Work on new legendaries suspended

[Kazgrel]

Source:

Hi all,

In the upcoming Spring 2016 Quarterly Update, we’ll launch the new legendary short bow, Chuka and Champawat. The team outdid themselves on this one. This new precursor journey takes you through a memorable experience inspired by a real-world story, and the bow you craft at the end is the perfect commemoration of that journey. I hope you all check it out.

Last year we talked about plans to gradually build out a second set of legendary weapons through live content updates. That’s a big responsibility. We have a team of six developers working on that, who could work on it for years to come.

As game director I have to make tough trade-offs. One thing I believe is that we have to focus on the core game first before taking on additional responsibilities. I wrote in the Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto in 2010 that our vision was to create a living, dynamic world, where there’s always something to do. Let’s ensure we succeed on that front.

So, after shipping Chuka and Champawat, I’ve asked that we indefinitely suspend work on new legendary weapons. This team of developers will instead shift their efforts back to Living World style content, building new journeys and events for everyone to participate in.

I know this will be a controversial decision. I’ll hang out with you here on the forums for a little while today to discuss it. And I’m always available by email.

Mo

This one will sting a bit. First thing folks have started responding with is how this is a disappointment since new legendaries were part of what was advertised to come with HoT. While they have technically delivered on that, the expectation was a whole new series of weapons, sans aquatic ones (this was stated at some point).

Personally, it doesn't impact me much, for I never bothered to work on any of the legendaries. I never liked any of them I would've used for my ele (main), and even past that, I didn't care to grind out the stuff for, say, Sunrise (which is one of the few I actually liked).

[PixelFox]

Or like maybe the team of six people could spend less than a year on each new Legendary, lol.

[carnifex2005]

Heh. Isn't this just a kick in the teeth. What the hell is going over at ANet? They have seemed extremely disorganized since HoT launched. In addition, not many will care about a legendary short bow releasing since that is not a primary weapon in any meta and maybe a secondary meta weapon for thieves. That is it.

[Edge-]

This whole expansion feels like one disappointment after another for me : /

[Kazgrel]

It does make me wonder what else could be on the chopping block as times goes on. I've been very vocal about my disappointment with HoT on here, but that doesn't mean I want to see things like this happen (even if legendaries don't interest me much; there's a lot of other people who are willing to do the grind).

[carnifex2005]

I suspect we'll be hearing very soon about layoffs at ANet for the very first time since GW2 launched.

[Svifnymr]

This whole expansion feels like one disappointment after another for me : /

I mean, I assume they needed to deliver more $, so they went for the expansion, but it really killed off a lot of participation even before HoT, the content drought was pretty bad. Then HoT was disappointing, but followed up with another content drought! SO now they're talking about another expansion while also changing Living World to a quarterly release?

I didn't see any bragging about the sales of HoT, so I assume they weren't as great as hoped.

[Shakadam]

Yeah this doesn't look good for Anet, at all.

Anet already have a legacy of not delivering on their promises. This is just another nail in that coffin.
I've been playing GW2 since day 1, and it's all fine and dandy hearing about reorganization and concentrating on core issues, but the problem is we've been hearing this for a long time now and NOTHING EVER FUCKING COMES OF IT! They're constantly redesigning stuff and very rarely actually delivering something new, unless ofc it's gemstore skins which they seem to be very capable of pumping out completely new sets every couple of weeks. Meanwhile they take full price for an expansion delivering a paper thin story which anyone can complete in a few hours and the rest of the expansion is basically just fluff. Lots of repeated event grinding for that 1 skin or that 1 achievement, and now they're cancelling stuff that was promised as a part of the expansion? It all stinks tbh.

[Gray_Matter]

I suspect we'll be hearing very soon about layoffs at ANet for the very first time since GW2 launched.

That doesn't make any sense. They have been consistent earners over time. That said, I think this is related to revenue. Legendaries don't bring in any revenue. Living story does because they can spin in sales for every weeks release.

I don't like the living story content. It's too short. That's why I wanted an expansion but what they gave us was more grind zones like Silverwastes and Dry Top. They didn't give me what I wanted which was more zones like the launch zones. I got those types of zones with Living Story, why would I want to pay a boat load of money for more of that crap. They are seriously losing the plot here. I don't need content that you have to repeat 100 times to get anywhere. I want small group and solo content that I can do once or twice. At launch they gave me 25 zones like that and they haven't managed to do one since then.

[Deleted]

One year from now: "We are extremely sad to announce it but the Guild Wars 2 is being cancelled."

I'm serious, I wouldn't be surprised.

[Alydael]

I am glad they suspended work on more legendaries. I don't want there to be a hundred legendaries. They already added: a legendary mastery, legendary armor and some new legendaries with the x-pac. I do think they should add something else to the legendary mastery though. To get the new legendaries, you have to get to the top tier of the mastery. Now that there is less legendaries, that tier is not worth as much.

I am glad they are focusing on LS3. I like the living story content.

[Fencers]

Seems like a smart move. Creating 3D objects with unique interactions is a ton of work and expensive as fuck relative to other aspects of game development. Every time someone has to draw something, create a UI icon &/or specify the rules for interaction- you are talking money and development time of at least 2 teams. Like one guy can create geometry, write a quest line or re-balance skills; pfft, that's nothing.

