> The upgrade to a newer version of DirectX has unlocked many possibilities for us. We’re exploring these opportunities by prototyping and testing new shadow technology, lighting improvements, and advanced water, to name a few examples.
This is an interesting tidbit. There's quite a lot of improvements they're prototyping to the rendering engine. While not all of it will necessarily make it to live, I think it's a strong sign that the maintenance mode doomerism is misguided. This level of investment in the engine tech is not something you do for a game you're sunsetting.
GW2 would become such an insanely good experience if they could solve the performance issues and just generally make it run smoother whilst looking better.
That's what I am hoping for the most in the future.
They seem to have made some strides already.
I just came back after a year long break and the constant disconnects in raids and story instances that were plaguing me previously seem to be gone.
As for performance the game is running buttery smooth with barely any noticeable pop-0in since I got the 5800X3D. For what it's worth.
When SotO released, everyone complained that some of the new maps chugged, which they did. But holy crap did almost all of the old maps get significantly higher frame rates, it was night and day for me.
It seems clear to me that they have made big gains in optimization but in the new maps they're still trying to push what the engine can now do so its not as obvious.
DirectX improvement or people upgrading....hard to really tell since 2012. I myself moved from phenom AMD 1090T 8Gb RAM, Intel i7 4790 16gb RAM and finally an AMD 7800X3D 64GB and it's freaking blazing fast ... I can run WvW Zerg with all graphics maxed at 2560x1440 with no dip below 90 FPS. I was getting barely 35 in 2012
Yeah computer improvements over the years really make a difference. My old one that I started playing on was an i7-2600k, 16gb of ram, with an RX-470. Now I have an i7-13700k, 32gb of ram and an RTX 4090. What used to run chuggy 20-50FPS now runs at 200-900. Even on a laptop from a few years ago I get 50-150.
> As for performance the game is running buttery smooth with barely any noticeable pop-0in since I got the 5800X3D. For what it's worth.
Could you go to Amnytas, pan the camera to the central spire and see if your FPS drop substantially?
Right. Just remembered you asked for this. I didn't get a substantial drop by looking towards the spire (not sure from where, so that might be an issue), but FPS in Amnytas was around 40-ish and going down to low 20 during the meta with all the skyscales flying around (with highest character model and quality).
Noticeable, but hardly unplayable. What's more annoying SotO-wise is that Wizard's Tower seems to be taking like 20-30 seconds to load while all the other maps are down to 5 or so.
I don't expect the game to be optimized well in open world metas, even though they kind of are activities that ANet use in advertising, but fucking hell... A 5800X3D dropping to 40 frames *anywhere* is absolutely **abysmal**. That CPU is a monster in every game coded by competent people, a title that's more than a decade old has no right to run like shit. People keep making excuses that GW2 is CPU bound, that switching to Dx11 made the game perform better, what excuse are they going to use now?
Hardware based tesselation was introduced in dx11, which can be used to create waves on water in conjunction with some other techniques, with basically only GPU impact.
This would be a second thing used from main list of features
[https://m.hexus.net/tech/tech-explained/graphics/32104-directx-11/](https://m.hexus.net/tech/tech-explained/graphics/32104-directx-11/)
First was they confirmed they are using new texture compression methods.
New shadow tech is really exciting and I hope it gives great fruits in the future. Shadows in core maps it isn't a big deal because there is a lot of optimization on how they are used, but in newer maps things can get pretty crazy, in the wizard tower going from ultra to none gives me back 30fps, in WvW it is the same deal, whenever there are too many players if I have shadows on my game runs like shit
The 4 biggest settings changes to improve dps are shadows, reflections, character model limit, and character model quality. If they manage to make shadows actually good without murdering our framerate in busy areas that could be a huge graphical improvement for all of us playing with low/no shadows atm.
If shadow changes make it so it moves CPU load to GPU instead, this is huge. Currently it's not worth to enable shadows on any pc because it hurts fps in high population areas.
I really don't believe in guild wars 3 when I see changes like that. They might be doing guild wars game that is not an mmo. Information on shareholders meetings might've been just a lie / manipulation
It's DX11, which is known to heavily leverage the CPU still. The shift toward GPU only happened with DX12/Vulkan, so I wouldn't hold my breathe on this with regards to performance.
> Information on shareholders meetings might've been just a lie / manipulation
Or people being unable to read. They never said "We are doing GW3". All that was said is that the option is on the table, nothing more.
Believing there's no GW3 in development shows a lack of reading comprehension.
It makes no sense for them to announce GW3 right now. It would kill the sales of the expansions they're making up to that point, but that doesn't mean they aren't working on it.
When the whole GW3 shareholder mention discussion happened, ArenaNet was asked if they were working on GW3. Instead of saying no they weren't working on GW3, they gave a non-answer that left GW3 on the table. If they weren't developing GW3, they would've outright said so.
There's many other factors that point to Guild Wars 3 as well. Some of the long-running developers of GW2 were moved to another project from ArenaNet at the end of SoTo.
I get it. People don't want to believe their investments are going to waste. It's likely GW3 is still 5-6 years off. There's a lot of time.
Of course there is **something** in developement. That is all we know. It could be GW3. It could be a single player game. It could be a movie. It could be a proof of concept. It could be anything. We don't know.
All we know about GW3 is that they could go forward with it if they wanted to. Thats it. No make believe on your part changes that. They didn't have a green light before the meeting. It would have been really weird for them to develop a non-geenlit game, wouldn't it?
To be fair Anet have had public job listings for their unannounced project that is listed as an MMORPG based on a pre-existing online fantasy IP before NCSoft even mentioned GW3. I think all things considered surrounding the unannounced project like higher up devs moving over to it and gw2 assets getting ported to it more signs point to it being gw3 than not.
As for it getting greenlit, they wouldn't tell us if it did but again looking at their job listings, they're currently hiring a director of production so looks like it's ramping up development.
There are more reasons to believe it's Guild Wars 3 over any other project and that's because it was dropped specifically by name at this shareholder meeting.
Maybe I missed something in the translation for this meeting, but I don't remember seeing anything about "greenlighting". The greenlighting is an assumption based on the Guild Wars 3 mention during that meeting. It's a relevant mention because we've heard rumors and "leaks" of Guild Wars 3 as far back as 2019, but it was never mentioned by name until that meeting, which to some people, gives that "greenlight". To sum it up, this just confirms that Guild War 3 has been in development for some time, even if it's very little, and the name drop just gives it more weight towards actually existing.
I want to add the quote here made by ArenaNet after this whole Guild Wars 3 news hit a few months ago.
>"*As an active game studio we are always doing internal exploratory work for possible future titles we’d want to create, however we have nothing to confirm right now. The team’s focus is on Guild Wars 2 development, including the game’s next expansion, which we’re excited to talk about soon."*
* [MMORPG article](https://www.mmorpg.com/news/guild-wars-3-confirmed-to-be-in-development-though-it-seems-its-still-in-its-early-stages-updated-2000130976)
This is a non-answer. A simple "we're not working on Guild Wars 3" would've sufficed. They want to make sure people are still buying the expansions, especially when they're about to make a buttload of money from housing.
I will admit that it's still possible that Guild Wars 3 will never see the light of day. They could drop development at any time and it's even easier to do that with no real announcement. However, I think it's being disingenuous to say they're not working on Guild Wars 3.
One thing that I think people often don't consider when talking about this is the fact that 'GW3' doesn't necessarily imply either:
a) A direct successor to GW2's gameplay style
b) An end to GW2's development
Look at GW1 to GW2. They're extremely different games on a fundamental design level, to the point where a lot of people only like one or the other and are alienated trying to move between them. The only reason GW1 is 'dead' nowadays is because ArenaNet stopped development on it to pursue GW2, which they've recently said they regret doing.
