GW2: S02E03 The Dragon's Reach - Part 1

[Karizee]

Maybe Halloween will be VERY dark this year, with rampant Mordremoth corruption and players and NPCs hanging strangled from vines everywhere....

And the Mad King laughing at it all.

[Kelimbror]

Decorations *snip* debris

I get it, but decorating debris is a wholly unappealing aesthetic for me. I'd rather it just be moved somewhere else and don't understand why they would use a destroyed city for a celebration when they have multiple functioning, non destroyed cities. It's a toss up for me between their living world and gameplay/aesthetics remaining fun.

I love a great story and continuity, but if it ruins my enjoyment I start to not like it. I guess we'll just wait and see. I still think the midseason break would have been timed perfectly with the holidays. I'm going to be nerdstressed if I have to try and do a story update AND holidays. I'll be cracking out on the game being irresponsible....and that's just no good.

[Kalcheus]

I can't imagine they'll be running holidays concurrent to season 2 living story

[Kelimbror]

Maybe Halloween will be VERY dark this year

They pull a crazy and have a completely new theme complete with a new jumping puzzle that's even crazier than the clocktower. Mad Scarlet's Clocktower: Revenge of the Clocks. Maybe we'll have some little shop of horrors stuff going on? Plant theme. Anything is possible.

[Arlee]

My honest guess is the Month of August will be the break, they'll start back up in September, the last part of season 2 will be Oct 14th, and then Mad King will be Oct. 28th.

[Kelimbror]

I can't imagine they'll be running holidays concurrent to season 2 living story

I don't think so either, but I don't think people would be entirely happy with a 4-6 month content break UNLESS the holidays are also new stuff. That may be their plan.

[Svifnymr]

I get it, but decorating debris is a wholly unappealing aesthetic for me. I'd rather it just be moved somewhere else and don't understand why they would use a destroyed city for a celebration when they have multiple functioning, non destroyed cities. It's a toss up for me between their living world and gameplay/aesthetics remaining fun.

I would really like if every other patch (once a month) fixed more of Lions Arch. At least get rid of the debris and get some scaffolding/ buildings started.

I think some of the changes are actually good from a layout perspective, it's just the debris that has gotten tiresome. At least patch the bridges!

[TequilaFlavor]

I would really like if every other patch (once a month) fixed more of Lions Arch. At least get rid of the debris and get some scaffolding/ buildings started.

I think some of the changes are actually good from a layout perspective, it's just the debris that has gotten tiresome. At least patch the bridges!

I agree, it would be nice to see subtle changes in every patch.

[Gray_Matter]

Personally I'd be severely pissed off if LA was completely or even mostly fixed already. Heck I'm going to be annoyed if they just rebuild it exactly how it was. Yes I loved it before and I do miss that, but a quick rebuilding or having everything go back to how it was would completely undermine the big dealness of it being destroyed in the first place.

I would also prefer it if it didn't look the same as it did previously. I would also love them to make little daily changes. Have small pieces fixed every day

[Karizee]

I would also prefer it if it didn't look the same as it did previously. I would also love them to make little daily changes. Have small pieces fixed every day

Hmm, that's expecting a LOT from an MMO, most rarely if ever see any map changes.

We've already had 4 iterations of Lion's Arch in the last few months (not counting any of the holiday iterations like Halloween, Dragon's Bash, Wintersday). Josh Foreman spoke about it briefly on a recent Ready Up livestream, how they design the map in various stages of destruction/renewal.

[Kelimbror]

Yeah I'm not going to lie...their dev team is impressive. When you consider other games take half a decade just to repair damage to a main city and Anet is tossing out multiple iterations of zones on the regular. It kinda puts a lot of other games to shame.

[Karizee]

I don't think players would appreciate having to DL a patch every day to I dunno, get a few bricks around the crate and barrel hobo bank of Lion's Arch either ;-)

[zito]

Yeah I'm not going to lie...their dev team is impressive. When you consider other games take half a decade just to repair damage to a main city and Anet is tossing out multiple iterations of zones on the regular. It kinda puts a lot of other games to shame.

how long has it been a year and 2 months for raiding SoO?

[Fencers]

When you consider other games take half a decade just to repair damage to a main city and Anet is tossing out multiple iterations of zones on the regular. It kinda puts a lot of other games to shame.

There are many factors both internal and external to the development of video games that could cause a development team to focus elsewhere than zone iteration. Depending on the game's design architecture, engineering, budget, team allocation, design focus, content pipeline, etc- it may not be a fair comparison for other games vis-a-vis Guild Wars 2.

GW2's content cadence is impressive, I don't mean to suggest otherwise. Though GW2's content delivery is very likely to be caused by how Arena.net structured the game, built their development tools, organize dev teams and what aspects of the game they chose to focus upon.

