Guild Wars 2

CETheLucid.3964:

mrstealth.6701:

If you bought an upgraded component for your computer, and ended up being unsatisfied with some aspect of it, would you then want to return the entire PC? If your only recourse was to accept a refund for only the upgraded component, but in turn had to send back the entire computer, you would actually do this?

If it’s bad enough, yes.

If that was my only recourse and I’m feeling utterly betrayed by the retailer and the only way I can get out of this fiasco is to get a refund and start anew far away from these folks, then that’s how it has to be.

Really? I find that quite hard to believe.

Giving up a complete product, that you are otherwise satisfied with, to get a refund of only a small portion of that value because the seller is unwilling to view the upgrade as the separate item it was sold as. I think it’s safe to say that you belong to a small minority of people willing to inflict such damage onto themselves to make a point. I’m sure that company would be “laughing all the way to bank” as it were, with you having just thoroughly screwed yourself over.

In the case of a game account, Anet wouldn’t be getting anything back as with a physical product, but the damage to the customer is still much greater than the refund the company paid back.

CETheLucid.3964:

A lot of people here talk like this issue is some absolute for them that they can’t possibly forgive.

But most won’t actually take the steps to show that displeasure in ending the customer relationship.

Guy earlier said they’d suffer through this VS longsuffering friends or loved ones. It’s so painfully easy to see the duality going on here with most posters.

What is your idea is ending the customer relationship in this case? Right now there isn’t really a good way of accomplishing that. I think many of us want to terminate that relationship by not giving them any more money, by not buying their next expansion.

Sure, we can request a refund for HoT, but it’s not actually possible to return and get a refund for the expansion. You can get your money back for the expansion, but lose the entire game account. The only dissatisfaction for many of us lies with very specific aspects of HoT’s marketing compared with its delivery, not the entirety of the expansion. Yet, still, our only “recourse” is return not only HoT in-full, but the whole game. It is essentially a false option, an insincere gesture that few were ever expected to take.

I don’t think I can even request a refund for HoT, as I did not purchase it directly from Anet. The only option I have is to stop playing the game entirely, which I don’t want to do. I’m not dissatisfied with the entire game, so why should I do that?

If you bought an upgraded component for your computer, and ended up being unsatisfied with some aspect of it, would you then want to return the entire PC? If your only recourse was to accept a refund for only the upgraded component, but in turn had to send back the entire computer, you would actually do this?

Obtena.7952:

It’s not about what I THINK, it’s about what Anet thinks. I know about varying interests and this is simply a case where players think the game caters to their wildly varying interests when that’s not always possible or sensible thing to do.

YES, an additional set of Legendary weapons is a good chance to booster end game things to do. That’s not actually relevant to the discussion if you ask me … there are LOTS of additional things Anet could do to booster end game content. Obviously, Anet thinks that it’s not the best way to booster end game content; it uses a handful of devs, take a long time and caters to a very small audience of people who have managed to craft EVERY existing Legendary. It’s VERY Low impact content.

Focusing all of their effort on one type of player would indeed be a mistake, but they also can’t really make one type of content that appeals to everyone. What the game needs to cater to is an assortment of interests to appeal to as wide an audience as they can. It’s quite obvious that legendary weapons appeal to a considerable portion of players.

A new set of legendary weapons absolutely appeal to more than just “a very small audience that has every existing legendary”. It might serve whatever your purpose is to argue in absolute black and white terms, but the reality is much more nuanced. This is something that has been pointed out more than once by several people. I only have 6 of the existing legendaries and it certainly appeals to me. It should appeal to anyone that doesn’t have any weapons they want out of the current list, whether that’s because they don’t like/have a use for them, or because they already have the ones they want. The point is that they do appeal to more than the very restricted group you keep trying to limit them to.

Anet decided long ago that legendary weapons were important enough to a large enough group of players to expand upon them. They’ve had years of data since that point, and continued to hold that position. Now they suddenly, after already putting in what looks to around half of the work (all the old pre collections), decide that the remaining half is too hard, and now isn’t important enough. The decision, timing, and reasons behind it sound very sketchy to some of us. Normally I’d say that was overly cynical, but given the inherent breach of trust that came with the decision to trash a prominently marketed feature, their honesty and intentions should be questioned.

Obtena.7952:

Ticky.5831:

And it’s already been proven that they can both, a) successfully make an arbitrary collection b) Create 16 legendarys(they already created 20 before the game launched)

Is it really? I don’t think Anet would agree with you when it’s taken them 6 months with a team of devs to deliver … ONE.

I’m confident they factored it. That doesn’t necessarily mean they correctly estimated the value of the factor.

It’s been about week beyond the 5 month mark since HoT was released, and there was a gap between HoT’s launch and those first weapons actually being implemented. A good portion of the time since then also saw work being done tweaking, fixing, and polishing those weapon collections and the 20 precursor collections.

We don’t know how the work as been delegated among that team and any others that could potentially have been involved in the various fixes and changes, but it’s unlikely the entire time has been spent working on weapon number 4. By the time the spring update ships it will have perhaps been 6 months, but it could also be finished right now waiting for the update. We have no way of knowing how much time actually went into the shortbow without Anet telling us.

Obtena.7952:

mrstealth.6701:

Obtena.7952:

mrstealth.6701:

Obtena.7952:

mrstealth.6701:

They are a key part of the endgame because the system of goals set by Anet is based on style and cosmetics, instead of the unending power treadmill most other MMOs use.

Then you could say that about ANY piece of gear … they are all a system of goals set by Anet based on style and cosmetics. Such a broadly defined think can hardly be considered ‘key’.

Legendary weapons are the centerpiece of that system. Designed to be the flashiest and most impressive looking items in the game, to make players want to work toward obtaining them. In a game where skins and fashion are the a big part of the goals set for players to achieve, the shiniest weapons available will be a major endgame goal. They were put in the game for the purpose of being the ultimate endgame goal.

They are STILL the centerpiece of that system; Anet is not removing them. They just aren’t adding more at the expected frequency. Developing more Legendaries is not necessary to maintain whatever status you attribute to their existence; key part of that endgame experience or not.

A single set of them can’t be expected to be a goal to occupy players forever.

I’ve already addressed this … MULTIPLE times now. If building Legendaries is the only content someone is interested in, it’s not unreasonable that they might run out of things to do because they are limiting their own interests in the game.

My interests in the game go well beyond legendary weapons, and I’m at a point where isn’t really much to do. No matter what you might think, not everyone fits your idea of what we should or shouldn’t have left to do in the game, and player interests vary wildy from a singular aspect of the game all the way up to enjoying every aspect of it. And I, as a player in the middle of that gamut, have a dwindling set of things to do. An additional set of legendary weapons as a pretty good chance of bolstering that for a considerable time.

Obtena.7952:

mrstealth.6701:

Obtena.7952:

mrstealth.6701:

They are a key part of the endgame because the system of goals set by Anet is based on style and cosmetics, instead of the unending power treadmill most other MMOs use.

Then you could say that about ANY piece of gear … they are all a system of goals set by Anet based on style and cosmetics. Such a broadly defined think can hardly be considered ‘key’.

Legendary weapons are the centerpiece of that system. Designed to be the flashiest and most impressive looking items in the game, to make players want to work toward obtaining them. In a game where skins and fashion are the a big part of the goals set for players to achieve, the shiniest weapons available will be a major endgame goal. They were put in the game for the purpose of being the ultimate endgame goal.

They are STILL the centerpiece of that system; Anet is not removing them. They just aren’t adding more at the expected frequency. Developing more Legendaries is not necessary to maintain whatever status you attribute to their existence; key part of that endgame experience or not.

