Do you still play GW2 regularly?

[Solidito]

They've been doing little teaser events, but it hasn't started yet. The teaser events are pretty useless little events to earn some achievements.

Ah ok, cheers.

Are the teaser events fun or just something to waste time with/get achievement points?

[Edge-]

Actually they've reached a pretty happy equilibrium now since they went back and updated the HoT maps, they are far more casual friendly now.

Honestly, things are better but I still see a huge dip in players/enthusiasm with the expansion, especially with the fact that we've seen basically zero non-raiding content in the past year. I mean, Anet taking pretty much a full year to release LS S3 is ludicrous no matter how you slice it.

The fact raiding exists doesn't really hurt anyone, except maybe in their own imaginations.

I'd rather those dozen or so folks be put to work getting non-raiding content (you know, the stuff that made GW2 so popular to begin with) out faster and actually delivering on the promised legendary weapons etc. that Anet decided to axe post-HoT launch. And I say this as someone who doesn't even have a precursor or care about legendaries.

The biggest issue atm is there's been too long of a lag between HoT coming out and the new Living Story picking up... which has more to do with the need to go back over the HoT maps than it does to do with raiding or esports things.

Honestly...it's because Anet screwed up and released a pretty shit expansion. They got a nice revenue bump, but they clearly didn't pull back in a lot of lapsed players, and reaction to the new zones has been...divisive, to say the last. That's why, as you say, they've had to spend so much more time working to fix them and respond to player feedback that they apparently decided to entirely ignore while it was in testing.

I don't give a hoot about esports, but apparently it's a super effective marketing strategy for them, so if they can stick their marketing folks and a few developers on it, that's fine. But the expansion over just feels so small, and they've spent more time trying to fix it and get it into a reasonable shape than they have expanding the content and making it into a proper sized expansion.

GW2 grew and thrived on "easy" content, not "HARDCORE, CUPCAKE!" nonsense. They've abandoned a lot of their manifesto with this expansion and the big direction change, and honestly it doesn't look like it's panned out as well as they'd hoped. Case in point that they already have almost half the studio (IIRC 70 folks, and the studio is around 200 I think) working on the next expansion. I mean, I think that's good in a sense, because I think they need to get expansions out faster than every 3 years, but at the same time it does feel like they've already abandoned HoT in a sense and are looking for the next expansion to really get things back on track.

Yes, I'm still bitter about HoT -_-

[Deleted]

wasn't living story season 3 supposed to start in june/july?

[Thelxi]

I've been trying to get back into GW2, but I'm having a hard time staying interested.

[thilicen]

I do come back for content patches (not raids) but they are so scarce these days that I can hardly answer yes to that question.

[Deleted]

Almost every day. There are a ton of things I haven't done yet. Just slowly working my way through it. Don't really spend a lot of time in HoT zones, though, because they aren't that fun to play in vs the "old" world.

[vian]

Yes, I log on once a day to grab the reward.

[Svifnymr]

Yea the next story season should be starting soon, not at all sure how soon though

In a while or two, give or take a couple.

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Actually they've reached a pretty happy equilibrium now since they went back and updated the HoT maps, they are far more casual friendly now.

They hit an equilibrium to make them more palatable to the folks still around, but I don't think it did anything to regain the people that turned away when the expansion was so disappointing.

The fact raiding exists doesn't really hurt anyone, except maybe in their own imaginations. The biggest issue atm is there's been too long of a lag between HoT coming out and the new Living Story picking up... which has more to do with the need to go back over the HoT maps than it does to do with raiding or esports things.

They nixed the living story teams and reassigned folks to work on raids and do living story in batches, so it does affect it. There's no telling how much, and as you say they were returning to the HoT content as well as (theoretically) working on a new expansion.


All I can say is all those folks that screamed about no raids and too fast content, I wish they'd never listened to them!

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Ah ok, cheers.

Are the teaser events fun or just something to waste time with/get achievement points?

