ArenaNet Studio Update: The future of Guild Wars 2

[Sylum.1806]

When Season 1 is fully released, merge it with Season 2 and rebrand it as "Living World: Scarlet's War" and make the whole thing available for free permanently.

 

Rebrand Season 3 as "Heart of Thorns: Living World" and unlock it for all accounts that have purchased HoT.

Rebrand Season 4 and Icebrood Saga as "Path of Fire: Living World" and unlock it for all accounts that have purchased PoF.

 

And all subsequent Living World releases should be branded under the expansion that it corresponds to (in other words, the last expansion to be released before the Living World content releases.) and unlocked for free so long for any account so long as it has purchased the corresponding expansion.

 

This will save us a lot of bad PR from new users in Steam who get surprised by hidden costs of unlocking content that the reasonable user would expect to have available after purchasing the expansions. 

[ShatteredStars.6548]

Icebrood saga has nothing to do with path of fire

[Diovid.9506]

2 hours ago, jonathanjp.6974 said:

Icebrood saga has nothing to do with path of fire

Except in one way: you need PoF to play it (unless I'm wrong there?)

[Drunkfrank.8795]

On 3/22/2022 at 1:18 PM, SlateSloan.3654 said:

"Working on so much more"

"Restructured the studio and want to make more frequent balance releases now"

"Stay tuned" in your "cornerstone gamemode"

"Number of players increased"

Where did I read that before somewhere?

Did anyone in the studio make statistics of how many of these "new players" actually arrive with the same IP-Adress on the server?

Its not a secret that there are players who own like 200+ Accounts by now to grab the daily login rewards and some are even actively exchanging with each others of how to automate this process by chrone jobs, macros and such...

So would be interesting to know how the "number of players" has been determined.

Holy kitten just quit the game

[SlateSloan.3654]

2 hours ago, Drunkfrank.8795 said:

Holy kitten just quit the game

here this link in case you get sober "Drunk Frank"...

 

[RyuDragnier.9476]

17 minutes ago, SlateSloan.3654 said:

here this link in case you get sober "Drunk Frank"...

 

Judging from those numbers, the vast majority of people only have a single account. And that's only counting the people on this forum, who even look at the thread.

[KeoLegend.5132]

12 hours ago, Sylum.1806 said:

When Season 1 is fully released, merge it with Season 2 and rebrand it as "Living World: Scarlet's War" and make the whole thing available for free permanently.

 

Rebrand Season 3 as "Heart of Thorns: Living World" and unlock it for all accounts that have purchased HoT.

Rebrand Season 4 and Icebrood Saga as "Path of Fire: Living World" and unlock it for all accounts that have purchased PoF.

 

And all subsequent Living World releases should be branded under the expansion that it corresponds to (in other words, the last expansion to be released before the Living World content releases.) and unlocked for free so long for any account so long as it has purchased the corresponding expansion.

 

This will save us a lot of bad PR from new users in Steam who get surprised by hidden costs of unlocking content that the reasonable user would expect to have available after purchasing the expansions. 

I AGREE WITH YOU.

Living world is awesome but the way its sold is terrible.

 

LWS1 and LWS2 should always be FREE

LWS3 should be free to HoT owners

LSWS4 and IBS should be free to PoF owners (even tho IBS has nothing to do with PoF, since this is the continuation of the story, it needs to be there)

IBS should also come free with EoD.

 

If the story wasn't a sequence, i wouldn't mind the 'unlock episode'. But this is very frustrating for a new player. Getting 80 and having to either grind a lot or pay a lot to unlock the pre-requisite story for the expansion, while also having to buy the expansion itself

[Linken.6345]

3 hours ago, KeoLegend.5132 said:

I AGREE WITH YOU.

Living world is awesome but the way its sold is terrible.

 

LWS1 and LWS2 should always be FREE

LWS3 should be free to HoT owners

LSWS4 and IBS should be free to PoF owners (even tho IBS has nothing to do with PoF, since this is the continuation of the story, it needs to be there)

IBS should also come free with EoD.

