to nothing at a stupid cave door.

Every patch is getting shorter and shorter. It took me roughly 3 hours to finish episode 1. This one took maybe 45 minutes to 1 hour, even while stopping to read all the npc dialogue. These episodes need better pacing and more depth. The Priory library was a brilliant way to add extra “meat” to the story by adding lots of side things to read and discover.

The other issue is that of the Lost Effect. Lost (the tv show) use stupid amounts of plot twists and cliffhangers as a gimmick to get people to keep watching. It wasn’t good storytelling, it was just audience manipulation. Anet needs to seriously stop before they slip into that bad habit.

Wow… such incredibly extreme opinions on this issue… I thought playing as Caithe was really fun and an interesting diversion from the same old monotonous content where I kill yet another thing with my zerker mesmer for the 10,000,000th time. It took all of 20 seconds to read the skills and get a feel for fighting as Caithe. As long as they don’t do this too often, I think it’s fine. It’s a perfectly valid form of gameplay, it’s fun, and it breaks up the monotony. I wouldn’t mind doing this again in Season 3 or 4 for one episode.

Ayrilana.1396:

Xenon.4537:

CureForLiving.5360:

Jornophelanthas.1475:

The carapace armor appears to be tied more to the Silverwastes zone than to Living Story season 2.

Who knows, perhaps the season will continue with a new zone after Silverwastes is completed (and a two-week Wintersday break).

After all, Season 2 did not end with Dry Top.

Also remember mawdrey? Still I do kinda feel that we’re getting close to the end of Season 2.

Dude I was expecting Season 2 to focus a lot more on Mordremoth and making actual progress towards engaging him. Instead all we have is a makeshift Pact base, and a bunch of characters running around on tangent side stories with Glint’s egg and stuff. I get that the egg is important, but its a tangential direction for the story to go. How deep does this rabbit hole go? They could have easily just had us catch up with Caithe in THIS release, but no. Instead we have to wait for a SECOND cliffhanger, and who the hell knows if we will even find Caithe next episode? What if they decide to stretch it even further? What if this crap never ends for 7 seasons? Like I’ve said before, this story is quickly becoming like Lost.

In the personal story, how long was it until they actually engaged Zhaitan and the risen directly?

Quite a while I guess, but look at the formatting of the personal story. It was delivered along with the entire game as a whole package. You didn’t have to wait 2 weeks in between instances. Also the story was told as needed, not with 2 week breaks in mind. When you actually plan for a 2 week break, you end up creating unnecessary plot twists, cliffhangers, and stalling. It’s disingenuous story structure.

I love OP’s use of the word “Bullfrak.” I want to see this type of breakdown for the latest episode of Lost, er I mean GW2 Living Story. Seriously, stopping at that cave door was even worse than Caithe running off in the first place.

CureForLiving.5360:

Jornophelanthas.1475:

The carapace armor appears to be tied more to the Silverwastes zone than to Living Story season 2.

Who knows, perhaps the season will continue with a new zone after Silverwastes is completed (and a two-week Wintersday break).

After all, Season 2 did not end with Dry Top.

Also remember mawdrey? Still I do kinda feel that we’re getting close to the end of Season 2.

Dude I was expecting Season 2 to focus a lot more on Mordremoth and making actual progress towards engaging him. Instead all we have is a makeshift Pact base, and a bunch of characters running around on tangent side stories with Glint’s egg and stuff. I get that the egg is important, but its a tangential direction for the story to go. How deep does this rabbit hole go? They could have easily just had us catch up with Caithe in THIS release, but no. Instead we have to wait for a SECOND cliffhanger, and who the hell knows if we will even find Caithe next episode? What if they decide to stretch it even further? What if this crap never ends for 7 seasons? Like I’ve said before, this story is quickly becoming like Lost.

Errant Venture.9371:

…just not bother starting a story until the whole season is complete? Our generation is the one that likes to binge-watch shows on Netflix…

THIS.
9001% THIS.