Waste of time. Though I've only done the latest one once, this big guy runs across the zone and you take down his break-bar to get the chance to damage him. I'm leveling another Jedi Consular instead. The others are "defend energy thingees" or "fight bandit champion" with an extra "fight legendary champion" possible. You'd probably get better loot running around Orr.

[Gray_Matter]

Almost every day. There are a ton of things I haven't done yet. Just slowly working my way through it. Don't really spend a lot of time in HoT zones, though, because they aren't that fun to play in vs the "old" world.

It depends which zones. Auric Basin is really nice. The tangled one is a nightmare.

[barackopala]

yeah, tbh i love AB, the other maps i dont care that much to be honest, DS really requires you to get in early for a good map, TD is a mess unless you know where you're going. The first map is kinda cool i guess, lots of gliding C:

[Jamie081]

Not regularly anymore. I'd play it frequently if its updates actually contained solid content and not just features that alter systems already in place.

They say the same thing with every update. A patch will lay down the foundations that they can expand upon in future updates... except they never expand on systems and just abandon them or completely rework them.

The same happened with HoT. They've said it "lays the foundations" for future updates yet we've received nothing but feature fluff since release. The raid doesn't count because they've just staggered its release.

[Deleted]

Bought it when it launched (deluxe edition i think). anyway i barely played it, my max lvl char is 23 :P

[Arlee]

wasn't living story season 3 supposed to start in june/july?

No, MO said back when he did the AMA that getting the next season going by July would be a tall order, and yet somehow people were still saying July. I'm hopeful we'll get it the end of this month/August.

They nixed the living story teams and reassigned folks to work on raids and do living story in batches, so it does affect it. There's no telling how much, and as you say they were returning to the HoT content as well as (theoretically) working on a new expansion.

That's actually not at all true. The only person who was working on the Living Story who is working with the raid teams now is Bobby Stein. The raid team is a mix of hired in new people and people who moved from other things (like were animators but are now doing design) etc. You know what did get people moved off living story? The expansion. The expansion that people bitched and moaned was needed for hype because the game needed hype for some stupid reason. So if you want to blame anything for the content drought blame people convincing Arenanet they needed to do expansions instead of updating through the living world and big features patches. That's where the real problem is.

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The raid doesn't count because they've just staggered its release.

Which is what every MMO does.

[Alydael]

Actually they've reached a pretty happy equilibrium now since they went back and updated the HoT maps, they are far more casual friendly now. The fact raiding exists doesn't really hurt anyone, except maybe in their own imaginations. The biggest issue atm is there's been too long of a lag between HoT coming out and the new Living Story picking up... which has more to do with the need to go back over the HoT maps than it does to do with raiding or esports things.

"The biggest issue atm is there's been too long of a lag between HoT coming out and the new Living Story picking up..."

I agree, but why do you think that is? It is because they have been focused on the raid. The raids take a lot of resources (just ask the WOW devs). I believe they should have held back the raid until the first HOT LS season completed. Or maybe alternate: First half of season LS, raid wing one, second half LS, raid wing 2, etc. They also should have designed the LS so it logically leads into the raid wing and maybe use it as a tool to promote the raids and get more people involved in the raids. The LS could have also been used to give HOT mastery and hp so that you don't have to grind the same content on your alts (and to help some people that have fallen behind to catch up).

[Arlee]

"The biggest issue atm is there's been too long of a lag between HoT coming out and the new Living Story picking up..."

I agree, but why do you think that is? It is because they have been focused on the raid. The raids take a lot of resources (just ask the WOW devs). I believe they should have held back the raid until the first HOT LS season completed. Or maybe alternate: First half of season LS, raid wing one, second half LS, raid wing 2, etc. They also should have designed the LS so it logically leads into the raid wing and maybe use it as a tool to promote the raids and get more people involved in the raids. The LS could have also been used to give HOT mastery and hp so that you don't have to grind the same content on your alts (and to help some people that have fallen behind to catch up).