 

If the story wasn't a sequence, i wouldn't mind the 'unlock episode'. But this is very frustrating for a new player. Getting 80 and having to either grind a lot or pay a lot to unlock the pre-requisite story for the expansion, while also having to buy the expansion itself

Yea they then need to split hot away from pof and all future people will have to buy both expansions. ( price for living world added to expansion price)

People who got hot for free will have to unlock it the old way.

[SlateSloan.3654]

4 hours ago, RyuDragnier.9476 said:

Judging from those numbers, the vast majority of people only have a single account. And that's only counting the people on this forum, who even look at the thread.

„Vast“ majority?

45 % have voted to have at least 2 accounts. Considering almost 10% voted to have 10 or more what does this tell you?

You know how scuffed the competitive gamemodes are cause there is almost no teamspirit anymore but people just logging here and there?

wvw: server x is losing the matchup so just log into server y?

guild xx cant win any fights so calling a second account friend for backup to login and join them?

do you know what this means for the upcoming wvw alliance system? Anet putting all the effort in developement for people who will just log randomly into different matchups anyways?

spvp full of bots?

this game is scuffed man lol

[Stago.7608]

5 minutes ago, SlateSloan.3654 said:

„Vast“ majority?

45 % have voted to have at least 2 accounts. Considering almost 10% voted to have 10 or more what does this tell you?

You know how scuffed the competitive gamemodes are cause there is almost no teamspirit anymore but people just logging here and there?

wvw: server x is losing the matchup so just log into server y?

guild xx cant win any fights so calling a second account friend for backup to login and join them?

do you know what this means for the upcoming wvw alliance system? Anet putting all the effort in developement for people who will just log randomly into different matchups anyways?

spvp full of bots?

this game is scuffed man lol

for wvw thats not the issue - the issue is it doesn't really matter which server is winning and the constant rotation of linking just makes it worse.

spvp bot developer (main one) left GW2 for FFXIV. you can check tpots vid on this, pvp now has pretty much no bots, but also low population atm. 

[ShatteredStars.6548]

On 3/24/2022 at 7:51 AM, Diovid.9506 said:

Except in one way: you need PoF to play it (unless I'm wrong there?)

In terms of story, it doesn't.

Edited March 25, 2022 by jonathanjp.6974

[Wonderly.1324]

On 3/24/2022 at 2:19 AM, Sernius Alathar.6538 said:

Alot of people have covered game progression adjustments that are required in game, even if the development team doesn't actually read any of it.

My issue as always is reward structuring in the game, even mentioning new expansions after that glorified DLC you called an "Expansion" is unproductive and hopelessly optimistic, you need to take the time to go back over previous content and give a tick or cross on what is and isn't fixed, or change to be 1. new player friendly (I cannot imagine how any new player would or could feasibly catch up on previous living world content) 2. make replayable and viable existing content for older players. Most of this comes down to reward mechanisms that have been deleterious to the game post HoT expac.

To name a few that have been destroyed by the development team to the point nobody cares anymore:

1. Festivals: 

 *Halloween - Halloween used to be a fun time to just hop on a zerg train farm trick or treat bags and fool around in the laby, kill the bosses get rewards, its old fashioned fun farming, and considering how garbage the contents are from ToT bags because newsflash the dev team has never updated them to have anything good in them (unless you count the same x-infusions that someone dragged the hue saturation filter higher in photoshop with). I remember the first few halloweens, we could get outfits like the witch outfit etc with farming, there were rewards that were reasonable to collect. Over time it just became a Candycob grind fest, which isn't fun especially when you incrementally increase the costs but reduce the rewards overall. The irony of course is the events and activities are still fun, they just aren't worth anybody's time.

*Dragon Bash - Pretty much the same as Halloween. Insert currency change, candy corn = zhaitaffy, cobs=jorbreakers. 

*Zephyr Fest - the first incarnation of this was spectacular, and not only was the reward schemes good, the events were fun, and you took a page out of GW1 book and made real world drops for kite fortunes which everybody loved, it was fantastic. F. knows why the fun police decided that should of been removed, things like this should be commonplace occurrences, kite fortunes, ToT bags, zephyr supply crates, red letter fortunes, Wintersday Gifts etc. Should have always been world drops during those events as well as the standard activity. We are left with a no-fun resource trade exercise for people to burn materials for excruciatingly valueless supply crates (yay gambling). In theory I have no problem with the crates, until it becomes about purely buying and not just farming for them in the open world and events. 

