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Hi, Can we have a Roadmap for PvE?


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@Vayne.8563 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:Anet is not going to tell you when they next raid is coming out, nor should they. Too much can happen in this industry in too short a time. No reason to build expectations only to later have people call them liars. Not like it hasn't happened already.

we dont want specific dates. just tell us there is somethinganet is in silent mode and it's not good for the game

So far Anet is unwilling to even say whether there's an expansion in the works. And here we're asking not only about confirmation on some less impactful content, but about a roadmap...Somehow i don't see any sort of info forthcoming.

Companies offer info on their time schedule, not yours. They said, straight out, that the next episode of the living story is next. My guess is they have features which can be delivered either in an expansion or in the living world and haven't internally decided how they want to deliver it yet.

Seems to me the main difference between LS and an expansion is elite specs, and some special feature like mounts or gliding. If they're going to deliver anything like that during a living world season then it's no different from an expansion. Instead of holding back delivery to package it, they'll release when things are ready. To you whether there's an expansion or not is a plan. Maybe Anet feels (and they've said this) they'd rather deliver features as they're ready than hold them back for an expansion.

The playerbase has expansion on the brain, but it's not necessary if we're getting the same stuff. And since Anet may not have made that decision they might have nothing to say. They said Season 5 is coming next. If they're going to give us elite specs, why does it matter if there's an expansion or not?

Companies pay the bills thanks to the consumer's spendings, not theirs. Its a relationship between someone who provides a product and someone who pays for it as much as we can be patient and understanding they too so need to be accepting of critisism and be ready to change and abjust their methods.

Plus lw and expansion are diff in more so ways than simply elite specs, having all the content delivered in one go is on its own a big difference.

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@zealex.9410 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:Anet is not going to tell you when they next raid is coming out, nor should they. Too much can happen in this industry in too short a time. No reason to build expectations only to later have people call them liars. Not like it hasn't happened already.

we dont want specific dates. just tell us there is somethinganet is in silent mode and it's not good for the game

So far Anet is unwilling to even say whether there's an expansion in the works. And here we're asking not only about confirmation on some less impactful content, but about a roadmap...Somehow i don't see any sort of info forthcoming.

Companies offer info on their time schedule, not yours. They said, straight out, that the next episode of the living story is next. My guess is they have features which can be delivered either in an expansion or in the living world and haven't internally decided how they want to deliver it yet.

Seems to me the main difference between LS and an expansion is elite specs, and some special feature like mounts or gliding. If they're going to deliver anything like that during a living world season then it's no different from an expansion. Instead of holding back delivery to package it, they'll release when things are ready. To you whether there's an expansion or not is a plan. Maybe Anet feels (and they've said this) they'd rather deliver features as they're ready than hold them back for an expansion.

The playerbase has expansion on the brain, but it's not necessary if we're getting the same stuff. And since Anet may not have made that decision they might have nothing to say. They said Season 5 is coming next. If they're going to give us elite specs, why does it matter if there's an expansion or not?

Companies pay the bills thanks to the consumer's spendings, not theirs. Its a relationship between someone who provides a product and someone who pays for it as much as we can be patient and understanding they too so need to be accepting of critisism and be ready to change and abjust their methods.

Plus lw and expansion are diff in more so ways than simply elite specs, having all the content delivered in one go is on its own a big difference.

Yes, companies also make decisions based on what's best for them. The six guys that leave because they don't announce an expansion RIGHT NOW are not going to change much. This isn't the company ripping people off. It's about the company not answering your questions when you are ready. How are they supposed to answer if they're not sure what they're doing? How is that reasonable?

There are reasonable consumers and unreasonable ones. You can't really plan your business around the unreasonable ones.

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@Vayne.8563 said:Yes, companies also make decisions based on what's best for them. The six guys that leave because they don't announce an expansion RIGHT NOW are not going to change much.It's not about announcing the expansion right now. It's about merely saying whether one is being worked on. It should have been no big deal - if anything, up until recently it has been an assumed state - and yet they keep being silent.

This isn't the company ripping people off. It's about the company not answering your questions when you are ready.Personally i don't think it's about them answering when they are ready. I fear it's them not having an expac in the works, and not wanting to say that because hey are (rightly) afraid the game will depopulate as soon as they announce it. On the other hand, if they really are afraid of announcing it, why aren't they working on an expac?Regardless, them not answering this very simple, and very core question is extremely worrying, and signifies the game might be in some serious trouble.

