[Merged] Feedback about today's Icebrood Saga announcement

[GreyFox.8046]

I feel like we need more contact with the Dev team. As someone that isn't actively looking in nooks and crannies for what Devs have to say, I present an easier method that gets public attention to the game that is NEEDED, the advertisement scene is lacking. Twitch Streaming with the devs, talking about content updates each set number of weeks, also fun streams that are actually engaging to the community, like Warframe for example. They NAIL the marketing and are so in touch with their community. Please take their game as an example of how to improve yours.

I'm not pointing fingers saying this game is better or vice verse, I'm just applying my perspective from another game that I would like to see in this one, which will gain it benefit. So, if the devs reading are not aware of what I am even talking about, Warframe hosts weekly shows called "Prime time" and "DevStream" and been doing successfully since so since launch. Integrate gem drops perhaps into twitch streams, or any skin rewards or what not to get people to start watching.I just want to see the game flourish into something even more beautiful in the coming months and years.

[Ashantara.8731]

@"cptaylor.2670" said:I hope so. I imagine they may release another trailer closer to the release date, but it seems odd they would have all of this presentation time and then not show the official episode trailer.

They general held back on a lot of things. :/

[Starbridge.7926]

So... pre-orders?

[Shampanix.3928]

Some honest feedback:

1. I take into consideration a huge harm that layoffs did. Tho you said that this should not affect the game? Because after today it feels like it did lot of harm. Makes me feel nervous about the future of my favorite game ever.
2. You made an event for announcement. But you did only a video for PoF - amazingly it was far better than this announcement. Very good montage, lots of interesting information about expansion. For Icebrood Saga a cool video and later on a guild chat with Q&A session would do far more than this event.
3. Of course I know it was supposed to be an LS announcement. You told us that. But showing this little with an event? When was an event like that last time? HoT announcement - the very first expansion for the game, right? Wasn't it obvious that people would expect more?
4. I like the vague idea of sagas. It actually sounds interesting, cus it seems you try to transition from expansion + LS into one format which is saga. One would assume that sagas will have content that would fit in scope between these two formats. And yet we know nothing from the event that would clarify that. So again we're open to speculate and hope. And again a lot of people will be disappointed. "Sneaking in surprises" is cool, but we have no idea about the scope and actually future of the game. If you do an event - explain new stuff.

So, yes - it's disappointing.

My take on it? I assume you struggle to recover from layoffs. It affected studio far more that you want to admit. The situation is actually quite bad. Announcement felt like message - "guys, we still try to keep this boat afloat, tho we're barely manage to do it". So you did a very cool Living World season 4, then decided to go new direction to reuse some old assets to make it cheaper to keep afloat. Thus I think we will not see much new stuff in terms of new assets. And we should hope this will be enough to keep game alive with new releases before Ncsoft pulls the plug. You weren't ready for announcing new stuff and that's why this event was so underwhelming but your Ncsoft overlord told you to do it cus it's a good idea (no it wasn't, and I kinda felt like Mike Z behaved like he didn't want to be there basically empty-handed with only good thing being the trailer). This makes me sad for the devs. Really. I know there are some passionate people there in Anet. Sadly, it didn't work out well today guys. I'm still crossing my fingers. You were rising from ashes before, I think you can do it again.

So I can only assume, cus you didn't tell us, that this time we will have perhaps a bit more content over time, but it will be spread across smaller, but more often releases. I can only hope it has a cadence of once a month. I'm totally fine with story-only release that happens on already existing maps. It's completely fine. I'm also fine with maps being released in parts. More often releases will be more healthy. My only hope is with renewed focus, and if you actually go saga-only, you can now produce at least 1,5 more that you did when there were 3 teams, thus making small releases actually feel a bit substantial every time.

Thanks for trying, I'll stick around and observe.

EDIT: typos.

[miraude.2107]

@"GreyFox.8046" said:I feel like we need more contact with the Dev team. As someone that isn't actively looking in nooks and crannies for what Devs have to say, I present an easier method that gets public attention to the game that is NEEDED, the advertisement scene is lacking. Twitch Streaming with the devs, talking about content updates each set number of weeks, also fun streams that are actually engaging to the community, like Warframe for example. They NAIL the marketing and are so in touch with their community. Please take their game as an example of how to improve yours.

I'm not pointing fingers saying this game is better or vice verse, I'm just applying my perspective from another game that I would like to see in this one, which will gain it benefit. So, if the devs reading are not aware of what I am even talking about, Warframe hosts weekly shows called "Prime time" and "DevStream" and been doing successfully since so since launch. Integrate gem drops perhaps into twitch streams, or any skin rewards or what not to get people to start watching.I just want to see the game flourish into something even more beautiful in the coming months and years.

