[Merged] Feedback about today's Icebrood Saga announcement

[rchristianhk.3914]

nah they wont read it... or they will just ignore it like alwayes. They will just keep milking gw as long as they can

[Iozeph.5617]

> @"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.

 

Bad example because Borderlands 3 is going to be a complete game that will offer a co-op experience and probably deliver on good action and story without nickling and diming you at every turn with worthless cash shop items.

[Devildoc.6721]

What was announced was fine, but should have been done in a blog post with trailer video like other LS announcements. Livestreaming with an event and announcing said event months in advance .. has only been done for expansions, so take into account how you present new information and how it affects people's expectations. Had this been just a blog post, almost everyone would just be looking forward to when it drops. This announcement was in the same vein as the Diablo Immortal announcement.

[Vavume.8065]

> @"LaFurion.3167" said:

> COMMUNICATE with us. Is there more??? Or is that it?

 

I think this is the thing I have wondered most about after watching the announcement, I feel like there has to be more that they are holding back as a surprise but right now I feel that that approach is back firing on them, because everyone is now out with the pitchforks, myself included.

[ricky markham.8173]

in truth if they would have held cooking announcement to this livestream and theatre event i wouldnt have been so disappointed. they really should have waited on the cooking to 500 also jewelry announcement then i would have felt this big thing was something. i think anet has to tailor there announcements better. the cooking thing being a big thing and given little announcement compared huge announcement and pretty much giving us stuff we almost already knew or could guess. its funny how i went with ecstatic over cooking and soon jewelry announcement to meh over this one. yeah strike might be a good idea the least they could have done was given us a nugget to what was coming after the next season and it didnt have to include anything about what was in it it could have been hey and yes ls6 will be coming after five announcement

[SnowMochi.7602]

> @"UNOwen.7132" said:

> They were made defunct for a simple reason. Theyre just inferior fractals. There is no reason to make a dungeon when you can make it a fractal, which automatically gives it difficulty scaling (which dungeons badly needed long before they were abandoned), and makes it possible to actually be relevant to the games lore. Dungeons pretty much only were played for the gold for months if not years prior to their abandonment. And once that gold went away, people quit in droves.

 

My guildies and I actually loved the stories in the dungeons and how they tied in with the NPCs' stories. We enjoyed the layout and the fights.

Earning gold in there was only the gravy for us, not the meat of the dish. These days, we still head to dungeons to play, even though the monetary rewards aren't what they used to be.

 

I've tried fractals and didn't like them as much - but that's just me.

Even so, I wouldn't get rid of them because I know others prefer them, but hey, to each his (or her) own. :)

 

 

[Blockhead Magee.3092]

Others have said it, but its worth repeating. I didn't expect anything and I was still disappointed.

 

I still don't know why they tried to make a big deal out of it (grade school plays have better production value). Yay templates - something virtually every player expected when the game was released. Hardly worth the hype of a live announcement.

[ugrakarma.9416]

people complaning about expansion makes non-sense, expansion is just like a delayed LSW season(new maps+new history) and the released in a one blow instead of 2~3 months cadence.

[Iozeph.5617]

> @"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?

 

Because they're desperate for a reason to keep playing gw2 at a time when everybody else out there is getting better updates and additions to their games of choice. And if they have friends and don't live in a vacuum they know this because people tend to talk a lot about things they're enthused about. They stream, or post on social media about it, or make a general nuisance of themselves in regular conversation because they want you to share in that excitement.

 

What do we have to be enthused about here? What was shown that would be worth sharing or boasting about in order to try and recruit one of those friends to play here?

 

Nothing. But you don't stop people from hoping, even if it's in vain. Take everything else away from them, but the moment you take their hope it's over.

[Acheron.4731]

> @"LaFurion.3167" said:

> I'll keep it simple. Guild wars 2 needs content. The rate at which living world or sagas are released is way too slow. People need REPEATABLE content as an end game. Repeatable pve content (fractals/raids), repeatable pvp content (such as arenas, or far far more maps for conquest), and your unique amazing game mode wvw needs more content (duels, better or updated maps etc)

>

>

> Basically what you guys rented out a theater for to tell around 30k viewers was that you were restructuring (cool. Not content), and that the saga would be taking place in the north vs jormag. Okay...

>

>

> Living world releases had never had content for more than 6 hours of play. People wait months for a release then zoom through it in 4 hours.

>

> So when you hyped it up as much as you did, people at the very least were expecting elite specializations, or s new race. But NOBODY cares about some spirits mastery that we will never appreciate. Its on the same level as bouncing mushroom or adrenal glands. Its.... nothing.