How are they supposed to answer if they're not sure what they're doing? How is that reasonable?They aren't sure whether they are working on an expansion, or raid wing, at the moment? Well, if they don't even know that, we have a real problem...

There are reasonable consumers and unreasonable ones. You can't really plan your business around the unreasonable ones.I'm afraid that in this case it's not about unreasonable consumers. This time it's about unreliable producers.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:Yes, companies also make decisions based on what's best for them. The six guys that leave because they don't announce an expansion RIGHT NOW are not going to change much.It's not about announcing the expansion right now. It's about merely saying whether one is being worked on. It should have been no big deal - if anything, up until recently it has been an assumed state - and yet they keep being silent.

This isn't the company ripping people off. It's about the company not answering your questions when you are ready.Personally i don't think it's about them answering when they are ready. I fear it's them not having an expac in the works, and not wanting to say that because hey are (rightly) afraid the game will depopulate as soon as they announce it. On the other hand, if they really are afraid of announcing it, why
aren't
they working on an expac?Regardless, them not answering this very simple, and very core question is
extremely
worrying, and signifies the game might be in some serious trouble.

How are they supposed to answer if they're not sure what they're doing? How is that reasonable?They aren't sure whether they are working on an expansion, or raid wing, at the moment? Well, if they don't even know that, we have a
real
problem...

There are reasonable consumers and unreasonable ones. You can't really plan your business around the unreasonable ones.I'm afraid that in this case it's not about unreasonable consumers. This time it's about unreliable producers.

I'm curious, do you think Arenanet used to be reliable and became unreliable only in recent months? Because the policy of not releasing info isn't new, it's been with us for a very long time. Also, saying that they are NOT working on an expansion makes little sense, you don't announce that you are NOT doing something, only that you ARE doing something. I think the reason they aren't working on an expansion is because those two other cancelled projects were requiring expansion-level resources. Now that those resources are freed maybe they can allocate them to an expansion, but we'd have to wait for Season 5.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:Yes, companies also make decisions based on what's best for them. The six guys that leave because they don't announce an expansion RIGHT NOW are not going to change much.It's not about announcing the expansion right now. It's about merely saying whether one is being worked on. It should have been no big deal - if anything, up until recently it has been an assumed state - and yet they keep being silent.

This isn't the company ripping people off. It's about the company not answering your questions when you are ready.Personally i don't think it's about them answering when they are ready. I fear it's them not having an expac in the works, and not wanting to say that because hey are (rightly) afraid the game will depopulate as soon as they announce it. On the other hand, if they really are afraid of announcing it, why
aren't
they working on an expac?Regardless, them not answering this very simple, and very core question is
extremely
worrying, and signifies the game might be in some serious trouble.

How are they supposed to answer if they're not sure what they're doing? How is that reasonable?They aren't sure whether they are working on an expansion, or raid wing, at the moment? Well, if they don't even know that, we have a
real
problem...

There are reasonable consumers and unreasonable ones. You can't really plan your business around the unreasonable ones.I'm afraid that in this case it's not about unreasonable consumers. This time it's about unreliable producers.

It should be no big deal if a decision has been made. But since there are two ways to deliver content, the SAME content, expansion or not, then they could be working on content, which may or may not be delivered in an expansion. They've said this has come up before, how come you're so sure they know, and if they haven't decided, how can than answer?

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@Vayne.8563 said:It should be no big deal if a decision has been made. But since there are two ways to deliver content, the SAME content, expansion or not, then they could be working on content, which may or may not be delivered in an expansion. They've said this has come up before, how come you're so sure they know, and if they haven't decided, how can than answer?You can't just get a bunch of unrelated content, and suddenly decide to package it together and call an expansion. Well, you can, but it would be a lousy expansion. For an expac to work, you need to start designing it long before you even start doing stuff for it. It needs to be a coherent whole, not something hastily ducttaped together. So, no, LS and expac are not really easily exchangeable - both require diffeent kind of design and work, even if they are introducing content of the same type.

Not making a decision yet is the same as not starting work on an expac yet.