Oh my Balthazar… If I have to wait until Jan 28th to open that stupid cave… Do we not have thousands of engineer players, each with [Big Ol’ Bomb]??? Do we not have a fleet of giant air ships with cannons? When Jory said she needed to go back to the priory to figure out how to open the door, I almost flipped my desk over…

THIS STORY PACING IS BAD

I was hugely disappointed at the length of the previous episode. I was expecting maybe this episode to make up for it, but it was just as short, if not shorter. The quality is pretty good IMO. It’s 9001% better than other MMOs I’ve played. It’s just not enough. I’m dying for an expansion here…

Oh and enough with the cliffhangers! Please find a better way to wrap up each episode! Seriously consider expanding the scope of each episode’s story component, even if that means we have to wait a little longer than 2 weeks. I promise I’ll come back to GW2. I would rather spend a large chunk of hours playing infrequently than spend a tiny bit of minutes playing hyper frequently.

This is what I’ve been talking about these past few days. The people defending LS as a perfectly viable way to deliver “expansion worthy content” don’t understand what formatting does to an entertainment experience. When the studio is driven to release things on a biweekly basis, it 100% shapes everything about those releases. Biweekly is practically the blink of an eye in game development terms. It’s quick and fast. So what you get is quick and fast content. It’s just not satisfying.

I dub this the Lost Effect. Lost was a show that seemed to employ a strategy of throwing egregious numbers of plot twists at the audience as a tactic to get them to tune in next week, or keep them hooked to the TV during the commercial. This is dishonest story design. It’s designed to manipulate the audience into repeat viewing NOT through quality story, but through gimmicks and trickery.

This is what they (in the industry) call a hack writer. It’s a person (or people) who have no talent for writing. Instead they employ manipulation to increase ratings. Like someone else said: Anet, you aren’t a TV show. This is a video game. Stahp et.

Edit:

I’d like to clarify, I don’t think the LS has quite gone that far. It’s not too late for Anet to make sure they deliver solid story experiences without gimmick tricks to keep us coming back. What story we have so far has been really good. It’s just that the slope is slippery and I think a lot of us are feeling the effects of gravity so to speak…

Honestly I’m sure Anet’s writers are really talented. It’s just that managers and producers need to allow that talent to shine through, and it might mean expanding the scope of story releases beyond 1-2 hours of playtime. Please don’t be afraid to change it up, Anet.

Vayne.8563:

Xenon.4537:

You know, this argument is way off topic and only serves to further add to the toxicity of these forums you mentioned… OP got his answer a long time ago: check out the game yourself and decide. Don’t read too much forum propaganda. By now the thread is only giving OP more reasons to run away from this community.

I’m not sure I agree.

The OP himself complained the negativity on the forums was making him ask himself whether he comes back. So if that negativity is unfair somehow, then it’s definite on topic.

I’m not even sure why you’d think it’s off topic.

Okay maybe it wasn’t completely off topic, but you have to admit it was becoming more about nitpicking who said what, and less about the general negativity of the forums.

Soulmancer.4715:

I guess these days it’s hard to find any AAA mmorpg that isn’t painfully casual/easy where the bulk of the content is steam rolled through fairly effortlessly and there is no consequence to dieing or careless play… I like the style of this game but I guess I’m left nostalgic for the days of UO, EQ and FF11, where you always felt a sense of dread and risk exploring and had to stay on your toes… These days I feel like I can just blindly cruise around in any mmorpg because they are so streamlined and hand holding. Makes accomplishing feats seem rather mundane and trivial.

They basically redistributed the challenge, piling it all up in raids and such. That way the casuals can cruise around nice and easy. Oh but then the casuals cruise too far. They make it to the raids and find out “Hey! There’s this section of the game I haven’t ruined yet! Nerf plz!”

Sakri.7234:

Superior Rune of Feature Patch:

1) +50% chance to hype a minor UI change.
2) +1% chance to fix something suggested on the forums.
3) +90% chance to add achievements requiring grind and gold.
4) +100% chance to stop delivering new content for 2.5 months.
5) +5% chance to make game more attractive to new players.
6) +100% chance to make game less attractive to veteran players.