*Wintersday - The same thing as the others, like stop being lazy and expand the scope of your event design, and update the kitten gifts so people aren't getting the same crap, If players got rewards like you get from the extra bags you get in BL chests with LS rewards, we might appreciate it a bit more, but also, open world drops - not difficult - learn from GW1.

*Queen's Jubilee - Holy Nerfing Batman, what didn't you ruin about this event? The gauntlet was awesome, great rewards for smart co-ordination, and then free reign farming around the map until the meta started again. The arena was great, doing challenges getting rewards, why did you remove the rewards from the arena. Crazy! This fest was always so busy, map capped on multiple maps, now its just sad.

2. Dungeons
*Abaddon give me strength, whoever decided to remove individual path rewards for dungeons and unify them into that garbage design needs to be removed from any game team that should and does exist. People loved them, hell I used to do nearly all paths daily with my guild before they were destroyed. I've never know a game dev team to make such unbelievably stupid choices that detract players from playing certain content. All it is now is - fastest path only. RIP Lupi you will be remembered fondly. BTW- 10yrs and no new dungeons, shame on you, stop wasting time on gem shop crap and make some real content. 

3. Event Scaling 
* Not much to say other than this change needs a hard ctrl+z. I don't know where the logic is, that when a group of players work together to scale up an event to get better rewards, it's somehow unbalanced. It used to be fun running groups through Cursed shore etc. scaling events up and fighting hordes of risen and champ risen and getting satisfaction from actually getting loot from your enemies. Istan was the same, we used to run events they would scale up, we would get some cool rewards, and also progress the meta chain. win-win for everyone. 

4. Loot tables for enemies 
* The last, I dunno 4 years, the game has been slowly stripping rewards from certain enemy types so that when you kill them, you get a big fat nothing. A good example is enemies that spawn extra enemies - It started in Orr with a particular event that created alot of risen and they could all drop loot, since then its expanded to things like Barracudas when they summon extras, they don't drop loot. Risen spider Hatchlings, etc. There are a lot of enemies that have extraneous spawns but also some enemies just don't drop anything anymore. If an extra enemy spawns at the same strength or sometimes when they scale up to elite, you kitten well should give me the loot for killing it. Such a strange choice to actively find this mechanic and nerf it. Oh also dungeon enemies got their loot tables essentially annihilated as well.

5. PvE zones 
* Specifically Istan is my personal pet peeve - That map is abandoned, nobody goes there other than story reasons, and the only time the meta gets done is during reset time. Istan was the only map of that entire LS group that had replayable content that players enjoyed doing, and it was done properly. Every player did every event, the commanders would organise it so we would all work together to clear each event, to progress the bar, then kill the 1st stage boss, then run through and finish Palawadan. It was like the other HoT metas, every time you cleared it you were rightfully rewarded for your time and effort to finish the events. Apparently doing a meta well and efficiently means it deserved a nerf. So well done fun police, you killed an entire map. If this was ever reverted I would actually praise a renewed dev teams perspective on punitive and harsh reward systems.

As for other reward structure issues
- Stop making people buy or create exotics to unlock ascended versions with slight graphical changes. Just sell 1 armor piece, for the map currency, Like heart of thorns, or make them drop from meta events. Or utilise existing design mechanics like you had with Jahai Bluffs were it was almost entirely all map currency. But remove these two/three step iterations, they are crap, plain and simple. Also must everything that has an unlock be an ascended version, how much ascended gear do you people think we need, just make exo and ascended skin the same. It's been ridiculous for too long.

- NO-MORE-GATING-CONTENT, when I was doing research for the Aurene set of Legendaries I legitimately laughed while talking to my guildmate on discord about the 20week nonsense or being forced to buy on the TP for the certain items needed for 1 weapon. I mean it's laughable enough that the set is identical, it's essentially a BL set with legendary stats, honestly how lazy has the leg weapon team gotten lol. The only way these legs are worth making is if they could change their dragon attunement to any of the other elder dragons. At least they would be dynamic and worth making. But I got a lil side tracked, stuff in game that is still gated like ascended materials, and god even charged quartz, long overdue to be removed and the philosophy of gating.

