Do you feel like ArenaNet is actively developing GW2 or just doing the bare minimum ?

[Danikat.8537]

> @"Tyncale.1629" said:

> It is impossible to answer this poll due to its format as someone else already pointed out, however I do feel that GW2 has not been as successful as everyone would have hoped, and I think it shows in the amount of development the game gets currently. It went of with a good start, with the LW seasons and 2 great expansions. The big elephant in the room here is off course the word Expansions, none have been announced since we had the lay offs.

>

> No matter how hard Anet and some of its hardcore fans are trying to sell us the LW seasons as their counterpart, this is an ominous sign. Any truly successful MMO would be constantly marketing their next expansion as soon as work had begun on them: it is a simple sign of a MMO that is being supported by enough revenue and a healthy vision of its future. Everquest: 24 expansions, Dark Age of Camelot: 7, Ultima Online: 7 Stars Wars the Old Republic: 2 major, 5 minor, TESO 3 major, 11 minor, FF14: 3 since reboot. I had always hoped that GW2 would fit that list, and in the beginning it looked that way..

>

> So though GW2 seemed on the right track a year ago, I am now worried that the game will go the way of the dodo sooner then I had anticipated. No announcement of a new expansion and the last tiny LW episode, with rehashed and uninspired map mechanics do not bode well.

 

Wait, are you saying all Elder Scrolls Online DLC is a 'minor expansion'? Even the ones which only include two dungeon paths? If so what's the difference between that and one of GW2's living story releases other than the fact that LS releases are given away free at first? (Although ESO's DLC is also "free" to subscribers.)

 

Don't get me wrong I like ESO, it's a great game. But you'd be really seriously stretching the definition of an expansion to include a couple of dungeons but not a new map and storyline like GW2 gets.

 

Honestly this is making me think the best solution for Anet is to start charging us for living world episodes. Then everyone can be happy that they're constantly releasing new DLC or expansion packs or whatever you want to call it, and Anet get more money coming in.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

They fact they are not hiding that they working on a unreal 3 console title should make it clear that are not actively developing this game. The fact that layoffs happened because of at least 2 failed projects, including a gw3 prototype also support this. Add the over aggressive monetization, this game is probably just doing the bare minimum to milk the most out of the playerbase.

[otto.5684]

> @"Rasimir.6239" said:

> > @"otto.5684" said:

> > We are now down to one LW episode every 3 month

> You might want to check your [numbers](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Icebrood_Saga#Dates_of_free_access). The Icebrood Saga releases so far have been/will be every other month (September - November - January).

>

> That said, I don't see any use in participating in a poll that, aside from offering a totally biased introductory text that compares apples and oranges, doesn't even offer answer options that fit the question put. When have "yes" and "no" ever been valid answers to an "or" question?

 

Since July of last year, we only had 2 episodes. We are only scheduled for 1 this quarter. That is 1 every 3 month. And honestly, last episode was terrible both quantity and quality wise. So even on quarterly schedule, Anet is cutting corners.

 

Could Anet speed-up a things bit? Sure. We can end-up with 5 maps and around ~5 hours of story in a year. Is this enough content? Not even remotely close.

[zealex.9410]

It deff feels like gw2 is on the backburner buying anet time while they move more of their eggs into unannounced baskets imo.

 

Tho id still call that "actively developing"

[zealex.9410]

> @"Shadowmoon.7986" said:

> They fact they are not hiding that they working on a unreal 3 console title should make it clear that are not actively developing this game. The fact that layoffs happened because of at least 2 failed projects, including a gw3 prototype also support this. Add the over aggressive monetization, this game is probably just doing the bare minimum to milk the most out of the playerbase.

 

unreal 3???

[Trise.2865]

The question posed is not a "yes or no" question. As a direct result, I can not feel any of the options presented. I'll fix that for you:

 

**Is Guild Wars 2 being actively developed?** Obviously, yes. What did you think they're doing all day, sitting on their hands? Could you get away with that at your job? Use some common sense here.

 

**Are they doing the "bare minimum"?** Definitively not. Bare minimum is functionality maintenance, or worse, nothing at all. What they have offered is new chapters in an ongoing story; new episodes of a series, and that's not insignificant. Ever wonder why TV shows are so expensive to produce, for maybe 15-20 minutes of content, when a YouTube video costs next to nothing? Think about it.