A single set of them can’t be expected to be a goal to occupy players forever. Anet obviously saw a need to augment the initial set of weapons way back in 2013, they just never managed to commit the resources to actually complete that project. In 2015 that need was still there, and Anet once again chose to use player desire for more weapons to help them sell HoT.

Despite this inability to actually deliver them, Anet’s repeated use of legendary weapons as a tool for marketing and hype shows the importance they place on them as a feature capable of pushing product sales, and is an acknowledgement of the importance they have for many players.

Obtena.7952:

mrstealth.6701:

They are a key part of the endgame because the system of goals set by Anet is based on style and cosmetics, instead of the unending power treadmill most other MMOs use.

Then you could say that about ANY piece of gear … they are all a system of goals set by Anet based on style and cosmetics. Such a broadly defined think can hardly be considered ‘key’.

Legendary weapons are the centerpiece of that system. Designed to be the flashiest and most impressive looking items in the game, to make players want to work toward obtaining them. In a game where skins and fashion are the a big part of the goals set for players to achieve, the shiniest weapons available will be a major endgame goal. They were put in the game for the purpose of being the ultimate endgame goal.

They are a key part of the endgame because the system of goals set by Anet is based on style and cosmetics, instead of the unending power treadmill most other MMOs use. Legendary weapons are the shiniest of the shiny things in the game, items that Anet has held up on a pedestal for years saying “look at these pretty shiny things we put in for you to work toward”.

They aren’t a specific activity (even the new ones still require a lot of non-specific-activity effort) and that is part of their design. They create a general drive and desire to play the game, a reason to play any other content whether it be new or old. They are a compliment to other content as much as, or maybe more than, they are content themselves.

As for the time frame of releases we’ve seen since launch, some others did point out a few issues with the supposed difficulties. It’s easy to look at the development time of HoT and think Anet spent well over a year making 3 weapons, but there was more going on during that time. They had 3 weapons nearly done at launch, and we don’t know if there was work being done on all 3 at them, or they were just holding the first 2 while the other was being completed. The time daily between those 3 and the upcoming 4th was filled with fixes and polish for those weapon, in addition to another 19 precursor collections. The framework of the journey/collection system also had to be laid out. So the delay in getting weapon 4, and the rest of the set, shipped is likely not as severe as their statements indicate.

It would be far easier to accept these projects as not viable to finish if their reasons actually made some sense, or were explained at a time when they would have made sense. You don’t spend well over a year making that many collections and weapons, then suddenly decide that the other half of the job is too much work.

Obtena.7952:

mrstealth.6701:

Obtena.7952:

Again, you seem to be limiting what you consider endgame content to make your argument that very specific endgame content is necessary or that it’s bad to stop development of very specific endgame content. Legendary crafting and non-repetitive story-driven content are not the only things you can do at end game. If a person CHOOSES to limit themselves to very specific things, they have very little reasonable ground to argue that other bits of content aren’t being made or given the level of attention they desire.

Anet thought they could make Legendary content and they couldn’t; it’s not that they cancelled it, it’s that it took so long to produce anything with it that they couldn’t deliver the Legendary weapon content anyways.

I’m not limiting what I consider to be endgame content to anything so specific.

If that’s the case, then why do we keep seeing arguments for continued development of Legendaries based on keeping players occupied at the endgame?

As a matter of fact … if we are so concerned for content to keep people occupied endgame, then that’s an argument FOR stopping Legendary development because those devs could be placed on more pertinent and sustainable content development.

Because legendary weapons are a key part of the game’s endgame content. Their importance isn’t a concept constructed by myself or other players to support their continued development. It’s an idea established and continually reinforced by Anet since well before GW2 launched. An idea that they kept pushing until development was unceremoniously dropped a week ago.

Contrary to what was said by MO in this thread, it doesn’t really seem that legendary development is much less doable than Anet thought it was going to be during the time they were accepting money based on the promise to finish it. If it was really that difficult, they would have known it long before HoT released. Sure, there were issues that cropped up after launch, but they also included problems from an entire set of precursors for the old legendaries in addition to the 3 new ones. Problems are to be expected with the addition of a major system to the game, and that set of them was resolved in a time frame not unlike other major additions. Similar difficulties with the remaining weapons should still leave them reasonably on-track with their stated estimate. To put it bluntly, their reasons for suspending development don’t make any sense, and seem like a flimsy excuse for not doing it.

I don’t think anyone is actually trying to argue for legendary weapons as sustainable content. That idea seems to be of your own creation in order to support their suspension. The sustainable, continually developed, content to keep players in the game is most likely going to be repeatable open-world events/bosses, supplemented with story-based instances. Legendary weapons are a type of content you’d more often see as an occasional addition, as they create a longer lasting goal. Occasional is more often than “indefinitely suspended”, and it’s been 3 and a half years since the initial set of weapons. What’s being argued for is the completion of the single set of weapons we were sold.

Obtena.7952:

Again, you seem to be limiting what you consider endgame content to make your argument that very specific endgame content is necessary or that it’s bad to stop development of very specific endgame content. Legendary crafting and non-repetitive story-driven content are not the only things you can do at end game. If a person CHOOSES to limit themselves to very specific things, they have very little reasonable ground to argue that other bits of content aren’t being made or given the level of attention they desire.

Anet thought they could make Legendary content and they couldn’t; it’s not that they cancelled it, it’s that it took so long to produce anything with it that they couldn’t deliver the Legendary weapon content anyways.

I’m not limiting what I consider to be endgame content to anything so specific. As I’ve pointed out a few times, legendary weapons are the premier long-term goal Anet has given us, but they are not the only one. I’m not the one that decided they were the “ultimate” endgame goal, it was Anet that made that choice when they created them.

As for other types of endgame what content, most of what we have seen added over the past 3 years falls into just a few categories of content.

One-off instance based story releases that have limited repeatability, usually based around achievements (every instanced part of LS1 and LS2)

Open world events designed to be repeated to obtain rewards/currencies to buy rewards with (Silverwates, Dry Top, Tequatl/Shatterer overhauls)

Repeatable instanced content with similar reward structure to the above (fractals, raids)

Item rewards earned as long-term goals (ascended gear, back items such Mawdrey, collections)

With the initial release of GW2, endgame content was essentially limited to dungeons (which have now just been replaced by fractals), repetition of open world events/bosses, legendary weapons, wvw, and pvp. I believe the general consensus is that the majority of players seem more pve focused, but wvw and pvp are still endgame content for a good number of people. That leaves most of the player base with a limited selection of endgame content.

Even Anet quickly recognized the fact that endgame content was very lacking. Legendary weapons were the only goal that wasn’t quickly attainable, and players were asking for more. There were other things to do, but little reason to actually do them for many players that lacked goals. Players that were not interested in legendary weapons were actually in the worst position.

Anet’s answer to that problem was adding ascended gear and fractals very soon after launch. A single move that added the two types of endgame content designed to keep players active. A long-term goal to work toward and consistently rewarding repeatable content. We did already have repeatable content, but the difference with fractals was its progressive reward system encouraging players to do it.

Aside from story-driven releases, pretty much every bit of endgame content we’ve had since launch or seen added over the last 3 years has been either repeatable content for rewards or a long-term goal. I’m not trying to belittle the importance of story-based content, but the fact remains that the time it takes to produce story content versus the time it takes players to consume it makes that type of content alone unable to keep players playing. Nor am I trying to limit what I see as qualifying endgame content. These are simply the types of content Anet has given us.

edit – some added thoughts for the futre

What I’d like to see for future content is more story instances combined with the continued addition of repeatable open-world content. This is essentially what HoT gave us. New, fresh additions to the selection of repeatable content, and its associated rewards, helps to ensure that players don’t burn out on content and have new rewards to work on. New long-term goals as a part of those rewards that can keep many more players interested in that content for an even longer time, and legendary weapons just happen to still be the premier long-term reward. But their ability to remain a viable goal to sustain interest is in a steady state of decline as more and more players attain them.

