[Merged] Feedback about today's Icebrood Saga announcement

[LucianDK.8615]

Anet was squarely at fault here, drumming up too big excitement. Of course people is going to be disappointed when it turned out to be something that couldve been covered in a blog post.

[omgdracula.6345]

@Dalec.9853 said:How can you blame the players for expecting something, ArenaNet made a big deal of nothing. Isn't that fully on them? Yeah I know it's best to expect and hope for nothing from them but people we're looking at this for a decision on if to quit or wait it out from what I have seen; so there was hope there that it would have something actually targeted at the old core playerbase beyond the same as usual

Blame for expecting something, and blame for expecting something that they themselves mentally expect are two very different things. Targeting the old core playerbase is not a smart move monetarily wise. This game is 7 years old. Everyone I played this game with is married now and most have kids. It would be financially irresponsible to market to the core playerbase.

[Witch of Doom.5739]

@Fenom.9457 said:Relax, we'll have more details soon. Plus a new expansion is nearly certain after this season so specs then probably

I need would really like confirmation from ANet that a new expansion is coming at some point. I'd rather pay for a huge, content-rich expansion pack than get LW stuff free.

[Redfeather.6401]

Honestly I was hoping for an announcement that GW2 would be left in maintenance mode for work on GW3. And that GW3 would be dual profession, elite skill capture, quest driven game like the franchise started with. At least I have elder scrolls online.

[Trise.2865]

Ten! Ten threads! Ah.ah.ah.ah.!!

[MetalGirl.2370]

@omgdracula.6345 said:

@MetalGirl.2370 said:It's not players fault at all.They announced it month prior. Even adding ominous sounds and stuff to the game to hype it, had 2 day long count down.... for what? Merch ads ?They led people on... it's not players fault at all. Altho I learnt my lesson and wasn't excited for it at all, I wish others were smarter.

Apple does this literally every year. I am not sure what your point is? Most game series do this. Borderlands 3 is being super hyped up by the community for it. Well knowing it will just be a shooter with comedy thrown in.

What are you on about? At least BL3 has some content.... they dont hype it for month to show you merch.

[Tsakhi.8124]

@Lily.1935 said:

@"Tsakhi.8124" said:...then get the kitten out...

The open hostility to those who dare criticize your favorite game leaves the environment of the game hostile. This response doesn't foster communication and leads to stagnation in the community. With the praise, you need to take the criticism in strides and understand where people are coming from. It is quite childish to just scream at people for being upset. This is something we all care about and each of us wants the game to be the best that it can be. And it can't be that if we never criticize the game.

For myself, I'm quite disappointed in this announcement, not because I hate anet or the game, but because I love the game and want to see it succeed. This announcement alienates the audience and its ultimately tone deaf to the concerns of the community. They didn't address the very real concern about the future of this game or how to promote players go join or rejoin the game.

If their goal was to get new players, they need snappy sound bites to get players in. An expansion is a massive draw. A new race, elite specializations, new class, dungeons, raids. These are pieces that we can point to to draw players into the game. Living world season or "Saga" doesn't do the same thing for outsiders. What's a living world season? In terms of an MMO this does not draw people in much like saying "This TV show has a new season" this only keeps the existing audience in, but doesn't draw new people in because they feel they've already missed out on the story. This episodic nature is great for existing players but is antithetical to new players.

If their goal was to bring back old players, the issue is that clearly the seasons were not providing player retention. Which is a major problem. Without new content that players can get excited about such as Elite specs, classes, races, raids or dungeons these old players are unlikely to return.

We hit a double issue with this announcement. It neither draws new players in because they don't understand the context of what is occurring in the game and for feeling like they're missing out and it doesn't draw back old players who feel content starved as it is. The result of this will be a slow hemorrhaging of players. And the damage control Anet needs to do is going to be pretty massive at this point.

I've hit fatigue with this game. And the new season isn't going to revitalize me or other players. And we want to get back into the game. But what are we coming back for? another season? It didn't keep us before it wont keep us now.

In retrospect that response was far from stellar. Understand this, though: I have no issues with opinions; I just hate the barrage of threads on the same subject. Add to this, the people in this thread alone is negative; I am an instigator, I'm not denying that. I just want people to be grateful they have that escape and it seems more and more people are quitting over something that may turn out to be pretty awesome. The trailer was what it was, I didn't expect anything. And with that, it's time to take a break from the forums.

~~I know, I know, I've said that before. What can I say? I am a procrastinator. ~~

[Gandalf.1537]

Wonder what the strikes is like?