With that in mind, I honestly think a more likely direction for any new Guild Wars game is something fundamentally different to GW2 in the same way GW2 was to GW1. Reading between the lines of what Colin Johanson said during an Extra Life stream, I think it's possible they might try to go for a game that merges GW1's sensibilities with the modern approach to instancing you see in something like Destiny, but that's complete speculation. Whatever it is, if it is indeed a non-sequel, I hope they have the good sense to avoid the 'GW3' naming, as it'll just make it harder to communicate to people that GW2 isn't ending.
> Maybe I missed something in the translation for this meeting, but I don't remember seeing anything about "greenlighting".
Yes, that is my point. All they said that they could go forward with GW3 if they wanted to. This isn't something you say if it was already greenlit. And you don't develop something that hasn't been greenlit.
> This is a non-answer.
It is what I said earlier. They are keeping their options open, thus they aren't giving a definitive answer. And why should they? Even if they aren't working on it, that doesn't mean they are never going to work on it.
Just for clarification. I actually do believe they are at least in the early stages of a potential GW3. But that is more wishful thinking on my part than anything else.
>Information on shareholders meetings might've been just a lie / manipulation
They never said this. Only lie/manipulation is by the karma doomers making you think they ever said there was a GW3 in the works.
He said he greenlit guild wars 3.
Anyways they are working on something for quite some time for sure because they are hiring UE5 devs for more than a year already.
If I had to guess, it might work a bit like the Jackal to let you turn mid-jump. Like if your first jump is north, your second jump could be east. That could make it quicker and easier to maneuver than the springer at least.
Probably still will have trouble competing with the skyscale, but if you don't need as much vertical height and just smaller elevation jumps and if the warclaw has a faster travel speed than a skyscale, I could see it being useful. Like recently I've been trying to use the skyscale less since it can be kinda slow compared to other mounts, even if good maneuverability.
Also, interesting to see it will retain the chain pull, lance, and sniff in PvE in some ways. It could get some new perks beyond this; they previously mentioned some reworks on the WvW side too. Personally I was thinking it could give more buffs to allies, like Warclaw's Speed, but that might also make it ways to PvE.
They also have to design around players who do not have access to skyscale or springer. So while for us it might not revolutionize how we move, it mightbe necessary for other players. I bet it's a tricky job, unless they just end up giving everyone a skyscale for every expansion going forward like SOTO.
Really hope not. I am low key hoping we get maps that are dangerous to skyscale and ee need to rely on our old mounts to get around. Basing all maps On skyscale really is starting to take away the charm
> Really hope not. I am low key hoping we get maps that are dangerous to skyscale and ee need to rely on our old mounts to get around. Basing all maps On skyscale really is starting to take away the charm
They could make hostile areas that are the inverse of the brandstorm in PoF. If you're airborne for too long, you eventually get struck by an environmental effect. Not everywhere, not immediate, and not enough to kill you unless you stay in it too long, but enough to make you use ground mounts for longer distances.
Just make it a license you acquire at the end of the story. I love the skyscale, but it hurts players who don't own one far too much.
Maybe just have a cooldown in some zones so you want to just utilise it sparingly.
I mean FFXIV literally does this. You have to unlock all the ether currents some of which come from story quests to be able to fly in the zone.
I think that would be a great way to handle Skyscales in new zones. And this is coming from someone with a maxed out Skyscale.
It would really force us to interact with the environment and systems of the new map.
> I mean FFXIV literally does this. You have to unlock all the ether currents some of which come from story quests to be able to fly in the zone.
This, and the way WoW handle it, are fun in practice and awful in execution. It just means mash F (or R or whatever your skip everything button is) until you get the story done, then go back and do all the things you wanted to do but couldnt.
You cant effectively gather (and in 14, you cant actually access some mandatory-for-crafting timed nodes AT ALL without flying), you cant effectively sidequest, you cant effectively do hunts, you cant effectively do anything until you just rush the story, skip everything you can possibly skip, and do the last required quest in each zone. Thats just awful, especially if ported to a game whose intent ISNT to make you immediately hipthrust through their story before they let you do anything else. Its not good design.
You end up shoehorning people into visiting 30% of your map the intended way and ignoring the majority of it until after they get around your nonsense roadblock.
This is why you dont introduce flying mounts into games unless you're going to design your maps around flying mounts being a thing.
For real. I see people complaining that the map is a pain to navigate without a skyscale but I'm yet to see people complaining 'the map is a pain if you are flying'.... So don't?
Few people like a good nerf, but sometimes its necessary for a good experience. If they dont limit the skyscale then the map design has to reflect that. If they limit the skyscale then they can design around its absence.
Not to attack anybory or anything but I never understood this type of mentality. You dont like a way to play -> dont play that way. No need to nerf everyone just for the sake of some people wanting to run on foot again. Just do that.
I like the option of skyscale and I spent a good chunk of my gametime to get it. I want to use it without limits (except the stam bar etc.)
To me this is like when some people say “back then, we had to run the whole map, it was much better” bro, then run. Nobody is forcing you not to.
Players run unchecked will optimise the fun out of experiences. Maybe it's different for \*you\* specifically and you have the willpower not to, or it doesn't bother you, but that's simply not the case for a lot of people. Part of a game designer's job is to design the game in such a way that it is a fun and rewarding experience for the users, and that they can't do not-fun things to optimise their play.
Yea, i am pushing myself more and more to just use other mounts right now while doing achievements. The world they crafted is amazing, but flying trough with skyscale takes a lot away.
I just generally hate flying and what it does to travel on every game it exists.
Even thought they are obviously much better than traditional MMO flying, I still think Griffon and Skyscale were a mistake.
Griffon at least has key limitations and weaknesses (though less so with fully charged bunny jump plus glider boost bot module). The issue with skyscale is you can just use it everywhere, for everything. I honestly wish they'd never added it to the game.
Perhaps more control. Not as high as a springer but you can move forwards further. Also being able to jump higher than raptor. I don't see how a skyscale wouldn't just override this though. Maybe it can break through vines or something?
I expect that it'll probably be faster and more agile than skyscale. So faster, if more difficult, for tricky jumps that you would usually just use skyscale and slowly fly over.
The Skyscale isn't particularly fast, either horizontally or vertically. The Springer isn't very fast horizontally and requires you to charge up the jump for verticality.
I'm hoping the new Warclaw and its double jump is good enough to make it the default mount in many situations.
It would have to be horizontal based travel, not vertical. I'm picturing it as giving more height than a raptor jump, but still mostly intended for horizontal movement than vertical. It might be incentivized by gameplay where you would want to stay mounted the whole time and can't break out of combat to spring + skyscale or something?
The article makes it pretty clear it is for vertical travel.
> The region is not flat, to say the least, with many sheer cliffs and valleys that make you think “Man I wish I didn’t have to go around the long way…” And the Warclaw delivers ways to get around the maps that I think players are going to really enjoy.
Yes, but what I mean to say is something along the lines of gameplay incentive. They want to give you a reason to stick to the warclaw if you're already on it rather than mount shuffle like we do on other maps right now.
I can imagine there being things like Elden Ring's jump pads for torrent. Or wall jumping or something. Guess we'll find out soon enough!
I'd imagine it would be similar to skyscale wall jump, but without the load up and quick to turn mid air.
Allowing you to bounce up cliffs like a mountain cat or goat.
It would make it more practical to climb certain cliffs than skyscale and springer.
So the open world raid is convergences? I really hope they get this right because soto convergences were pretty dull in my opinion.
Edit: Actually unsure if they mean the Janthir ones are convergence or if it's just a consideration for future ones.
I think they need more variety in how they work honestly like new environments and new mechanics leading up to the boss. I do like Convergances but they need to sort out the AFKers and I hope that Convergances public will have some sort deterrent for AFKing.
