157 replies to this topic

[Mr_Finesse]

As promised, Colin Johanson has takent the time to outline what we can expect from Guild Wars 2 in the first half of 2013. It's a big post with lots of exciting new information, so below you can find the highlights of the article to find what was mentioned quickly. You can also read the preview in its entirety here in order to get a more detailed picture of what ArenaNet has planned. There's a lot of new content here, so let us know what you're looking forward to the most!

General

• Expansion of the achievement system and its rewards.
  
• No new gear tier between Ascended and Legendary in 2013
  
• New guild missions.
  
• Guesting.
  
• Redesigned boss encounters.
  
• Improvement of "looking for group" tool.
  
• Improvements to Fractals of the Mists.
  
• Paid server transfers.

World vs World

• Continued work on "culling".
  
• New reward/prestige system.
  
• Visible titles.
  
• The final game score for the week will not be the only reason to be "winning".

PvP

• Reward system re-haul.
  
• Allow less competitive players to find matches with players of a similar skill.
  
• Custom arenas, "observer mode", visible rank leaderboards.
  
• Major tournaments are mentioned as a long-term goal.

[Lordkrall]

That new rewards system does sound quite intresting. And not just becuase we see a cat-mini in nice clothes or a endless mystery cat tonic...

[Nabuko Darayon]

Interesting to read... achievement rewards are something I'm looking forward to.

Edited by Nabuko Darayon, 15 January 2013 - 03:17 PM.

[Cereal]

I'm glad they're deciding to improve existing features instead of just adding more stuff. Honestly, I don't know what they were trying to do with the November content update.

[Jairyn]

Umm...squee?

Hurray for a reason to leave Lion's Arch!

[Mr_Finesse]

[quote name='Jairyn' timestamp='1358263642' post='2142901']
Umm...squee?

Hurray for a reason to leave Lion's Arch!
[/quote]

And a reason (hopefully) to do dailies outside of Queensdale, Gendarran Fields, and WvW!

[Serris]

tokens for doing daily achievements, turning in tokens for stuff... sounds like they're finally turning daily achievements more into the zaishen quests from gw1 :3

[Quartz]

Really looking forward to this Especially the open world stuff. I really prefer open world stuff to dungeon crawling so this makes me very happy.

[Perm Shadow Form]

So basically nothing actually new, only expanding on already existing things.

[viespea]

Yay, Zaishen quests are here to stay ! Yummy, 10 dyes pack is awesome !

[Ritualist]

1. [quote]You won’t see another tier between ascended and legendary in 2013 for example. Our goal will be to use our existing reward systems and build new ones that are fun and exciting that step away from the stale gear grind reward systems you see elsewhere. Later in 2013, we’ll begin to introduce more of these systems once we’ve finished rolling out the remaining ascended gear and infusions.[/quote]
Does that mean we'll see new tiers in 2014?

2. [quote]We’ll add support so daily achievements will be different each day of the week, which will help drive players to different areas of the world and play together.[/quote]
With no free waypoint travel, ZQuests 2.0 will get really old, really fast. Not only that, but the fact that you could do dailies ANYWHERE in the world was what made them worth doing.

3. [quote]Some of these missions may be content designed specifically for the guild to accomplish within certain constraints or time requirements ...[/quote]
Oh fantastic! Lets promote super huge guilds even more, shall we?

4.[quote]... fight for the pride of that server ...[/quote]
Server pride? Really? So I am guessing folks on shitty WvW servers should move now before they get stuck?

[Baldur The Bold]

Good to see that they are working on the culling issue. Lets hope that other performance issues are addressed as well.

[pumpkin pie]

stop right there , everyone can experience? AHEM! one time event??!! everyone , one time event?

talk about changing the world, try this: make the dragons attack different parts of the world and UNEXPECTEDLY, as in dynamically instead of the same old place where there's a timer kept to tell you when they are attacking! for the more basic dynamic events, move them around! if a giant attack fort A (town of Nageling, players stop caring that they are being attack!), when all the npc are down, and no players are there to help, it should move on to attack another town! Fort A will then need to be rebuild! ie: surrounding trees when chopped will be taxed 50% to go to rebuilding that fort. etc

because as of now, your dynamic events is not even remotely dynamic.

sorry for the criticism, i still love gw2 but you just got to make it more "dynamic", if you claim to have a dynamic event system. it needs to be improved.

