Colin Johanson livestream at noon looks at the future of GW2

[Karizee]

Join us for a Livestream on July 16 at noon PDT with Game Director Colin Johanson, who will explain our Living World approach and take a look into the future.

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2

[zito]

Colin is wearing a "I like evon" pin.

ENOUGH SAID PEOPLE VOTE FOR EVON

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Aehterblade and molten facilty will come back with the new fractal.

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CD and elona not planned for this year

/sigh

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Confirmed fall of abaddon is about abaddon before nightfall when he was still one of the 6 gods.

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LFG system is almost done

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No new professions anytime soon because the current 8 covered most generally.

[Karizee]

Recording of the livestream:

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/2585362

[Valeron]

If you just want to read a quick summary of what was talked about, GW2Hub put one together

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/news/gu...tch-transcript

[zed zebes]

I got a sense from the twitch stream that the chorus of anger over the Living World has started to make them back away from the idea of releasing expansion like content in episodic, story-driven bi-weekly releases. That kind of saddens me. I hope I'm wrong about that vibe. I liked the idea of the world growing at a natural pace. I liked the idea that new areas will be discovered by the playerbase instead of just suddenly appearing in the world. It gives the sense that the players are discovering these lands and leading towards Tyrian expansion rather than what players are used to, which is that is sort of an accepted mechanism of MMOs. "We're in new areas now that were right next to us before because expansion."

I do understand the enjoyment of having a big chunk of content to sink your teeth into, but I was very interested in the experience of new lands being discovered by players. You know, an MMO Oregon Trail of sorts.

[Scyth]

Confirmed fall of abaddon is about abaddon before nightfall when he was still one of the 6 gods.

That is still good enough for me. VOTE FOR EVON!

[Exroyal]

I'm more excited about the blog post on Thursday (?) now. I like the juicy news. Sad about Crystal Dessert, but oh well, still happy we get Abaddon.

[zed zebes]

The Crystal Desert wasn't confirmed or denied. It was just sidestepped. Though I suppose you could take the lack of confirmation as a sign it won't be coming soon.

[Exroyal]

We'd be lying to ourselves if we didn't think that the Crystal Dessert would be coming. It's just that it won't come this year, maybe next year if we're lucky.

[Lane]

I got a sense from the twitch stream that the chorus of anger over the Living World has started to make them back away from the idea of releasing expansion like content in episodic, story-driven bi-weekly releases.

Until very recently most of the LS updates have been terrible. I'd say that's just my opinion, but obviously a lot of other people agreed. I will say that I did like the Aetherblade JP and Zephyr Sanctum is cool, but I could have done with or without everything preceding that, most of which I only did for the achievements and not because it was actually fun or interesting (because it was neither).

I think their problem was linking the idea of anything expansion wise with "Living World/Story" because those words just evoke thoughts of lackluster updates that are little more than a new set of temporary, grindy achievements for a stupid title or back piece, with no real substance. You can't really blame them since that's all we've been given for the past ~6 months. Anet really needed to show something beefier/more spectacular for people to be like, "Oh, yay!"

There are even complaints from people saying, "When you release new content, that forces people to play! You said your game wasn't going to be like that!" So I guess no content is preferable to content because content makes you play the game as opposed to there being no content, so you don't play the game? So why are you playing in the first place?

The problem is this 2-week cycle they've set for themselves combined with temporarily available content/achievements. I play every day (at least to do the daily) and even I find it a pain in the ass. It seems like they're getting better about leaving achievements open to be completed for longer periods of time, but I know I'm not the only one who missed out on things in the past especially since their communication about exactly how long you have to complete something is very poor.

I still maintain that I would prefer a 4-8 week update schedule with more substantial content and at least a month in which to complete ALL of the achievements.

[zito]

I still maintain that I would prefer a 4-8 week update schedule with more substantial content and at least a month in which to complete ALL of the achievements.

