Too much fluff in the roadmap

[lezbefriends.7516]

The roadmap image makes it look like all those things are major content updates, but a lot of it is fluff.

 

Extra Life? Why is a publicity event made to look like it's content? It's an ad in the roadmap.

 

Festivals? Yeah, we already know they're coming. They're expected at this point, and the only reason to add them to the image is if we were getting new changes to them. But we're not, they're rehashes.

 

"Balance changes" are not important anymore, as most people will still be spamming '1' and not noticing much of a difference.

 

Don't care about WvW.

 

Weapon variants should all have been released with EoD. Why are they making their mistakes out to be content updates?

 

The only actual major updates are Living World Ep 5, which is rehashed sub-par content, and a new strike mission, which has no connection to the main story.

 

Suggestion: Focus on the main story. Fall and Winter Roadmap should've been Living World Season 1 ep 5, and 2 Living World Season 5 episodes. We've had enough 'refinement' of old features by now. You only do that after an expansion *if the expansion dropped was abundant in content*. The expansion was rushed to combat the "maintenance mode" rumors, and the last season was cut short to make a last minute expansion. Now they're making another expansion - great - but we still have no meaty content. The focus on strikes and raids is unwise, as no hard trinity is holding them back from making it a worthwhile minigame.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 10, 2022 by lezbefriends.7516

[Silent.6137]

Do you have

48 minutes ago, lezbefriends.7516 said:

.

Do you even like this game at all?

Edited October 10, 2022 by Silent.6137

[Dawdler.8521]

Whatever fluff you care about is just fluff to me.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

1 hour ago, lezbefriends.7516 said:

Fall and Winter Roadmap should've been Living World Season 1 ep 5, and 2 Living World Season 5 episodes.

You want two Episodes from Season 5?  That would be re-introduced content, as Season 5 (aka The Icebrood Saga) finished long ago.

[Aelin.9317]

Since I am newer them refining older things is quite nice, esp getting to do season one it's really cool! 

You might not care about WvW but that does not make it any less content, pvp is infinitely repeatable content having the mode be good to play is important. After someone so kindly made a large post explaining the WvW for me I have since grown to love it! 

I am excited to see the future for this game! I understand repeat events is not exactly the most exciting for you but them taking some time to improve the early game experience and older content is not a bad thing. To me it shows they want the game to grow and want to invest some time and care into it. 

If you find yourself a bit bored you can always take a bit of a break, play some other games and return when something catches your eye ^.^ I am glad this game is not punishing of people taking a break. 

[mercury ranique.2170]

off topic.
I was going to say that a post already exists and the OP should use the search function, but that post seems to be gone. Looking at the way things are going in this one, it seems the same issue is arising here. Please be respectful to each other. It should be a shame as honest opinions would get bullied away cause people can't address each other in a civilized way.

On topic.
GW2 does not charge monthly fees. The studio has limited development time compared to games who are a lot bigger and/or has monthly fees. This means it takes time for new content to be delivered.
There is still a lot to do in the game if you are willing to revisit older content. Re-run all of the living world for example 😉 
It is not the fluff that is the issue, but that you are bored. I have a universal rule that applies to all games. "No content can be developed as fast as it can be created." (I should trademark it).
It means that no matter how quick new content is released, people will be bored as there is no new content available strait away.  With the need to cather the many, and not just the one, this issue gets even bigger. In the end patience will always be a virtue.

[Danikat.8537]

This shouldn't need saying but they're never going to personalise road maps, or releases, to what any one person wants.

I'm quite excited about the WvW beta. I've been meaning to get back to playing WvW more often and I think this will be the push I need, plus it will be fun to actually play with my guild. (Although killing each other and then acting shocked in guild chat can be fun too.) I don't know how much it will do to bring us closer to finally getting alliances, but as an event it should be interesting.

Extra Life could be interesting too because there's always in-game aspects to it, mainly a boon which scales based on how much Anet have raised and bonus items and/or karma, as well as gem store items which can be bought to donate money. It's not a festival, but it's not entirely separate from the game either.

I would say they don't need to announce Halloween and Wintersday, but we do have a lot of new players this year (not just from Steam) who may not have done those festivals before, and before the road map was published there were already posts in the Festivals section of the forum asking if Halloween was happening. To be fair my other MMO doesn't run all it's festivals every year, so if you're new to GW2 it may not be obvious that Halloween is guaranteed. (I'm looking forward to new players going from the initial impression that it's just copying the commercial aspects of American Halloween to learning about the Mad King and all the lore that's built up behind it.)

[Mortime.1359]

1 hour ago, HowlKamui.5120 said:

dang if you hate the game so much, leave. It's not worth your time.