GW2:HoT has had threadbare content delivery. Now that the base game is F2P the larger incentive is to introduce content that is playable by the largest majority of the player base. Legendary items are not content- why commit resources with a limited margin of ROI? Nonsense.

The error was Arena.net announcing a commitment to these fluff items. As any takeaway can be viewed negatively in the realm of low opinion; even if that takeaway is a net benefit or under performing aspect.

One year from now: "We are extremely sad to announce it but the Guild Wars 2 is being cancelled."

The game is Free-to-Play with multiple income streams. GW2 is not unprofitable and has only had historical growth and there is no evidence that no one is playing this game- the contrary in fact.

MMOs with an active player base of 30,000 can remain in business and profitable for years on end. I worked for such an MMO actually.

GW2 has a bit more than 30k players at the least. This game will be around for years barring a major shift in development (Guild Wars 3, another property taking development focus, etc).

It's incredibly foolish to make such a statement as Guild Wars 2 being canceled in a year within the context of some news here.

[Kazgrel]

Seems like a smart move. Creating 3D objects with unique interactions is a ton of work and expensive as fuck relative to other aspects of game development. Every time someone has to draw something, create a UI icon &/or specify the rules for interaction- you are talking money and development time of at least 2 teams. Like one guy can create geometry, write a quest line or re-balance skills; pfft, that's nothing.

GW2:HoT has had threadbare content delivery. Now that the base game is F2P the larger incentive is to introduce content that is playable by the largest majority of the player base. Legendary items are not content- why commit resources with a limited margin of ROI? Nonsense.

The error was Arena.net announcing a commitment to these fluff items. As any takeaway can be viewed negatively in the realm of low opinion; even if that takeaway is a net benefit or under performing aspect.

The game is Free-to-Play with multiple income streams. GW2 is not unprofitable and has only had historical growth and there is no evidence that no one is playing this game- the contrary in fact.

MMOs with an active player base of 30,000 can remain in business and profitable for years on end. I worked for such an MMO actually.

GW2 has a bit more than 30k players at the least. This game will be around for years barring a major shift in development (Guild Wars 3, another property taking development focus, etc).

It's incredibly foolish to make such a statement as Guild Wars 2 being canceled in a year within the context of some news here.

Players can only hope this is the silver lining; that enjoyable content comes as a result of the decision to halt legendary weapon development for now. That would suit me just fine; as I noted, I've pretty much never even tried grinding out a legendary in GW2. I have all ascended weapons on my main, and crafting additional ones for alts (if I were so inclined) would be a tiny fraction of the time/resources needed to get a legendary.

It's a wait-and-see approach for me. At this moment, Anet won't be getting another penny from me. I may load the game up and fart around if I'm really bored, but I doubt that comes to pass (FF14 has it's fangs in me once again).

[Tuesdays]

I have everything for Sunrise except Dawn, but I quit years ago.. I've never gotten so bored playing an mmo until I played GW2. I constantly felt like I had to feed the game gems to get any that looked decent, overall no progression was a pretty big turn off for me. I knew the game wasn't supposed to have a vertical progression style, but nothing was worth doing more than once, especially after that huge loot nerf early on after release.

[zito]

Wow a kick in the teeth indeed. Indefinitely? Why? So no new legendarys ever? To focus on the living world? There hasn't been a content update in months and you think 6 people is going to change that after you promised to release these new legs?

I'm kinda glad I retired from this.

[Fencers]

There hasn't been a content update in months and you think 6 people is going to change that after you promised to release these new legs?

6 people could be like half a team. More than half in some cases.

It's a lot easier to write quests, place markers and so on than creating unique object interactions.

[darkwarrior42]

Disappointing, but I'm not overly worried about it. I picked up the game again not too long ago, and I've been having a blast with it.... pretty much everything I enjoyed is still enjoyable, and most of what I was annoyed by has been improved or fixed in some fashion.

Still having more fun with GW2 than any of the other MMOs atm... will probably try out Legion when it comes out, but I'm not overly hopeful atm. I have zero faith that they can do the things that sound interesting well, and I still can't raid regularly.. so if the game becomes "level, have fun for a few weeks, then grind endlessly" like WoD was, I'd rather play GW2 or FFXIV... at least in those games when I grind for something I feel like I get something out of it and am making some kind of progress.

[Grinia]

God, the GW2 subreddit went up in flames over this. I think the drought and poor content implementation of Heart of Thorns made people severely angry, but this was the straw that broke the camel's back. A dev responded in one of the threads and he was basically chewed alive.

[Usagi Senshi]

Considering the low amount of people that most likely build the massive grind-a-thons (makes the FFXIV relics look like a walk in the park which is pretty fucking bad, especially for a cosmetic piece) that are legendary weapons, this is probably a correct choice. Mikle is most likely cleaning up the shitfest that Chuckefuck Colin built up over the last 4 years.

Gotta give a nod to such a ballsy move tbh.

[LilSaihah]

While it's a shame, it's good to know that they're reconsidering where they're placing their resources. ANet seems like it's had mid-upper management issues for a while; maybe this is them getting down to fixing that.

Mike is most likely cleaning up the shitfest that Chucklefuck Colin built up over the last 4 years.

Part of me is really optimistic and hopes this is the case. I think Colin very well might have had a terminal case of Molyneuxism. I find it very interesting that we're seeing this redirection of development resources so soon after hearing that they're bringing in someone new to control the feature creep of the WvW revamp.