Hits me right in the feels

Superior Rune of Arenanet(6/6)
(1): +9001 big promises
(2): -500% faith from fans
(3): 50% chance to add cool new features every 6 months or so
(4): 100% chance for fans to complain no matter what
(5): -9001 hopes and dreams
(6): 100% chance to say “When it’s ready” and cloak for 7 years (1 sec cooldown, stacks duration)

Build templates are a popular suggestion that Anet is aware of. They even had it in GW1. I can’t say for sure, but I think they mentioned they will add it in a future feature pack.

You know, this argument is way off topic and only serves to further add to the toxicity of these forums you mentioned… OP got his answer a long time ago: check out the game yourself and decide. Don’t read too much forum propaganda. By now the thread is only giving OP more reasons to run away from this community.

Mesmer mainhand pistol:

1. Trick Shot – range 900, damage roughly 85-90% of sword, same attack speed. Every 3rd shot randomly applies cripple, vulnerability, or weakness.

1. Dazzling Volly – range 900, damage similar to Blurred Frenzy, channel time 1.5 sec. Fire 3 quick shots which reflect projectiles for 1.5 seconds.

1. The Pledge – Summon a clone at your position that uses Trick Shot.
2. chain skill: The Turn – your target swaps position with your Pledge clone. Inflicts Blind.

The idea is to have a strong ranged 1-handed option (for power or hybrid builds, not condi) that doesn’t summon clones on auto attack. I also would like to see the magician theme expanded. The torch has The Prestige which is the 3rd part of a magic act. The first two parts are called the Pledge and the Turn. The pledge is when the magician presents a seemingly normal object. The Turn is when he does something incredible with it, like make it disappear. The Prestige is when he makes it reappear.

Notice how Phil loves to use the phrase “F** this I’m bored” as an excuse for his failure at the game. For some reason, at some point, people like Phil redefined “too hard” as “boring” because they want to avoid facing the fact that they didn’t beat the boss on the first try.

This thread reminds me of DarksydePhil from and the amazing “This is how you DON’T play [game]” series.

Main hand pistol for Mesmer, please. Make it a power or hybrid weapon that is useful for phantasm builds and doesn’t summon a clone on auto. Basically a ranged option for phantasms so I’m not forced to use a sword all the time.

Unfortunately, OP, right now is the worst time to have a fresh start in GW2 if you are looking for a challenge. They implemented the NPE (new player experience) a while ago. Basically they dumbed down the leveling process up to like 30 or so. You used to be able to unlock all of your weapon skills right away just by killing mobs. If you truly want a challenge, get to 80 and do fractals or unlock all your traits without visiting the vendor. Or you could try PvP.

Enemies generally attack the nearest player. However they also seem to be programmed to change targets every so often. It depends on the enemy. Sometimes they want to attack the weakest person. Sometimes they are coded to use a specific attack only on the farthest person. Lupicus seems to be programmed to chose a specific target for each ability. He tends to use his bubble on the same person every time, and then he switches to someone else to cast his missile. So there is no aggro statistic. Enemies are simply programmed to try to behave with some level of improvisation.

I think what spoj was getting at is that when you buy gems, you are telling Anet:

“I like this product as it currently is, thus I am giving you this money now in return for goods now.”

Whereas an actual investor, like someone who buys stock in a company, is saying:

“Here, have this money now. In return I hope that the value of your company goes up so that later I can take my money back with a bonus.”

I imagine they have stock holder meetings and stuff to discuss the future of the company, and the expected returns their investors can expect. Buying gems is not the same thing. Buying gems is only going to perpetuate Anet’s current business behavior. If you want to change their minds, you either stop giving them revenue (gems) or become an actual investor.

1. An open persistent world I could explore and get lost in.
2. A place for my friends and I to hang out and play together without ever getting bored.

