Lack of post-EoD content

[Zekent.3652]

It's been 1 year since last Living World chapter, more since last fractal, the last raid... Alliances taking forever and PvP seems pretty empty, specially on NA.

I know, that CMs, recycled LS1 and the EoD legendary variants counts as content, but it's not even compared to new Living World chapters, fractals, alliances or raids.

Don't get me wrong, EoD is a good expansion (in general), but the post-EoD era is really lacking.

Edited September 4, 2022 by Zizekent.2398

[Sunchaser.9854]

It's 10 years of content silly, and the 6 months without content is still 6 months of content silly. If a game has no dungeons for 9 years, you're still getting 10 years worth of updates! Just use your imagination. Gee there's just so much content! 😛 , You can even collect outfits as a endgame, gee. Didn't you know?

They just made one of the most fluid combat systems of all time so everyone could be on a laggy megaserver so we could all enjoy the content made at launch.

The content Is logging in to do nothing in arborstone for 4 hours, and logging out with +25% rested xp so after you log back in you can log out. But to be fair, eod came out only 4 7 months ago, and expansions are no easy feat for most mmorpgs. 

Still, i feel ya. Even fractals kinda lose their luster when you realize some of the maps seem to be repeatably re used with just boss changes for a focus on quantity on limited resources. I guess you can't blame em but like when they design a gear system where strikes reward 1-3 pieces of 300 strike prophet shards for a piece of gear and going to a meta and farming for a hour is 1-2 pieces worth, there's really not much point to do the content over flower picking other than boredom.

I don't know why they don't do the 4 difficulty tier system but gw2 likes doing stuff only it thought of. I always thought the LFR Tourist mode / Normal / Heroic / Mythic or whatever ff14 does with normal, savage, and ultimate wasn't a bad idea. You have a tourist / entry level mode for people who accessible content / Justify raid content development to masses for funding.

Then a middling mode for guilds or lfg to try towards that might revolve around, 50% optimized build use. Then a hard mode for people in their teens or who want a grinding session, and it helps a lot where it makes the content accessible but also can make it last 2-3x longer. Gw2 tries to do this but when you achieve ascended gear, most people just play 1 main so there's not as much of a treadmill or point to, so the thing just kinda breaks.

Even if they add new raid content, why will anyone play it when it doesn't drop any new gear, doesn't offer accessibility for new players to learn the mechanics, depth for the talented players or rewards to strive for. Instead. Exchanging gold for gems and buying outfits and sitting afk in arborstone for 7 months is.. Kinda the endgame. i guess(?), But maybe we'll get a living season soon. 

[Randulf.7614]

This year is all about tarting up the game - LS1, major focus on new players and steam and the wvw alliance beta (I think that happened) and the ten year anniversary, whilst working on the early stages of a new expac.

Whilst we will likely see this new map before year end, I’m not expecting much more than sporadic map releases until the new expac essentially relaunches the game into whatever direction this current team wish to take it.

Given the struggles to juggle Icebrood and EoD and the weakened end products we got from both, I’d rather have a lengthy drought with some drip feeds and overhauls and have a big, sweeping expac, rather than try and balance too many things if it means allowing the team time to breathe and get back their creativity.
 

There’s plenty of game to focus on for players and I think the final LS chapter should give a lot of replay value if it’s anything like the original

[Farohna.6247]

Tarting up, I like description Randulf.  It really is, especially with the Steam people, it gives some new players a chance to level and a breath of time for veterans to work on legendaries or achievements.  I'd prefer to see a long pause as opposed to just cranking out filler.  Personally I always have too much I want to do in game.

[patton the great.7126]

But but, return to season one! What was old is now new marketable content, what took effort in the past is whatever they did now. How dare you question their methods....it's not like we need new content for cantha!!! The maps are so vast and alive. Why I get lost just stepping into the vibrant bustling metropolis known as kaining! Just find some fun and adventure doing the same old...error NEW ACTIVITIES! 