So, we're back to the original point - if they think the delivery method they picked is the right one, why are they afraid of saying so clearly? I can think of several reasons for that, but none of them are good.

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While I would love a roadmap, I get why the developers are shy on interacting with the community. It's almost never been a good idea until the content was shippable.

On the notion of expansions and Living World, I believe Living World releases are good for keeping the short term attention and probably keep the revenue high with less effort. It's expansions though which make a buzz.

I can't recall nearly any one I know who returned for a Living World Episode unless it conincided with them wanting to give the game another try anyway. I've seen a lot of people return for expansions, even if only temporary, in pretty much any MMO I've played.

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@Fawx.9064 said:

@tim.4596 said:

@Fawx.9064 said:While wing 7 was completed for the first time pretty fast by the community, it is repeatable content. The cries of “9 months for 2 hours of content” are pretty inaccurate. Most of us will get hours and hours of playtime from w7. Just like we have had hours of playtime from w1-6.

Its not even truely repeatable. Anet is so scared of players "farming" raids, they nerfed repeatable rewards - which were low to begin with - into the ground to make it as unattractive as possible to repeat raids more than once a week. So in this context that means, if (and thats still a big if) we get w8 in 9 months, w7 is only 30min * 36 weeks worth of "content". So thats 18 hours. Add 2 hours for progression and maybe 4 hours for CMs, you are at 24 hours.You can artificially (yay, buzzword) stretch the content by doing w7 only with pugs, then you get maybe a hundred hours of frustration out of it. I mean, seriously, how can you fall into the first hole on adina CM three times in a row?

Guess why raids are slowly dieing? 24 hours of content that you have to stretch over 9 months.

Name me any content in the game that is adding more that 24 hours of content over 9 months if cleared at optimal efficiency. Also, you talk as if w5 was invalidated as soon as wing 6 released, and wing 6 as soon as wing 7. Wing 7 is permanent content. It'll exist until its removed, not until wing 8 comes out.

For me personally, W5 becomes invalidated after farming it for 3months straight. It just isn't a challenge anymore. It's pure farm.

And don't make me laugh about nerfing repeatable raid rewards. Repeatable rewards never existed. Claiming that a champ bag and 2 bags of gear was "repeatable reward" for raids is laughable. You can't nerf something that was never there.

I can understand that. I’m a raider myself. My only point is that our community is exaggerating the levels of content that we receive. No area of the game receives more than a few hours of content every few months - and even what most areas do receive - none have the replay ability of raids.

Fractals have a lot more replayability than raids... And this is mostly because of how rewarding their daily system is goldwise and how grindy their rewards are (like attunements/titles/omnipots.)

They should really think about adding Raid Boss daily quests... And maybe add something like a secondary portal that takes you directly to the daily bosses even if the wing is already cleared on your account. The rewards wouldn't even have to be anything great... Like 2g + a new currency that you can grind out would be more than enough to keep the interest going throughout the week.

Another idea could be to rework Call of the Mists into the form of a daily wing. Like, every day a different wing would have the CoM buff, and if it does, it would be enabled to be cleared for rewards once that day (even if you've already cleared that week.) This would give people cause to repeat one of the wings every day--or at the very least--might inspire the lazy to spread their clears out throughout the week to double dip the rewards instead of just full clearing all 7 wings on monday; this could lead to more sustained LFG activity throughout the week.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@zealex.9410 said:Anet does neither because neither the 2 hours of content come out every 3 months nor the 10 hours come out every 15.

That's totally subjective, how long content lasts is up to the individual player. Some players (most I'd wager) haven't even beaten Wing 7 yet

I wasnt refering to the hours of content, i was referering to how often said content comes out, they havent been consistent.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Vayne.8563" said:Yes, companies also make decisions based on what's best for them. The six guys that leave because they don't announce an expansion RIGHT NOW are not going to change much.It's not about announcing the expansion right now. It's about merely saying whether one is being worked on. It should have been no big deal - if anything, up until recently it has been an assumed state - and yet they keep being silent.

This isn't the company ripping people off. It's about the company not answering your questions when you are ready.Personally i don't think it's about them answering when they are ready. I fear it's them not having an expac in the works, and not wanting to say that because hey are (rightly) afraid the game will depopulate as soon as they announce it. On the other hand, if they really are afraid of announcing it, why
aren't
they working on an expac?Regardless, them not answering this very simple, and very core question is
extremely
worrying, and signifies the game might be in some serious trouble.