>

> And the quality of life is long overdue so I won't whinge about that. Finally we are getting it, so that's that.

>

> But there is no content. Your new 10 man expeditions or bounties or whatever better be repayable and rewarding. Otherwise they will end up like bounties/dungeons... just... there.

>

> I sincerely hope to god that you guys have more than this. Because if there was ever a chance for you guys to blow us our of the water and pull the millions of people who are currently getting hit with how hard and boring and outdated wow classic is to this amazing game, this was your chance... but you blew it big time.

>

>

> A lot of people are feeling let down. COMMUNICATE with us. Is there more??? Or is that it? Are we going to cantha ever? Will we be getting permanent arena? How much longer do wvw players have to wait before giving up??

 

Well, at least this topic on reddit will give the 22k people in the WoW classic que a chuckle

[Tiviana.2650]

> @"shadowpass.4236" said:

> > @"Tiviana.2650" said:

> > > @"shadowpass.4236" said:

> > > As the saying goes, all feedback is good feedback.

> > >

> > > A huge amount of players are telling Anet _exactly_ what they were/are looking for and _why_ they were disappointed with today's announcement. If Living World was what players were excited about, people would be hyped instead of frustrated.

> > >

> > > If Anet is smart, they will reevaluate their plans going forward (after giving us what they talked about today) and deliver content people actually want instead of forcing all of this story-mode stuff down our throats and locking all of the new rewards behind it while largely ignoring PvP and WvW.

> > >

> > > Now, I'm not saying some players don't enjoy LW. However, a lot of people don't and Anet needs to recognize this and stop focusing 90% of their efforts towards this one area of the game.

> >

> > Exactly this, there were 30 thousand people on twitch streaming this and the majority agreed this is not the way to go. They really do need to reevaluate where they are going, because its a clear message from the playerbase this is not it.

>

> I'm happy other people also understand the situation.

>

> From what I've heard, Anet bases most, if not all, of their decisions based off of their data/statistics. So, I'm curious to see what statistics led them to believe that focusing on the Living World was the best option and whether or not they expected the reception to be positive.

>

> Also, I'm curious as to what their statistics say about how many people are happy with today's announcement vs. how many people aren't.

>

> Honestly though, ignoring the numbers, reviews are generally one of the best possible ways to gather information. You are able to hear firsthand what people _think_ about your product which you don't get based off of records of user activity. There's a reason why investors looking to put money into restaurants (for example) always make it a point to ask patrons what they think about the establishment and food rather than formulating their entire decision around how many people eat at the restaurant every day. This type of feedback is invaluable and Anet would be smart to take advantage of it. I mean, they could have someone comb through every response in these threads, write down their points, and tally how many people wanted x vs. y and how many people disliked z. At least, that's what I do for ecommerce/engineering projects. It helps narrow down _exactly_ what people want. And, when you deliver on what people want, you have happy customers and full pockets.

 

Thing is this game is a lot more wow like than people admit, not that it plays combat like wow, but that it has all the same game modes and then some. You cant ignore whole parts of your playerbase , if all this game wanted to be was a lws game and some metas in open world then they should not have added wvw pvp raids fracts , but the game would have been a boring mess without all those types of gameplay. So anet needs to think what well rounded means.

[Iozeph.5617]

> @"Brother.1504" said:

> The problem was the format of the announcement. Live gathering. Countdown timer. Several weeks of lead up. Anet did a very bad job managing expectations. Hope people didn’t pay money for flight tickets or anything like that. Definitely not a “ I was there event.”

>

 

Oh I wouldn't say that. Lot's of people want to be able to say they remember where they were or what they were in the middle of when something terrible happened - JFK assassination, the day the music died, the attacks on the towers etc. Or in less important matters- say the day they shut down the servers on game- such as Star wars galaxies. Plenty of videos on youtube about that. This could be one of those bad times, where in hindsight you'll be able to look back and see the beginning of the end playing in slow motion on youtube in full HD.

 

Look at it this way;

 

[Ashantara.8731]

Not sure whether my post was merged into this thread, so I will collect my thoughts:

 

* I'm excited about the topics the next LW season will deal with. :) The graphics and cinematics looked awesome!

* That said, I would prefer it to be an expansion. I don't mind the wait. I prefer story content that you can play through at once instead of being spoon-fed over the course of 1.5 years, that has a conclusion at the end (not counting any cliffhangers for upcoming stories) and has _one_ team that wraps up the whole thing and ensures it is well-rounded and - most importantly - consistent in terms of quality and coherence.