Obtena.7952:

mrstealth.6701:

Obtena.7952:

No, you have options … you can either accept that Legendary crafting was unsustainable content, forget it and enjoy the other aspects of the game or decide that it’s such a big deal to you that you quit the game.

If anything were to be labeled as unsustainable content, it’s living world/story content that we’ve seen for the past two seasons. A couple hours of content that takes weeks to months to develop, followed by weeks or months of nothing new to do. It’s just not possible to make content at the rate players are able to go through it.

But I’m not going to argue for the suspension of that type of content. Even though I was far from impressed with the majority of Anet’s installments, I understand the value of such content. It offers change and growth to the world, and the ability to progress the game’s narrative. It keeps players interested and involved with the game’s world.

I’d prefer spend my time on long-term reward goals over more episodic story but I do not want to see living world content sacrificed for it. I don’t have the right to tell players that content that is important to them shouldn’t be made because I think the content that matters to me is more important.

I guess that’s a matter of opinion. Anet has the data to make these decisions, we don’t.

Which type of content we like is and feel is more important to us is indeed our personal opinion. But story-driven non-repetitive content being unable keep players occupied is a fact of game development. If that were possible, games would be produced at the same rate players complete them.

We have seen some LW content that was designed to be repeated, and was well-received by a lot of players (Dry Top, Silverwastes, Marionette to name a few). But those releases also didn’t carry much story with them, or had their story elements as shorter bits of content within the same areas. Content designed to be repeated is less suited to having story elements built into it, as the storytelling is something players usually don’t want repeated over and over.

Obtena.7952:

No, you have options … you can either accept that Legendary crafting was unsustainable content, forget it and enjoy the other aspects of the game or decide that it’s such a big deal to you that you quit the game.

If anything were to be labeled as unsustainable content, it’s living world/story content that we’ve seen for the past two seasons. A couple hours of content that takes weeks to months to develop, followed by weeks or months of nothing new to do. It’s just not possible to make content at the rate players are able to go through it.

But I’m not going to argue for the suspension of that type of content. Even though I was far from impressed with the majority of Anet’s installments, I understand the value of such content. It offers change and growth to the world, and the ability to progress the game’s narrative. It keeps players interested and involved with the game’s world.

I’d prefer spend my time on long-term reward goals over more episodic story but I do not want to see living world content sacrificed for it. I don’t have the right to tell players that content that is important to them shouldn’t be made because I think the content that matters to me is more important.

Obtena.7952:

While I do think Anet listens to players, I think decisions that affect the bottom line are communicated to us as a courtesy in the interest of open communication, not to open a debate with players to compel them to rethink the decision.

That sure wasn’t what happened with the HoT/core game bundling/price fiasco last summer. Anet didn’t make a drastic shift in their business decisions, but it was a decent change in showing good will and appreciation to customers.

The current issue is about a “business decision” that should not have even existed. The decision was already made when Anet decided to commit to completing this project and proceeded to market their expansion based on that decision.

I have to question the competence of those in charge when a decision to anger a large number of your customers, turn your previous current marketing into a lie, and essentially have you running off with your customers’ money is considered to be good for the company.

In a thread started to offer transparency, I think some actual transparency is in order. There seem to be a couple likely (but not the only, of course) explanations for the supposedly massive issues with adding the remaining legendary weapons.

1 – The team is abysmally incompetent, and spent a year or more to implement 3 new legendary weapons, while another (apparently amazing) team completed 19 precursor collections (a task that should be similar to 10 new weapons) in the same time. This team then spent several months fixing issues with their 3 weapons, while the theoretical 2nd team had their 19 collections sorted out within the same time frame.

2 – The team is quite impressive, and managed to implement 19 precursor collections and 3 new weapons, mostly within the confines of HoT’s development period (due to the 2014 restart on the pre collections). They then managed to resolve the issues with all of these collections within a couple months, and were ready to start working on the remaining weapons.

If it’s #1, then I have to wonder how this could possibly go on for so long without being resolved. It absolutely had to have been known that this team had no chance of delivering long before HoT was released, or even being sold. Why not hand this off to the clearly better team that would be capable of finishing it?

If it’s #2, why has development been stopped over what would be a delay of a couple months, at most? A couple months of bugfixing a project that would be done in a little over a year (a time estimate from just before HoT’s release, after already making 3 weapons) is not the job “taking years” to complete. It’s 6 people, out of a company with a couple hundred employees taking a couple more months to polish their project. The only “reason” to to this is because you decided that you simply do not want to finish the job and wanted these few people working elsewhere.

In either of these cases, why keep selling the expansion with the claim of these weapons being deliverable? There is no way that these problems were not known at or before HoT’s release. You don’t work on 25 collections for over a year, then suddenly discover afterwards that the remaining 26 collections are too hard to make.

Neither of these, nor any other explanation I can think of give a good reason for this decision. Anet has already shown that they are in fact capable of delivering 25 collections of precursor/legendary content in a time frame seemingly consistent with their claimed schedule of 1 month per, with a fairly small margin of error for dealing with issues/difficulties. Whether this was the job of the stated 6-dev team, or some other/larger group, really doesn’t matter. It shows their claim of being incapable of delivering the remaining weapons is purely a product of their own decisions and resource mismanagement, which is by no means a valid excuse for not providing what was sold.

Andraus.3874:

mrstealth.6701:

I’m curious about this legendary team. Just how many people were part of it during HoT’s development…the parts of it that were actually being worked on before they released?

If it has taken 6 people 6 months to produce a single legendary weapon, this can’t be the same team that built the precursor crafting that shipped with HoT and the 3 weapons that came shortly after. It would have taken them taken them about 4 years to complete that task at this pace.

It looks like this team either had a lot more people on it during that time, or a different team was in charge of the original set precursor journey. In either scenario, it would have been obvious to Anet that these 6 people were not going to be able to finish the remaining weapons in any reasonable time frame, and that Anet had the people needed to finish the job and chose to use them elsewhere knowing the job would go unfinished.

The had to fix a bunch of issues relating the all the precursor collections. There had been Dev repainted about this like back in December. My guess is the team did not focus on the short bow development until January. Of course there’s no way to tell but that team was I charge of fixing collections issues and possibly bugged event chains preventing precursor collections. And revamping collections so that they do not rely on events failing.

You’re right about that. During the couple months after release, they were also dealing with issues from 19 other precursor collections that were released shortly before. So if the unforeseen difficulties of 25 collections can be resolved in a couple months, the “difficulties” of adding the remaining 26 collections probably don’t present much more of a problem. And similar issues that came up with the those initial 25 collections should be more easily avoidable or faster to resolve for subsequent weapons, unless this team really is incompetent and would have continued requiring events to fail in order to obtain items for a collection.

This is all, of course, assuming that this small team was also the same group fixing all of these issues. It’s likely that at least some of them were resolved by other people/teams.

I’m curious about this legendary team. Just how many people were part of it during HoT’s development…the parts of it that were actually being worked on before they released?

If it has taken 6 people 6 months to produce a single legendary weapon, this can’t be the same team that built the precursor crafting that shipped with HoT and the 3 weapons that came shortly after. It would have taken them taken them about 4 years to complete that task at this pace.