I sort of got my first wish, but my friends abandoned this game long ago. So my second wish is long dead. Reason they left? No raids, no side quests, no purposeful progression, bad story. Sadly even with the story getting better, its not enough to bring them back…

Zaxares.5419:

No, I did that too. The reason was because using the Infinite coin only gave you 10 lives at a time, while you could buy up to 25 in a go with regular coins. That gave me more lives (and thus attempts) between visits to Moto’s Chamber of Death while doing Tribulation Mode. The Infinite coin was just a safety net for if I was completely out of regular coins while doing a Trib Mode run.

Now I feel dumb instead of weird, lol. I just used the Inf coin the whole time while regular coins piled up…

I want to see more raid bosses like Wurm and Teq added. In fact I want to have legit 8-10 man raids. The raids could have a weekly reward of dungeon tokens, and ascended gear could be added to the dungeon vendors. Before you flip out, consider my breakdown:

• 1 new raid boss per existing dungeon
• it could be instanced or it could be open world in the vicinity of the dungeon entrance
• killing it rewards 500-800 tokens (for that dungeon) per week
• ascended gear is added to a new tab at the dungeon vendors
• gear costs between 1000 and 3000 tokens depending on the slot
• 1000 for boots and gloves
• 1200 for off-hand weapon
• 1500 for main-hand weapon
• 2000 for shoulders and helm
• 2500 for chest and pants
• 3000 for two-handed weapon

Hell they could even have a 9001 token legendary crafting material you buy for precursor crafting (if they ever implement that in my lifetime…)

This would allow non-raiders and dungeon farmers a way to still get the gear (albeit slower) while giving us something to spend our excess tokens on. Also, they wouldn’t have to invent yet another currency to bloat our wallets.

Am I weird for owning an infinite continue coin while also saving all of my regular continue coins?

Scipio.3204:

Xenon.4537:

Vayne.8563:

Xenon.4537:

Belenwyn.8674:

Xenon.4537:

@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.

The forums are about the worst place to look for opinions on a game.

dlonie.6547:

Players asking to ping gear: they want to run with other meta/minmaxers. Believe me, you probably don’t want to run with them anyway.

Yeah, don’t run with them if you aren’t meta. You will have a bad time. It’s their right to run the way they want, just like it’s your right to start your own group and run it the way you want.

Players asking for gold at the final boss: They just solo’d a dungeon path and are opening the slots up for other players who want tokens/levels (for a small compensation for their efforts). Seems fair to me.

This is totally true, but I think it’s just a symptom of how badly dungeons need to be revamped. Arah is hard, and it’s supposed to be, but I doubt Anet intended it to be a solo challenge. If they did, they wouldn’t have made it 5 man so that 4 people could come in and pay one guy. It’s harder to find an Arah group because 1: it’s hard and 2: there’s path sellers so why bother? WP had a good video about this a while back. Basically it would be nice if dungeons themselves compensated solo or duo runners by having proportional rewards upon completing.

Just ignore the LFG posts that don’t match what your looking for, and make your own post if nothing available suits you.

This this this.

Zylonite.5913:

An expansion will never happen in the lifetime of GW2, because ANet depends on constant cash flow from the cash shop and needs to produce contents that would promote the cash shop stuff. They cannot just sit back for one year and create an expansion which people would run through in the matter of days and then ask for another expansion and so on.

If ANet ever decides to develop an expansion then its needs to introduce some VIP program to keep the cash flow going while developing an expansion. Honestly at this point I doubt anyone would pay a fee to play GW2 and a VIP program can easily ruin the economy in game.

The living story model is here to stay if you like it or not. At the end its just business, nothing personal. You don’t like it? there are subscription MMOs out there that have expansions. The question is, can you afford it?

Why on earth would they need to add a subscription to start working on an expansion? They didn’t have to add a sub to GW1 to make Eye of the North. There are dozens of other games that have expansions without a subscription. The expansions have their own price tag. That price tag is what compensates the company for development.

Vayne.8563:

Xenon.4537:

Belenwyn.8674:

Xenon.4537:

@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?

Belenwyn.8674:

Xenon.4537:

@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.

Vayne.8563:

Xenon.4537:

Vayne.8563:

Eirdyne.9843:

If we go back through Anet’s track record their honesty is pretty spotty:

- Precursor crafting
- Super Adventure Box returning
- Listening to player feedback
- “All the things you love from Guild Wars 1” … (Would that include expansions?)