How are they supposed to answer if they're not sure what they're doing? How is that reasonable?They aren't sure whether they are working on an expansion, or raid wing, at the moment? Well, if they don't even know that, we have a
real
problem...

There are reasonable consumers and unreasonable ones. You can't really plan your business around the unreasonable ones.I'm afraid that in this case it's not about unreasonable consumers. This time it's about unreliable producers.

I'm curious, do you think Arenanet used to be reliable and became unreliable only in recent months? Because the policy of not releasing info isn't new, it's been with us for a very long time. Also, saying that they are NOT working on an expansion makes little sense, you don't announce that you are NOT doing something, only that you ARE doing something. I think the reason they aren't working on an expansion is because those two other cancelled projects were requiring expansion-level resources. Now that those resources are freed maybe they can allocate them to an expansion, but we'd have to wait for Season 5.

I think anet used to be more reliable but they got worse at it as time went on. Dont forget we had word on pof months before se3. The other projects taking expac lvl resources from gw2 makes alot of sense but these projects have also now been cancelled for months, if anet is unsure if they want to have an expansion for so long while claiming "renewed focus on gw2" then i think thats very worrying for the game.

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@narcx.3570 said:

@tim.4596 said:

@Fawx.9064 said:While wing 7 was completed for the first time pretty fast by the community, it is repeatable content. The cries of “9 months for 2 hours of content” are pretty inaccurate. Most of us will get hours and hours of playtime from w7. Just like we have had hours of playtime from w1-6.

Its not even truely repeatable. Anet is so scared of players "farming" raids, they nerfed repeatable rewards - which were low to begin with - into the ground to make it as unattractive as possible to repeat raids more than once a week. So in this context that means, if (and thats still a big if) we get w8 in 9 months, w7 is only 30min * 36 weeks worth of "content". So thats 18 hours. Add 2 hours for progression and maybe 4 hours for CMs, you are at 24 hours.You can artificially (yay, buzzword) stretch the content by doing w7 only with pugs, then you get maybe a hundred hours of frustration out of it. I mean, seriously, how can you fall into the first hole on adina CM three times in a row?

Guess why raids are slowly dieing? 24 hours of content that you have to stretch over 9 months.

Name me any content in the game that is adding more that 24 hours of content over 9 months if cleared at optimal efficiency. Also, you talk as if w5 was invalidated as soon as wing 6 released, and wing 6 as soon as wing 7. Wing 7 is permanent content. It'll exist until its removed, not until wing 8 comes out.

For me personally, W5 becomes invalidated after farming it for 3months straight. It just isn't a challenge anymore. It's pure farm.

And don't make me laugh about nerfing repeatable raid rewards. Repeatable rewards never existed. Claiming that a champ bag and 2 bags of gear was "repeatable reward" for raids is laughable. You can't nerf something that was never there.

I can understand that. I’m a raider myself. My only point is that our community is exaggerating the levels of content that we receive. No area of the game receives more than a few hours of content every few months - and even what most areas do receive - none have the replay ability of raids.

Fractals have a lot more replayability than raids... And this is mostly because of how rewarding their daily system is goldwise and how grindy their rewards are (like attunements/titles/omnipots.)

They should really think about adding Raid Boss daily quests... And maybe add something like a secondary portal that takes you directly to the daily bosses even if the wing is already cleared on your account. The rewards wouldn't even have to be anything great... Like 2g + a new currency that you can grind out would be more than enough to keep the interest going throughout the week.

Another idea could be to rework Call of the Mists into the form of a daily wing. Like, every day a different wing would have the CoM buff, and if it does, it would be enabled to be cleared for rewards once that day (even if you've already cleared that week.) This would give people cause to repeat one of the wings every day--or at the very least--might inspire the lazy to spread their clears out throughout the week to double dip the rewards instead of just full clearing all 7 wings on monday; this could lead to more sustained LFG activity throughout the week.

Your perspective is very accurate. The reality is that fractals are repeatable because of systems in the game (daily reset, multi tiered, etc), not because of anything to do with the individual fractals. I strongly agree that Anet should add some systems to make raids way more replayable than they are now.