Game development is... all over the place. Every studio does things a little differently and it is not always possible to replicate the style of development another studio puts in practice. So it's not just a matter of saying, "Carbine/Bioware/Blizzard, you should do it like these guys!"

I understand from a consumer POV the actual content delivery is paramount. Not the process. I consider that a totally fair and valid perspective. Such that I promote the notion every consumer should ask; "What am I getting here (in a given game) that I cannot get elsewhere cheaper &/or better?"

However, the reality is many studios develop and design differently from each other. Not all games have the same ends either.

[Karizee]

It is rather amusing to watch the constant stream of "omg what happened to this place?" and "where is the mystic forge now?" and "can you no longer get to the vista above the trader's forum?" in LA map chat.

I saw some fool offering free ports to the pirate JP a couple days ago, sending unsuspecting players to a dark death in the new pit there.

[Arlee]

It is rather amusing to watch the constant stream of "omg what happened to this place?" and "where is the mystic forge now?" and "can you no longer get to the vista above the trader's forum?" in LA map chat.

I saw some fool offering free ports to the pirate JP a couple days ago, sending unsuspecting players to a dark death in the new pit there.

Dude, I was working on map completion in LA the other day (first time since the destruction) and there were a lot of points where I was confused about how to get to certain spots. It's sad, awesome, and interesting all at the same time.

- - - Updated - - -

It is rather amusing to watch the constant stream of "omg what happened to this place?" and "where is the mystic forge now?" and "can you no longer get to the vista above the trader's forum?" in LA map chat.

I saw some fool offering free ports to the pirate JP a couple days ago, sending unsuspecting players to a dark death in the new pit there.

Dude, I was working on map completion in LA the other day (first time since the destruction) and there were a lot of points where I was confused about how to get to certain spots. It's sad, awesome, and interesting all at the same time.

[Kelimbror]

GW2's content delivery is very likely to be caused by how Arena.net structured the game, built their development tools, organize dev teams and what aspects of the game they chose to focus upon.

Exactly...which is why I disagree, as a consumer, that you can't compare to other games. It's pretty simple. It's because of all of these factors that they are able to deliver a more dynamic update experience for the player. That is paramount. Now I wouldn't go so far as to compare content consumption or enjoyment, because I enjoy all MMOs regardless of their time to production or methods, but as far as how quickly they can iterate, change the world, and provide new experiences...it's the best I've ever seen in an MMO to this date. Only Vanilla Rift, which I didn't get to experience personally (but can evidence via update history) has done so much in so little time.

[Karizee]

GW2's content cadence is impressive, I don't mean to suggest otherwise. Though GW2's content delivery is very likely to be caused by how Arena.net structured the game, built their development tools, organize dev teams and what aspects of the game they chose to focus upon.

Speaking of development tools, I know they continue to invest deeply into them, constantly upgrading and creating more tools. Spoke with a dev ingame a few months back, that's all he does is make tools for the development teams.

It explains in part the impressive speed in which we get updates and how they are much meatier now with new art assets everywhere than say at the beginning of Season 1.

[Kalcheus]

Exactly...which is why I disagree, as a consumer, that you can't compare to other games. It's pretty simple. It's because of all of these factors that they are able to deliver a more dynamic update experience for the player. That is paramount. Now I wouldn't go so far as to compare content consumption or enjoyment, because I enjoy all MMOs regardless of their time to production or methods, but as far as how quickly they can iterate, change the world, and provide new experiences...it's the best I've ever seen in an MMO to this date. Only Vanilla Rift, which I didn't get to experience personally (but can evidence via update history) has done so much in so little time.

The issue is faulting 10-yr Game X for not having features that 2-yr Game Y2 has. It's easy to say "WoW should do this" but that doesn't mean it's easy for WoW to actually do it.

Take dyes for example. People really want dyes in WoW. The problem is the art in WoW wasn't designed with dyes in mind. To implement dyes would require them to redo the art on thousands of items, and Khaz help them if the final appearance of Shaman T7 doesn't perfectly match with how it looks now. Is it actually worth that effort? So far Blizzard has decided no. And I suspect considering what would be lost in order to implement dyes, most players would agree with this.

[Fencers]

Exactly...which is why I disagree, as a consumer, that you can't compare to other games.

I said you can and should. XD

Only that the manner in which a game is "built" (so to speak) is often responsible for the bulk of content delivery. It's just not that easy to change an entire development procedure and develop new tools that integrate preexisting systems to match the "other guys".

To some degree, you'd be changing livelihoods. Like for your employees. That is even assuming you have developers, designers, artists, engineers and programers and project managers skilled in the areas you would be moving them to anew.

Speaking of development tools, I know they continue to invest deeply into them, constantly upgrading and creating more tools. Spoke with a dev ingame a few months back, that's all he does is make tools for the development teams.

Jon Peters does a lot of the engineering w/r/t tools for Anet despite the fact he works in design now. He's very good. We met him in San Francisco at a conference once. Shy guy.