I understand the feels but I've also seen the backside of this. The Dev Ghostcrawler for WoW. I liked the guy, he was actively on the forums, telling us what's up on the forums. But people would sit there and attack him on anything he posted on. Someone could post about a class question and Ghostcrawler would pop in and explain it only to have subsequent posts be people replying to him about things that weren't even about the question. I watched a post about him answering a question about the ghost crab hunter pet, one of the moves it did and was it an easter egg devolve into the thread being locked/deleted because suddenly there was a slew of people going off topic in the thread demanding fixes for pvp, this class needs a nerf, that class needs a buff, etc.I've also seen things lauded over devs heads. I'm on a discord where the devs are active in talking to people and sometimes, it's frustrating seeing someone @ a dev over and over again about a bug even though the dev addressed it in the first @ and explained they were working on it but it isn't gonna be an easy fix. I've watched these devs talk on a stream and then mention something in the discord just to have someone go well that's not what was said on the streaaam and the devs trying to explain that they had limited time to stream and are trying to explain it better. I've watched these devs go from being active and friendly on the discord daily, to commenting here and there to finally appointing volunteer admins for the discord and only talking when something major is up simply because the fanbase stressed them out. Some fans, unfortunately, seem to think that if a dev talks to you, they will always want to talk to you.

And while Warframe is a great example on what to do to garner interest and interact with the fanbase, also know that we have people right now complaining that they didn't get the Aurene code because the stream happened while they were at work/school/life/etc. The twitch announcement I last had was 3 days ago before the main event. So they do tend to stream quite a bit (I like watching the ones of the artwork and that as it helps keep me motivated in practicing drawing) and if they added codes to that, I can still see people going, I don't want to sit through a 2 hour stream for a code, what timestamp does the code show up or complaining that they missed the stream. The discord I mentioned above always gave codes away during their early streams and gave streamers codes to give away as well....until people just started posting 'here's the codes' on the forums and in the discord itself. Now I rarely see a code pop up that isn't time-gated to an hour after the stream which again would have people complaining that they have work/school/life/etc and they didn't get a chance at a free item. The devs here know they can't please everyone and how their fanbase is sadly and I understand why they do things the way they do.

Also since I mentioned discord, I actually get a LOT of info from discord of what's going on with GW2 which seems to be an easier source of what's going on than following them on twitter or even e-mail (like I got the event emails after the event has been active for a few days instead of the day it started) so maybe they either need to work out some bugs to get everything evened out on announcing or find out what discord is doing as for its algorithm as the dash for that updates daily and I see all the current news for all the games I play in one spot (like I haven't played Terraria in a year and I get a blurb on my dash about the mobile update even though I play PC o.0) .

[Frostfang.5109]

Charr and Norn, finally! I'm happy as can be! Hopefully more faces, hairs, horns, fur-patterns, and tattoes....

[Thalimae.3406]

@miraude.2107 said:

@"GreyFox.8046" said:I feel like we need more contact with the Dev team. As someone that isn't actively looking in nooks and crannies for what Devs have to say, I present an easier method that gets public attention to the game that is NEEDED, the advertisement scene is lacking. Twitch Streaming with the devs, talking about content updates each set number of weeks, also fun streams that are actually engaging to the community, like Warframe for example. They NAIL the marketing and are so in touch with their community. Please take their game as an example of how to improve yours.

I'm not pointing fingers saying this game is better or vice verse, I'm just applying my perspective from another game that I would like to see in this one, which will gain it benefit. So, if the devs reading are not aware of what I am even talking about, Warframe hosts weekly shows called "Prime time" and "DevStream" and been doing successfully since so since launch. Integrate gem drops perhaps into twitch streams, or any skin rewards or what not to get people to start watching.I just want to see the game flourish into something even more beautiful in the coming months and years.