The vocal minority of the raid community that are screaming "9 months wait for 2 hours content" mis-represent what we have actually received. It would be just as accurate to say "9 months wait for 15mins of fractal content" - or how ever long its been between fractal releases. Its true, but its also a bad representation of content received.

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@Obtena.7952 said:If you are 'dedicated', then logging into the game isn't dependent on when they are releasing something new. If you have to ask yourself if you should log in, then you aren't very dedicated.

I'm honestly trying to wrap my head around the idea of a 'dedicated' player. What does that mean?

I log in to play so long as I'm having fun. If I have nothing on my 'to do' list, I look for something to do that is fun. That can mean running in WvW, doing map completion on alt characters, metas, fractals, crafting, etc.

If there is nothing I want to do / or is fun, I log off and play something else.

Does that make me dedicated? Not dedicated? :confused:

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@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:If you are 'dedicated', then logging into the game isn't dependent on when they are releasing something new. If you have to ask yourself if you should log in, then you aren't very dedicated.

I'm honestly trying to wrap my head around the idea of a 'dedicated' player. What does that mean?

I log in to play so long as I'm having fun. If I have nothing on my 'to do' list, I look for something to do that is fun. That can mean running in WvW, doing map completion on alt characters, metas, fractals, crafting, etc.

If there is nothing I want to do / or is fun, I log off and play something else.

Does that make me dedicated? Not dedicated? :confused:

It makes you sane.

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@"zealex.9410" said:I think anet used to be more reliable but they got worse at it as time went on. Dont forget we had word on pof months before se3. The other projects taking expac lvl resources from gw2 makes alot of sense but these projects have also now been cancelled for months, if anet is unsure if they want to have an expansion for so long while claiming "renewed focus on gw2" then i think thats very worrying for the game.

Path of Fire was announced here:https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-guild-wars-2-path-of-fire/After Season 3 was over. When did they give word that Path of Fire was coming? I don't doubt they announced it earlier but I can't seem to find anything

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"zealex.9410" said:I think anet used to be more reliable but they got worse at it as time went on. Dont forget we had word on pof months before se3. The other projects taking expac lvl resources from gw2 makes alot of sense but these projects have also now been cancelled for months, if anet is unsure if they want to have an expansion for so long while claiming "renewed focus on gw2" then i think thats very worrying for the game.

Path of Fire was announced here:
After Season 3 was over. When did they give word that Path of Fire was coming? I don't doubt they announced it earlier but I can't seem to find anything

We learned later that it was called pof, but we know that what is now pof was in the works before even se3. It was during their first big ama post near the end of the hot content drought.

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@"Cyninja.2954" said:While I would love a roadmap, I get why the developers are shy on interacting with the community. It's almost never been a good idea until the content was shippable.

On the notion of expansions and Living World, I believe Living World releases are good for keeping the short term attention and probably keep the revenue high with less effort. It's expansions though which make a buzz.

I can't recall nearly any one I know who returned for a Living World Episode unless it conincided with them wanting to give the game another try anyway. I've seen a lot of people return for expansions, even if only temporary, in pretty much any MMO I've played.

Have you seen how Warframe devs are talking with their community? Anet should take notes.

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@Krzysztof.5973 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:While I would love a roadmap, I get why the developers are shy on interacting with the community. It's almost never been a good idea until the content was shippable.

On the notion of expansions and Living World, I believe Living World releases are good for keeping the short term attention and probably keep the revenue high with less effort. It's expansions though which make a buzz.

I can't recall nearly any one I know who returned for a Living World Episode unless it conincided with them wanting to give the game another try anyway. I've seen a lot of people return for expansions, even if only temporary, in pretty much any MMO I've played.

Have you seen how
devs are talking with their community? Anet should take notes.

Id rather they take notes from poe devs instead, they can keep a schedule unlike warframe's (tho the dev stream in warframe are quite pog)

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@zealex.9410 said:

@zealex.9410 said:I think anet used to be more reliable but they got worse at it as time went on. Dont forget we had word on pof months before se3. The other projects taking expac lvl resources from gw2 makes alot of sense but these projects have also now been cancelled for months, if anet is unsure if they want to have an expansion for so long while claiming "renewed focus on gw2" then i think thats very worrying for the game.