No it's not because they have been focused on the raids at all. I'll spell it out for you

Expansion launches, yay expansion wooo.... Oh damn things need to be changed and fixed, ok lets do a bunch of fixes and changes before the holidays and we'll reassess after the holidays... New Year wooooo... hmm ok so there are some real issues with HoT we can either leave them as they are or fix those issues before moving on to the next story season... yea we should fix those issues, oh and in the meantime we are also restructuring things so we can also start working on the next expansion at the same time so we won't have a year to wait again... woot HoT fixes are out yay... Oh man, now it's been a long time since stuff came out hmmm... quick dissolve the legendary team and put them on quick events to give people something while we work to get the living story going asap!!!

^ That's what has been at work. The raid team is a very very small team. Scrapping them to put them to work on the Living Story wouldn't have fixed the issues but would have just pissed off the people who enjoy raiding as well. The honest truth with game development is simply throwing more people at a thing doesn't often result in the thing getting done any quicker.

[Svifnymr]

That's actually not at all true. The only person who was working on the Living Story who is working with the raid teams now is Bobby Stein. The raid team is a mix of hired in new people and people who moved from other things (like were animators but are now doing design) etc. You know what did get people moved off living story? The expansion.

Well, I did mention the expansion in the quote, so... :-p
But the other thing I mentioned was that they used to have 3-4 LS teams doing alternate schedules, then they consolidated them for LS2 so we ended up getting big batches of LS followed by gaps of nothingnewness. I'm sure there were folks from the LS teams reassigned to Raids, as well as Expansions, and other things, but heck if I know how Anet is laid out. There could also be some central bottlenecks where stuff is shared, like the teams may design their stuff independently but all route it through a single team for something.

By the same token, we don't know how well the LS episodes did, money/gem wise, but it'd be interesting to see how the loss of revenue over the year+ of no LS compares to the HoT revenue. Even retuning the HoT zones didn't bring back the guildies lost, but not sure how that translates into cash.

[Arlee]

Well, I did mention the expansion in the quote, so... :-p
But the other thing I mentioned was that they used to have 3-4 LS teams doing alternate schedules, then they consolidated them for LS2 so we ended up getting big batches of LS followed by gaps of nothingnewness. I'm sure there were folks from the LS teams reassigned to Raids, as well as Expansions, and other things, but heck if I know how Anet is laid out. There could also be some central bottlenecks where stuff is shared, like the teams may design their stuff independently but all route it through a single team for something.

By the same token, we don't know how well the LS episodes did, money/gem wise, but it'd be interesting to see how the loss of revenue over the year+ of no LS compares to the HoT revenue. Even retuning the HoT zones didn't bring back the guildies lost, but not sure how that translates into cash.

Yea... Honestly the two week content schedule was my favorite time period of playing GW2. If I had my way seasons would run on that schedule for 3-4 months... maybe take two months off to catch-up and then start again. /sigh That being said there were some distinct drawbacks to it. If you compare the story in S1 with S2, S2 was by far a more coherent story with a lot more momentum whereas S1 felt not at all cohesive and there was a lot of "so things are just happening for no reason... oh 'because Scarlet...ok'" Also we often forget S1 wasn't new story every two weeks, some of that were events and stuff. I think S2 is more of the goal they are aiming for where during the season we'll get chapters every few weeks or so and then longer breaks between seasons.

It's also worth considering what a raid wing takes to create and implement vs a living story... especially if we consider it wouldn't be weird for us to get new zones with the next season as well. It's really comparing an apple to a watermelon and it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I know it's easy and it's really frustrating to see other people get content while we're all sitting here wondering when... it just doesn't really fit in this case.