[vanfrano.1325]

I think that as long as people are buying overpriced jade bot skins probably made by third parties for cheap, they'll be fine with delivering the bare minimum.

[Zekent.3652]

11 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

This year is all about tarting up the game - LS1, major focus on new players and steam and the wvw alliance beta (I think that happened) and the ten year anniversary, whilst working on the early stages of a new expac.

 I mean, why can't they just improve the new player experience, while ALSO give us a new LS chapter, fractal, etc. ANet has around 300 workers, it's PROBABLY just a management problem.

Edited September 5, 2022 by Zizekent.2398

[Bakeneko.5826]

58 minutes ago, Zizekent.2398 said:

 I mean, why can't they just improve the new player experience, while ALSO give us a new LS chapter, fractal, etc. ANet has around 300 workers, it's PROBABLY just a management problem.

It costs money and work hours.

[Sarius.9285]

1 hour ago, Bakeneko.5826 said:

It costs money and work hours.

good thing they earn money and have workers

[The Boz.2038]

3 hours ago, Zizekent.2398 said:

ANet has around 300 workers

Source?

[Sarius.9285]

28 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Source?

Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArenaNet

 

400 after the layoffs 

[casualkenny.9817]

Maybe they're still working out what happens after dragons-begone. Like, the long term storyline and gameplay direction. That's probably some serious brainstorming with  lots of waste coffee grounds.

[Randulf.7614]

5 hours ago, Zizekent.2398 said:

 I mean, why can't they just improve the new player experience, while ALSO give us a new LS chapter, fractal, etc. ANet has around 300 workers, it's PROBABLY just a management problem.

Not all are going to be developers though. They’ve been pushed hard over the years and content has suffered for it. We are getting new ls chapters (minus a map) in ls1 which still take a lot of work to convert from what they were. I’d love to see new fractals etc, but not at the cost of dev burnout or a continued reduction in quality like we have seen since mid IBS and in some ls chapters which were rushed or unfinished (Kourna, Thunderhead)

Edited September 5, 2022 by Randulf.7614

[Luthan.5236]

I doubt they'll rush any new content before finishing season 1. With the Steam release there is a lot of focus on the new players - that do not need post-EoD content yet. With festivals and possibly some minor events (boss rush or fractal rush) + the remaining chapters ... there should be enough time until they finish re-introducing season 1. New stuff maybe early next year with some teaser around christmas.

Also there is DX11 that got released and moved from beta to stable ... while there are still bugs reported in the forums that have not been fixed yet. (Apparently windows 7 related and only appearing there? But they still list win 7 as supported in the requirements. So they have to support it ...)

Edited September 5, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[HotDelirium.7984]

6 hours ago, Sarius.9285 said:

Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArenaNet

 

400 after the layoffs 

This is so baffling. The amount of content we get makes it seem like its much less...

[Sarius.9285]

8 hours ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

This is so baffling. The amount of content we get makes it seem like its much less...

true, it's also thr reason why I decided to finally take a few months break in ff14

[Labjax.2465]

8 hours ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

This is so baffling. The amount of content we get makes it seem like its much less...

I was in disbelief too so I checked the citation and this is what I could find. The citation sources an article about the 2019 layoffs and uses the number 400 in this context:

Quote

While no official number has been announced by the studio, it is believed as much as 33% of the company could be let go – about 132 employees. ArenaNet currently employs around 400 workers.

So that would imply after the layoffs, the number could be more like 268. Tho even that is apparently just an estimate, so it could be significantly more or significantly less. Hard to say without more info. I wonder too where the article got their 400 number from.

So far what I'm finding from a web search is some zippia website that claims anet has 400 employees, but nothing on where they are getting their information. And owler, which estimates 250-500 employees. Nothing all that concrete. Edit: Oh and glassdoor, another possible source, says 51-200 employees.

Edit2 lol: one more website I found, puts the number at 258, which sounds fairly believable next to the numbers given in the article and the estimate being laid off.