* Not much was revealed during the announcement, it was _much_ shorter than expected, but that's okay. Story _is_ the most important thing to me, and I hope you have found ways to make it replayable on several characters without it getting boring (e.g., by providing choices to the players). Other than that, I am curious and looking forward to playing it.

* P.S. A new playbale race would have been glorious news. :/ Koda! <3

[UNOwen.7132]

> @"SnowMochi.7602" said:

> > @"UNOwen.7132" said:

> > They were made defunct for a simple reason. Theyre just inferior fractals. There is no reason to make a dungeon when you can make it a fractal, which automatically gives it difficulty scaling (which dungeons badly needed long before they were abandoned), and makes it possible to actually be relevant to the games lore. Dungeons pretty much only were played for the gold for months if not years prior to their abandonment. And once that gold went away, people quit in droves.

>

> My guildies and I actually loved the stories in the dungeons and how they tied in with the NPCs' stories. We enjoyed the layout and the fights.

> Earning gold in there was only the gravy for us, not the meat of the dish. These days, we still head to dungeons to play, even though the monetary rewards aren't what they used to be.

>

> I've tried fractals and didn't like them as much - but that's just me.

> Even so, I wouldn't get rid of them because I know others prefer them, but hey, to each his (or her) own. :)

>

>

 

I mean, fair enough, but the problem with the (explorable, noone really cares for the story dungeons) dungeons was the fact that their core design is flawed. Since there are multiple competing paths, everything in them has to strictly be completely non-canon. As far as the lore is concerned, the locations exist, but the characters you meet, the events that happen, and the choices you make? None of them ever existed or ever will exist. Explorable paths also means that you have certain restrictions to your layouts and environment that limit you quite heavily. And ultimately, what can dungeons do that fractal cannot? Given that several dungeons from LS1 have been made fractals already, it seems the answer is a resounding "absolutely nothing".

[Iozeph.5617]

> @"nxsage.6578" said:

> > @"Stephane Lo Presti.7258" said:

> > Please give your feedback

>

> Does it matter if you guys don't care to listen?

> One look at reddit should tell you guys how badly the event went, no amount of feedback can help if all you do it compliment and convince each other that you're doing great work.

 

There's a song that applies here. Oh right- here it is;

 

[Iozeph.5617]

> @"Exy.5903" said:

> > @"Vishnok.7059" said:

> > Oh,another WHINING ,i mean "feedback" thread....why do you guys whine so much...you get more free content...

>

> If someone gave you a free kitten sandwich, would you be happy just because it's free?

 

Why not? Million's of flies couldn't possibly be wrong.

 

[otto.5684]

> @"ugrakarma.9416" said:

> people complaning about expansion makes non-sense, expansion is just like a delayed LSW season(new maps+new history) and the released in a one blow instead of 2~3 months cadence.

 

With 9 new elites, 9 new weapons, full masteries and typically a major new feature. And ya, having multiple maps and 6-7 hours story available at once.

 

It is exactly the same as getting a limited mastery, as LWS3 was, 6-7 hours of story and few maps over 18 month (this sarcasm if you did not get it).

 

And this expansion argument is not really what this about, since we already knew no expansion was coming. However, Anet clearly built hype up around “major content incoming,” only to tell waste 45 minutes telling things we already knew, month ago. And could have summarized, literally, in half a page blog.

 

And beside all that, I have no fucking idea how Anet thinks they will keep players interest in the game. It has already been falling at a rapid rate. And 6-7 hours of story plus 6-7 maps will not keep players engaged for 18-21 month. For this game to maintain it needs major content. Without it will bleed over players, resulting in hastily decline. Many players were looking at what beside LW Anet had in store. And the answer is clearly nothing. This what the whole thing is about. Basically, Anet is not willing or cannot provide content. This is what today’s announcement said.

 

 

[Ashantara.8731]

A new race would have been _glorious_ news. :/ Koda! <3

 

Other than that, yes, a bit disappointed myself, but also very interested in the story.