I understand the feels but I've also seen the backside of this. The Dev Ghostcrawler for WoW. I liked the guy, he was actively on the forums, telling us what's up on the forums. But people would sit there and attack him on anything he posted on. Someone could post about a class question and Ghostcrawler would pop in and explain it only to have subsequent posts be people replying to him about things that weren't even about the question. I watched a post about him answering a question about the ghost crab hunter pet, one of the moves it did and was it an easter egg devolve into the thread being locked/deleted because suddenly there was a slew of people going off topic in the thread demanding fixes for pvp, this class needs a nerf, that class needs a buff, etc.I've also seen things lauded over devs heads. I'm on a discord where the devs are active in talking to people and sometimes, it's frustrating seeing someone @ a dev over and over again about a bug even though the dev addressed it in the first @ and explained they were working on it but it isn't gonna be an easy fix. I've watched these devs talk on a stream and then mention something in the discord just to have someone go

well that's not what was said on the streaaam

and the devs trying to explain that they had limited time to stream and are trying to explain it better. I've watched these devs go from being active and friendly on the discord daily, to commenting here and there to finally appointing volunteer admins for the discord and only talking when something major is up simply because the fanbase stressed them out. Some fans, unfortunately, seem to think that if a dev talks to you, they will always want to talk to you.

That kind of stuff had already happened with the GW2 devs, too, let's be real. Whenever there was a time period when they tried to be more communicative the community* would always do their worst to chase them away. Heck, just the other day there were threads about "broken promises" and the like here on this forum and some people still drag out that manifesto video from the launch to complain about Anet not doing what they set out to do. No matter how much or little Anet tells us about their plans it's never enough and often taken wildly out of context with people twisting words and intentions to their liking only to complain about their expectations not having been met later on. It's the same nonsense every time.

The problem is people have no idea how much time and effort is put into producing such a game with the resources a small studio like Anet has. So they make all sorts of demands regardless of whether or not it's even possible to implement them. The sheer volume of output in all game modes those people demand is not in any way helpful input for any dev trying to listen to the community*.

The result is that Anet mostly only announces new content when it's ready and keeps communication to a minimum and I can't blame them cause anything more doesn't seem to be worth it with the way the community* behaves sometimes.

(*not meaning literally everyone but some people are just... ughhh)

[azurerogue.9240]

I think Shampanix hit the nail on the head. I feel for the devs, I really do, with what the studio has gone through lately. But I think the way the announcement was revealed, hyped up, and executed was obviously going to lead to a let down. I don't know whose idea it was to run things like this (possibly higher-ups at NCSoft) but it was not a good one. I watched the whole thing and felt just sort of empty afterwards. I wvw, pvp, and raid weekly and I bet I'll like the new LS as well...but the way this announcement was teased made me expect a lot more than just some notes about episodes 1/2 (and the prologue). Best of luck going forward, ANet.

[Seth Moonshadow.2710]

Thank you so much for adding Strike Missions!! 10/10. I know you mean for them to be stepping stones for getting into raids. While I wish this were going to be true for us, sadly it won't be our case. We are very grateful Strike Missions are being added and that our, along with many others, opinions were listened too. We enjoyed the Freeze Strike Mission / Mini raid and encouraged more to give it a try also.

I would like to ask that if the dynamic release style you are going for is like the Dry Top release that the entire map be released and the actual playable story/content/achievements/masteries...etc be the dynamic part. Getting a small portion of a map for us explorers just is not as fun. I would even be happy with the entire map and only ambient creatures, later drop an NPC or 2 in. Then later an event chain or two. But please let us get the entire map to explore and enjoy while waiting for (and speculating on ) what the content will be when it arrives. Thank's for considering it.

I loved the art style for the reveal trailer awesome sauce!

[Bloodstealer.5978]

@"ricky markham.8173" said:in truth if they would have held cooking announcement to this livestream and theatre event i wouldnt have been so disappointed. they really should have waited on the cooking to 500 also jewelry announcement then i would have felt this big thing was something. i think anet has to tailor there announcements better. the cooking thing being a big thing and given little announcement compared huge announcement and pretty much giving us stuff we almost already knew or could guess. its funny how i went with ecstatic over cooking and soon jewelry announcement to meh over this one. yeah strike might be a good idea the least they could have done was given us a nugget to what was coming after the next season and it didnt have to include anything about what was in it it could have been hey and yes ls6 will be coming after five announcement

To me that's what makes yesterday's live theatre even more disappointing... we got so much more out of just the cooking 500 expose than all of yesterday's display merchandising event. Did anyone else get the impression Mike Z just didn't want to be there or that maybe he knew this was never going to go down well.... he struggled so badly to put any excitement or emotion into this and at times it seemed like he was searching for words to fill the void and the more he struggled the more perspiration appeared above his top lip.If you break the whole thing down the actual announcement was no more than about 10-20 mins max the rest was just ear bleeding shouting by some random and a head of marketing trying to do cosplay on the real cheap (though to be fair he was a smidge funnier than the Mos they paid to shout and laugh at his jokes). Might of been more apt for him to of attempted a Dhuum esc cosplay outfit with a hammer smash finale to close the event.The best moment by far for me was when he attempted to poke fun at that "one PvP guy at the back".... how to hammer nails in has never been done so well imo.