If this is all you can bring up for spotty honesty then Anet is more honest than most companies. It’s been 2 years and literally thousands of things have been said. Less than a dozen don’t ring true. One of the things you quoted was said ONCE, 2 years before the game launched. Good memory.

They never said SAB wouldn’t be back. So it’s not a lie. They never said when it would be back.

They’ve have listened to player feedback. Maybe not yours. The question is did they ever say they would do everything players asked for?

Actually they did mention after launch that they had plans to release precursor crafting “by the end of the year” as well as other things such as “new types of legendaries.” And “by the end of the year” meant the end of last year. I believe it was in their big blog post about how far GW2 had come since launch.

I know and they later said that it had to be pushed back. Saying something and saying it has to be pushed back is not dishonesty.

Yeah but it’s still disappointing

Vayne.8563:

Eirdyne.9843:

If we go back through Anet’s track record their honesty is pretty spotty:

- Precursor crafting
- Super Adventure Box returning
- Listening to player feedback
- “All the things you love from Guild Wars 1” … (Would that include expansions?)

If this is all you can bring up for spotty honesty then Anet is more honest than most companies. It’s been 2 years and literally thousands of things have been said. Less than a dozen don’t ring true. One of the things you quoted was said ONCE, 2 years before the game launched. Good memory.

They never said SAB wouldn’t be back. So it’s not a lie. They never said when it would be back.

They’ve have listened to player feedback. Maybe not yours. The question is did they ever say they would do everything players asked for?

Actually they did mention after launch that they had plans to release precursor crafting “by the end of the year” as well as other things such as “new types of legendaries.” And “by the end of the year” meant the end of last year. I believe it was in their big blog post about how far GW2 had come since launch.

Edit: Found it!

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

“We aren’t quite ready to go into all the details here, but what I can say is you will see a specific way to build precursor items on your way to a legendary. On top of this, you’ll also see new legendary weapons and new types of legendary gear in 2013.”

Not so much as a mouse fart about it since that blog post.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Guess you’ve never sent a message to a party member in an instance or dungeon. Sadly, we aren’t all telepathic. Lol.

Well there is Teamspeak lol. Or type out of combat. When I try to type while pressing 11111, my sen1tenc1es1 tend1 to1 co1me ou1t lik1e th1is.

Filaha.1678:

Xenon.4537:

As for you… Have you ever taken advice in your entire life? For anything? Did you stop to think maybe someone was just trying to help when they suggested you use a certain weapon? Your attitude reflects the social decay of today’s society (at least here in the U.S.) and it’s depressing. Someone opens their mouth to give free advice during a cooperative activity, and he receives a mountain of vitriol for his effort. As if advice has become an insult.

Your soapbox would be a lot sturdier if it wasn’t for the fact that people literally kick you out of dungeon groups if you’re not playing your character the way they want you to.

There’s a difference between “Hey, did you know that this does more damage than this?” and “Hey, you kitten noob, why are you kitten using a kitten greatsword? gtko my group kick”

I’ve literally never seen that happen so I guess I’ll just have take your word for it that everyone in GW2 acts like such a child. In that case, fine, don’t listen to those jerks. However don’t jump down my throat just because you’ve had a bad experience. Sometimes you do, in fact, need to use the correct weapon or skill to kill the boss. That’s just how games work.

By the way, this IS a cooperative multiplayer game last time I checked. Why do people get so uppity about their build and instead “play how I want” in a multiplayer game where success is measured in group effectiveness? It’s not even that hard to switch your build. Your staff will still be there in your bag when you finish the dungeon. I promise your staff won’t get jealous you were using the sword for 20 minutes.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

What if you send a message whilst in combat? Would you drop out of combat to emote? That would be unfortunate. Same with running on auto somewhere. I’m not sure it should be automatically attached to using the chat box.