- Overdue, it's been in PvP and WvW for years, Add PvE reward tracks to PvE as well. Allow players to do the content they enjoy while gaining rewards for content that's dead, or simply unfun. Like honestly does anybody want to go back to Thunderhead Keep or any of those LS areas that are just obnoxiously unrewarding and tedious. It wouldn't be that hard to implement it would simply be finding a way to balance how events and/or participation values function on a reward track.

- If you guys want something to nerf, how about nearly every single weapon collection from LS after Heart of Thorns. You know the ones, that need 188 of each ascended material to complete, because that's normal and sane. You wonder why people are looking for ways to make gold when you make collections more obscene with every content release. RIP new players.

Metas - Anything not designed the way they developed them in HoT is a no-no, you reached the pinnacle of rewards vs participation and time invested in Heart of Thorns, this design is perfect, it makes players feel a sense of accomplishment and progress, especially in long drawn out meta events like in Cantha. Removing this style in Cantha made those meta events extremely stale very quickly.

EoD Cantha Specific - Yo guys, you need to make this expansion have value, right now it's a story with no replayable content, until you update the reward systems, the participation systems, and generally all event rewards to give you things meaningful to the vendors in the expac. These areas will have high turn over for the player base, but an unsustainable player base. You don't even get jade slivers or jade fragments from events, or amber in echovald. 

I think I have ranted enough, I love this game, I've played since the 3-day head start and years of GW1 before, I hate the wasted potential, my guild has essentially died down to a handful because they rather play games that reward their time invested. This is the main issue I see and hear about the most, These are not unfixable changes.

I appreciated reading your post; clearly you've been playing a long time, and some of the things you metnioned (like Orr farming) triggered some serious nostelgia.

That being said, I wanted to address your main complaint, which basically sounds like "the game is dead because nothing is rewarding." The thing is, objectively speaking the game is insanely rewarding. Every time you do an event or kill a monster you get a bouncy chest or a drop or a container, which opens up to even more rewards! The game is objectively so overwhelmingly rewarding that people complain inventory management is an issue. The problem you are describing is the subjective feeling of rewarding. "Two greens and a blue" is a meme reward for an event because you can get those anywhere. When everything is rewarding, nothing is rewarding. If the "devs" "buffed buffed the rewards" then the game would be reward crept such that rares mean nothing, exotics and ascendeds mean nothing, and the legendary you can get off a trash mob that everyone else also has without putting in any time or effort would also feel empty, hollow, and unrewarding.

I think the devs know exactly what they're doing. If you've followed their manifesto from the earliest days you'll know that their goal is to draw in players who play for fun, instead of pushing players towards one specific event grind. If you enjoy the holiday events because, as you admitted, they are subjectively "fun", then the devs want players where that is motivation enough to engage in the content. I think in cases like this it's important to have a little bit of humility in considering another's (the game devs') perspective instead of assuming we know all and they know nothing, and the openness to realize that they may have goals and values that differ from our own. If you're still playing the game after 10 years, maybe continue to play and enjoy it for what it is and what the DEVS want it to be, instead of complaining about the game that it COULD be because that's the game that YOU want it to be.

[Diovid.9506]

3 hours ago, jonathanjp.6974 said:

In terms of story, it doesn't.

But that was not what I meant. You can unlock IBS without PoF but unless I'm mistaken you can't play it without owning PoF. 

[grx.8714]

Where is the patch note preview of the upcoming changes next tuesday?

 

Will be a surprise as usual?

[Aavataris.5720]

Now comes the resurrection of the dwarfs, right? Commanded by one of the remaining ancient gods, who, seeing that the dragons left the world, want to take control of it again, thinking that the chaos is the fault of mortals and that they must be controlled. One of the deities will take pity on mortals, uniting with Aurene and bestowing new powers (Domain lines) on her champion.

Because of the influence of a couple of deities, determined to subdue mortals, the manifestations of the remnants of the Void on the different continents finally begin to transform the surviving dragon servants into new beings, some of which will create a new one. species, with the sole objective of destroying those who contain the Void, Aurene and the commander.