It looks like this team either had a lot more people on it during that time, or a different team was in charge of the original set precursor journey while this team was struggling to produce 3 weapons. In either scenario, it would have been obvious to Anet that these 6 people were not going to be able to finish the remaining weapons in any reasonable time frame, and that Anet had the people needed to finish the job and chose to use them elsewhere knowing the job would go unfinished.

Lord Kuru.3685:

TheNecrosanct.4028:

Spira.4578:

They held their end of the deal, the provider didn’t. They can and should be as cynical, salty, angry and loud as they are – and more, until they get what they paid for or at least until they would be pesented with a solution to the broken trade. (the customer didn’t pay for the development team to work on bugs. They paid for the expansion with the promoted features- so it’s only fair they would CONSULT with the customer, before using their money for other purposes. Instead they said "oh yea, sorry guys, we’re gonna use that money to fix the bugs and issues – which were present prior to the expac)

Really? Life has taught you that this is how you get your way: expressing your anger loudly, being salty and cynical? Cynicism is not constructive and throwing a tantrum most likely won’t lead to your desired results. Most children in the world (the ones whose parents/guardians actually have a backbone, that is) can tell you this. Just imagine how you would respond to someone treating you that way, whether you’ve actually wronged him or not. Is this the only way to get through to you if the roles were reversed? If so, I can understand your point of view, but it also comes off as pretty closeminded. Whether you’re justified or not, it’s best to take the high ground and show some maturity. People are much more likely to take you serious and listen to you then.

Anet has shown again and again that they don’t react and don’t communicate unless the community explodes in anger. It’s the only thing that works when dealing with this company.

They’re right, nothing short of a complete meltdown seems to get their attention.

And, honestly, if I had taken someone’s money for a product/service knowing that I was not going to be able to deliver it, I would expect an irate response. Not a calm discussion and willingness to accept my excuses.

Am I really to believe that when I bought HoT back in November that Anet was not aware of, after already developing 19 precursor crafting journeys and 3 full pre-through-legendary journeys, the amount of effort involve in creating the remaining 13 weapons?

After having done this 25 times already, Anet should be quite familiar with the process of making these journeys/collections. They most certainly had to know by October, and probably even before they started accepting cash for pre-orders in June, how long it was going to take the finish the new set of weapons. They had likely already decided they weren’t going to finish the job before the game launched, but had no issue continuing to take money for it.

Harddrive.2738:

They claim the journey is the hard part. Which is ironic because they don’t actually develop new content for that, just place triggers in already created content.

As some posters here have said, some difficulty could have cropped up in adding additional features to the old/core game code. Which does make sense, especially if the people that built those old parts of the game are no longer with Anet. But there are also issues with that theory.

If you go back to some of the posts about GW2’s development, Anet was supposedly making a game that was built from the ground up to be easy to later add events and other content to. I believe it was stated specifically that the more complex code was in the underlying engine and systems, and that pretty much all content was handled with much simpler scripting. A somewhat rough comparison would be to say that adding events, items, and most playable content was stated to be more akin to the process an Elder Scrolls/Fallout modder would use to add a quest than the process of coding a new game.

This doesn’t mean that everything is easy, and that problems don’t crop up that require complex solutions, but it shows that the game’s older content shouldn’t be a mess that is overly difficult to work with.

Spira.4578:

I just realized something..
Many users said that the main issue of creating the legendaries is the implementation of the journey… But. Here’re 2 facts:
In one of the Guild Chats it was revealed that all 3 legendary weapons were already ingame for a long time (meaning, they had models ready before HoT), so visually they didn’t really do much, while.. at the same time, they actually did 23 journeys in aprox 2 years tops (giving them the benefit of the doubt of them starting working on it back in 2013, even if in 2014 they announced that their old system wouldn’t work so they had to start to design a new system ect)…
This makes it at least 1 journey per month.
Presuming that since we had 3 weapons at the beginning they also had only 3 journeys done, they would only have to do 13 – which they could do in one year.
So journeys are NOT the problem.

You have a point. Though, the new legendary weapons also have that sort of journey attached to the last stage final weapon itself, that was supposed to be on-par with the precursor collections. It does however make it look like they should at least be able to provide a full set new of precursor journeys with the final stages being mostly crafting/forging. This is similar to what myself and others have suggested, implementing a toned-down, more manageable journey on order to get the feature into the game.

But, as you pointed out, it looks like they did manage to make a 22 (not counting the new shortbow) precursor journeys and 3 legendary journeys in what was likely not much over 1 year. So creating the remaining 26 journeys (13 pre + 13 legendary) should not have taken them much longer, almost surely not the “years” that was claimed. Even at their original estimates, completing the legendary set was still going to take more than a year beyond HoT’s releaese date.

In any case, I’m not really sure how Anet thought not delivering on a paid-for feature at all was somehow a better solution than shipping it in a slightly less legendary state than was initially expected. I suppose some would still be disappointed in it, and blame Anet for falling short of expectations, but that is surely better than shipping nothing and satisfying no one.

Obtena.7952:

You don’t seem to understand what you are actually paying for when you purchased HoT but I doubt I’m going to convince you otherwise. It’s the whole reason these arguments are flawed to begin with. Just to keep it simple .. you bought access to a service that has ongoing developing features; their priority was not specified, nor the timeline. I get that no one expected delays, indefinite or not. Well, it’s happening. You need to be more realistic about what that means for you. Finish your legendaries and quit or decide there is more to the game than that.

It’s you that doesn’t seem to understand that it being viewed as a service doesn’t absolve them of the responsibility to deliver what was advertised. Those consumer protection laws aren’t just magically inapplicable to services.

The fact that it is a service, and has ongoing development, allows for the game to evolve over time and is a disclaimer that it might not always be the exact product that was originally advertised. A key difference between this and the failure to deliver legendary weapons is that HoT was never at any point the product that was advertised. A set of 16 legendary weapon weren’t added, and then altered at some later time. They were just never added.

And I’ll likely continue playing the game a little, largely because I still have friends that play. I’ve already been playing far less than I did even in the content drought before HoT’s release. There are still fun and entertaining things to do, but long-term goals are sorely lacking, and that impacts the desire to play. WvW kept me playing for a huge portion of the last 3 and a half years, but I’ve almost entirely ignored it since the new borderland gutted the game mode. The return of the alpine border land will likely see some renewed interest. But things to do are still just that, and do not make up for the lack of long-term goals for some of us.

Obtena.7952:

I don’t think what I said changes; I described two kinds of players and a reasoning why the change shouldn’t really impact them. If you think there exists some other class of player that exists, go ahead and describe them and say why this is a major impact on them. You describe making 5-6 legendaries a year … if making legendaries is your WHOLE purpose in the game, I guess you will be done playing in a year or so. I don’t see a problem with that actually. You’re limiting your end game goals because there are lots of other things to do other than make Legendaries.

It should be obvious to you, especially after being explained by myself and at least a few others, that the “classes of players” interested in legendary weapons is a wide spectrum with varying amounts of weapons desired. And even wider ranges in the determination, drive, and ability to achieve those goals. However, the actual issue is not with the “class of player”, but with the fact that the goalpost is a static one. No matter how many weapons a player wants, or how fast they are able to attain them, the simple fact exists that as long as the number of weapons remains the same every player working toward them will, at some time, run out of those goals.

Despite your unwillingness to accept or comprehend this idea, a number of players have already reached this point, or are very near to it. I’m a “living example”of this, myself. There are 8 or so weapons out of the original set of 19 that I like, and 6 out of those that I had actual use for and had enough desire for to complete. Over the last 3 and a half years I have, with various other goals and activities providing distraction along the way, exhausted that list of 6 weapons. In fact, the 6th of those weapons was completed last summer. I was waiting for the set of weapons that was sold to me with HoT to provide an extension to that list. And extension that is now not coming, a fact that leaves me without a comparable long-term goal for the foreseeable future.