[omgdracula.6345]

@LucianDK.8615 said:Anet was squarely at fault here, drumming up too big excitement. Of course people is going to be disappointed when it turned out to be something that couldve been covered in a blog post.

Yea but it wasn't anything beyond what they stated it would be. All of you are ignoring the fact that the playerbase took the hype generated and overhyped it even more thinking this would be an expansion announcement. Which means very few people complaining have any common sense. We were told an expansion was not planned. We were told that the next living story is what is planned. The email literally says tune in to learn about the next chapter of the living story.

You are correct that it could have been covered in a blog post. There was 0 reason to do this event. But to say the community did not fashion this annoucement into something more is an outright lie.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

@ugrakarma.9416 said:any UW content would be a fiasco.UW content is one is overhyped things that exists only on forums. last time Anet heard these ideas them come out the repeatable Hearts in LS3, thats in practice no one liked it. just because a vocal minority in forums was saying for years that repeatable heart content was a good idea.

Black and white thinking doesnt really work imo. Sure you could say this failed lets never touch it, that works so lets do more of the same of that. But ArenaNet started this game with revolutionary ideas and concepts.

That is what excites people and that is what is interesting.

One thing that I personally was surprising is that HoT is becoming included to PoF. Or vice versa, so that not just their masteries could potentially move over and continue to evolve, but so could Guild Halls.

Potentially anyways.

Instead of locking doors, like where ArenaNet shut the doors on UW content, and shut the doors on raids not being public and guild halls only being for expansion x and mounts only for expansion Y.; what they should do, imo, is keep all those options open, open the game up to the potential, and when possible, exploit those potentials.

They should be done with closing doors on the ambitious ideas. And start bringing in some more crazy ideas.

As long as they balance that with stuff that does work, they could have a great revolutionary game on their hands again.

[omgdracula.6345]

@MetalGirl.2370 said:

@omgdracula.6345 said:

@MetalGirl.2370 said:It's not players fault at all.They announced it month prior. Even adding ominous sounds and stuff to the game to hype it, had 2 day long count down.... for what? Merch ads ?They led people on... it's not players fault at all. Altho I learnt my lesson and wasn't excited for it at all, I wish others were smarter.

Apple does this literally every year. I am not sure what your point is? Most game series do this. Borderlands 3 is being super hyped up by the community for it. Well knowing it will just be a shooter with comedy thrown in.

What are you on about? At least BL3 has some content.... they dont hype it for month to show you merch.

Borderlands 3 has been hyped up for months now. Are you high? It has promises of content sure. But at its core it is going to be the same old borderlands we have been playing.

[MetalGirl.2370]

@Sinofgreed.9735 said:

@"MetalGirl.2370" said:It's not players fault at all.They announced it month prior. Even adding ominous sounds and stuff to the game to hype it, had 2 day long count down.... for what? Merch ads ?They led people on... it's not players fault at all. Altho I learnt my lesson and wasn't excited for it at all, I wish others were smarter.

Lmao they announced the stream as a living world stream from day one, they did the most with the countdown but still the players are also responsible for this. I kept seeing posts like "omg elite specs", "maybe new expac soon" and I thought why on earth would you think that?

What is your point.... it doesn't matter if it was told to it's going to be LW, point is... they spoke about merch more than LW, managed to offend spvp players and they only talked about prologue.. so not even a full thing.It could've been said in a stream from their office... i obviously can't attend as im living in europe, but imagine you paid money to fly over from another state or even drive over, just to be shown a trailer for 2 mins and rest of it was merch talk.

[Donari.5237]

I agree that this wasn't as big a thing as I thought it might be (note I was not over hyped, I had no definite expectations and am not at all disappointed, but since the last big pre-announced live announcement was HoT I had a certain frisson going). But they needed to alert people to it in advance because getting to the theater for a 9 am thing means having some time to plan, so they had to get the info out there.

What they did announce is plenty exciting to me.

[WhatLiesBeneath.9018]

@Gandalf.1537 said:Wonder what the strikes is like?

It seems like they will be Instances in the open world, like Dragon Bash Arena. You will be able to just walk in to join random players there or start a premade team and walk in to take it down.

[Crab Fear.1624]

No. Only Anet is to blame.

[MetalGirl.2370]

@omgdracula.6345 said:

@MetalGirl.2370 said:

@omgdracula.6345 said:

@MetalGirl.2370 said:It's not players fault at all.They announced it month prior. Even adding ominous sounds and stuff to the game to hype it, had 2 day long count down.... for what? Merch ads ?They led people on... it's not players fault at all. Altho I learnt my lesson and wasn't excited for it at all, I wish others were smarter.