As far as money spent... I wish there was more to go here. I love data and I always prefer having more but with the way things get reported it's really difficult to take meaningful information from any of it. I wish I could see their gem sales and the rate of f2p conversions (which I think with the implementation of the lvl 8o boost it's safe to assume was lower than they hoped)... also average number of players logged in during various time periods... well now I'm getting way off track because really I want to know all the things

[Alydael]

No it's not because they have been focused on the raids at all. I'll spell it out for you

Expansion launches, yay expansion wooo.... Oh damn things need to be changed and fixed, ok lets do a bunch of fixes and changes before the holidays and we'll reassess after the holidays... New Year wooooo... hmm ok so there are some real issues with HoT we can either leave them as they are or fix those issues before moving on to the next story season... yea we should fix those issues, oh and in the meantime we are also restructuring things so we can also start working on the next expansion at the same time so we won't have a year to wait again... woot HoT fixes are out yay... Oh man, now it's been a long time since stuff came out hmmm... quick dissolve the legendary team and put them on quick events to give people something while we work to get the living story going asap!!!

^ That's what has been at work. The raid team is a very very small team. Scrapping them to put them to work on the Living Story wouldn't have fixed the issues but would have just pissed off the people who enjoy raiding as well. The honest truth with game development is simply throwing more people at a thing doesn't often result in the thing getting done any quicker.

I still disagree. They used to use alternating teams to get content out faster. The raid team could have been used as such to get content out faster. Although many were excited to see GW2's take on raids (myself included), you have to remember the game launched and did great without any promise of raids at all. I feel like getting the next LS going was more important to most players (and the game as a whole) than getting the whole raid done first.

[Svifnymr]

Yea... Honestly the two week content schedule was my favorite time period of playing GW2. If I had my way seasons would run on that schedule for 3-4 months... maybe take two months off to catch-up and then start again. /sigh That being said there were some distinct drawbacks to it. If you compare the story in S1 with S2, S2 was by far a more coherent story with a lot more momentum whereas S1 felt not at all cohesive and there was a lot of "so things are just happening for no reason... oh 'because Scarlet...ok'" Also we often forget S1 wasn't new story every two weeks, some of that were events and stuff. I think S2 is more of the goal they are aiming for where during the season we'll get chapters every few weeks or so and then longer breaks between seasons.

Season1 had a random pace at first, but smoothed into the two week setup soon enough. It was a bit random in story, certainly, but I also think that helped the feel of a "real world" in some ways rather than just one trek after another.
Season2 had some nice story telling, but some awful "boss battle" crap for each episode, which HoT kept in their story. Repetitive encounters where you learn a pattern and then repeat it for 10 minutes, hoping you don't DC or glitch or something. Been playing TOR this month, which tracks your development along the quest parts, vs GW2's habit of resetting your instance whenever you leave.

It's also worth considering what a raid wing takes to create and implement vs a living story... especially if we consider it wouldn't be weird for us to get new zones with the next season as well. It's really comparing an apple to a watermelon and it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I know it's easy and it's really frustrating to see other people get content while we're all sitting here wondering when... it just doesn't really fit in this case.

I'm just thinking of back in the old RPG book days, when a publisher might have 3-4 lines rolling along at their own pace, meanwhile only having the one art department. So schedules always got hurt when they hit the bottleneck. Not sure how much terrain or stuff that a raid needs, but is that the same guys that need to be designing terrain for LS3 or Nextpac?

I dunno, but seems it still have an impact, even if not a 6 month one.

As far as money spent... I wish there was more to go here. I love data and I always prefer having more but with the way things get reported it's really difficult to take meaningful information from any of it. I wish I could see their gem sales and the rate of f2p conversions (which I think with the implementation of the lvl 8o boost it's safe to assume was lower than they hoped)... also average number of players logged in during various time periods... well now I'm getting way off track because really I want to know all the things

Yeah, I'm always curious about things like this. There's also the fact that any reaction to trends is probably a year later than the trend, so who knows.