It takes no longer then a day to complete the achievements unless it's specifically over a period of time (like the charged quartz crystals) and you have a month to complete it but new updates roll out every 2 weeks. You have plenty of time to finish everything. In fact more then plenty.

I usually finish everything around 3-4 day after release of said content and I'm a casual player. I think people are complaining that they have less time on their hands and that Anet should cater to them which is BS.

[zed zebes]

I think a good example of their trial & error with Living World is the start of Dragon Bash.

People wanted the wings. There was an RNG chance for the wings and then an achievement to get them. Initially, you needed 10 achievements to get the wings, but two achievements didn't count because PVE players didn't work to be "forced" into playing Dragon Ball Arena. So, all that was left was basically cow clicker achievements. Even then, it was a lot of clicking to even get close to ten, so they reduced it to eight achievements needed.

The overall experience sucked. However, once the story segments came out, getting the achievement was pretty easy. The story part was the first good part of the Dragon Bash (other than Dragon Ball), and it banged out six quick achievements... making the wings suddenly easy and far more enjoyable to get.

Basically, ANet could have saved themselves and players some grief by having the story events at the launch of Dragon Bash or by allowing Dragon Ball to count. But due to the order in which they released the events of Dragon Bash, everyone saw it as lazy achievements instead of the easy achievement it became once the story sequence was released.

So you look at how Bazaar of the Four Winds opened, and all the fun stuff is there right at the start. The competitive mini-game is not excluded from the reward achievement and the event begins with the small story segment about Evon and Kiel.

[Lane]

It takes no longer then a day to complete the achievements unless it's specifically over a period of time (like the charged quartz crystals) and you have a month to complete it but new updates roll out every 2 weeks. You have plenty of time to finish everything. In fact more then plenty.

I usually finish everything around 3-4 day after release of said content and I'm a casual player. I think people are complaining that they have less time on their hands and that Anet should cater to them which is BS.

I have the time, I just don't like feeling rushed. I don't want to have to do everything in 2 weeks. I don't care if it would only take a day if I buckled down and did it. That's not really fun for me and unfortunately that's what I've been having to deal with for most of the LS updates. I want the leisure of getting to it when I feel like it so it might actually be fun instead of, "Crap, I need to do this before Tuesday when it's disabled and I'll never be able to do it."

I kept putting off Molten Facility because I really did not want to run the dungeon. My bf says to me that he wants the gauntlets from the meta achievement so I'm like, fine, let's do MF on Sunday (his next day off). Oh wait, Sunday they shut down MF almost a full 3 days before the supposed end of the event and with no warning. Awesome! Needless to say, neither of us got our metas and he never got his gauntlets. That's the BS I'm talking about that I hate.

It wasn't until the weekend after the Zephyr Sanctum update that I got around to any of it and when I logged it I didn't feel that sense of, "Oh, let's see what's new and shiny!" it was, "Alright, let's see how much crap I have to grind out before it's disabled." I don't want to feel that way. So, if the way things are has been working for you, that's great. I'm saying it doesn't work for how I would like to play.

[zito]

I have the time, I just don't like feeling rushed. I don't want to have to do everything in 2 weeks.

You have a month. You have plenty of time I don't know why you are complaining. (Even 2 weeks is plenty of time, 2 whole weeks! If you play an hour a day you can get that shit done in less then a week)

I kept putting off Molten Facility because I really did not want to run the dungeon. My bf says to me that he wants the gauntlets from the meta achievement so I'm like, fine, let's do MF on Sunday (his next day off). Oh wait, Sunday they shut down MF almost a full 3 days before the supposed end of the event and with no warning. Awesome! Needless to say, neither of us got our metas and he never got his gauntlets. That's the BS I'm talking about that I hate.

That's your fault, Anet gave a respectable large time limit for people like always. You put it off till the very last second because you didn't want to do it.

I'm saying it doesn't work for how I would like to play.