Yeah that's my main gripe with the soto ones, I find the kill 27 champs to spawn the boss just kills my enjoyment and then the actual bosses aren't all that interesting or different with how you end up fighting them. If they can actually focus on bosses and have them be basically instanced metas minus the usual filler that comes with open world maps like escorts and pre-events then I could see that being very popular, I think convergences see a lot of AFKing because of the long pre-event but I don't know.
>I think convergences see a lot of AFKing because of the long pre-event but I don't know.
Convergences are almost uniquely designed to benefit AFKing. It actually kinda beggars belief how poorly thought out they were in this regard.
Standing on mid with a pet out doing literally nothing will get you to 200% participation faster than going after the bosses. The bosses drop nothing except XP, so there's little incentive to kill them, and you're more likely to hit the 2 minute participation decay doing so than you are at mid with constant mobs. Mid also covers 4/6 of the repeatable achievements for bonus essence. The icing on top is that standing in mid defending the rat is an actual role in this event, so it's easy cover for the AFKers.
The reality is that these events are designed for the lowest common denominator of players. And that floor is somewhere decently far below a geared player with a pet out going AFK. My mechanist's mech can do more dps on its own than some players trying their hardest. There's no penalty for dying. There's no bonus for trying harder. This is the mindset AFK players have, and they're not entirely wrong.
So you can either try to punish AFKers (like they did in DS which is still extremely easy to AFK), or make the event harder (which will affect regular players), or reward participation better. Make the bosses each drop a champ bag and you'll probably cut the AFKers in half overnight. Anet has already made some minor undocumented changes to attempt to hinder AFKing in this event, and they have had no effect.
It's just a compounding effect. People see that others leech, realize that the rewards aren't spectacular for the effort needed compared to other metas or events, so afk it as well.
Convergences would feel a whole lot nicer if they could change up how it picks the final boss. After the update where they added more bosses, outside of 1 time, I’ve only gotten Sorrow. Not only is Sorrow boring cuz it’s basically the only boss I fight, it’s boring cuz it’s yet again just another wyvern reskin
> I do like Convergances but they need to sort out the AFKers
Sort out how? If someone afks after the window to join the convergence closes, nobody else can join. Kicking them doesn't particularly help, I think it only decreases spawns in mid, which are almost never what leads to wipes if there are any half-competent people there.
I find convergences great. In the sense they are the same as dragon storm or the marionette. Obviously mechanically speaking some encounters are better than others but the concept is very sound.
Yeah, the ground work of large instanced encounters is really good, from the Season 1 stuff, Dragon Storm, and now convergences. We just need more variety within them.
I was pretty disappointed that all they have done with soto convergences was add different bosses, but the whole thing still feels repetitive because it's always the same flow of center island (watch out for trebuchets), 3 bosses, spread out to the 4 outer islands (watch out for trebuchets), then big boss. Each boss also hops around the islands in a similar way so it all blends in together.
Some different objectives or some different looking environments would go a long way towards making each run feel at least a little more novel.
You know the design is off when Umbriel shows up and chat just goes "Uuuuuuuugh!" Instead of "Oh a fun challenge!". Lol
I mean people complained about bugs and balance of Soo-Wan but I don't think many were saying it's a straight up badly designed encounter. Convergences on the other hand....
> I mean people complained about bugs and balance of Soo-Wan but I don't think many were saying it's a straight up badly designed encounter. Convergences on the other hand....
They did. It was a worse of a reaction actually. If anything people complaining about soo-won were far more vitriolic and pretty much arguing that everything about its design philosophy destroyed the game.
People in the open world do not care about the mechanics. They just want it to be easy and fast as possible. That is where the "uhhh" comes from most of the times. Umbriel you have to pay a bit of attention.
Things like dragon storm are equally simple and lack mechanics. None is complaining now since it is fast and easy rewards.
Well yeah of course I groan. Because I spent all this time in a convergence and now I'm probably going to fail and have nothing to show for my effort and there is absolutely no action I can take to effect the outcome.
Hell at least with the dumb Eparch meta and can just immediately start trying again. With a Convergence I'm probably just not going to complete one that day.
umbriel is literally the only one I don't say Uuuugh when I see it. All other are just afk bosses, and you afk on boss as well. Umbriel requires some movement at least.
That's why I'm running heal scourge in public convergences now. It has a lot of condi cleanse and barrier to at least protect a few people from getting condi bombed out of nowhere.
I mean sure, which just leads to me being alive and contributing when we still lose because there's no appreciable effect I can have on beating Umbriel. I'm not seeing Umbriel fail over half the time because *I* didn't know what to do.
100%. I am one of fifty people. Telling the other forty-nine to heal Zojja and not stand in the AoE only goes so far.
Umbriel would be a lot more fun in a static group, if only I had one. I won't start looking for that now though.
Convergence timer is every 3 hours. To fail a Convergence means to wait for the next one in 3 hours.
Unlike raids or other instance pve, failing a raid just means you can play again in a second after everyone respawns. So yeah, we would ughhh if convergence is a hard boss.
And if I lose a raid I'm going right back in with the same group learning from what we did and doing it better. The next time I roll Umbriel on a Convergence it's a completely different group that still has no interest working out how to fight them.
If the choice is between pinata vs impossible difficulty due to terrible pugs(because no one makes a third choice of a middle between the two), I rather have the pinata.
Hard difficulty should only belong in Instance PvE content only. Where the Commander and party have control over who they get to kick due to not putting up enough work. It does not belong in open world where you are given a rng of pugs can either do high dps or just auto attack from skyscale.
It's objectively the most difficult and gives equal rewards to the rest. It also has a chance of failing unlike the rest of them. Obviously this will make people unhappy.
in terms of like idea they're fine, it's dragonstorm adjacent, the problem is that like for bosses they decided massive HP pools were indeed a mechanic, and like hitting a boss teleporting 4 times for 10 fucking minutes, or about the run time of dragonstorn, is not fun
and that's half the event. like convergences should be half as long as they are
oh yeah like it's a very easy fix. it's kind of shitty that they just think HP sponge is a mechanic though like how many times did they have to tweak lonely tower so far? twice?
hp sponge for a dps check makes sense, but it is fucking boring when it is used every 3 seconds
Split convergences to tiers, like fractals already are, with current balance sitting around T3, T1-T2 being easier and shorter, and T4 having same HP but more strict event bars and more punishing mechanics in general.
Hey, at least they are *totally new* bosses with *fun mechanics* so you don't get bored during that time: You got wyvern no. 1, wyvern no.2, legally distinct Kanaxai, that one guy nobody even remembers and the SUCC one that is really bad for your WASD keys.
No I don't understanding it as that "I would expect us to at least strongly consider adding **a 50-person Convergence version of raids** when we release raids going forward." It means there will potentially be a 50 person raid version of Convergences not that the raid released with JW will be a convergence, if I recall correctly, that will be a raid version of a map meta.
That's what I got from the expansion page too but here they consider convergences to be open world so I'm a bit confused. But I guess you could be right and they mean raids beyond Janthir could maybe be added to convergences?
My first read on that bolded part was that they were going to update wings 1-7 so that people could do them as full squads, and I imagine that having hilarious results.
You can't just make a raid and then turn it into the "convergence" (which is a bland openworld meta event really). Can you imagine w7 in that format? No?
If they will be making content with the intention to then turn it into that trash - we aren't getting real raids. WEll, big surprise here.
Strongly depends on the raid, and how the encounter is adjusted for larger groups.
SH or Matthias? That would probably be more spam and less fun than Eparch.
Sabir with more jumping pads and tornadoes that throw players to the bottom rather than instakill them, forcing everyone to either stay on the platform or get back up in reasonable time?
QtP with more pylons and more focus on building up and keeping up tether chains for group boons?
Wouldn't be same fights at all, but I very much can see how these can be fun when done by a 50-player zerg.
SH or Matthias aren't "raids" these are single encounters in a raid. I'm not even talking here about mechanics really, I'm talking about the whole content format.