[Bloodstealer.5978]

@Mass Pandemic.3517 said:

@otto.5684 said:

@DzT.8127 said:If i was the owner of ANET i would have seriously fired most of the people. This announcement was a joke really. Hey we announcing a LW5 that we allready announced weeks ago.

More like since March. I really do not understand Anet. Do they really think people care that much about the story? If I rate content in GW2 in terms of quality:

Open world PvE + great combat systemPvPInstanced PvEStory

Story is the GW2 weakest content.

Open world is some what tied to story, but story does not carry it. And open world quality too a nose dive with PoF. LWS4 had some improvement, but it is far from what it used to be.

I think you underestimate how many people play this game solely for the story , i'm not one of these people, but a lot of people are heavily invested into guild wars lore/story. Arenanet has all kinds of data on how people play, if it wasn't that popular or desired they wouldn't be focusing on it as much and if pvp was most of the community's focus like any good business they would do what they would believe would net the most income for them. Why do you think the game is very casual friendly in a lot of it's design?

Oh I agree... LS is there go to moneypit for sure and to me that is fine, I enjoy it quite alot and consider the story writing to be top notch and made all the more richer by the quality music, VA and art.But GW2 needs more than LS. Gemstore and grindfest mechanics will only last for so long before even the most diehard of players grow tired of it all and imo I Think we may be reached, if not over reached that point already.Servers have lost their identity, competitive gameplay feels like it is on life spport and the whole ebb and flow of the game has been reduced to trickle of it's former greatness. Aside from a few hours of new predominantly single player content every 3 or 4 months the biggest features of release are new skins in the gemstore.The game needed this announcement to push new or at least reignite old passions for investing in GW2... for me it failed to either.Sure the new LS sounds intriguing and fun, I expect nothing less but the game as a whole needed this to offer more, much more imo but it didn't so it is no sprise to that many players are asking... what was the point of yesterday, what was there that they couldn't of done on a live stream back at HQ considering it was mostly old news with a small piece of new talking points that clearly aren't even close to being in a state of readiness to talk about in any detail. Heck if strike forces are the next big thing to co.e out of their flagship content then it absolutely should of been given much more air time than it got and it should of been at a point there was actually somethi g to show and talk about, but it wasn't imo.

[Celeste.9135]

The way I'm looking at it is that season 5 looks set up to be an interesting story at least and it will probably be a lot of fun but without the hint of an expansion coming in the future or highlighting the alleged expansion like features that living world is supposedly able to bring to the game now, the event was underwhelming and probably shouldn't have taken place at all. There was no need to hype up and publicly present what is shaping up to be a pretty standard looking living world update. It's just more of the same content that will be played through once and for most people, never to be touched again. I will say that the strike missions do sound interesting and I do hope they serve as a good introduction to raids or are even just well received as their own thing.

I'm not angry with the devs and I'm not hating on what they presented, it looks fine. But it's just fine. I knew I wasn't going to be, but I wanted to be surprised by something amazing. Maybe new content, maybe elite specs, maybe a mastery system on par with gliding and mounts, or maybe even just a hint at the future beyond season 5. Something that would make me believe that GW2 is sustainable through living world alone or that an expansion is on the table. Overall I'm thoroughly disappointed and I'm worried about how much more life is left in this game without an expansion on the horizon.

Perhaps the trailer (which was really well done) and a post outlining the features would have been more appropriate for this level of content. Save hyped up countdowns to live events for expansion grade announcements.

[SuwanHime.7685]

I'm afraid it's partially a matter like described in this video about the gaming industry. Arenanet's name even gets shown on the presentation when they talk about lay-offs being a regular thing now in the gaming industry.

[Ukon Cairns.9160]

strike missions and the prologue coming so soon are a pleasant surprise. strike missions seem like they could address an issue i had with raiding being fairly unapproachable to get started in without heading to outside resources like Discord. Anet did good here. im only disappointed in the overwhelming negativity in the community.

[ChuddaCHOO.4723]

Very disappointed. Way too overhyped for ordinary lore/story content. Ok you tried with Strike Missions(what are the rewards? Unidentified gear?) I'd rather farm something else more lucrative. New PvP armor, very basic looking. Oh just another new story. Great if you're a pve/lore fan, but what about the other side of the community? You say you are listening, but is that all you do just listen? WvW restructure for 10 sec mentioned. How long have you been saying that. It's starting to get boring waiting now. I'm a big fan of the game. 90% WvW 10% PvE. I really don't know how long I can keep playing for until I get bored and jump ship. Pls do something NEW to retain your other half of the player base.