Considering that steam version has lost over 2000 players in a month then plenty of people seem to be taking that advice. Now I know that steam does not show the whole player base needless to say I would not be surprised if the game as a whole was losing players right now. I mean the roadmap was pretty lackluster with the biggest thing coming being a strike (you know, the type of content that a good chunk of players don't involve themselves with anyways).

[Healix.5819]

7 hours ago, lezbefriends.7516 said:

Suggestion: Focus on the main story. Fall and Winter Roadmap should've been Living World Season 1 ep 5, and 2 Living World Season 5 episodes.

All that does is push around the dates. Releasing "season 6" early would only mean a longer drought later, and releasing more episodes only pushes back the next expansion. ArenaNet doesn't have the resources to work on season 6, expansion 4 and another game at the same time - remember, they had previously cut expansions before NCSoft intervened.

[Luks.4230]

4 minutes ago, Mortime.1359 said:

Considering that steam version has lost over 2000 players in a month then plenty of people seem to be taking that advice.

and we dont know how many of this players playing on steam are Vets playing through steam or really new players

[lezbefriends.7516]

8 minutes ago, Healix.5819 said:

All that does is push around the dates. Releasing "season 6" early would only mean a longer drought later, and releasing more episodes only pushes back the next expansion. ArenaNet doesn't have the resources to work on season 6, expansion 4 and another game at the same time - remember, they had previously cut expansions before NCSoft intervened.

They never cut any expansions, they just wanted to deliver IbS instead… which dropped steeply in quality after they decided to work on an expansion.

[Healix.5819]

1 hour ago, lezbefriends.7516 said:

They never cut any expansions, they just wanted to deliver IbS instead… which dropped steeply in quality after they decided to work on an expansion.

Exactly - they no longer had a dedicated expansion team after PoF, and IBS had to be sacrificed to reform that team. If they were fully dedicated to GW2, the best they could manage is the period after HoT where MO took control and reformed all the teams to make S3 + PoF at the same time.

Expect "season 6" to be much smaller in scale considering there's only room for 1 or 2 episodes without delaying.

[mercury ranique.2170]

25 minutes ago, Healix.5819 said:

Exactly - they no longer had a dedicated expansion team after PoF, and IBS had to be sacrificed to reform that team. If they were fully dedicated to GW2, the best they could manage is the period after HoT where MO took control and reformed all the teams to make S3 + PoF at the same time.

Expect "season 6" to be much smaller in scale considering there's only room for 1 or 2 episodes without delaying.

I do think the IBS was a no win situation. They originally planned to release IBS as a replacement for an expansion. Looking at specifically how they did Drizzlewood coast after the decission was made to do it differently, I can see the potential this plan had. However, it hit with very strong backfire by the general public and they had to redraw the roadmap to include an expansion. This costed way too much of the quality of the IBS living world being unsattisfying as it is now. If they didn't change course, the outcry would have been the same and even now people complained a lot bout the release path towards EoD. So it was never good enough.

Looking back, they never actually had a pace that was good enough and always struggled with the delivery speed.

I do hope now everything is behind us, they can pick up the pace again and go on as it was with season 3+ 4. 

Side note here: Somewhere after PoF the studio also concentrated on projects outside GW2. These were cancelled. This was around the same time as season 4. After that IBS got demoted to a (rushed) living world season and they started on EoD.

Let's focus on what we know for the future for sure and what we can assume.
- Living world season one remake (this one is obvious as the final part is nearly released)
- New living world season (I think this is also confirmed, but correct me if I'm wrong)

afaik not confirmed, but suspected:
- A new DLC (expansion or something of the sort). (suspected cause they should have learned from the IBS mess and cause they still have many great plans for the game) 

With the state of the original game and that being 10 years old I also suspect they have plans there. But we 'll have to wait and see what and how

 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

7 minutes ago, mercury ranique.2170 said:

afaik not confirmed, but suspected:
- A new DLC (expansion or something of the sort).

Well, the Devs have stated they are working on the next expansion; I'd guess that would indicate a confirmation. 

[Randulf.7614]

3 hours ago, mercury ranique.2170 said:

I do think the IBS was a no win situation. They originally planned to release IBS as a replacement for an expansion. Looking at specifically how they did Drizzlewood coast after the decission was made to do it differently, I can see the potential this plan had. However, it hit with very strong backfire by the general public and they had to redraw the roadmap to include an expansion. This costed way too much of the quality of the IBS living world being unsattisfying as it is now. If they didn't change course, the outcry would have been the same and even now people complained a lot bout the release path towards EoD. So it was never good enough.

Looking back, they never actually had a pace that was good enough and always struggled with the delivery speed.

I do hope now everything is behind us, they can pick up the pace again and go on as it was with season 3+ 4. 

Side note here: Somewhere after PoF the studio also concentrated on projects outside GW2. These were cancelled. This was around the same time as season 4. After that IBS got demoted to a (rushed) living world season and they started on EoD.