[BrettM]

[quote name='Lordkrall' timestamp='1358262938' post='2142890']
That new rewards system does sound quite intresting. And not just becuase we see a cat-mini in nice clothes or a endless mystery cat tonic...
[/quote]
Bah. GW2 needs fewer cats and more ferrets if they want to be truly [i]interesting[/i].

[Sevens]

[quote name='pumpkin pie' timestamp='1358266210' post='2142932']
stop right there , everyone can experience? AHEM! one time event??!! everyone , one time event?

talk about changing the world, try this: make the dragons attack different parts of the world and UNEXPECTEDLY, as in dynamically instead of the same old place where there's a timer kept to tell you when they are attacking! for the more basic dynamic events, move them around! if a giant attack fort A (town of Nageling, players stop caring that they are being attack!), when all the npc are down, and no players are there to help, it should move on to attack another town! Fort A will then need to be rebuild! ie: surrounding trees when chopped will be taxed 50% to go to rebuilding that fort. etc

because as of now, your dynamic events is not even remotely dynamic.

sorry for the criticism, i still love gw2 but you just got to make it more "dynamic", if you claim to have a dynamic event system. it needs to be improved.
[/quote]Couldnt agree more, dynamic events that are on a timer......utter crap

[jirayasan]

[quote name='Perm Shadow Form' timestamp='1358265925' post='2142925']
So basically nothing actually new, only expanding on already existing things.
[/quote]
It's new content, not just new landmass.

[Guardian of the Light]

The Achievement hunting thing sounds like an interesting way of getting people to run around the world. I've barely explored 50% of the world simply because I don't feel I have a reason to.

[Ragnadaam]

These plans sound quite promising, and it's really a good thing that they realize they need to polish what is already in the game, not attempt to feed half-assed new content to people that will devour it in moments and cry for more immediately after.

[BlairPhoenix]

[quote name='Protoss' timestamp='1358266027' post='2142928']
1.
Does that mean we'll see new tiers in 2014?

2.
With no free waypoint travel, ZQuests 2.0 will get really old, really fast. Not only that, but the fact that you could do dailies ANYWHERE in the world was what made them worth doing.

3.
Oh fantastic! Lets promote super huge guilds even more, shall we?

4.
Server pride? Really? So I am guessing folks on shitty WvW servers should move now before they get stuck?
[/quote] So you can't find one single thing in that entire blog post to be positive about?

[WinterSnowblind]

[quote name='Protoss' timestamp='1358266027' post='2142928']
Does that mean we'll see new tiers in 2014?
[/quote]

It's been mentioned before, but even before the game was released they talked about how the level cap would most likely be raised with expansions.  It makes sense to add new tiers of gear with that, even if the Ascended stuff was a huge mistake.  They're just trying to get across the point that it won't become a gear treadmill like many feared.  Of course, people will still whine about it.

I'm pretty excited about this update personally.  Making achievements more rewarding should give players more of a reason to do things besides farming the same few events and making the existing areas more worthwhile to explore, rather than just piling on new zones is definitely the right direction to take.  I also like the idea of more "medals" like the map completion one, that's a much better way to add in a form of progression and character growth than the ascended gear was.

[Lunacy Polish]

At least it sounds like they learned something from the Ascended Gear/FoTM fiasco.  I am optimistic.

[Azure Skye]

Lunacy Polish, on 15 January 2013 - 04:47 PM, said:

At least it sounds like they learned something from the Ascended Gear/FoTM fiasco.  I am optimistic.

And don't forget the Lost Shores one time event also. =P

[rick1027]

im like the sound of most of what he mentioned and its a good thing cause im really on the brink of shelving this game. not to sound negative but i dont think its my type of game but atm im still giving it a try so anything that sounds good will keep me for  a while

[Gaaroth]

ZOMG even if half of this will become true in short , is still AWESOME!

GO ANET GO, GO!