Path of Fire was announced here:
After Season 3 was over. When did they give word that Path of Fire was coming? I don't doubt they announced it earlier but I can't seem to find anything

We learned later that it was called pof, but we know that what is now pof was in the works before even se3. It was during their first big ama post near the end of the hot content drought.

This one?https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/

You’ve seen in past years that we went through times when the whole company worked on one thing. In 2013, the year we shipped 21 Living World updates, pretty much the whole company was working on Living World. In 2015, we were all working on the expansion. Going forward we’re putting ourselves in a more sustainable mode where live and expansion don’t compete with each other.We have about 120 devs working on the live game, 70 devs on Expac2, and 30 devs on core teams that support both.

Interesting bit is that it's 15 months time between first announcement and release.

I think this part answers the question of the thread:

The final thing you should know is that we’re working hard to avoid having a default assumption that “this thing will ship on this date,” or even, “this thing will ship,” and instead we’re proactively deciding to ship things when they’re done and polished and we’ve played them and love them. So if you ask us for a list of things that will ship in April, we’ll probably be coy because we think it’s nice for you to have presents to unwrap on release day, but more than that, the truth is we don’t even know.

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@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:If you are 'dedicated', then logging into the game isn't dependent on when they are releasing something new. If you have to ask yourself if you should log in, then you aren't very dedicated.

I'm honestly trying to wrap my head around the idea of a 'dedicated' player. What does that mean?

I log in to play so long as I'm having fun. If I have nothing on my 'to do' list, I look for something to do that is fun. That can mean running in WvW, doing map completion on alt characters, metas, fractals, crafting, etc.

If there is nothing I want to do / or is fun, I log off and play something else.

Does that make me dedicated? Not dedicated? :confused:

Honestly I don't know .. I didn't coin the term but the guy I was having the discussion with decided that somehow, that term differentiated people into some way that put a positive spin on his position. That's the problem with some people, just throw out ideas that they invent.

I guess my point is that you are the kinds of people I'm talking about ... you don't need a roadmap to find reasons to play; you don't decide to play because you know what is going to happen in two months. I guess if you want to call that dedicated, I would support that definition.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@zealex.9410 said:I think anet used to be more reliable but they got worse at it as time went on. Dont forget we had word on pof months before se3. The other projects taking expac lvl resources from gw2 makes alot of sense but these projects have also now been cancelled for months, if anet is unsure if they want to have an expansion for so long while claiming "renewed focus on gw2" then i think thats very worrying for the game.

Path of Fire was announced here:
After Season 3 was over. When did they give word that Path of Fire was coming? I don't doubt they announced it earlier but I can't seem to find anything

We learned later that it was called pof, but we know that what is now pof was in the works before even se3. It was during their first big ama post near the end of the hot content drought.

This one?

You’ve seen in past years that we went through times when the whole company worked on one thing. In 2013, the year we shipped 21 Living World updates, pretty much the whole company was working on Living World. In 2015, we were all working on the expansion. Going forward we’re putting ourselves in a more sustainable mode where live and expansion don’t compete with each other.We have about 120 devs working on the live game, 70 devs on Expac2, and 30 devs on core teams that support both.

Interesting bit is that it's 15 months time between first announcement and release.

Actually its 16 months before the reveal. Yeah pof had notably a much smaller hype period as well as having s3 run over 12 months instead of the 18month run time of season 4.

Could be wrong but pof was 18 months of development or 16 at the time of the reveal so that means the revealed that expac 2 was in production right around when it started production. Now they could ofc take more or less time on expac 3 but i dont see it having started production before the layoffs so if they do idd make a new one thanks to the renewed focus on gw2 they would need to announce that a possible expac is in development at the start or before se5 (which is likely to not take another 18 months)

I think this part answers the question of the thread:

The final thing you should know is that we’re working hard to avoid having a default assumption that “this thing will ship on this date,” or even, “this thing will ship,” and instead we’re proactively deciding to ship things when they’re done and polished and we’ve played them and love them. So if you ask us for a list of things that will ship in April, we’ll probably be coy because we think it’s nice for you to have presents to unwrap on release day, but more than that, the truth is we don’t even know.