Of course, there are other goals and activities in the game, but none of them are on the scale of legendary weapons. Those weapons were designed to be the ultimate endgame goal. In a game where power is fairly easily capped out, the endgame goal becomes style. There is a good reason many players refer to this game as “Fashion Wars 2”. Cosmetic items/skins, the pinnacle of which is legendary weapons, were Anet’s intended end-game goals. So as players exhaust their list of legendary goals, the need for new goals being added arises.

And that is where we are right now. As should be apparent by this thread, many of us are out of, or running out of, long-term goals. Even Anet had acknowledged the growing need to extend that list of goals going all the way back to 2013. But despite their acknowledgement of it, and promises to add more weapons, they decided it was too much trouble for them to actually finish. If Anet had already seen the desire for more weapons and a need to fulfill that desire way back in 2013, don’t you think that it would be an even more pressing issue in 2016?

You can’t really stand in the middle of a group of players that are already out of endgame goals, and expect them to agree with you saying the existing endgame goals are enough to last them….forever? I still don’t know how long you actually expect a finite list to be enough, but simple fact that it is finite means that it certainly will not last forever for anyone. Even the most casual player, taking their time with a long list of goals, will inevitably complete that list someday.

Now, we could go back and forth till the end of time over whether this existing list is enough for most players, or whether the number of players that have exhausted it warrants its extension. But those are things that we don’t know, and facts we probably never will be privileged to. I, obviously, belong to the group that wants to see more added, and you to the group that think what we have now is enough. And I know that there are still many players that are still working on the “old” list and will be for some time. However, you seem to be determined to deny the very existence of the group that is in need of more, despite the fact that you have been conversing with many of us in this thread.

But, again, all of this isn’t even on track of the point. Anet did decide that more legendary weapons were needed, and sold us an expansion that promised to deliver that. Their decision to abandon it because it was too hard doesn’t change the fact that they saw the need, and accepted our money on the promise of fulfilling it.

Obtena.7952:

I think my point is pretty clear so I won’t continue to argue with you about who said what or useless things like that. With the current state of Legendaries, there isn’t any reason either of the two kinds of players I described can’t be satisfied with what we presently have.

I think it was described pretty clearly by several people that it’s quite possible to not be satisfied with what we currently have. Anyone that would like to make a legendary weapon, but has no use or desire for the ones currently available that they do not already own, has a good reason for wanting more of them to be added to the game.

And your personal preferences for story content over long-term goal oriented content is just that. Your own personal preference. I like story content too, but I also realize that story content releases will never be able to keep up with players’ ability to consume it. That’s one of the reasons why long-term goal-oriented content is important. It keeps players active and interested in the game during the breaks between content releases.

If you want a steady stream of story-driven unique content, then an assortment of single player games is the best bet for that. You won’t find any single game that can deliver that, unless your available playtime is extremely limited. Even at their fastest pacing, Anet’s LW content was still only 1-2 hours of content every 2 weeks.

I believe Anet’s current plan is to do quarterly LW releases, which won’t be starting for several more months. I don’t see any way that each of those releases is going to fill the 3 month gap in between them. Even the “full expansion” worth of story content didn’t manage that. And players’ lists of long-term goals will continue to grow shorter, or empty, as more time passes and those goals are achieved.

Do you think the existing set of legendary weapon will forever be able to serve its purpose for a growing number of players that continue checking things off of that list?

A lot of players have already ran out of things to do out of that list, despite your assertion that what we have now should keep them satisfied.

[edit] time for a little fun math
I’ve made 6 legendary weapons to date, and it took me somewhere around 2-3 months to complete each of those with fairly steady effort. Assuming I want every legendary in the original set of 19 (which I do not), that would mean between 38 and 57 months, if that same rate were sustained. Averaging that out, it would be just under 48 months for me to make them all. 4 years, which just happens to be the age GW2 is coming up on in a few months. Even with the 4 (3 so far, with1 assumed to actually be coming) HoT legendary weapons, that number is still under 5 years. And I think it’s likely that we won’t be seeing any new legendary weapons by August 2017, seeing as their development is at a stand still.

So, even looking at the best case scenario, I’m out of legendary weapons (the game’s primary long-term goal, that doesn’t really have anything else comparable) in just over 1 year from now. Of course the reality is that if I were to start today and make the remaining weapons that I’m just somewhat interested in, I’d be done before the game’s 4th anniversary.

bloodletting wolf.2837:

“The first handful being introduced in HoT and others released at regular intervals”. Listen we could fight about the marketing and wording all day and not get anywhere.

I’m not sure where your quote is from(not doubting it, as I’m pretty sure I’ve seen something to that effect in their blogs/etc), but the HoT website states precisely what was in my post. It explicitly says that a set of 16 legendary weapons will be added.

It’s on this page
https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/game/maguuma/

There’s nothing to fight about over what it says. It’s a direct quote copied from their own marketing page, and its meaning is extremely obvious. The only thing not specified is a time frame, but I don’t think “regular interval” and “indefinitely suspended” are even remotely similar. Something can’t be coming at regular intervals if it’s not even being worked on because its development was halted.

bloodletting wolf.2837:

If you read my post you would see that developer promises are part of the problem I have with the game atm. If Anet had not kept us in the dark and had let us know how much difficulty they had with the journey we wouldn’t be in this position. In addition marketing made this even worse since they left their statements are open to interpretation. Maybe it was because I didn’t care about them but I didn’t get hyped up about new legendaries I got hyped up about alternate ways of getting them.

I still disagree with the decision to “suspend” legendary development. I can see how a lot of people could interpret the marketing to include a whole set. Marketing. It’s the same thing as the borderlands being included in the expansion (you can play them ftp or core). If we can get to no more hype and semi-open communication on what is or isn’t off the table we don’t have to be in a position this bad again. That is the make or break point right now.

I agree with you that the promises have been a problem. They need to be absolutely sure they can deliver something before they make statements indicating that we are “for sure” getting it. I don’t think looking for feedback on new ideas they are considering is a bad thing, but it does become a problem when they start making statements about these features like “coming soon”, “we’re working on it”, “by the end of the year”. Don’t try to hype it and tell us how exciting it is, just present it as the idea that it is.

As for their marketing, there isn’t anything left open to interpretation. The HoT website explicitly states that “Additional legendary weapons will be released in small groups at regular intervals until the full set of 16 has been added to this game.” There isn’t any question about them committing to deliver that feature.

bloodletting wolf.2837:

Spira.4578:

The ironic part is that MO didn’t reply for the last 40 pages.
He cares THAT much about his community being angry.
He practically dropped the bomb, said that HoT, in his eyes is perfect, and that we’re all wrong and then put us on ignore.

I don’t blame him. What has this thread really accomplished? He could come out with all of the reasons behind the decision and he would still be crucified. If he decided to cut something else instead people would still scream for murder.

I’m not happy with HoT by a long shot. In fact it broke the game for me in a lot of ways so I play less. What I am willing to do though is give MO a chance now that he is back in the trenches closer to what’s going on that he can keep things in check.

Things that I believe they are moving towards that have been sorely needed:
1. No promises
2. Open communication

Those lack of those 2 things are why we are in the current situation.

They’ve been getting the flak over legendary weapons since they failed to deliver on the end of 2013 promise. And going back even farther over the scavenger hunt aspect they were talking about right around the core game launch.