[Arlee]

I still disagree. They used to use alternating teams to get content out faster. The raid team could have been used as such to get content out faster. Although many were excited to see GW2's take on raids (myself included), you have to remember the game launched and did great without any promise of raids at all. I feel like getting the next LS going was more important to most players (and the game as a whole) than getting the whole raid done first.

I was going to reply and talk about how you aren't really understanding the scope difference between even a single LS chapter and that of a raid wing, but I think it's probably better to agree to disagree there.

About people wouldn't have cared if they didn't get the next wings until after the living story started and that might be true of you and yours, but the rate at which the wings came out was almost too slow for many of the raiders I see on the forums and reddit. Slowing it down more would have been a big deal. Yes the game was "fine" for many of us without raids but you have to remember the reason they implemented them was no raids was a huge complaint about the game. It isn't as if Colin woke-up one morning and was all "hey we should add raids for no reason what so ever". The demand is and was there and we shouldn't pretend it isn't.

Season1 had a random pace at first, but smoothed into the two week setup soon enough. It was a bit random in story, certainly, but I also think that helped the feel of a "real world" in some ways rather than just one trek after another.
Season2 had some nice story telling, but some awful "boss battle" crap for each episode, which HoT kept in their story. Repetitive encounters where you learn a pattern and then repeat it for 10 minutes, hoping you don't DC or glitch or something. Been playing TOR this month, which tracks your development along the quest parts, vs GW2's habit of resetting your instance whenever you leave.

I dunno, but seems it still have an impact, even if not a 6 month one.

The pace of the first few Season 1 updates was awful... but that's not what I was referring specifically when I said it was disjointed. I was referring to the storytelling. It's excruciatingly easy to tell where the group divides were on the updates which just makes for poor storytelling. There was also more "breaks" in the story part than I remembered. Lets just go through it real quick for shits and giggles

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/

The Secret of Southsun & Last Stand at Southsun - Group 1
Dragon Bash & Sky Pirates of Tyria - Group 2
Bazaar of the four winds & Cutthroat Politics - Group 3
Queen's Jubilee & Clockwork Chaos - Group 4
SAB & Tequatl Rising (break from the season story) - Different Teams not on Living Story
Twilight Assualt & Blood and Madness (still no real continuation of the season) - the revamp of the FU TA path is related to LS but not something the LS teams specifically did and B&M obviously is not part of LS
Tower of Nightmares & The Nightmares Within - Group 1
Fractured & A Very Merry Wintersday - again not LS stuff done by others
BREAK!
The Origins of Madness - Group 2
Edge of the Mists - again related but not actually part of the LS and mostly done by WvW teams
Escape From Lion's Arch - Group 3
Battle for Lion's Arch - Group 4
Battle for Lion's Arch Aftermath - Group 1

It's just far less cohesive then what we got with Season 2. And do agree with you about the boss battles in Season 2 which looking back I think probably had a lot to do with them switching to adding new zones with the Story and having most of the actual story take place in an instance, rather than adding new things to existing zones. I'm hopeful they'll remember lessons learned from that thought and the boss parts of the season will be better.

I'm just thinking of back in the old RPG book days, when a publisher might have 3-4 lines rolling along at their own pace, meanwhile only having the one art department. So schedules always got hurt when they hit the bottleneck. Not sure how much terrain or stuff that a raid needs, but is that the same guys that need to be designing terrain for LS3 or Nextpac?

I can honestly tell you in this case that isn't the issue. They've pretty solidly split people into the different groups in an effort to get things out faster. Of course they've been looking for a bunch of programmers and designers for awhile, but if they are smart those are mostly for xpac related things and they already have their current teams working at full capacity, you can only add so many people to a project before having so many people slows things down I'm still super annoyed MO went and said exactly how many people are working on each thing during the AMA, though I am surprised more people aren't more annoyed at 70 devs being devoted to the next expansion with 30 going between live and the next expansion then they are that the raids team exists Of course I am wandering off in stream of contentiousness stuff now