Let's focus on what we know for the future for sure and what we can assume.
- Living world season one remake (this one is obvious as the final part is nearly released)
- New living world season (I think this is also confirmed, but correct me if I'm wrong)

afaik not confirmed, but suspected:
- A new DLC (expansion or something of the sort). (suspected cause they should have learned from the IBS mess and cause they still have many great plans for the game) 

With the state of the original game and that being 10 years old I also suspect they have plans there. But we 'll have to wait and see what and how

 

No new season confirmed only a new Cantha map. They have confirmed a new expansion though

[Gibson.4036]

Farm your GoBs.

[Valisha.8650]

12 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Whatever fluff you care about is just fluff to me.

I wouldn't call EoD-related living world season a "fluff".

[ArchonWing.9480]

It seems that many people make the mistake of thinking whatever they don't care about, nobody cares about.

But then again nobody cares about what someone doesn't care about either.

[Sobx.1758]

19 hours ago, lezbefriends.7516 said:

Suggestion: Focus on the main story. Fall and Winter Roadmap should've been Living World Season 1 ep 5, and 2 Living World Season 5 episodes. We've had enough 'refinement' of old features by now. You only do that after an expansion *if the expansion dropped was abundant in content*. The expansion was rushed to combat the "maintenance mode" rumors, and the last season was cut short to make a last minute expansion. Now they're making another expansion - great - but we still have no meaty content. The focus on strikes and raids is unwise, as no hard trinity is holding them back from making it a worthwhile minigame.

Disagreed. Despite what you wrote here, I think the content I like is better than the content you like. Luckily we can have both, so there's no need to change the game in its entirety into whatever you want it to be or whatever I want it to be.

[Svarty.8019]

22 hours ago, lezbefriends.7516 said:

Don't care about WvW

I only care about WvW. The rest of the game is all fluff. It takes up waaaay too much space on my hard drive with all that garbage PvE and story and "lore" guff. 

[Ashen.2907]

I tend to agree with the title. My point of disagreement with the OP centers around the (apparent) idea that the roadmap should cater to one individual.

[Samfisher.7942]

16 hours ago, mercury ranique.2170 said:

I do think the IBS was a no win situation. They originally planned to release IBS as a replacement for an expansion. Looking at specifically how they did Drizzlewood coast after the decission was made to do it differently, I can see the potential this plan had. However, it hit with very strong backfire by the general public and they had to redraw the roadmap to include an expansion. This costed way too much of the quality of the IBS living world being unsattisfying as it is now. If they didn't change course, the outcry would have been the same and even now people complained a lot bout the release path towards EoD. So it was never good enough.
 

 

What is/was wrong with IBS?  I haven't gotten there yet but have finished HoT, PoF, LWS 1 (up till what is available), LWS 2 and almost done with LWS3 so IBS isn't that far away for me right now.  What's wrong with it that people don't like it?

[IndigoSundown.5419]

4 minutes ago, Samfisher.7942 said:

What is/was wrong with IBS?  I haven't gotten there yet but have finished HoT, PoF, LWS 1 (up till what is available), LWS 2 and almost done with LWS3 so IBS isn't that far away for me right now.  What's wrong with it that people don't like it?

Some say quality in IBS dropped off significantly.  As with many such things, once something like that has been said, it's not hard to get other critics to chime in.  Eventually, those critics accept that their opinions are consensus.  This happens on all sorts of online social media and about a multitude of topics, and is usually the product of only paying attention to what you agree with.

 

So, did IBS represent a drop in quality?  Maybe, maybe not.  I recommend you make up your own mind.

[Mortime.1359]

22 minutes ago, IndigoSundown.5419 said:

So, did IBS represent a drop in quality?  Maybe, maybe not.  I recommend you make up your own mind.

I didn't mind most of the IBS except for some characters being written to be complete morons. The last part, the champions part however was cursed back when it was released and nowadays is even more cursed because for most of the time you'll be soloing those damned response missions. Unless you have a team of people to help you which many do not.

[Randulf.7614]

4 hours ago, Samfisher.7942 said:

What is/was wrong with IBS?  I haven't gotten there yet but have finished HoT, PoF, LWS 1 (up till what is available), LWS 2 and almost done with LWS3 so IBS isn't that far away for me right now.  What's wrong with it that people don't like it?

The last third is arguably the worst content in the game. They cut short the season and rushed out some incredibly dull, ill thought out, repetitive instances to replace having to make maps or write any story. It’s so jarring against the rest of the season that it being a drop in quality is a massive understatement. What made it worse was that they spread this across many months so it dragged horribly.

Which is a shame, because apart from some minor writing problems,, IBS was looking like a decent season at first. But they just gave up on it so they could get to the expansion (which also appeared to have suffered anyway).

If you compare to season 4 which had some extremely high quality content even in the awful episodes, it’s clear the loss of many devs and clear leadership took its toll