What’s different in this round is that it’s not just a promise. It was used to get money. When you take someone’s money, then don’t deliver what you marketed, you should expect (and deserve) an angry mob. The explanations and attempts to justify don’t really matter after you’ve decided to commit to the promise and accept your customers’ money. The only options he should have are to deliver what was advertised or offer some sort of monetary compensation.

Instead, what MO tried to do was create some absurd third option, and talk his way out of his company’s obligation to its customers. That’s just not how this works, and he knows it. It’s actually pretty insulting that he seems to think excuses and reassurances that it’s “better for the game” are justifications we should begrudgingly accept while he runs off with our money to make another expansion.

Obtena.7952:

Again, I don’t think that it’s a genuine argument to say we need continuous development of Legendaries because an old, unchanging list of goals will eventually run out of players left to attain them. Isn’t a continuous provision of new Legendary weapons in fact, and old, unchanging list of things to do just by it’s very nature of being a repetitive process? OK, the output is different, but make no mistake, there is nothing interesting about obtaining the mats for your 20th Legendary weapon. It’s simply mechanical at that stage.

It think what is more realistic is that 1) you get players who make the Legendaries they like and 2) you get players who make as many Legendaries as possible. Unless you can think of some other player that doesn’t fit those descriptions, I don’t actually see the current number of Legendaries as unreasonable to satisfy the desires of the former kind of player or see a reason for Anet to sink a large number of resources into Legendary development for the latter kind of player.

Who said anything about continuous development of legendaries?

Yes, the game needs new goals to be added to give players things to do in the game. But that is not saying that continuous development is required. You’re just distorting the point from one extreme to the other.

This is about a single 2nd set that was marketed and sold as being part of HoT. That’s it, 16 weapons. Not a never-ending stream of them being constantly developed. If anything beyond that, maybe 1 new set of them per paid expansion would be a reasonable expectation. But the current issue has nothing to do with anything beyond the 16 weapons HoT’s price was supposed to have brought us.

And yeah, some aspects of legendary weapons are repetitive. But so are a lot of other things in this, and any other MMO. Like all the events you have to do over and over to max masteries or earn map currencies.

Should I argue that we already have enough maps to do events in, so might as well stop adding those, as well?

But, this entire debate is pointless and isn’t even about the actual issue. It doesn’t matter how many legendaries you think count as enough of an endgame goal. It doesn’t matter how many I think should be added. What matters is that we were sold an expansion under the premise of it getting us a full set of weapons, and now that product has been changed post-purchase.

Obtena.7952:

mrstealth.6701:

Obtena.7952:

mrstealth.6701:

I think SAB will just be a momentary distraction. After the initial hype settles, and especially after SAB has gone away for another indefinite period of time, the community is not going to let go of the fact that the most prominent items on the already short list of endgame goals just got canned.

Except you can still make creating a Legendary an endgame goal so whatever the fact is that the community isn’t letting go of, it’s not that one.

Yeah, we can still make legendary weapons that have already been available for over 3 years. Weapons we’ve had 3 years to work toward, and have been acquiring for 3 years. For a lot of players, those aren’t goals anymore because we have everything we want out of the old set of legendaries.

An MMO isn’t going to last forever on a small set of endgame goals. As time goes by, people will accomplish those goals and new ones need to be added. HoT was sold to us under the premise that it was going to do that.

I don’t know about you but I think making 20ish Legendary weapons is a large goal itself, and not the only endgame goal that exists … so the idea that GW2 is going to come crashing down on people because ‘nothing to do endgame" isn’t really a sensible one.

I never said GW2 was going to come crashing down right now because of it. But an old, unchanging list of goals will eventually run out of players left to attain them.

And for how many people are all 20 an actual goal? Sure, there are people that will (or already have) make all of them just because they are legendary, purple, and shiny. But for most players, the ones we like and will use get made.

I have 6 of them, and there are 1 or 2 more that I might consider. The rest I have no interest in. They aren’t goals for me, as I don’t like them and won’t use them. A new set of weapons brings with it a fairly good chance of new goals. I’m probably not going to want all of them, but I’m very likely to want some.

Obtena.7952:

mrstealth.6701:

I think SAB will just be a momentary distraction. After the initial hype settles, and especially after SAB has gone away for another indefinite period of time, the community is not going to let go of the fact that the most prominent items on the already short list of endgame goals just got canned.

Except you can still make creating a Legendary an endgame goal so whatever the fact is that the community isn’t letting go of, it’s not that one.

Yeah, we can still make legendary weapons that have already been available for over 3 years. Weapons we’ve had 3 years to work toward, and have been acquiring for 3 years. For a lot of players, those aren’t goals anymore because we have everything we want out of the old set of legendaries.

An MMO isn’t going to last forever on a small set of endgame goals. As time goes by, people will accomplish those goals and new ones need to be added. HoT was sold to us under the premise that it was going to do that.

Behellagh.1468:

The problem with the New Legendary Journeys is they wanted to make every one of them a memorable adventure. Sadly I think too many players simply don’t care about that. It’s a purely mechanical process to get the item at the end. That’s the conflict. ANet could spend a ton of time making each of these great but if a fair portion of those going for it simply don’t care, then is it worth the devs time.

I feel like what they actually created was somewhere in between. A lot of the “journey” is just a to-do checklist of events to do, items to collect, or objects in the world interact with. The only story along with it is tucked away in flavor text within collections or item tooltips. To the player that cares about lore, it feels tacked on and not immersive. And to the player that just wants to farm for their reward, it’s bunch of pointless running around the world. I would say that it’s catering more to the “press button, get reward” crowd, because the lore aspects are so easily ignored.

I’m not really sure which camp I’d put myself in. I’ve always had interest in GW’s lore, and most other games I’ve gotten really into. But when I’m working toward a goal in the game, I don’t always want that aspect slowing down the pacing or feeling like it’s in the way. I think I would be more interested in the lore aspect of the journey if it was presented in a more immersive way.

I still think it will just be a matter of time before they consider SAB too much work to maintain, in same way that legendary weapons became too hard, or how SAB’s own world 3 was too much to take on. But that will be dependent on just how much the game engine and other systems change over time. Next year’s return will be the most likely to come true, what about after another expansion sees more underlying changes like the ones that had to be fixed in this iteration of SAB?

I would say that I’m more than slightly jaded when it comes to Anet’s promises and failures to deliver on them. But I think that is to be expected when features repeatedly fail to materialize, or new systems do get implemented only to never be fully fleshed out, and eventually get replaced with yet another new system that never gets finished. It becomes very difficult to accept their statements at face value when so many of them have proven to be nothing more than hype and smoke.

As the saying goes…Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Sartharina.3542:

Why do jump pads even require gliding in the first place? Why not let non-gliders be able to just bounce off them?

There isn’t any reason for the restriction, and it’s clear that even this version of the pad (auto-launching, with the tornado spin animation) can in fact work just fine without gliding. The pads at Shatterer are of a similar type (with added ability to give you a bomb kit), and will launch you without HoT/glider mastery. Shatterer’s pads do still display the help tooltip about gliders on every use, though.

It’s likely just a bug, and not intended. But it’s a pretty bad thing to screw up. Someone did have to add in that annoying popup help thing nagging about gliders, too.

It’s sad, but I really can’t say I blame Anet. This falls on the overly sensitive, whiny, so “politically correct” it hurts, portion of society that wants to be offended by everything. I’d still rather see Anet tell them what they can do with their triggers and give us a prank anyway, but I can understand why anyone would want to avoid having to deal with that level of idiocy.