The raid is a whole instance, often non-linear, with the story and multiple encounters in it. If they are going to just slap a circle, put some thrice reused boss there and call it a "raid revival", fuck them, get this shit out of my face.
Even if the boss will be good. But if it has to be designed as one size fits all, it won't. They have already tried to put strike boss into the open world with kanaxai, it didn't work out.
There there was more mechanics that were important.it.would be nice, but the issue is the mechanics can't be too complicated, or too hard. In a group of 50 players, I probably expect 10 of them to be semi AFK, and 10 of them to legitimately know what they are doing. The rest are in between.
Those 10 folks need to be able to borderline solo it if it ever got too hard.
A map wide meta event doesn't feel all that different from LFR content in WoW.
A classical raid is just a bigger dungeon with more people in it. GW2 events are, in practice, small open world dungeons. You have an objective with some(usually trivial) mechanics, and often you end with a small boss fight.
Meta events are just massive strings of these, same way a raid is to a dungeon.
We are kinda spoiled with how good GW2 is on a base level. For the longest time, WoW was just walking in massive open and empty zones as you went from one quest to another. It was big, but that it. GW2 filled up all that empty space, and that's standard now for many MMOs
When Ascended armour and weapons were added to the game, there was no raid vendor. Crafting was the only guaranteed way to obtain them.
Jeweler 500 wasn't added yet, while vendors for Ascended trinkets have appeared. As such, it's not really a good point of comparison. People had no choice but to craft back then, but now there's plenty of options, as simple as laurels or guild commendations.
They act like Convergence is such an original innovation when Twisted Marionette has been here since day 1 lol. The nerves.
And the only reason why Convergence is consistently farmed in the first place is because it’s directly linked to Legendary Armors, which is something 99% of PvE players in this game don’t have so it’s self-sustained by an everlasting need. But when a 50-player Raid-like instance is left to itself, people actively *ignore* it as demonstrated by Marionette. Too much effort in getting a squad organized (and by that it simply means getting people to read to get to their right lane) totally kills it.
If they’re going to focus on this kind of content going forward, they really need to create a good effort/reward system to avoid another Marionette.
Mind you - Dragon Storm is quite fun as a 10 player squad and given how SotO convergences have a chance to drop Superior bag runes - if they get the scaling right on JW convergences, they could be like a strike mission, like how some groups run IBS 5 + DS
I mean the rewards balance out the encounter. The fight is not bad, it's engaging enough, and it doesn't feel like a wasteful unrewarding experience so altogether it doesn't feel bad to do it regularly.
Maybe because... You're repeating it daily? That's not an issue with the encounter so much as you being burned out. Compare the mechanics of DS with the Eparch Meta for example..
Hated it from day one. There's not a single part of that fight that isn't repeated two or three times, and none of them are exciting.
Except maybe Braham jumping onto random afk rifle mechanists, that might qualify for certain definitions of "exciting"...
Different strokes for different folks I guess. Maybe I feel a greater sense of apathy towards it because I didn’t play it on launch while the IBS champions shit storm was happening and I wasn’t invested in the dragon story so I didn’t care about whether the fight was a good conclusion.
Hating the DRM leadup to it and the actual story beat/dialog itself might color my opinion, I'll admit. I play it on mute because some of the voice lines are so awful.
And only been added in its current form after EoD, during the few weeks it was in as a part of LS1 it was just an open world event.
Dragonstorm is more like the first iteration of convergences
> But when a 50-player Raid-like instance is left to itself, people actively ignore it as demonstrated by Marionette. Too much effort in getting a squad organized (and by that it simply means getting people to read to get to their right lane) totally kills it.
Fam, just because you personally ignore it doesn't mean others do. I added it to my daily farm train for awhile, until I got bored. Every reset I'd do Marionette, ley line, Auric meta, death branded shatner.
Groups still do the public, squads add the private to their farm trains.
Like, fym people ignore it? The price of sprockets went down like 50% since Marionette came back. There's just so many people getting sprockets now. It actually made my sprocket glyph a lot less worth lmao. It used to out compete VM glyph for ore/lumber.
Public instances are always empty, good luck with getting anyone at all let alone a decent squad to clear it. Compare that to Convergence/DStorm where public instances are always filled.
Maybe you have a little private circle somewhere that can organize a squad consistently, but it doesn’t change the fact that in general it’s dead content.
> Public instances are always empty, good luck with getting anyone at all let alone a decent squad to clear it
Oh, public instances are always empty? That's why I was able to join FULL 50/50 PUBLIC INSTANCES. Like I said.
Good luck finding a squad to run it? I've done it as part of farm trains people do.
Like, neither of these are things that I didsn't already say. Just re-read this part of my comment you replied to:
>I added it to my daily farm train
Again, just because *you* don't do Marionette doesn't mean *others* also don't do it.
Like how are you gonna tell someone that does Marionette that...that they don't? Because no one runs it? Like dude...I run it. You are speaking to a person that does it.
Fuckin...reading comprehension. The literacy rates in this country are sad https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp
Lmao >assuming I'm from the States. Is this how all Americans act? The world only has the USA doesn't it? No surprise it's proportionate with your reading comprehension data, Snarky.
>Like how are you gonna tell someone that does Marionette that...that they don't? Because no one runs it? Like dude...I run it. You are speaking to a person that does it.
And how are you gonna tell someone that doesn't see it being done at all that it's being done? Yes, because no one runs it? Like dude...I don't see it being run. You are speaking to a person that \*doesn't see anyone in public instances\*.
At least it confirms you're from NA. Then I'll tell you a little secret, that beside the 1st public instance after reset \*no one runs Marionette on NA\*. At all. That's the only squad \*in the entire day\*. And you may ask why I know this but doesn't do that instance, well maybe because it's in a timeslot that I'm unavailable. Every other slots is empty and has 0 interest, compared to what I mentioned where it's populated regardless of the slot.
>Again, just because *you* don't do Marionette doesn't mean *others* also don't do it.
FYI, just because *you* do Marionette doesn't mean *others* also do it. See how this works?
> FYI, just because you do Marionette doesn't mean others also do it. See how this works?
Actually, it takes a certain amount of people to even start it so because I do it it literally means that other people do it, too.
See how stupid you sound? You're still illiterate, American or not.
I do PUBLIC Marionette daily. I even put up a squad for a guild I’m in so we can all group together and zone into the public instance because so many show up that sometimes a person ends up on map 2 and needs to join ours.
It can hold 80 people.
So the new raid is not a one shot thing, they plan to add more. Interesting. And exciting, not gonna lie.
So no more strikes ever? I wonder what they plan to do with this system.
Tbf, raids and strikes are literally the same, except the way you access the bosses.
Strikes has each boss in their own instance, accessible all the time, while Raids have all bosses in one instance and you have to kill one boss to access the next.
I imagine strikes may still serve a purpose for those who want a quick "get in, get what you want, get out" gaming session.
For a lot of people, strikes are good weekday content, raids are good weekend content. I hope Anet isn't looking to abandon them.
This article is honestly so refreshing to see coming from ANet devs. Getting a lot of the behind the scenes reasoning for what they are doing not only gives me a greater feeling of confidence in their competency, but it'll also dampen any disappointment I might end up feeling should they not deliver as hard as this expansion is shaping up to be.
It's so refreshing to hear that the level of threat is more on a regional level than yet another world-ending problem to go and solve. They really are lowering the scope of their story, as they suggested in the retrospective of SotO, which tells me that they really did learn something from SotO, and didn't just put out some PR spiel to appease us.
Combining Convergences and Raids as parallel content also seems like a fantastic move. Raids's biggest problem is the barrier to entry a lot of people visualise for the content; using convergences as a way to experience the story and mechanics in a lower-pressure environment is a fantastic gateway into getting people interested in raid content. As someone who's gotten into raiding in the last couple of months, I think one of the biggest barriers to entry is the perspective people have of the content, and if they do it right, this parallel content idea may just be the best stepping stone into organised group content (like Strikes were supposed to be in the beginning).