 

**Would I like to see or have gotten more than I did?** Naturally. Humans are inherently greedy, especially for things they like. It wouldn't matter what they did, I would have wanted more of it because I liked it.

 

**Do I believe ANet is using their resources to the fullest?** How could I possibly know that? I don't even know all of their employees' *names*, let alone their capabilities. I do know that people can be pushed harder than they think they can, but I also know pushing them too hard causes burn out and that both affect the final product dramatically. It's a delicate balance. I know ANet has been leaning toward the side of their workers' morale and well-being - which can not be said of most dev studios, including Path of Exile - and their release schedule has been affected by that.

 

**Do I think the recent layoffs are an ill omen?** Only for the people who were laid off. To everyone else, it's just another business day. People don't seem to understand what "turnover" is, or how regularly it happens, especially for artists and programmers. They'll either be fine or they won't, and no amount of crying from the audience is going to change that.

[Randulf.7614]

> @"zealex.9410" said:

> > @"Shadowmoon.7986" said:

> > They fact they are not hiding that they working on a unreal 3 console title should make it clear that are not actively developing this game. The fact that layoffs happened because of at least 2 failed projects, including a gw3 prototype also support this. Add the over aggressive monetization, this game is probably just doing the bare minimum to milk the most out of the playerbase.

>

> unreal 3???

 

They are hiring new ppl with experience of the unreal engine. It is irrelevant to this discussion since development of GW2 continues and the console thing appears to be a sep team altogether

[InkTide.1908]

Just like they were before the layoffs, my impression is that ANet's leadership is betting the company's future on unannounced, unreleased future products (specifically using Unreal Engine 4 on consoles based on their recent job listings). We have had no indication of a renewed focus on GW2 despite the suggestion that it would happen after the layoffs. Content has been smaller but well-liked, but the reality is that ArenaNet produces less content less quickly than dev teams a fraction of their size - if they aren't focusing on other projects instead of their singular income generator franchise, then I cannot fathom why a handful of new assets, some new VO, and a short bit of new writing is the extent of what their content teams can produce every two months. Before last year's layoffs, I had always felt that ANet's content was much, much less than what a studio of that size should be able to produce, and now I'm starting to feel the same way again. Are we in 'maintenance mode'? Perhaps, in some sense, we are - the bare minimum is what we got before the layoffs, and even after the layoffs nothing much seems to have changed. We have no announcements of long term projects or content, and nothing to look forward to but a smaller chunk of content every 2 months and a continuation of ANet stringing along the WvW players with promises of 'alliances' that have not been kept for years at this point. The roadmap was a vague joke, and the announcement event of this 'icebrood saga' was almost insulting, giving players hope for the future of the game prior to the event, then selling gaudy leggings and funko pops in place of giving us actual long-term plans that didn't essentially boil down to 'more living world seasons but we changed the name and made the episodes smaller'.

[witcher.3197]

OP you really messed up the wording of that question..

 

> Do you feel like ArenaNet is actively developing GW2

 

No.

 

> or just doing the bare minimum ?

 

Yes.

 

So which one do I pick, yes or no?

[Dawdler.8521]

How many other games relese patches every two weeks after soon 8 years of life?

 

But I cannot answer the poll. Because we have question which asks whether we believe A **or** B and the option is... yes/no.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

> @"Dawdler.8521" said:

> How many other games relese patches every two weeks after soon 8 years of life?

>

> But I cannot answer the poll. Because we have question which asks whether we believe A **or** B and the option is... yes/no.

 

F2p games to update their cashshop.

[Makuragee.3058]

Did you guys saw the new holiday weapons set? At this point, they dont even do the bare minimum, I'll keep an eyes for "new stuff" but I may never really log again.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

but muh feeeeeels.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

> @"Makuragee.3058" said:

> Did you guys saw the new holiday weapons set? At this point, they dont even do the bare minimum, I'll keep an eyes for "new stuff" but I may never really log again.

 

Not only that but things they have released they take it off the gemstore for way to long. As a example I've been checking the store for over a yr for Belinda's greatsword skin. If the devs want to make money on that shit make it actually available at decent intervals not this bs they do now.

[Vash.2386]

What a badly worded poll. You need to ask one question and change the choices to yes they are actively working on it, or no they are in maintenance mode.

 

Having said that I think they are nearly in maintenance mode. Getting the same repeated festivals that we have had for the last 7 years is not really new content.