Animations can be given priority over each other. Combat animations can overwrite emotes easily. Not only that but the actual functions of your weapon skills cancel out non-combat actions. Basically combat would override this system. And why you are typing in chat while actively in combat is questionable lol.

I’m guessing this is OP’s first MMO? Your entire account is stored on Anet’s servers, not your computer. The only thing you may need to do is reinstall the game. All your stuff will be waiting for you safe and sound.

Relshdan.6854:

you get less than a real expansion, but you pay nothing for it. its fair….but not sure its the best model to go with (i would gladly pay for expansions if that is what it takes to get new classes/races/weapons/etc).

This is something that gets glossed over in these types of threads. I think we can all be grateful of the free content Anet gives us. It’s really quite nice. But we want more substance. We want to truly get personally invested in this game, and we are willing to pay real money for real content, but Anet just isn’t interested for some reason. I really hope no one is suggesting Anet should make a whole expansion for free. It should be understood that you get what you pay for.

@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.

Kaldrys.1978:

Only in GW2 would a weapon set be judged on its ability to tag mobs over its actual contribution to a fight.

Mesmer GS is woefully underestimated in pve. It’s not as powerful as sword for dungeon melee stacking, but in a shatter build, GS is key in delivering 20k+ clone bombs which can be pulled off every 40 seconds, with 15k mind wracks every 11 seconds. It’s far superior for killing things in the open field where things move around and you can’t rely on phantasms to stay up.

CMM.6712:

Another dungeoneer chimes in… To be clear… not everyone plays dungeons in this game, or wants to.

I refuse to be told how, when, or what to use and want no part of anyone who tries to herd me.

As for you… Have you ever taken advice in your entire life? For anything? Did you stop to think maybe someone was just trying to help when they suggested you use a certain weapon? Your attitude reflects the social decay of today’s society (at least here in the U.S.) and it’s depressing. Someone opens their mouth to give free advice during a cooperative activity, and he receives a mountain of vitriol for his effort. As if advice has become an insult.

Let me tell you something. When a player suggests you play a certain way, they aren’t doing so out of some secret Illuminati world domination conspiracy. They just want to increase the groups chances of beating the boss. Everyone benefits, including you. You don’t have to do everything everyone says, but it doesn’t hurt to listen.

DeceiverX.8361:

It’s not even that. Nobody cares about how these kinds of updates are implemented as long as they are.

You should care, because how things are done directly affects the end product.

While delivery mechanisms are important and can build hype, the actual content is what matters in the end.

Like I said earlier, its like eating 1 Skittle every 2 weeks instead of treating yourself to a nice full steak dinner with all the trimmings. Anet can’t afford to make us a steak dinner every night, but I daresay 1 steak dinner every year or two is far more satisfying and builds better memories than a monotonous regimen of 1 Skittle every two weeks.

DiogoSilva.7089:

If NCSoft has talked about an expansion, then it’s because an expansion or expansion-like content is in the works. Or do you people seriously believe that GW2’s publisher has no idea of what Anet’s plans are?

Given the timing of NCSoft’s reports, their wording, and the actual releases GW2 has had, it’s fair to assume NCSoft was confused about the definition of “expansion.” They were probably referring to the upcoming living story journal episode format when they said GW2 was getting an expansion “later this year (2014)”. It’s kind of like when grandpa says “My kids play the Nintendos.” They aren’t video game developers. They just pay Anet.

I dunno about stun or daze lasting 15 seconds… Maybe you are referring to immobilize? That tends to come from the husks when they stomp the ground and send out little vine trails in multiple directions. You can dodge those, or pop a condi cleanse.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Andred.1087:

They can release any content through the Living Story, which they’ve been doing for a while now.

They have not shown they can release any content through the Living Story. That’s the problem.

Okay… mathematically they have released some content. It’s just not enough to satisfy most people. In today’s gaming culture, most gamers want a large, substantial package of content they can consume in a matter of days or weeks. GW2 is trying to drip feed us a couple hours of content at a time. It’s like they have a bag of Skittles and we only get to eat 1 Skittle every 2 weeks. Where is our steak dinner? We need some meat and potatoes.