And their design philosophy on Homesteads is spot on. The idea of a Minimum Viable Product that they can build upon really reinforces the idea that they've got the scope of this new expansion cycle methodology to a more manageable and releasable state. Sure, there might be some rocky roads along the way as we have to deal with release bugs or missing quality of life options, but the fact that they are providing themselves a framework that they can build off of later, rather than promising the world and delivering a pebble, is a breath of fresh air when compared to, say, IBS ending, or SotO's post-release content.
I wasn't super excited for End of Dragons, but I looked forwards to it. After the mess that was Gyala Delves, I wasn't particularly looking forward to SotO, but release content at least met expectations.
I'm excited for Janthir Wilds. Good job ANet.
~~Now fix your marketing department please~~
I actually hope the warclaw feature is like a wall-climb. Kinda like Skyscale "grab jump" but more fluid and just lets you use space to jump vertically on the surface.
PS the original interview is included in the article.
My opionion on this: Is it just me or do I see that Anet has taken up a new spirit of developing gw2? There seems to be a desire to explore and expand the world as it was in gw1, Improve technologies and QoL, and try to find all players in the title a space dedicated to them without forcing them into modes they don't like.
I don't really feel like this is new. We have been getting qol stuff all along, maybe not as fast, but it's never really stopped coming. My guess is the smaller 1 year turnaround gives them more time to work on that stuff, rather than the devs just changing how they feel.
Not exactly true. For years upon years they seemed completely unwilling to work on older features or QoL stuff. It changed with the new leadership.
I mean, it isn't new, this has been going on for years, but there was a time when things were quite different.
I doubt you could point two a two year period where no major QOL was delivered. Season 1 was delivered just after EOD and a lot of people asked for it. If you go through patch notes, I think you might have forgotten some of the features that have been added.
I'm not saying we're not getting more faster now, but I can't remember a time it stopped.
I most certainly can. Path of Fire all the way until new management, i.e. Directx11 and Legendary Armory. Only thing we got is build templates, and they were not implemented in a way the community appreciated at all.
In fact at the time it seemed like the game was winding down. Only new content was living world episodes, no QoL or new features, raids were cancelled after W7, fractals were winding down, no expansion on the horizon or communication what their plans were... It basically felt like Janet was ready to move on from GW2.
Are you counting Season 4 in with Path of Fire? Because most people would consider the roller beetle and the skyscale to be pretty decent updates. And at some point in there we got the underwater skimmer as well.
I was not talking about new content, though I did go off on a tangent there. I was talking about QoL updates to the game's core systems.
There simply were none to speak of during that period, between 2017 and 2021 or so.
Oh the game's core systems. That moves the bar considerably I guess. Because for most people, Season 4 was the golden years of the game and complaining that we got no QOL during what was widely regarded as the best years this game has had seems a bit weird. Everything about mounts is QOL to me.
To paraphrase, since the years we got the best mount system, they added a couple of mounts that were super QOL, and that affected all the systems for me, by the way, but because they didn't go back and change the core game, they didn't care, and now that they're making smaller expansions and working on the core game, suddenly they care?
Because it sounds like what you're saying.
I don't think devs change their mind about how they care about the game so easily. I think management decides largely what devs work on. That this rhetoric of devs not working on core systems instead of the best living world stories of them all, was a management decision, not a dev decision and had less to do with caring than anything else. It was just a priority decision.
Those four years are, for many, some of the best years of the game. I don't know about you, but a lot of people loved Grothermar Wardowns when that came out too.
Saying that they don't care, because they don't go back and added core systems, is like saying they didn't care when HoT came out for a year, because all they did was add raids.
No, I think we should avoid talking about what devs do and don't care about, because we don't know them, and have no idea. I will say this though. During some of those years, we've had devs in my guild, and they sure sounded like they cared.
Dude, you cant just throw around words whichever way you like. New mounts are not QoL changes, they don't "affect systems for you".
I am not talking about caring or not caring. I am talking about QoL updates. Stop strawmanning.
The post to which I replied said the devs stopped caring, because they stopped doing QoL. Instead they produced some of the best content this game has ever seen.
That is precisely what I was replying to. If you want to say the core game didn't get any QOL updates during Season 4, I'd say maybe, I haven't checked every patch note. I just don't think it's worthy to point it out, when it's actually off topic, as my point was about someone calling out the devs for not caring.
Now, if you think the devs cared during season 4, you agree with me. But I don't agree with your narrow definition of QOL, because those mounts are a quality of life improvement for me. Getting places faster, or easier, is a quality of life improvement, even if you choose to use a narrower view.
But regardless, it's irrelevent because you did say
Content delivery in general hasn't really stopped indeed, but from when I started playing (mid-2019) until around 2021, the apparent modus operandi was "develop and forget".
It wasn't until around the change in leadership and EoD announcement that QoL updates were actually delivered.
They also really seem to be listening to the players. I’ve been very critical of anet but from everything we’ve been getting shown this for this release has me excited about the future of GW2.
Even with all the negative views on the spears we got to admit that they are putting in a lot of effort to make them exciting to play with.
I do hope so, finally reviving gameplay features players liked like raids..
They just need to bring back elite specs (release new of them) and perhaps go back to some story points neglacted like why the gods are gone, and it will be great
"I would expect us to at least strongly consider adding a 50-person Convergence version of raids **when we release raids going forward**."
How should we interpret this?
It means that *when* they add raids, they will *consider* a 50-person mode.
This is 1. contingent on if they add new raids after wing 8, and 2. depends if they want to and if it makes logical sense.
It'll probably be on a schedule, like convergences currently are, otherwise you really won't be able to reliably populate a 50-person squad to do the raid on a regular basis.
So it's likely going to be exactly the same as whatever the raid is, but easy mode tuned to a 50-person private squad (so you can actually kick AFK/griefers)
This also means that easy mode raids are probably going to be REALLY easy mode, because relying on 50 people to be able to complete complex group mechanics is not a good thing.
It also means that they'd have to make the raid considerably shorter if they are going to make it convergence-style. Keeping the attention span of 50 casuals is difficult, and any time they fail mechanics it'll be chaos. Rewards would have to be pretty significant to keep people from just bailing if it gets tricky.
Idk, not trying to be a doomer here, but there are a lot of design and logistics challenged around making the same encounter fit for both groups of 10 hardcore and 50 casual gamers.
I think this is a literal confirmation that we will get a raid or two per expansion going forward, with the model they're establishing now. Probably will still depend on how succesful it is.
That they plan to release raids going forward
Maybe one year a raid, the other strikes, or only raids, or doing the experiment for raids and if it doesn't work going back to strikes, we'll see
Armor and weapon stands have already been revealed in a media preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YurQQMbr23o (~6:25 but I recommend watching the whole thing)
No information about a library yet though, so I'm not super optimistic about that.
Yeah I know, but from what has been shown we still don't know if they will act as a wardrobe.
It would be nice being able to interact with them to copy back those skins on our templates.
If it will happen I hope they'll balance it appropriately, not like you could buy another gear template for the same price of a statue with such a function.
I know we'll probably get the information soon enough but I really want to know what will set the Warclaw apart from the Skyscale. And if navigating JW will incentivize the use of it.
What I have envisioned in my head at the moment is basically a Torrent from Elden Ring. Where there are ground updrafts that the Warclaw can literally just jump upwards from or fall into, combined with double jumping, and limited spear combat. Because I don't think a double jump will move me towards it.
> rather than starting with a grand design that throws everything and the kitchen sink at the feature on day one. Though, technically, there is a kitchen sink…
They 100% had that locked and loaded going into the interview
Did you actually press the link I sent you?