Apple does this literally every year. I am not sure what your point is? Most game series do this. Borderlands 3 is being super hyped up by the community for it. Well knowing it will just be a shooter with comedy thrown in.

What are you on about? At least BL3 has some content.... they dont hype it for month to show you merch.

Borderlands 3 has been hyped up for months now. Are you high? It has promises of content sure. But at its core it is going to be the same old borderlands we have been playing.

again, at least they didnt show you 2m trailer and other 30m just merch.Also now that you mention it, after what I watched .. i wish i was high.

[LucianDK.8615]

@omgdracula.6345 said:

@LucianDK.8615 said:Anet was squarely at fault here, drumming up too big excitement. Of course people is going to be disappointed when it turned out to be something that couldve been covered in a blog post.

Yea but it wasn't anything beyond what they stated it would be. All of you are ignoring the fact that the playerbase took the hype generated and overhyped it even more thinking this would be an expansion announcement. Which means very few people complaining have any common sense. We were told an expansion was not planned. We were told that the next living story is what is planned. The email literally says tune in to learn about the next chapter of the living story.

You are correct that it could have been covered in a blog post. There was 0 reason to do this event. But to say the community did not fashion this annoucement into something more is an outright lie.

I never said it would be an expansion, nor did I expect it.

1: We did not get an expansion at the end at LS4, leading many to think that LS5 might offer more expansion like content to keep people interested. Such as new especs.2: Especially when Anet overhyped it badly, making people think the reveal would be BIG!

Yet we got just served with more of the same.

Again, Anet is solely at fault here for mishandling it and creating false expectations.

[BorgCollective.4509]

@omgdracula.6345 said:I will keep this post short and to the point. But as my title says. Anet definitely did not need an event for this as it was info we knew. The community also should not have gotten excited about this being a new expansion because the announcement was not marketed as such and common sense would be enough to know it would not be an expansion.

Anet over marketed a blog post worth announcement, and the community took the hype and gave them self a set of false beliefs on what this would be.

Am I disappointed in the announcement? No there are some cool things coming. Will gw2 rise back to my main game? Nope.

While I'm not disappointed, generally when making a twitch feed, the company should be mindful that people think it means more really cool stuff is coming. Players getting their hopes up SHOULD ALWAYS be a good thing because it means they love the game and want more content and cool stuff. Putting this on the players at all is kind of insane. Completely insane. It's like saying to them that they should not expect more good stuff to come even when areanet pushes their twitch feeds and makes it seem like something good will come. To tell them to not get their hopes up is akin to saying it is basically a dead game and don't bother to care. If that is how things are around here then perhaps people should move on to another MMO.

[Danikat.8537]

They clearly said they were announcing the next season of the Living Story: "It’s almost time for you to set out on your next adventure. Are you ready to catch the very first look at an all-new chapter in Guild Wars 2‘s Living World story?"https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/news/join-us-for-a-special-live-event-on-august-30/

If anyone was expecting an expansion, or a WvW or PvP announcement or literally anything except the next season of the Living World it's down to their own lack of reading comprehension or wilful ignorance.

If you're disappointed because you were hoping for a different theme/setting/whatever for the next season (like the people who were convinced it would be set in the Unending Ocean) then that's somewhat understandable, although still not Anet's fault that you chose to set your hopes on a specific type of release they had not promised, but expecting something totally different is absurd.

[Crab Fear.1624]

This is more properly hyped.

[Dalec.9853]

@omgdracula.6345 said:

@Dalec.9853 said:How can you blame the players for expecting something, ArenaNet made a big deal of nothing. Isn't that fully on them? Yeah I know it's best to expect and hope for nothing from them but people we're looking at this for a decision on if to quit or wait it out from what I have seen; so there was hope there that it would have something actually targeted at the old core playerbase beyond the same as usual

Blame for expecting something, and blame for expecting something that they themselves mentally expect are two very different things. Targeting the old core playerbase is not a smart move monetarily wise. This game is 7 years old. Everyone I played this game with is married now and most have kids. It would be financially irresponsible to market to the core playerbase.

My main point is that you shouldn't blame the players for expecting more than something that could barely fill a blog post without half filling it with information about merchandise to make it look more than it is at first glance. It's not the players decision to live announce this so you can't blame them.

Curious though, who do you think the game should be made for now then? It would be irresponsible to throw away all care for players that have been there since day 1 as more people leaving does make the game look dead; I assume by making more of it F2P they hope for more kids to join begging for mommy/daddies card to use on the gem store, not sure how the 7 year old game is going to catch their attention though. And the parents are probably fed up of Fortnite nevermind something older and even less worthy of spending.