A month

You have a month for each update

That's a reasonable amount of time. No excuses. 672 hours, takes less then 24 of those hours to do everything except the "do this every day" achievement.

[Meledelion]

The main issue to me is that the story isn't progressing. I expected to be fighting big dragons and we're just defeating weak random bosses who come out of nowhere...

TBH Zhaitan wasn't even worth the trouble of going through LS, he was a push-over and really boring.

To me it feels a lot like series that just keep going on side-stories without ever rounding up the real questions. We now know that there won't be anymore dragons for at least a year, which is a very big let down and TBH I doubt many people find fighting foes who hardly matter worth it.

[zito]

The main issue to me is that the story isn't progressing. I expected to be fighting big dragons and we're just defeating weak random bosses who come out of nowhere...

They said it will make sense "later


of course it will

TBH Zhaitan wasn't even worth the trouble of going through LS, he was a push-over and really boring.

Zhaitan fight went into 3 stages:

Release: Bugged, he did nothing for half the fight
Bug Fix: He summons hydra heads (replica of his heads) onto the ship to destroy the cannons. On top of the endless army of adds and veteran adds, and a few champions
Nerf: Hydras removed, veterans/champions turned into normal mobs, reduced the amount of adds.

I liked it when there was endless adds and hydra heads and it made it seem like all hope is lost. However zhaitans power and only power is to control the dead so yea.

[Lane]

You have a month. You have plenty of time I don't know why you are complaining. (Even 2 weeks is plenty of time, 2 whole weeks! If you play an hour a day you can get that shit done in less then a week)

That's your fault, Anet gave a respectable large time limit for people like always. You put it off till the very last second because you didn't want to do it.

Molten Facility was active less than 2 weeks (April 30-May 12), and it closed almost a full 3 days before the end of the event with no announcement to that effect. Three days -- on a Sunday -- before the end of Flame & Frost is not what I consider waiting until "the very last second".

Dragon Bash is the first event I can recall that didn't have some achievement cutoff at around the 2-week mark and I'm not sure it was part of the Living Story, I think it might be an annual event. As I said, it seems like since then they've been giving people more time to complete objectives.

Two weeks is not enough time for me, sorry. You're free to disagree all you like, it doesn't change the fact that I personally want more time than that so that I don't feel rushed. A month is really the bare minimum for me. As long as they stick to at least that then it's fine, but they haven't been for very long.

[zito]

Two weeks is not enough time for me, sorry.

You kept putting it off and Molten facility was 2 weeks. And they clearly advertise what event runs how long.

Update: Xmonth/day - Xmon/day it's usually one of the first things you read.

But like I said you kept putting it off, it's not that you didn't have time for it, you didn't want to do it till your BF made you.

Don't know what else to tell you except it's not Anet problem you can't spend 30 min out of 336 hours to run a dungeon. They said the time frame, dungeon was quite simple didn't take long.

[Lazuli]

Temporary content is still a fucktarded idea, I don't like the whole "I was there, derp!" aspect they're going for, but whatevs. I guess attempting to force your playerbase be special snowflakes is one way to get them to play your game, I've missed like 5 and still don't give a shit. I prefer permanent content, through and through. This actually makes me play LESS.

/rant over

Sigh at the no new professions, and that they're going to keep focusing on skills because they're just sooo amazing at that. Missed archetypes? Ugh... just add a time mage or something cool that was going into GW1. I want to see dervish as well as paragon. Glad they are finally adding relevant GW lore though, Glint was the best dragon evar and Abbadon was cool I'd like to know his full story.. you know, before I banished him and all (or rather kormir the dumb whore)

[zito]

Temporary content is still a fucktarded idea

It's good then they have a small team working on 2 week updates while larger teams focus on bigger updates in the background instead of solely focusing on "big updates" like MMO's usually do.

So wait you get those big updates every 4-6 months that other MMO's do? AND temp content every 2 weeks?

Holy shit balls