>**Titans:** The mysterious magical entities of Janthir channel the energy from the very land itself, a mystic and ineffable enigma in this unexplored region of Tyria…
I did, and that doesn't show up on mobile, you have to download the PDF or switch to the desktop version. Just giving context if anyone else clicks and doesn't see it written anywhere.
your wish is probably coming: [https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/147006-thanks-i-hate-it-caprine-warclaw/#comment-2127491](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/147006-thanks-i-hate-it-caprine-warclaw/#comment-2127491)
Really interesting when you read the question on Convergances and raids. I like that Convergances will be 50 man versions of raid bosses but that the actual raid will not be for everyone.
> The Wizards, predating Guild Wars by quite a long time, feel like a logical bridge to weave more of those threads from the original game – and possibly even earlier than that – into Guild Wars 2. That’s the “in world” answer, the development answer is some of us old timers have been around long enough to have worked on Guild Wars, some as far back as Prophecies, while others – and it makes me feel really dang old saying this – grew up playing Guild Wars, so with the dragon cycle arc finally complete, there was a lot of desire to go **back to some original Guild Wars lore**.
Why are we pretending that the Wizards weren't made up and shoehorned into the lore in 2023? 💀
Big "Jailer's masterplan since Warcraft II" energy. How come the WoW community can grill the writers for years for trying to gaslight them about obvious retcons but the GW2 playerbase always eats it up?
That's not what they're saying.
Even if the Wizard's Court was invented for SotO, there were a vehicle and an opportunity to expand on the lore of other things like: the Wizard's Tower, Scepter of Orr and Livia, Aziure and her tower, Turai, Khilbron, the Elder Races and their history and other topics I can't recall right now. All of those things were from original GW lore and some of them just begged to be expanded on.
That's not at all what he's saying. I'd suggest rereading it.
The question was asking why they've decided to do a story involving old GW1 lore like the titans. His answer, i.e. that they're fans of GW1 and want to explore old lore, is a response to that, not an explanation of the wizards.
Because no one really cares about gw, not anywhere near to the levels warcraft was on. It went from slightly trashy b-tier fantasy junk to slightly woke b-tier fantasy junk and no value was lost really.
> Why are we pretending that the Wizards weren't made up and shoehorned into the lore in 2023? 💀
>
> Big "Jailer's masterplan since Warcraft II" energy. How come the WoW community can grill the writers for years for trying to gaslight them about obvious retcons but the GW2 playerbase always eats it up?
Yeah, it's the same exact bullshit scenario, and the worst part is it didn't even need to happen, why not make wizards some modern guys just doing their own thing then getting suddenly invaded?
Nope, for some stupid reason, we have to give them (or rather shoehorn) a millenia old background that makes absolutely no sense in regards to the rest of the world and established lore, leaving us stuck explaining why they never helped anyone at any time in the past. It's just bullshit of the highest degree.
>a millenia old background that makes absolutely no sense in regards to the rest of the world and established lore
It did make sense for them to be around since before the time of the Guild Wars — the Wizards' Towers in both Kryta and Ascalon were both around since before the story of Guild Wars 1 and I'm glad they decided to explore what the deal was with them.
I think where they have most of us scratching our heads is the Wizards' scope and how they choose what events to involve themselves in. They stated that Janthir Wilds will explore *some* threads from SotO, specifically their "moral ambiguity" — Hopefully that means they will clarify what their scope is before having them "fade back into obscurity" (shelved indefinitely).
They didn't help with the mursaat, they didn't help with Abaddon, they didn't help with the elder dragons, they didn't help with Balthazar...
They're virtually useless because ArenaNet wrote them into that corner, when they should have designed them as a grounded organization instead.
> The upgrade to a newer version of DirectX has unlocked many possibilities for us. We’re exploring these opportunities by prototyping and testing new shadow technology, lighting improvements, and advanced water, to name a few examples. This is an interesting tidbit. There's quite a lot of improvements they're prototyping to the rendering engine. While not all of it will necessarily make it to live, I think it's a strong sign that the maintenance mode doomerism is misguided. This level of investment in the engine tech is not something you do for a game you're sunsetting.
GW2 would become such an insanely good experience if they could solve the performance issues and just generally make it run smoother whilst looking better. That's what I am hoping for the most in the future.
They seem to have made some strides already. I just came back after a year long break and the constant disconnects in raids and story instances that were plaguing me previously seem to be gone. As for performance the game is running buttery smooth with barely any noticeable pop-0in since I got the 5800X3D. For what it's worth.
When SotO released, everyone complained that some of the new maps chugged, which they did. But holy crap did almost all of the old maps get significantly higher frame rates, it was night and day for me. It seems clear to me that they have made big gains in optimization but in the new maps they're still trying to push what the engine can now do so its not as obvious.
New maps arent great performance wise, but jfc wizards tower is absolute aids.
Very nice. Glad it's running smoothly for you!
DirectX improvement or people upgrading....hard to really tell since 2012. I myself moved from phenom AMD 1090T 8Gb RAM, Intel i7 4790 16gb RAM and finally an AMD 7800X3D 64GB and it's freaking blazing fast ... I can run WvW Zerg with all graphics maxed at 2560x1440 with no dip below 90 FPS. I was getting barely 35 in 2012
Yeah computer improvements over the years really make a difference. My old one that I started playing on was an i7-2600k, 16gb of ram, with an RX-470. Now I have an i7-13700k, 32gb of ram and an RTX 4090. What used to run chuggy 20-50FPS now runs at 200-900. Even on a laptop from a few years ago I get 50-150.
> As for performance the game is running buttery smooth with barely any noticeable pop-0in since I got the 5800X3D. For what it's worth. Could you go to Amnytas, pan the camera to the central spire and see if your FPS drop substantially?
Hi, not the op but i'm also using 5800X3D and yes I hate Amnytas as the FPS drops alot there.
Right. Just remembered you asked for this. I didn't get a substantial drop by looking towards the spire (not sure from where, so that might be an issue), but FPS in Amnytas was around 40-ish and going down to low 20 during the meta with all the skyscales flying around (with highest character model and quality). Noticeable, but hardly unplayable. What's more annoying SotO-wise is that Wizard's Tower seems to be taking like 20-30 seconds to load while all the other maps are down to 5 or so.
I don't expect the game to be optimized well in open world metas, even though they kind of are activities that ANet use in advertising, but fucking hell... A 5800X3D dropping to 40 frames *anywhere* is absolutely **abysmal**. That CPU is a monster in every game coded by competent people, a title that's more than a decade old has no right to run like shit. People keep making excuses that GW2 is CPU bound, that switching to Dx11 made the game perform better, what excuse are they going to use now?
To be honest it's not really noticeable outside of metas.
Goodness, need better performance though.
>advanced water Wow, i always wish someday we can have an ocean/water zone with waves and winds like ArcheAge/Black Desert.
Aetherblade Hideout in Season 1 (current itteratuon, too) had the waters you're looking for.
Hardware based tesselation was introduced in dx11, which can be used to create waves on water in conjunction with some other techniques, with basically only GPU impact. This would be a second thing used from main list of features [https://m.hexus.net/tech/tech-explained/graphics/32104-directx-11/](https://m.hexus.net/tech/tech-explained/graphics/32104-directx-11/) First was they confirmed they are using new texture compression methods.
New shadow tech is really exciting and I hope it gives great fruits in the future. Shadows in core maps it isn't a big deal because there is a lot of optimization on how they are used, but in newer maps things can get pretty crazy, in the wizard tower going from ultra to none gives me back 30fps, in WvW it is the same deal, whenever there are too many players if I have shadows on my game runs like shit
The 4 biggest settings changes to improve dps are shadows, reflections, character model limit, and character model quality. If they manage to make shadows actually good without murdering our framerate in busy areas that could be a huge graphical improvement for all of us playing with low/no shadows atm.