[Randulf.7614]

> @"Vash.2386" said:

> What a badly worded poll. You need to ask one question and change the choices to yes they are actively working on it, or no they are in maintenance mode.

>

> Having said that I think they are nearly in maintenance mode. Getting the same repeated festivals that we have had for the last 7 years is not really new content.

 

No, but that's not what we are getting because that ignores the other content we are getting - maps, episodes, visions of the past, strike missions. It also ignores the updates we get to festivals like what we just got today in Lunar and the fact we got a whole new one in Hoelbrak last year. Yes some festivals are repeated every year with a couple of extra rewards, but that's the same of any festival in most active MMO's. Festivals being repeating has been a hallmark of festivals since they began. It's pretty much the point of them in MMO's.

 

Repeating festivals is not an indication of maintenance mode since repating festivals occur when MMO's are fully active. We'd have to have no content whatsoever for that to be accurate and it isn't. At all. No matter what the subjective opinion of that quality is.

 

But yes, the poll is badly worded - I'll give you that one ;)

[theSacred.1942]

It's bare minimum. We got promised "expansion level content" but we got nothing from this and game is in worst state ever. Season 4 felt like maintenance mode already but now we're getting only half of episodes with "walking simulator" story, we didn't got new fractal since over year now, we have no idea if next raid is even coming at all (and both fractals and raids were not even mentioned in season 5 announcement stream or in any "road map"), no new elite specializations and we didn't get any new legendary weapons to craft. Only new thing we got are Strike Missions but they're not fun and not even worth doing, but they're seems to be only a replacement for bounties from PoF.

 

 

In short, we're getting only half of hour single player story every few months. If anyone thinks this is not bare minimum put in game then... that person is simply lying himself.

[zealex.9410]

> @"Randulf.7614" said:

> > @"zealex.9410" said:

> > > @"Shadowmoon.7986" said:

> > > They fact they are not hiding that they working on a unreal 3 console title should make it clear that are not actively developing this game. The fact that layoffs happened because of at least 2 failed projects, including a gw3 prototype also support this. Add the over aggressive monetization, this game is probably just doing the bare minimum to milk the most out of the playerbase.

> >

> > unreal 3???

>

> They are hiring new ppl with experience of the unreal engine. It is irrelevant to this discussion since development of GW2 continues and the console thing appears to be a sep team altogether

 

Yeah but unreal 3?

[Vlad Morbius.1759]

Anet and NCSoft management should write a book on how to take a great game with huge future potential and turn it into nothing after 7 years. They are absolutely doing the bare minimum they can while trying desperately to dress that up to look like much more than it really is, take a good look at the last several patches. The whole looking forward to 2020 article reminds me of when I was a kid in school trying to plump up a couple decent paragraphs into enough content to fill an essay. Expansion level content....more like a small patch containing rehashed festivals and holiday content.

Clearly they have given up on the game and are working towards another title, apparently console related and GW2 is a fond memory to them.

[Tulki.1458]

-I- think they are given some of the studio problems that went down. In game development, you run releases through a pipeline. I think the game was 100% due to end after War Eternal, and there was nothing ahead in the pipeline so they had to start from scratch with Icebrood Saga. Which would mean that releases will be smaller for at least 9 months until the pipeline is filled out with ongoing projects. This is probably the exact reason why they said the map will grow dynamically over episode 1 and 2. They're basically developing 1+2 as if they were milestones of one episode's development, but they're releasing what they have as they have it.

 

It's easy to think that if episodes are 3 months apart, they take 3 months to develop. But that's not true.

 

That said, their communication kinda tells me they're not devoted. A Q1 roadmap only tells me they're invested until March. I'm 99% sure they're invested beyond that, but this is a really bad time to keep their cards close to the chest. A commitment to 2020 rather than just Q1 would say much more.

[Zexanima.7851]

> @"Tulki.1458" said:

> -I- think they are given some of the studio problems that went down. In game development, you run releases through a pipeline. I think the game was 100% due to end after War Eternal, and there was nothing ahead in the pipeline so they had to start from scratch with Icebrood Saga. Which would mean that releases will be smaller for at least 9 months until the pipeline is filled out with ongoing projects. This is probably the exact reason why they said the map will grow dynamically over episode 1 and 2. They're basically developing 1+2 as if they were milestones of one episode's development, but they're releasing what they have as they have it.

>

> It's easy to think that if episodes are 3 months apart, they take 3 months to develop. But that's not true.