[Aaralyna.3104]

I went into the live stream without any expectations other than, we will see a trailer for lws5 and some talk about that but I still felt a bit disappointed. We already knew we would get build templates (we saw a toon running swapping weapon etc while running but what I want to see is actually, can you slot your gears in it so you don't have to store every single item in your backpack which means I will never use a template to start with as I don't have the space for that). We know about alliances but they did not word it even unless its what they meant with world restructuring (and how far is it actually, its still same message as back in 2018). We know about swiss in pvp but what about class balancing and them 2 vs 2 maps brought to use in some leaderboard with rewards (I couldn't even find 2 vs 2 maps in custom browser..)... We know we get a new living world season (now called saga) with expansion like features but what is an expansion like feature (not a single mention of 1 thing we can expect, masteries is not expansion feature/mounts is not expansion feature as we got them in previous living world chapters, no word of new ways to play your character like elite specs or something (ok im in dubio here as i hate the powercreeps but nothing more fun than trying out new playstyles as its like playing a new toon with new abilities). What about new fractals? What about new raids? Ok 10 man instanced bosses announced as a step in raid thing BUT the reason players ask for easy mode raid is because they want to experience the stories in existing raids and want to have a peak inside and be able to actually play those existing ones.... We didn't really ask for a 10 man 1 boss instance a la Dragon Bash or Wintersday raid (unless this new thing does give the raid currencies and can actually be accessed pugging without LI requirements). And lets hope its not an autoattack and boss down fight. Another thing that got mentioned in the stream was that the saga will be updating over time just like season 1 did. What does that do with replayability? Can one experience the pre-changes stage again? Will it be accessible forever and not like season 1 gone for good? Players want replayability. They want to be able to redo fractals/meta events/raids/stories as much as they like without hitting a "you cannot do this as we want you to only do this 1x a day/week". This is also why Istan was a lot more fun to join in at past ( I cannot pop into this meta anymore unless I find a structured group first if there is any available instead of the "oh i see a tag, lets pop on on the fly").

 

We did get a lot of information we already knew and we lacked a lot of information we would kinda need. That you don't spoil any season trailers yet and all features thats fine but you could at least have told a "you can expect something like this, spoil 1 thing (even if you describe something without actually telling how its worked out) so we know what to expect by "expansion like content". The stream only added more confusion, unanswered questions , lack of real future insight of the game...

 

P.s We do not neccesarrily need an expansion but what we do need is content you spend weeks+ playing in to finish it (so no timegating but actual play).

[lothefallen.7081]

I've been playing the Guild Wars franchise since 2005. What I'm most disappointed about with regards to this recent announcement is how ArenaNet doesn't seem to try at all to innovate anymore. It seems like the developers have settled into a formulaic pattern of behavior that gets the best results for their bottom line rather than trying to invent ways to deepen the player experience. Some of this blame rests with management and some rests with capitalism as a system of production that gives incentives for companies to actually ignore consumer feedback as long as they're still making money from gem store sales.

 

I waited excitedly for this announcement and when I checked reddit this afternoon at work to see the details and community reaction, I was severely let down. It honestly ruined my entire day to hear pretty much exactly what we expected; a new living story season and promises of un-released features. Strike missions are basically re-branded bounties, masteries aren't even a real progression system since you unlock them so quickly while playing and there's no consistent sense of accomplishment with them.

 

The players want new, exciting features that actually add longevity to their game play experience while convincing them to actually interact with the community as well. Living story updates create a formula where players log in briefly to consume the very small amounts of content produced then log off for 3-4 months until the next announcement. I enjoy the GW2 story for pure nostalgia purposes at this point, but I know for a fact that this game could be thriving so much better if the content development focused on replay-ability, challenge, and actually rewarding player accomplishment in the course of the game, not just developing the best rewards for the cash shop alone.

 

What's worse than ArenaNet development being so severely out-of-touch with player expectations and desires is the fact that the marketing and management is even more severely out-of-touch with reality to the point that they would hype an announcement like this that basically told players nothing we didn't already know or expect. Tons of marketing and advertising effort wasted -- but that's what ArenaNet has become. A game company that over-hypes and under-delivers, always.

 

In my opinion, ArenaNet needs to focus on real expansion-level features for announcements in lieu of continuing to produce actual expansions. These features should be:

 

-New playable races

-New weapons

-New elite specializations

-Expanding GW lore

-Focusing on content that isn't just braindead open world zerg meta events

-Make the game challenging and focus more on how your systems teach new players to play correctly. The role system is so poorly defined based on early game play design.

-Focus on challenging content like fractals and raids, less on world meta events that become obsolete and dormant unless they are the top tier farm spots. You'll never balance the game properly and distribute player population evenly if you continue down this formulaic route.

-Creating a coherent pipeline for new players to become involved in fractal and raid communities by reducing unnecessary grind and making the content accessible

-Actually incentivize pvp. Make some actually cool, exclusive skins for sPvP. Like seriously, put tons more exclusives in modes you want more players to congregate in

-Oh, and put the damn gift of battle in sPvP reward tracks, but make it quicker to get in WvW.