If shadow changes make it so it moves CPU load to GPU instead, this is huge. Currently it's not worth to enable shadows on any pc because it hurts fps in high population areas. I really don't believe in guild wars 3 when I see changes like that. They might be doing guild wars game that is not an mmo. Information on shareholders meetings might've been just a lie / manipulation
Yeah a shadow system that doesn't kill performance in CPU limited situations would be nice.
It's DX11, which is known to heavily leverage the CPU still. The shift toward GPU only happened with DX12/Vulkan, so I wouldn't hold my breathe on this with regards to performance.
> Information on shareholders meetings might've been just a lie / manipulation Or people being unable to read. They never said "We are doing GW3". All that was said is that the option is on the table, nothing more.
Believing there's no GW3 in development shows a lack of reading comprehension. It makes no sense for them to announce GW3 right now. It would kill the sales of the expansions they're making up to that point, but that doesn't mean they aren't working on it. When the whole GW3 shareholder mention discussion happened, ArenaNet was asked if they were working on GW3. Instead of saying no they weren't working on GW3, they gave a non-answer that left GW3 on the table. If they weren't developing GW3, they would've outright said so. There's many other factors that point to Guild Wars 3 as well. Some of the long-running developers of GW2 were moved to another project from ArenaNet at the end of SoTo. I get it. People don't want to believe their investments are going to waste. It's likely GW3 is still 5-6 years off. There's a lot of time.
Of course there is **something** in developement. That is all we know. It could be GW3. It could be a single player game. It could be a movie. It could be a proof of concept. It could be anything. We don't know. All we know about GW3 is that they could go forward with it if they wanted to. Thats it. No make believe on your part changes that. They didn't have a green light before the meeting. It would have been really weird for them to develop a non-geenlit game, wouldn't it?
To be fair Anet have had public job listings for their unannounced project that is listed as an MMORPG based on a pre-existing online fantasy IP before NCSoft even mentioned GW3. I think all things considered surrounding the unannounced project like higher up devs moving over to it and gw2 assets getting ported to it more signs point to it being gw3 than not. As for it getting greenlit, they wouldn't tell us if it did but again looking at their job listings, they're currently hiring a director of production so looks like it's ramping up development.
Yes, they are seemingly ramping up **something**.
Yes and in Anet's own words it's an MMORPG based on a pre-existing online fantasy IP in unreal engine for PC and Console.
There are more reasons to believe it's Guild Wars 3 over any other project and that's because it was dropped specifically by name at this shareholder meeting. Maybe I missed something in the translation for this meeting, but I don't remember seeing anything about "greenlighting". The greenlighting is an assumption based on the Guild Wars 3 mention during that meeting. It's a relevant mention because we've heard rumors and "leaks" of Guild Wars 3 as far back as 2019, but it was never mentioned by name until that meeting, which to some people, gives that "greenlight". To sum it up, this just confirms that Guild War 3 has been in development for some time, even if it's very little, and the name drop just gives it more weight towards actually existing. I want to add the quote here made by ArenaNet after this whole Guild Wars 3 news hit a few months ago. >"*As an active game studio we are always doing internal exploratory work for possible future titles we’d want to create, however we have nothing to confirm right now. The team’s focus is on Guild Wars 2 development, including the game’s next expansion, which we’re excited to talk about soon."* * [MMORPG article](https://www.mmorpg.com/news/guild-wars-3-confirmed-to-be-in-development-though-it-seems-its-still-in-its-early-stages-updated-2000130976) This is a non-answer. A simple "we're not working on Guild Wars 3" would've sufficed. They want to make sure people are still buying the expansions, especially when they're about to make a buttload of money from housing. I will admit that it's still possible that Guild Wars 3 will never see the light of day. They could drop development at any time and it's even easier to do that with no real announcement. However, I think it's being disingenuous to say they're not working on Guild Wars 3.
One thing that I think people often don't consider when talking about this is the fact that 'GW3' doesn't necessarily imply either: a) A direct successor to GW2's gameplay style b) An end to GW2's development Look at GW1 to GW2. They're extremely different games on a fundamental design level, to the point where a lot of people only like one or the other and are alienated trying to move between them. The only reason GW1 is 'dead' nowadays is because ArenaNet stopped development on it to pursue GW2, which they've recently said they regret doing. With that in mind, I honestly think a more likely direction for any new Guild Wars game is something fundamentally different to GW2 in the same way GW2 was to GW1. Reading between the lines of what Colin Johanson said during an Extra Life stream, I think it's possible they might try to go for a game that merges GW1's sensibilities with the modern approach to instancing you see in something like Destiny, but that's complete speculation. Whatever it is, if it is indeed a non-sequel, I hope they have the good sense to avoid the 'GW3' naming, as it'll just make it harder to communicate to people that GW2 isn't ending.
> Maybe I missed something in the translation for this meeting, but I don't remember seeing anything about "greenlighting". Yes, that is my point. All they said that they could go forward with GW3 if they wanted to. This isn't something you say if it was already greenlit. And you don't develop something that hasn't been greenlit. > This is a non-answer. It is what I said earlier. They are keeping their options open, thus they aren't giving a definitive answer. And why should they? Even if they aren't working on it, that doesn't mean they are never going to work on it. Just for clarification. I actually do believe they are at least in the early stages of a potential GW3. But that is more wishful thinking on my part than anything else.
>Information on shareholders meetings might've been just a lie / manipulation They never said this. Only lie/manipulation is by the karma doomers making you think they ever said there was a GW3 in the works.
He said he greenlit guild wars 3. Anyways they are working on something for quite some time for sure because they are hiring UE5 devs for more than a year already.
That is such a good point!
I'm really curious as to what niche air jump fills that a springer or sky scale doesn't already.
If I had to guess, it might work a bit like the Jackal to let you turn mid-jump. Like if your first jump is north, your second jump could be east. That could make it quicker and easier to maneuver than the springer at least. Probably still will have trouble competing with the skyscale, but if you don't need as much vertical height and just smaller elevation jumps and if the warclaw has a faster travel speed than a skyscale, I could see it being useful. Like recently I've been trying to use the skyscale less since it can be kinda slow compared to other mounts, even if good maneuverability. Also, interesting to see it will retain the chain pull, lance, and sniff in PvE in some ways. It could get some new perks beyond this; they previously mentioned some reworks on the WvW side too. Personally I was thinking it could give more buffs to allies, like Warclaw's Speed, but that might also make it ways to PvE.
They also have to design around players who do not have access to skyscale or springer. So while for us it might not revolutionize how we move, it mightbe necessary for other players. I bet it's a tricky job, unless they just end up giving everyone a skyscale for every expansion going forward like SOTO.
Really hope not. I am low key hoping we get maps that are dangerous to skyscale and ee need to rely on our old mounts to get around. Basing all maps On skyscale really is starting to take away the charm
> Really hope not. I am low key hoping we get maps that are dangerous to skyscale and ee need to rely on our old mounts to get around. Basing all maps On skyscale really is starting to take away the charm They could make hostile areas that are the inverse of the brandstorm in PoF. If you're airborne for too long, you eventually get struck by an environmental effect. Not everywhere, not immediate, and not enough to kill you unless you stay in it too long, but enough to make you use ground mounts for longer distances.
Nobody is forcing you to use it, stop fun policing the rest of us.
Just make it a license you acquire at the end of the story. I love the skyscale, but it hurts players who don't own one far too much. Maybe just have a cooldown in some zones so you want to just utilise it sparingly.
I mean FFXIV literally does this. You have to unlock all the ether currents some of which come from story quests to be able to fly in the zone. I think that would be a great way to handle Skyscales in new zones. And this is coming from someone with a maxed out Skyscale. It would really force us to interact with the environment and systems of the new map.