[omgdracula.6345]

@LucianDK.8615 said:

@omgdracula.6345 said:

@LucianDK.8615 said:Anet was squarely at fault here, drumming up too big excitement. Of course people is going to be disappointed when it turned out to be something that couldve been covered in a blog post.

Yea but it wasn't anything beyond what they stated it would be. All of you are ignoring the fact that the playerbase took the hype generated and overhyped it even more thinking this would be an expansion announcement. Which means very few people complaining have any common sense. We were told an expansion was not planned. We were told that the next living story is what is planned. The email literally says tune in to learn about the next chapter of the living story.

You are correct that it could have been covered in a blog post. There was 0 reason to do this event. But to say the community did not fashion this annoucement into something more is an outright lie.

I never said it would be an expansion, nor did I expect it.

1: We did not get an expansion at the end at LS4, leading many to think that LS5 might offer more expansion like content to keep people interested. Such as new especs.2: Especially when Anet overhyped it badly, making people thing the reveal would be BIG!

Yet we got just served with more of the same.

Again, Anet is solely at fault here for mishandling it and creating false expectations.

Your first point is again your fault as a community for thinking that. Not once has a living story chapter given us new elite specs or anything expansion worthy. Other than the mount in the last chapter.

Did they overhype it though? The email literally states "Tune in to learn more about the next living story chapter."

[omgdracula.6345]

@Crab Fear.1624 said:No. Only Anet is to blame.

Literally no one in this thread must have read the email. If you did you would not be in here complaining. Ill add a screenshot to the OP .

[omgdracula.6345]

@MetalGirl.2370 said:

@omgdracula.6345 said:

@MetalGirl.2370 said:

@omgdracula.6345 said:

@MetalGirl.2370 said:It's not players fault at all.They announced it month prior. Even adding ominous sounds and stuff to the game to hype it, had 2 day long count down.... for what? Merch ads ?They led people on... it's not players fault at all. Altho I learnt my lesson and wasn't excited for it at all, I wish others were smarter.

Apple does this literally every year. I am not sure what your point is? Most game series do this. Borderlands 3 is being super hyped up by the community for it. Well knowing it will just be a shooter with comedy thrown in.

What are you on about? At least BL3 has some content.... they dont hype it for month to show you merch.

Borderlands 3 has been hyped up for months now. Are you high? It has promises of content sure. But at its core it is going to be the same old borderlands we have been playing.

again, at least they didnt show you 2m trailer and other 30m just merch.Also now that you mention it, after what I watched .. i wish i was high.

Oh you're not? All of your replies led me to believe that. Sorry I did myself a bamboozle like this community did with this announcement and anet did thinking they needed to go this big for it.

[Suddenflame.2601]

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

@Suddenflame.2601 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

@Suddenflame.2601 said:Misleading is only if they went out of their way to misdirect which is not the case. I do say hosting a live event was probably a bit much for the content. But if you look at all promotional material it talkes specifically about the story and then lightly mentions other stuff. So in my mind, the focus is going to be on the story and lightly touch on other mechanics. Which is exactly what I got.

Now about the live event isn't it due to PAX being near?

Renting out a theater is misleading in of itself. Announcing that it was an important event is just that confirmation that Anet set a precedent and overhyped the situation. What they showed wasn't theater worthy.

This is on par with the Sunspear Refuge disappointment.

It was important to Anet and to the players who care about the story. And the theater being rented out was due to PAX: Fri., Aug. 30, 2019 – Mon., Sep. 2, 2019. So if you put that in mind it does makes sense. It allows the players who can't be on their computers a chance of gathering and seeing the announcement. So no the live event was just fine for what it was in this case.

It wasn't an announcement. It was a showcase of what the players already knew. Anet splitting hairs with their word choice to feign responsibility.

No, it was an announcement. I am not sure your definition of what announcement is but let's follow the written definition please and thank you. Just so you have the definition (a public and typically formal statement about a fact, occurrence, or intention). For some people who do not keep track of everything and play the game most of the stuff being talked about is "new" and required being announced.

The live event is for the players at PAX who can bring their friends to see the accountment as well.

So there is a very good logical reasoning for why it was done this way. For what you were expecting based on all available information I could find I have no clue what raised your expectations so much. It's like someone says I got exciting news and you asking if they are having a baby or moving to Tropics or something. When in reality they only had a good day at work and had news about a possible raise increase.