[hugo.4705]

Yeah thanks a lot for strike missions.

[roamzero.9486]

It would be nice if there was somekind of discount for getting PoF if you already have HoT.

[Braynz.2906]

Underwhelmed

[kasoki.5180]

For me honestly its all about those strikes. If they are good I'm staying, if they aren't I'm leaving.

This is also why I am super confused about this announcement event. You guys just announced a new 10-men challenging content but instead of properly presenting it to us and explaining it's features to us you just gave us a vague short statement and then proceeded to talk about everything else.It's like you yourselves don't want this content to be played

[Belenwyn.8674]

The saga concept sounds like a new sow driven through the village. The word season is laden with too much negativity. Let us look for a new name..

It is nice to get listetd what a saga can do. Are you willing to do all things the saga concept enables you to do?

[Dutchdevil.6902]

Anet,

As you already can see on the poll you really failed in explaining waht we get and when we get it (for the most part). Before i start, the only thing that was nice, was the trailer! Oh and the 10 man boss fights..

This announcement could be wrapped up in a blog post. All this hype for only this information? And of course you will take this with a grane of salt because there are always complainers, but I think the majority is not happy. See also for example Woodenpotato video. He summarized it correctly.

Since the "announcement" I have so many questions / remarks(and some are not even discussed):1) Will there by new legendary weapons?2) Will we get more variety on weapons?3) Will there be new races?4) What is the definition of a saga for Anet? Its just a season....5) Please don't tell me we get a tiny contenct drop for the epilogue and then have to wait 3 months for episode 1 (if these things still drop every 3 months as we are used too)?6) We got no exact date of the build templates. Coming soon is very subjective. If it comes with epilogue its good, but nothing heard about that. People will be dissapointed if we dont get it this year7) Will there be new elite specs coming "soon"?8) will there ever be a new expac? Or do you justify it with "sagas"? I prefer to know cause with no expacs I don't want to play as much because there is nothing big to look forward too...9) Will there be underwater mounts?10) What does it mean for us that you split the teams in 4? Do we get more and faster content drops then we used to? Thus also faster the episodes?11) If so, do you justify not giving expacs cause of the many content drops? It nice to get for example cooking to 500 but what most people like in pve is the maps and meta and grind.12) What are the exact plans for WvW and PVP?13) plans to keep the LS4 maps interesting with new content?

With this announcement I think Anet shot there selves in the foot. Creating hype for this little info will backlash. You made the state of the game worse... How could you make an announcement with this little info? This is no more info then that we get in a blog when an episode is out?

I dont post much, but I had to say this. This is really sad! I hope the epilogue has enough content to get me to the first episode. And I also hope that if we get an episode with no new map there are interesting things to do that keep me busy till the next episode.

What did you guys think of the announcement?

Regards,

[ROMANG.1903]

You seem to want to show us everything, and make a huge event around it, but it ends up kind of underwhelming compared to the hype you built up. A dynamic video with glimpses of what's to come, would've had much more impact in my opinion. The secret is to show just enough so people are interested. If you show everything, they won't want to discover the content.

How I would've done it: A short teaser video showing a fraction of everything. Starting with where we left of, we then get a few, slow-ish frames of the new area(s) to get people excited over the landscapes. Then we get to the dynamic content. A few frames with a bold text "NEW CONTENT: STRIKES" showing that new boss, just a few seconds to get people excited. Then "MASTERY: NORN SPIRITS", with again a few quick frames, not stretching this over a few minutes like in the live stream. The whole thing undercut with a few quotes from Jormag. Perhaps a glimpse of a new meta event, if there is such a thing?

My point is, the live wasn't the way to go. Too much hype, not enough content.

[Arzurag.7506]

I simply wanted to know, what they have planned to keep me busy over the next years, elite specs, new maps, mastery, wvw-content.I couldn't care less about the story or its characters, any book does a better job at telling a compelling story, it's not gw2 main strength.

[Dutchdevil.6902]

I do agree with you.no dateswhen what will drop. So sad

[attachi.1792]

Did you noticed A-net increased their gem-store production last mounths? Brand new stuff every week + sales for some of the old goods. Gold price for 400 gems rised to the 170+ gold and won't drop. Looks like another way to get more money plus sink ingame gold from the player's pockets.Reminds me SWTOR and their Cartel market focus with short chapter content scheme.