[Izzy.2951]

I think LWS2 should be free too, atracting new players to buy LWS3, LWS4, IcebroodSaga and the future LWS6!

[Galacticsnow.7905]

So as a relative new player to the whole GW2 scene this makes me very happy. Especially that there is a planned roadmap now. Coming from WoW it was weird that the game never had that to start with. I'm glad that they are making plans to balance and rework professions and ensuring the cumminity is aware that this is not the end of the game. Makes it worth my time to then invest in the game.

 

My only thing that I was hoping to see there is that They will be looking at the PVP system as a whole. Yes they are looking at WvW which is great to know but there are still lots of the PvP scene that needs to be looked at. Now I get every MMORPG out there has there own short comings and high points. Though, if you like it or not, PVP as become an active part of most MMo RPGs. So these areas should also be made a priority and looked at.

 

Though that is just my 2 cents on the matter, very happy that they are actively planning the future of GW2 seeing as I have come to love this game and don't want to see it go anyware. On top of that therevery vocal people in this community and ANet should use that to their benefit to see where they can constantly refine GW2.

[Sylum.1806]

On 3/24/2022 at 7:51 PM, Diovid.9506 said:

Except in one way: you need PoF to play it (unless I'm wrong there?)

 

That's right.

[Sylum.1806]

On 3/24/2022 at 5:08 PM, jonathanjp.6974 said:

Icebrood saga has nothing to do with path of fire

Because you need PoF on your account before you're allowed to play IBS content. That's the point my suggestion of merging it together with Season 4 and rebranding it as "Path of Fire: Living World". It's not about whether the story of a Living World season's got anything to do with the story of the required expansion. If you need Expansion A to play Living World season B, then season B should be rebranded EXPANSION_A_NAME: Living World and unlocked free so long as you buy Expansion A. I don't know how much simpler I can break this down for you.

Edited March 26, 2022 by Sylum.1806

[Vyarra.8239]

Happy to hear about Season 1, wasn´t around that time so I´m happy I get to play it.

Hearing about professions updates I kinda hope they get to nerfing HoT maps a little bit. Now that the player base is spread across the maps even further that content is hard to solo - compared to PoF and now EoD

[Gorem.8104]

On 3/24/2022 at 4:56 AM, ugrakarma.9416 said:

Ppl was complaining about lack of communication on forums about the "future", so they responded it.

If they didn't respond, ppl still keep complaining that they didn't listen.

 

Now only doomers on this post are complaining, very fat better than everyone complaining.

 

Sorry, would have responded sooner but they'd banned me - I never once saw this complaint about lack of communication, it was more, lack of listening. And if the post had instead said "we are nerfing DE as its overtuned, we are also fixing bugs that have been in game since launch and implementing some QoL features that have been in other games for years" Then It'd have gone over so well the forums would be filled with praise. 

I don't see doomers either, I only see people who want the game to be the best game it could be, we believe in GW2 and how it can be a great game. We know GW2 could sore much higher then it currently is. 

[Berking.1042]

THANKS FOR THE COMMUNICATION !!

Im here just to say that actually xD

[Albadaran.1283]

The reason for a new season of Living World 1 escapes me. Lore for new players? What about new players playing Cantha without mounts or wings? I mean: For new players there should always be an entry point where they can pick up the latest developments quickly and and have a quick start without the need to 'learn' the whole game with all living world seasons and expansions first...

 

Actually I had hope that the info would be about upcoming GW3. What about that? 

[mythical.6315]

2 hours ago, Albadaran.1283 said:

Actually I had hope that the info would be about upcoming GW3. What about that? 

That’s never been a thing so there isn’t anything to say about it. 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

On 3/28/2022 at 11:23 AM, Albadaran.1283 said:

The reason for a new season of Living World 1 escapes me. Lore for new players? What about new players playing Cantha without mounts or wings? I mean: For new players there should always be an entry point where they can pick up the latest developments quickly and and have a quick start without the need to 'learn' the whole game with all living world seasons and expansions first...

 

Actually I had hope that the info would be about upcoming GW3. What about that? 

New players playing Cantha can unlock Gliders and 2 Mounts (Raptor and Springer) easily...in Cantha.