I think an expac is kinda beyond that as ots a massive investment from anets and the players standpoint.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Vayne.8563" said:It should be no big deal if a decision has been made. But since there are two ways to deliver content, the SAME content, expansion or not, then they could be working on content, which may or may not be delivered in an expansion. They've said this has come up before, how come you're so sure they know, and if they haven't decided, how can than answer?You can't just get a bunch of unrelated content, and suddenly decide to package it together and call an expansion. Well, you can, but it would be a lousy expansion. For an expac to work, you need to start designing it long before you even start doing stuff for it. It needs to be a coherent whole, not something hastily ducttaped together. So, no, LS and expac are not really easily exchangeable - both require diffeent kind of design and work, even if they are introducing content of the same type.

Not making a decision yet is the same as not starting work on an expac yet.

So, we're back to the original point - if they think the delivery method they picked is the right one, why are they afraid of saying so clearly? I can think of several reasons for that, but none of them are good.

Living world stuff is actually a bunch of related content anyway. If you were to add elite specs to the living world, you're only missing the "big feature" like gliding or mounts. Let's pretend that big feature is say...housing. You add housing and elite specs to a living world season that you don't deliver and you have an expansion. You may not think that would work but Anet themselves have said stuff similar. That is that in order to make an expansion they were holding stuff back and not releasing it when it was ready. The story arc in a game like this would be enough to make the game an expansion, and and of itself. If Anet said this, and said they didn't want to do an expansion at all and all upgrades would be delivered through the living world, as they've done in the past, why would the situation now be any different. Anet has said it is possible that it works as I've said. I think I'll take them at their word for that.

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Has Anet ever done or said anything you didn't feel like defending within 5 seconds of being critiqued?

At this point I'm just curious.

I have my own complaints against the game. And I've complained about the game. Oddly on the occaassions I have complained, I've been shot down by the community, so no, I don't defend everything Anet did. In fact, anyone paying any attention at all to the bulk of my posts will see that I never thought raids should have been added to this game at all. I've complained about the jump in skill required to go from core to HoT, which should have had more gradation going up to it, and I've complained that the game does a piss poor job of communicating itself. I've even said in the past that Anet should communicate more. So no, I don't just defend Anet. At the same time, I'm happy to chime in when I disagree with people, because his is a forum, you know, that's sort of what it's for.

In this particularly case, saying I don't know specifically if an expansion is coming and I'm a; customer and therefore Anet should tell me is something I disagree with. Companies announce expansions when it makes sense to announce them. The timing of such an announcement is usually part of a business strategy. Admittedly in the case of an expansion, most MMO players assume that one will be coming in other games, and so they never ask. However this game has always been different from other MMOs.

I guess my issue comes from the fact that before the first expansion, we were told there would be no expansion and content would be delivered through the living world. And then they released an expansion anyway, so I'm not sure what demanding answers from the company will even yield. Let's pretend Anet comes out and says no more expansion. They absolutely lose more people. Then NcSoft, who owns the company says, you really do have to make an expansion. That's been a point of contention in the past. NcSoft saying there will be an expansion and Anet saying there wouldn't. If that happens, they've lost people for nothing.

On the other hand, if Anet says, there WILL be an expansion definitely, and the game loses playerbase between then and now and NcSoft says, nope, we're not doing it, then the fan base says they're lying and they lose people as well. If they announce an expansion too early, the playerbase starts getting restless and rabid and starts making it hard to do business as well.

If they don't specifically announce an expansion, as they didn't till HoT was first announced, some players will make some noise, and some players may leave because of it, but there's absolutely no guarantee they'll lose more players than if they announce one and it takes too long, or if they don't announce one at all. I'm not even defending Anet in this case, I'm saying demanding an answer isn't going to yield any result because of what I've just said. It's funny because I too would like to know if there is going to be another expansion. I want to know lots of things. I just happen to be aware that I can't always have everything I want, when I want it. Even if I REALLY want it.

There were people saying there would never be an expansion before HoT launched, and I came out back then and said I believe Anet is working on an expansion and people called me a fan boi back then and said I was defending Anet, when all I was actually doing was stating my opinion, which happened in that case to be right. I'm pretty sure people just pick and choose what they want out of my posts and ignore the ones that don't fit their personal theories about what I'm actually saying. It's far easier to dismiss me if you think I'm just a blind fan boi. It's not the case.

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