>

> That said, their communication kinda tells me they're not devoted. A Q1 roadmap only tells me they're invested until March. I'm 99% sure they're invested beyond that, but this is a really bad time to keep their cards close to the chest. A commitment to 2020 rather than just Q1 would say much more.

 

As a software engineer, I get the whole "project deadline being hard to meet" thing but it seems to me anet is **really** bad a predicting when things will be done and that's why they have chosen to not give us anything beyond what is near completion.

[XenesisII.1540]

The newly redesigned north side of smc in wvw shows they are still actively developing gw2.... yup..... now just need to find a stepladder to get to the cannon floating outside the wall....

[hugo.4705]

No middle option? I don't think they are developing very much the game, but they aren't doing the bare minimum too.

 

I'm sorry, but it's just aberrant when you pay really intention to the recent maps released that the quality is varying: You can have an awesome ls episode or a very bad one.

>! LS4E1: The astralarium stairs are just rushed not even polished, for astronomers that kinda strange, plus the area Churrhir Cliffs is just well unused? I've even noticed a broken asuran gate who knows what was planned?

>! LS4E2: R3D-RCR was obviously planned for a new kind of races, golems race. That sad we could have raced with her and several other allied inquest you can meet. The northern part "Ruined path" is also a cut content, I suppose It was maybe a lab during earlier development, also, same, we find a broken asuran gate. A bridge was planned to link the central complex to leyfinder facility again not implemented. All over the complexes you can find holographic devices, I bet it was planned to make giant holograms spawns to be defeated. The map is awesome, still my favourite map, but potential not fully exploited.

>! LS4E3: Gandara is entirely cut, two paths of the meta taking place on the fortress are removed. I bet the pestilent golem wasn't planned and rapidly made using an exterminator golem. Some events are just strange, like that guy trying to revert the awakening of his friend that abruptly end with the guy being sad and leaving after the fail. The story isn't gorgeous too, gaining help from ghost dynasty who hate us, from charrs that have 0 reasons to follow us because their island is very nice. And omygod the end of Joko, I pity him that aberrant plot of being eating by a dragon whereas the guy see the dragon since the start... He even have awakened inquest and not thought of adding an holographic shield for its balcony?

>! LS4E4: Follow E3, Sunrefuge is a big deception, in the map you somehow find awakened humanoid soldiers but no abominations? Not that much canids too? Not really fitting. The branded shatterer was nice through the rift bubbles too. A huge space in the map is useless and can't be explored (mountains middle-north), could have been one more bubble. But it was one of the best episode. Will not spit on it.

>! LS4E5: Both metas are really meh, the story is special too and it shown how stupid decisions change like killing aurene and resurrecting her two secs later at the start of the next episode... even the dredges who could have been awesome are well mediocre, we passed from tunnels with pipes, excavations, customs barracks, drills and complex machines to just iron barracks and some speakers with chains....

>! LS4E6: The map is nice, really nice, the end of kralkatorrik/the story on the contrary is an aberration ala Disney.

 

What is the point, Anet, if you need 4 months even 4-1/2 months to finish perfectly a map and story, take them, don't reduce the production time if it is to reduce the quality too, I'm very worrying for LS5 episode 2.

 

Episode one was a failure in my eyes, the map as always is okay; liked it. But the story... Almorra deserved better, Jora should have died. Or becoming Jormag servant to free her at the end. Bangar could have been awesome as a grumpy/bloody character sure little racist but I mean, seriously, joining Jormag? But hey, I'm not a quality writer, I bet I would have not made it better. But I would have made the combo inquest-joko lasted the whole season. And Ls5 with kralkatorrik/jormag.

 

 

I feel closer to maintenance than the intensive development/releases period at the start of the game with the 2 worlds of sab, festivals and LS1 events.

Rewards are now just recoloured existing assets and junk...

 

Stop joking about expansions and turning it into a meme. Release one when you still can to make profit. The hype will soon disapear due to bad management and wrong priorities.

[ugrakarma.9416]

Is clearly on maintenance mode. but inst anything new, a old product bring money to a new product.

[Strider Pj.2193]

> @"XenesisII.1540" said:

> The newly redesigned north side of smc in wvw shows they are still actively developing gw2.... yup..... now just need to find a stepladder to get to the cannon floating outside the wall....

 

Are you suggesting that breaking SMC and Mendons isn’t development?