Those joke patch notes were still pretty great, though. And I think SAB is a well-received “consolation prize” for a big part of the community.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I don’t think the L. team was disbanded and re-purposed because ANet was short-handed. I think the re-purposing is a cost-effectiveness move. I think it was taking way too much time and effort to add the collections. This is possibly because the old code is a mess, that those who wrote it are no longer there, that it is poorly annotated, etc. The telling point is the statement that the L. team could “take years” to complete that project. There often comes a time when a businessman has to say, “This is costing more than it’s worth. We need a new plan.”

If SAB is live now, what are the odds that it was ready — or almost ready — before Mr. Johanson left and before the decision to postpone L. weapons (indefinitely) was made?

What if the plan is to rethink the process of getting L. items once the process of adding content/XPac’s regularly is more under control? What if they would like to replace the Precursor collections with a more manageable process while also avoiding RNG drops — which have been reviled for years? Based on the communications policy, which Mr. O’Brien has reiterated recently, they aren’t going to say anything about that until they know what they’ll do.

Putting the project on indefinite hold would have been a fine decision if this were part of a feature pack/quality of life/other free update. Sure, it’s disappointing and a blow to credibility/reputation, but there is less of a case to be made when the feature being dropped has no price attached to it. However, that is not what legendary weapons are. They are an advertised feature of a paid expansion.

There should be no “what if” about re-working the legendary journey into something more manageable that they can deliver. It’s something that needs to happen, because this was/is a key marketing point for HoT. They should have made sure their promise was deliverable before they started taking money for it. They had up to June (16th, I think?) 2015 to determine that and alter their marketing.

Now Anet needs to either deliver the feature in some form approximate to how it was advertised, or compensate their customers for their failure to provide what was bought.

TheNecrosanct.4028:

Also, they made it into a festival. SAB will not be disappearing for an indefinite amount of time. Expect to see it every year at April 1st.

As said before, I will believe that when I see it next year, and the year after, etc. Right now, the promise of it returning each year has the same credibility as the promise of a new full set of legendary weapons.

Anet has a long road of rebuilding trust, and anyone accepting their statements as the truth at this point is being the fool they are hoping we all are.

Dante.1508:

Never ever understood the whole legendary drag out grind thing people seem to worship, even at release it seemed over done, i am glad they are focusing on content over some grindy shinies..

I think legendary weapons qualify as content just as much as a lot of HoT, and even the rest of the game. Content that is designed to be repeated for the purpose of earning rewards. Unique story content with little/no reason to repeat is important, and I’m not trying to downplay the need for it. But, that type of content does not keep players in the game. It’s a reason to come back for a short while (often very short, as in a matter of hours), but it’s typically not been a reason to stay.

A developer will never be able to create content at the pace players consume it. This creates the need for long-term goal oriented content like legendary weapons. Like them or not, they are important to a lot of players, and to the game’s ability to retain a viable customer base.

Possibly due to a surge in active players from SAB’s return. Seems like I see this error/message more during peak hours on Fridays and weekends. My guess is that it’s related to server load.

maddoctor.2738:

mrstealth.6701:

I think SAB will just be a momentary distraction. After the initial hype settles, and especially after SAB has gone away for another indefinite period of time, the community is not going to let go of the fact that the most prominent items on the already short list of endgame goals just got canned.

SAB is now a yearly festival, meaning it will appear every year on April 1st.

As a yearly festival, SAB will now be a dependable fixture in Tyria, and that makes us very happy.

source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/welcome-to-the-super-adventure-festival/

I stand corrected on that detail, but it does not change the fact that SAB is a temporary distraction. It’s not as if players are going to simply forget about undelivered, already paid for content because of a few week festival that will be gone for another 11 months.

And it also possible, especially in light of current events, that SAB could end up being suspended for various reasons. As per that same announcement, the current iteration of SAB took considerable effort to re-implement to due changes in the engine and other game systems. I believe game engine improvements are still ongoing, so future SAB events will likely require updates and fixes as this one did. So, its return is dependent on Anet’s ability and willingness to continue updating it along with the rest of the game.

Just because Anet says something is coming back, doesn’t mean it actually will. If this thread has shown us anything, it’s that Anet’s promises aren’t to be fully trusted. I’ll believe that SAB is returning in 2017 when I see it ingame on April 1, 2017. Honestly, it’s a little disappointing to see that some people are already willing to accept Anet’s promises as if it means they will actually be delivered.

Testing with my second account that doesn’t have HoT, I’m unable to use the pads scattered around Central Tyria. Result is the same as trying to use the Tequatl pads. The launch animation starts (sound effect and ‘tornado’ spin), but is interrupted and a help tooltip shows telling me to train glider mastery. However, the pads at the Shatterer event do successfully launch, but still show the help tooltip on every use of the pad.

I think SAB will just be a momentary distraction. After the initial hype settles, and especially after SAB has gone away for another indefinite period of time, the community is not going to let go of the fact that the most prominent items on the already short list of endgame goals just got canned.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

You know what, maybe this is it. After last year maybe ANet decided that April fools was too much of a minefield if people are going to be “triggered” by an April fools joke and an airplane crash a week or two beforehand, on the other side of the world from them. Those people raised a huge fuss and forced ANet to apologize for being disrespectful. Sab is now a yearly festival at end of March/beginning of April. That may be ANet’s way of bypassing April fools and possible future controversy.

That did cross my mind. And it would be very sad if that turns out to be the case.

It is actually April 1st going by server time, which is UTC. Previous jokes have started at midnight UTC, along with daily reset.

They’ve either changed that for this year for some reason, have no joke, or something bugged and it didn’t actually start.

The pads are now functioning like the newer ones at the Shatterer event and others that are spread around several other zones. While they do allow for glider deployment mid-flight, the glider use is not actually needed to reach the destination. The requirement for glider mastery to launch from the pads is completely unnecessary.

It’s not a nice change for those that don’t own HoT, because those pads now require a glider/mastery to use.

I wasn’t sure if people were actually serious until I logged into my second account, which doesn’t have HoT. Trying to use the pads gave me a help pop-up telling me to train glider mastery.

Seriously hoping this is not intended. But seeing as they did a similar stunt with the Shatterer overhaul, I’m guessing it’s not. I’m still hoping I’m wrong about that, though, since these pads are pretty important to getting people around to quickly to defend and burn.

Spira.4578:

It’s becoming more and more obvious that MO canceled the legendary team a while ago, but was waiting for the right moment to tell us.
In the last month we got 2 of the most demanded items that we were constantly asking for : Wizards hat, bunny ears and now we got SAB.

So first they put Wizards hat and bunny ears in the shop, then, a dey before easter (a family holiday when people tend to be less stressed and kinder) they told us about the legendaries, and 1 week after, they put SAB in game, hoping the hype would overcome the disapointment (or at least change the current appearrance of the community).

Interesting fact: It’s not accurate at all and I’m sure anet has more info about it, someone on reddit posted a survey. Based on the results, over 50% of players own a legendary 49% have played for more than 3000 hours and 62% have played for 3 or more years

Of players who have played for 2+ years, approximately 72% own legendaries.
Minor interest?..

It does seem likely that the legendary announcement was held back to be put out along side several big positive announcements. It makes a lot of sense and I’d say is a smart business decision. Though, it is a bit underhanded and disingenuous. I also think that it’s not going to work as well as they hoped. The legendary “suspension” is not something that will be easily forgotten.

As for that reddit poll, I think the results would be skewed quite a bit because players active on forums (especially non-official ones) are more likely to have more dedication to the game, hours played, and legendary weapons.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Mirta.5029:

mtpelion.4562:

Per the terms and conditions of your transaction, you were entitled to receive “as is” access to the game server. They did not fail to deliver on that.

the “buy HoT” is the page that I’ve sent in to UK Trading standards. That answer was directly from them. Under UK law UK citizens have the right to claim for refund.

