To the Arenanet team

[Von Dobbs.9072]

I find that your new policy (producing a new expansion every three months) is quite dangerous and bad for a large part of the players.

I understand that this new policy can reassure your shareholders, but it does not really suit me.

Here is why:

Each new expansion brings its share of new features: new legendary armors/weapons, which require a lot of rare material resources (T5, T6), research notes, and a lot of gold.

Previously, we had plenty of time, between two expansions, to replenish our stocks of rare materials, farm the maps, earn gold, etc.

Now we only have three months left.

Before the crafting of my two legendary obsidian suffused armors, I had about 3500 gold. After that I only had a few hundred. I gave up on crafting a third armor so I could get back to farming, replenish my material stocks and make some more gold (1800 now).

At the rate of an expansion every three months, we're all going to have to farm like crazy to keep our material storage and in-game finances afloat.

I don't want to have to play 8 hours a day to be able to access the new features of each expansion. Three months is too short. I don't have the soul of a hardcore gamer, I do other things outside of GW2, I have a life, as they say.

[Ashantara.8731]

Just now, Von Dobbs.9072 said:

I find that your new policy (producing a new expansion every three months) [...]

What? 😄 The new expansion system is one expac per year.

[Portico.2354]

If you pace yourself and buy discerningly, you can comfortably make the legendary armor without playing 8 hours a day. The only thing I was really forced to spend gold on was ectos and I did it casually enough that my funds didn’t really drop much throughout the process. The need to grind essence and map currency was enough to stop me from going on spending sprees.

Also legendaries are supposed to be pricey rewards that you can pick and choose to go for, not game features that you should feel forced to unlock with each expansion.

[Danikat.8537]

They're releasing 1 expansion per year, not one every 3 months. The expansion chapters are spread out through the year instead of all releasing at once, but it still adds up to 1 expansion per year. (You might have noticed you haven't needed to buy anything else since the first SotO release - if you owned it when it came out you got the follow-up releases for free.)

But also you don't have to rush through collecting everything just because it's there. If there's things you're not interested in or don't have time to get you can skip them. You can always go back and get them later (I've been doing some of the Icebrood Saga weapon collections I never did when it came out). Also I think it's unlikely every expansion will have something as expensive as legendary armour (especially if you were aiming for all 3 sets).

[Randulf.7614]

Could you imagine an entire expansion every 3 months? I mean it was hard enough with a map and episode every 3 months which the game was doing for most of its life with Seasons 3-IBS, but an expansion every 3 months would be quite insane

[Omega.6801]

No one forces you to always get what just has been released.
No one forces you to get what just has been released before the next release.
"Expansions" stay available after their initial release.
 

However...
Content can lose relevance as time passes on and players can abandon it, making some content harder to complete.
ANet has less resources and incentive to rework bugs so if something is broken at the moment a new "expansion" drops, it will most likely stay broken.

[Von Dobbs.9072]

13 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

What? 😄 The new expansion system is one expac per year.

I think the intensity with which I farmed SOTO made me lose track of time a little.

Indeed, SOTO was released in August 2023.

I'm probably a little on the verge of burnout with this game!

You're all right here, I need to calm down a little in this game and find a more moderate pace!

[Gehenna.3625]

1 hour ago, Von Dobbs.9072 said:

I think the intensity with which I farmed SOTO made me lose track of time a little.

Indeed, SOTO was released in August 2023.

I'm probably a little on the verge of burnout with this game!

You're all right here, I need to calm down a little in this game and find a more moderate pace!

Might be good to take a break then. I've taken multiple breaks throughout the years and it worked well for me. And with regards to SoTO, it's interesting how different things can be from player to player. I don't care for the Obsidian armor sets, so I barely set foot in SoTO anymore after doing the story and do map completion an a few characters. I can't even imagine farming SoTO intensely lol.

But yeh, take a break and step away from GW2 for a bit. You might find it refreshing.

[Astralporing.1957]

15 hours ago, Von Dobbs.9072 said:

I find that your new policy (producing a new expansion every three months)

Wrong on both counts. Not only the release schedule for "expansions" is one per year, but also what they now call using that name is half-sized at best. You're receiving less content now, not more.

[quake.9023]

just play the new stuff 1 year later. or 2....or whenever u want. shrug

[Danikat.8537]

6 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

Might be good to take a break then. I've taken multiple breaks throughout the years and it worked well for me. And with regards to SoTO, it's interesting how different things can be from player to player. I don't care for the Obsidian armor sets, so I barely set foot in SoTO anymore after doing the story and do map completion an a few characters. I can't even imagine farming SoTO intensely lol.

But yeh, take a break and step away from GW2 for a bit. You might find it refreshing.

Same here. It also doesn't have to be all or nothing, I recently went through a phase where I was semi-inactive, sometimes just logging in to check the dailies and then logging out again, sometimes doing a few little bits but nothing very time consuming, mostly spending my time on other things, including playing other games.

Then I found myself looking through the achievements I'd nearly finished and mastery points I hadn't gotten (I still haven't completed all the IBS, EoD and SotO masteries) and I found some things which seemed interesting and started doing them. Some days I still only played for a few minutes, other days I'd get caught up in something and play for a few hours, but still not committing to anything more than making a bit of progress on one achievement.

[NayNay.7680]

I, for one, will be withholding my purchase this time around. The accelerated releases also gives them reason to abandon older prospects and leave last years x-pack selling points incomplete. I'm pretty annoyed that the pistol on Elementalist will probably always lack a muzzle-flash and functioning overwrites for the bad sounds, and refuse to buy the spear knowing it's likely just going to be 4 bars of differently-colored damaging skills that clash horribly with weaver. Plenty else to do while waiting for the next one.

[Ghastly.3914]

On 7/30/2024 at 5:18 AM, Astralporing.1957 said:

Wrong on both counts. Not only the release schedule for "expansions" is one per year, but also what they now call using that name is half-sized at best. You're receiving less content now, not more.

What???? Care to elaborate?

[Linken.6345]

14 minutes ago, Ghastly.3914 said:

What???? Care to elaborate?

Just check how many maps you got with season 3 or season 4 compared to SotO and what you will get with JW.

That is basicly what SotO and JW is paid living world with added reused instance content.

[Astralporing.1957]

5 hours ago, Ghastly.3914 said:

What???? Care to elaborate?

A new style miniexpansion gets released every year. In that year you get the expansion main release and 3 patches. All those together are at best half the size of an expansion, but more realistically are half the size of the living story season. That means two "miniexpansions" are about equal to the whole living story season. Except in the same time frame previously we would get an LS season and one full-sized expansion.

And that's only about quantity, even without commenting on the quality of the releases, which seem to have gone downward with SotO.