 

Until I see some commitment to changing the formula, I won't be logging in much and I won't be spending money in the gem store.

 

Good luck,

 

- A seriously disappointed fan of GW for nearly 15 years.

 

 

 

[RyuDragnier.9476]

Went in expecting nothing more than just LS5 stuff. I was not disappointed on that front, and got quite a bit hyped for Icebrood Saga. Helps that Bangar Ruinbringer has finally been seen, and him and Rytlock get into a literal fist fight. Kinda hard not to get excited over that (then again, I love lore).

[Acheron.4731]

> @"lothefallen.7081" said:

> I've been playing the Guild Wars franchise since 2005. What I'm most disappointed about with regards to this recent announcement is how ArenaNet doesn't seem to try at all to innovate anymore. It seems like the developers have settled into a formulaic pattern of behavior that gets the best results for their bottom line rather than trying to invent ways to deepen the player experience. Some of this blame rests with management and some rests with capitalism as a system of production that gives incentives for companies to actually ignore consumer feedback as long as they're still making money from gem store sales.

>

> I waited excitedly for this announcement and when I checked reddit this afternoon at work to see the details and community reaction, I was severely let down. It honestly ruined my entire day to hear pretty much exactly what we expected; a new living story season and promises of un-released features. Strike missions are basically re-branded bounties, masteries aren't even a real progression system since you unlock them so quickly while playing and there's no consistent sense of accomplishment with them.

>

> The players want new, exciting features that actually add longevity to their game play experience while convincing them to actually interact with the community as well. Living story updates create a formula where players log in briefly to consume the very small amounts of content produced then log off for 3-4 months until the next announcement. I enjoy the GW2 story for pure nostalgia purposes at this point, but I know for a fact that this game could be thriving so much better if the content development focused on replay-ability, challenge, and actually rewarding player accomplishment in the course of the game, not just developing the best rewards for the cash shop alone.

>

> What's worse than ArenaNet development being so severely out-of-touch with player expectations and desires is the fact that the marketing and management is even more severely out-of-touch with reality to the point that they would hype an announcement like this that basically told players nothing we didn't already know or expect. Tons of marketing and advertising effort wasted -- but that's what ArenaNet has become. A game company that over-hypes and under-delivers, always.

>

> In my opinion, ArenaNet needs to focus on real expansion-level features for announcements in lieu of continuing to produce actual expansions. These features should be:

>

> -New playable races

> -New weapons

> -New elite specializations

> -Expanding GW lore

> -Focusing on content that isn't just braindead open world zerg meta events

> -Make the game challenging and focus more on how your systems teach new players to play correctly. The role system is so poorly defined based on early game play design.

> -Focus on challenging content like fractals and raids, less on world meta events that become obsolete and dormant unless they are the top tier farm spots. You'll never balance the game properly and distribute player population evenly if you continue down this formulaic route.

> -Creating a coherent pipeline for new players to become involved in fractal and raid communities by reducing unnecessary grind and making the content accessible

> -Actually incentivize pvp. Make some actually cool, exclusive skins for sPvP. Like seriously, put tons more exclusives in modes you want more players to congregate in

> -Oh, and put the kitten gift of battle in sPvP reward tracks, but make it quicker to get in WvW.

>

> Until I see some commitment to changing the formula, I won't be logging in much and I won't be spending money in the gem store.

>

> Good luck,

>

> - A seriously disappointed fan of GW for nearly 15 years.

>

>

>

 

Someone please post this on every cubicle and at every desk at HQ

[AliamRationem.5172]

I didn't see the info on this because the link in the email sent to me led nowhere. But am I to understand no expansion and no significant WvW/PvP updates? Sorry, but more Living World is not enough. I like this game. I really do. But I'm not likely to waste my time on it if you can't put some resources into it. Make an effort, ANet.

[ErikTheTyrant.4527]

> @"RyuDragnier.9476" said:

> Went in expecting nothing more than just LS5 stuff. I was not disappointed on that front, and got quite a bit hyped for Icebrood Saga. Helps that Rangar Ruinbringer has finally been seen, and him and Rytlock get into a literal fist fight. Kinda hard not to get excited over that (then again, I love lore).

 

I also agree, I've been wanting to see Bangar for the longest time. Seeing him and hearing Jormag were the highlights for me.

[Trise.2865]

They did. It was simulcast through Twitch, Youtube, and Facebook. I heard talk of a few other platforms as well.