However, under ANet’s terms of a refund, that means account closure. Which isn’t what most people want.

While I can’t speak for others, what I would like is one of 4 things.
1) reversal of this decision
2) if not reversal then tell us how long. What are the outer boundaries of “eventually”
3) rework the Legendaries so that they fall under the old system of the first set so that we can at least get these new Legendaries. The set afterwards can be done with precursor crafting, as it sounds like it’s too difficult to attempt now.
4) if ANet can’t reverse it, rework it and can’t give a date of restarting this project, then they should consider giving some sort of small refund, gems if need be, to all purchasers of the expansion.

I’d be happy enough with option 2 or 3 and I suspect others would be also happy with one or the other.

I think option 3 would be their best bet at this point. Precursor crafting is something Anet still needs to deliver eventually, but players seem more concerned with just getting the weapons themselves added. Put the crafting/journey part on hold until they can rework a simplified version of it that is more manageable for the team to create.

This gives players what matters the most in a shorter time frame, and would be a showing of good faith on Anet’s part to deliver the journey in some smaller form instead of halting the entire project.

A ToS/EULA doesn’t always hold up to legal scrutiny, and can be found unenforceable. Perhaps more so when its terms are intended to absolve a company of responsibilities and circumvent consumer protections or other laws. They exist more as discouragement and a legal hurdle that potential plaintiffs can’t afford to get by in order to file suit for the actual issue.

Another issue with TOS/EULAs is that typically they aren’t shown to the customer till after purchase, and in many cases that is too late to get a refund. This is more applicable to boxed copies, but is still a potential issue with digital goods.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

BrotherBelial.3094:

What makes me laugh is everyone is surprised by the silence from ANet. Remember the whole HoT price and no character slot for people who already had HoT? ANet said nothing for a week before they made things “right”. Give it a week and maybe they’ll have something for us.

My other advice, is never buy anything on the strength of something that is not, finished/ready to go/started work on. We knew when we got HoT that legendary weapons where not ready or all finished.

It’s been 5 months and they still aren’t finished. They’re still hardly more than what was promised on the box. How long do you recommend that people wait before buying the expansion? A year? Not until all the Legendaries are done?

If you are buying is for a feature that is not added/finished you wait till its there.

That’s easy to suggest. However that is also suggesting that all people who might one day want one of the new Legendaries not buy this expansion for however months, or years, until it’s in game. That means they will be left in vanilla until that time and missing all the new content and living story that comes with it. That also assumes that people would have a reason to believe back then that something advertised for that expansion would be put on hold.

While some people might be expecting that advertised content will be withheld or be willing to sit in Vanilla for however many years it takes, most people did not have that expectation. Therefore a suggestion that this expansion should not have been bought is not a reasonable one.

As I said if you are buying something on the strength of something that is not there you wait. If there are many things you want then get it now. But when people say “I got the expansion only for the legendary weapons” I have no sympathy. I don’t think what ANet has done is right. But people have no one to blame but them self’s why the paid for something that wasn’t there to start with.

Maybe it’s different where you live, but where I’m from I can buy a package of items in which some are not quite available and expect them to be delivered when done. If there is a reason that the company can’t deliver the items, I get a refund of the money that paid for it. It’s not a usual practice in most companies that they’ll take your money, not deliver the goods and then also not give a refund of money paid.

I’m sorry you live in a society with such weak consumer protections and therefore this is common place to you, but it’s not the type of treatment by a company that I’m used to and therefore I didn’t anticipate needing to not buy ahead of time.

You are talking about a whole product, not a digital one. As I said I don’t agree with what ANet did,

Many consumer protection laws apply to more than just physical goods. They even apply to services, which can be delivered over time in the same manner HoT’s remaining features are/were supposed to be.

This is not “on the customer” simply because the product isn’t a physical item that was intended to be delivered all at once. These protections still apply.

BrotherBelial.3094:

As I said if you are buying something on the strength of something that is not there you wait. If there are many things you want then get it now. But when people say “I got the expansion only for the legendary weapons” I have no sympathy. I don’t think what ANet has done is right. But people have no one to blame but them self’s why the paid for something that wasn’t there to start with.

It shouldn’t be something a customer needs to be concerned about. There are consumer protections in place to prevent this from happening, and place consequences on companies do it anyway. If this were about pre-orders for a game no one outside of the developer has had a chance to play, then I would agree that buyers need to wait to be able to make an informed decision. But this isn’t a pre-order, it’s a product that has been out for months, that had some features slated for later release. Under no circumstances, short of Anet going bankrupt and being financially unable to provide these features, should there ever be any question as to whether or not they would be released.

As for players that weighed their decision to buy HoT heavily on the promise of new legendaries, there was still good reason to buy it before they were added. There is a good deal of work toward a legendary weapon that can be done before it’s actually added to the game, ranging from mastery requirements, to completing various pve content, and gathering materials unique to HoT. Not the smartest purchase decision, in my opinion, but still one that should have been able to be made with confidence that the product would be delivered.

If the “legendary journey”/collection/scavenger hunt system is bogging down production of content and can’t be solved by assigning more people to the project, why not just cut out some complexity (fewer collections and item hunts) to make the process more manageable. Or even fall back on the “old” method of acquiring precursors and crafting legendaries, at least until more resources can be dedicated to implementing some of the more complex new process along side it. Surely, any option that sees these weapons actually added to the game as a goal for players to work toward is better than simply tossing the entire idea out into the trash can.

One thing I will never understand about Anet is this unwillingness to see something through and try to make it work out, even if not in the way they had originally planned. They would rather build another entirely new system to replace it, or give up on a concept entirely instead of tweaking/fixing what they have or reverting a previous working system.

How many players would be more satisfied (or at least feel less upset or betrayed) if new legendaries were added under the old system? Or if the old wvw borderland was restored? What about if previous dungeon rewards were re-implemented?

Why let negativity and mistrust fester while you waste time trying to come up with a new solution (that might end up being even worse), or decide to do nothing, when there is a working solution sitting there on a dusty shelf that can be used in the mean time?

Spira.4578:

The only reason why any mats had any value is because legendaries were gold sinks. Removing them will also remove the will to farm for many players. Not to mention that mats will lose their price so the only valuable farmign will be fotm – which gives direct gold.
Most HoT maps will get deserted pretty fast because one of the main reason to farm them is to get the materials for the legendary weapons – same goes map completion and any kind of matsfarming (most of them will lose on their price).
1 thing will lead to another and players will lose their drive to play the content.
Legendaries have definitelly more importance than you’re giving them.

I can see this happening over time at a somewhat faster rate due to this change, but I don’t think it will be a sudden, drastic shift. There are still a lot of players making existing legendary weapons, or using many of the same materials to craft ascended armor and weapons. It will take time for that demand to settle, but there are some other considerations that could impact that now.

Demand for weapons and the materials to make them will always be in a decline unless there is a steady influx of players to maintain it. Every person that completes a legendary, means one less person in need of its materials. This will always be a part of the economy, but right now the influx rush from HoT and f2p is over, and we’re in an ongoing content drought.

Without new items coming in to bolster that demand for both new and old players, demand could start to drop off at a faster rate. But, even without new legendary weapons, the past 3 years have seen other uses for these materials added. This can either continue to decline, or new changes/additions can turn it around and increase demand.

There is also the added impact of players that have been building up shared/common materials in preparation for unreleased weapons, that now have an unneeded surplus of materials to dump back into the market. If nothing else is added to use up those materials, players will have little reason to not sell them.