Edited September 6, 2022 by Labjax.2465

[Mistwraithe.3106]

On 9/5/2022 at 5:52 AM, Sunchaser.9854 said:

I don't know why they don't do the 4 difficulty tier system but gw2 likes doing stuff only it thought of. I always thought the LFR Tourist mode / Normal / Heroic / Mythic or whatever ff14 does with normal, savage, and ultimate wasn't a bad idea. You have a tourist / entry level mode for people who accessible content / Justify raid content development to masses for funding.

Then a middling mode for guilds or lfg to try towards that might revolve around, 50% optimized build use. Then a hard mode for people in their teens or who want a grinding session, and it helps a lot where it makes the content accessible but also can make it last 2-3x longer. Gw2 tries to do this but when you achieve ascended gear, most people just play 1 main so there's not as much of a treadmill or point to, so the thing just kinda breaks.

 

I would love a difficulty setting. It would make it much easier for players of different levels to work together (the lvl 80 with 200 masteries player can set themselves to ultimate mode so they are way weaker while the level 30 player is on normal mode) and it would also make it far more fun when going back to map complete or generally explore areas of the map you haven't visited for a while.

The game is straight up better when combats have a bit of challenge to them and being able to set your difficulty level would be awesome.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

17 hours ago, Sarius.9285 said:

Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArenaNet

 

400 after the layoffs 

400 (2019) before the lay-offs.  Right there in the citation. 

From LinkedIn (current)  244 employees

[fenriswolfman.5486]

After a layoff the people who made it through arent likely to stick around and wait for the other shoe to drop. Churn would have been bad for a good while.

[Ashen.2907]

3 hours ago, fenriswolfman.5486 said:

After a layoff the people who made it through arent likely to stick around and wait for the other shoe to drop. Churn would have been bad for a good while.

And some veterans with better prospects of finding new employment volunteered for layoff so that newer, less experienced, devs could remain employed. So not just numbers, but experience declined.

 

Still, the reporting was that the numbers lost did not reduce the size of the GW2 specific team.

Edited September 6, 2022 by Ashen.2907

[Shadamehr.1284]

Its been far longer than a year since the last Living World chapter was released.

We had a 10 month new story content drought before EoD was released. The final chapter of IBS was released the end of April 2021.

With expectations of an expansion the size of PoF and a Living World schedule like that of Living World 4, I was quite happy with that. Instead we got a smaller expansion and now were going though 6 months plus of no new story content with still no sign of Living World 6 on the horizon.

Most of these new Steam players would be from WoW or FFXIV, they are used to regular new story content, we aren't going to keep them once they find out regular new story content is no longer a thing at Guild Wars 2.

I realize that the lay offs after PoF/LW4 have hit hard, would be interested in knowing how small the dev team is now compared to then when GW2 was at its peak.

 

[AliamRationem.5172]

Yeah, it's pretty rough.  I hope the plan involves some new content soon.

[Urud.4925]

LW1 was old content, lore-wise, but they are developing it from scratch again, you can't call it a "recycled" content. People wanted it, and they gave it to us (after many years of delay).

I'm at 39k AP and I still have a lot of things to catch up. Maybe you played the game longer than me and completed everything already, so I would understand it. But most of the players still have more than enough to spend their time on, especially now that ArenaNet opened to few new players. It's also fine to take a break for a bit, if you're bored, eh.

[Bast.7253]

Yeah. It’s a ghost town. I think they were really banking on new player increase with steam.

 

I’ll be highly surprised if we don’t see another announcement about another IP or another layoff announcement due to development on another IP.

 

Think this is just the new pace for the remainder of the game though. Put that hopium down now and spare yourself. 
 

I mean it’s fine for a free game and free releases I guess but we’re quite a few months after the expansion now. 
 

Not that it will have anything beyond festival content and season 1 but I’d expect a roadmap sometime soon for the fall.