[Mockingjay74]

Protoss, on 15 January 2013 - 04:07 PM, said:

3.
Oh fantastic! Lets promote super huge guilds even more, shall we?

4.
Server pride? Really? So I am guessing folks on shitty WvW servers should move now before they get stuck?

Regarding the guild updates... it's encouraging smaller guilds to get better. Better, not bigger. If a small guild can start one of the world events, that's not only great publicity for them, but also a way of banding the community together more. Instead of being a small guild that is within itself and quiet and cozy, it gets a bit more attention and respect. Maybe. Bigger guilds will get more done and will get more influence and whatever these rewards are. Unfortunately, that's just the nature of the beast. 500 people earning 4 influence a day will always be "more productive" (in that sense) than 50 people earning 4 influence. On the flipside, 50 people who are super active and earn an average of 20 influence a day will still earn quite a bit of stuff for their guild.

Obviously, that's going to happen. People will bandwagon onto one server and that server's WvW will suffer and probably not recover for quite a while. OR, people on smaller servers will work together even more as their community will not be so diluted. As someone on JQ, I've seen people jump to the server for WvW stats before and the community suffers - as does our WvW score. Preventing bandwagoners will, in the long run, do wonders for server communities, even outside of WvW. People will stick around and eventually start getting to know each other - instead of just hopping around to a bunch of different servers each week whenever they feel like it.

[BuddhaKeks]

Mhh a story that will unfold over the time of the next months. Sounds like the beyond updates to me. Good news everyone, we are going to kick Jormag's icy butt out of the Norn homeland!

[Ritualist]

Mockingjay74, on 15 January 2013 - 05:10 PM, said:

Regarding the guild updates... it's encouraging smaller guilds to get better. Better, not bigger. If a small guild can start one of the world events, that's not only great publicity for them, but also a way of banding the community together more. Instead of being a small guild that is within itself and quiet and cozy, it gets a bit more attention and respect. Maybe. Bigger guilds will get more done and will get more influence and whatever these rewards are. Unfortunately, that's just the nature of the beast. 500 people earning 4 influence a day will always be "more productive" (in that sense) than 50 people earning 4 influence. On the flipside, 50 people who are super active and earn an average of 20 influence a day will still earn quite a bit of stuff for their guild.

He mentions guild exclusive content. The problem is that in our guild folks pretty much stopped logging in because they don't care about the game any more. Which means that those of us in tiny guilds are potentially locked out of this content or we need to find new guilds.

Mockingjay74, on 15 January 2013 - 05:10 PM, said:

Obviously, that's going to happen. People will bandwagon onto one server and that server's WvW will suffer and probably not recover for quite a while. OR, people on smaller servers will work together even more as their community will not be so diluted. As someone on JQ, I've seen people jump to the server for WvW stats before and the community suffers - as does our WvW score. Preventing bandwagoners will, in the long run, do wonders for server communities, even outside of WvW. People will stick around and eventually start getting to know each other - instead of just hopping around to a bunch of different servers each week whenever they feel like it.

Maybe the better idea would be to FINALLY separate WvW from servers and turn it into a PvP game?

Edited by Protoss, 15 January 2013 - 05:20 PM.

[Mockingjay74]

Protoss, on 15 January 2013 - 05:19 PM, said:

He mentions guild exclusive content. The problem is that in our guild folks pretty much stopped logging in because they don't care about the game any more. Which means that those of us in tiny guilds are potentially locked out of this content or we need to find new guilds.

Maybe the better idea would be to FINALLY separate WvW from servers and turn it into a PvP game?

In that situation, I would just expand the guild as it's more of a skeleton. I thought you meant small guilds as in guilds that have a small but active roster. Small and "dying" guilds are small and dying and are not the target audience. Hopefully they'll start trickling back if the new content is actually as awesome as GW2 needs!

[Champen]

I was hoping for a specific date for the January update

[Ritualist]

Mockingjay74, on 15 January 2013 - 05:25 PM, said:

In that situation, I would just expand the guild as it's more of a skeleton. I thought you meant small guilds as in guilds that have a small but active roster. Small and "dying" guilds are small and dying and are not the target audience. Hopefully they'll start trickling back if the new content is actually as awesome as GW2 needs!

The issue is that by making guild-exclusive content, A.Net decided to intentionally exclude these guilds. If you can't get a guild group together, then you can't do this content.
And I don't really think GW2 needs more content that will exclude folks.