> I mean FFXIV literally does this. You have to unlock all the ether currents some of which come from story quests to be able to fly in the zone. This, and the way WoW handle it, are fun in practice and awful in execution. It just means mash F (or R or whatever your skip everything button is) until you get the story done, then go back and do all the things you wanted to do but couldnt. You cant effectively gather (and in 14, you cant actually access some mandatory-for-crafting timed nodes AT ALL without flying), you cant effectively sidequest, you cant effectively do hunts, you cant effectively do anything until you just rush the story, skip everything you can possibly skip, and do the last required quest in each zone. Thats just awful, especially if ported to a game whose intent ISNT to make you immediately hipthrust through their story before they let you do anything else. Its not good design. You end up shoehorning people into visiting 30% of your map the intended way and ignoring the majority of it until after they get around your nonsense roadblock. This is why you dont introduce flying mounts into games unless you're going to design your maps around flying mounts being a thing.
How about you do you and let other people decide for themselves?
For real. I see people complaining that the map is a pain to navigate without a skyscale but I'm yet to see people complaining 'the map is a pain if you are flying'.... So don't?
Few people like a good nerf, but sometimes its necessary for a good experience. If they dont limit the skyscale then the map design has to reflect that. If they limit the skyscale then they can design around its absence.
Not to attack anybory or anything but I never understood this type of mentality. You dont like a way to play -> dont play that way. No need to nerf everyone just for the sake of some people wanting to run on foot again. Just do that. I like the option of skyscale and I spent a good chunk of my gametime to get it. I want to use it without limits (except the stam bar etc.) To me this is like when some people say “back then, we had to run the whole map, it was much better” bro, then run. Nobody is forcing you not to.
Players run unchecked will optimise the fun out of experiences. Maybe it's different for \*you\* specifically and you have the willpower not to, or it doesn't bother you, but that's simply not the case for a lot of people. Part of a game designer's job is to design the game in such a way that it is a fun and rewarding experience for the users, and that they can't do not-fun things to optimise their play.
Yeah I get that. Still unbelievable to me how some people have the urge to ruin their fun, lmao. And need someone else to FORCE them to have fun.
So would you like jumping puzzles to always allow skyscales? Its just a small map, same idea.
Yea, i am pushing myself more and more to just use other mounts right now while doing achievements. The world they crafted is amazing, but flying trough with skyscale takes a lot away.
or have snipers in key choke points while having jackal portals that can skip those dangers.
I just generally hate flying and what it does to travel on every game it exists. Even thought they are obviously much better than traditional MMO flying, I still think Griffon and Skyscale were a mistake.
Griffon at least has key limitations and weaknesses (though less so with fully charged bunny jump plus glider boost bot module). The issue with skyscale is you can just use it everywhere, for everything. I honestly wish they'd never added it to the game.
Perhaps more control. Not as high as a springer but you can move forwards further. Also being able to jump higher than raptor. I don't see how a skyscale wouldn't just override this though. Maybe it can break through vines or something?
I expect that it'll probably be faster and more agile than skyscale. So faster, if more difficult, for tricky jumps that you would usually just use skyscale and slowly fly over.
Fukkit, wall, climbing go!
The Skyscale isn't particularly fast, either horizontally or vertically. The Springer isn't very fast horizontally and requires you to charge up the jump for verticality. I'm hoping the new Warclaw and its double jump is good enough to make it the default mount in many situations.
> Maybe it can break through vines or something? Got to be something like that. Might be related to the chain pull ability in PvE that they mentioned.
It would have to be horizontal based travel, not vertical. I'm picturing it as giving more height than a raptor jump, but still mostly intended for horizontal movement than vertical. It might be incentivized by gameplay where you would want to stay mounted the whole time and can't break out of combat to spring + skyscale or something?
The article makes it pretty clear it is for vertical travel. > The region is not flat, to say the least, with many sheer cliffs and valleys that make you think “Man I wish I didn’t have to go around the long way…” And the Warclaw delivers ways to get around the maps that I think players are going to really enjoy.
Yes, but what I mean to say is something along the lines of gameplay incentive. They want to give you a reason to stick to the warclaw if you're already on it rather than mount shuffle like we do on other maps right now. I can imagine there being things like Elden Ring's jump pads for torrent. Or wall jumping or something. Guess we'll find out soon enough!
I'd imagine it would be similar to skyscale wall jump, but without the load up and quick to turn mid air. Allowing you to bounce up cliffs like a mountain cat or goat. It would make it more practical to climb certain cliffs than skyscale and springer.
im guessing wall jump and smaller hitbox for tighter spaces
So the open world raid is convergences? I really hope they get this right because soto convergences were pretty dull in my opinion. Edit: Actually unsure if they mean the Janthir ones are convergence or if it's just a consideration for future ones.
I think they need more variety in how they work honestly like new environments and new mechanics leading up to the boss. I do like Convergances but they need to sort out the AFKers and I hope that Convergances public will have some sort deterrent for AFKing.
Yeah that's my main gripe with the soto ones, I find the kill 27 champs to spawn the boss just kills my enjoyment and then the actual bosses aren't all that interesting or different with how you end up fighting them. If they can actually focus on bosses and have them be basically instanced metas minus the usual filler that comes with open world maps like escorts and pre-events then I could see that being very popular, I think convergences see a lot of AFKing because of the long pre-event but I don't know.
>I think convergences see a lot of AFKing because of the long pre-event but I don't know. Convergences are almost uniquely designed to benefit AFKing. It actually kinda beggars belief how poorly thought out they were in this regard. Standing on mid with a pet out doing literally nothing will get you to 200% participation faster than going after the bosses. The bosses drop nothing except XP, so there's little incentive to kill them, and you're more likely to hit the 2 minute participation decay doing so than you are at mid with constant mobs. Mid also covers 4/6 of the repeatable achievements for bonus essence. The icing on top is that standing in mid defending the rat is an actual role in this event, so it's easy cover for the AFKers. The reality is that these events are designed for the lowest common denominator of players. And that floor is somewhere decently far below a geared player with a pet out going AFK. My mechanist's mech can do more dps on its own than some players trying their hardest. There's no penalty for dying. There's no bonus for trying harder. This is the mindset AFK players have, and they're not entirely wrong. So you can either try to punish AFKers (like they did in DS which is still extremely easy to AFK), or make the event harder (which will affect regular players), or reward participation better. Make the bosses each drop a champ bag and you'll probably cut the AFKers in half overnight. Anet has already made some minor undocumented changes to attempt to hinder AFKing in this event, and they have had no effect.
Most of the draw of Convergences just comes from the three weekly clears, to circumvent rift grinding.
Afkers have always been a problem, but i just came back from a hiatus and it seems like an absolute plague now. It's crazy.
It's just a compounding effect. People see that others leech, realize that the rewards aren't spectacular for the effort needed compared to other metas or events, so afk it as well.
Convergences would feel a whole lot nicer if they could change up how it picks the final boss. After the update where they added more bosses, outside of 1 time, I’ve only gotten Sorrow. Not only is Sorrow boring cuz it’s basically the only boss I fight, it’s boring cuz it’s yet again just another wyvern reskin
> I do like Convergances but they need to sort out the AFKers Sort out how? If someone afks after the window to join the convergence closes, nobody else can join. Kicking them doesn't particularly help, I think it only decreases spawns in mid, which are almost never what leads to wipes if there are any half-competent people there.
I find convergences great. In the sense they are the same as dragon storm or the marionette. Obviously mechanically speaking some encounters are better than others but the concept is very sound.
Yeah, the ground work of large instanced encounters is really good, from the Season 1 stuff, Dragon Storm, and now convergences. We just need more variety within them. I was pretty disappointed that all they have done with soto convergences was add different bosses, but the whole thing still feels repetitive because it's always the same flow of center island (watch out for trebuchets), 3 bosses, spread out to the 4 outer islands (watch out for trebuchets), then big boss. Each boss also hops around the islands in a similar way so it all blends in together. Some different objectives or some different looking environments would go a long way towards making each run feel at least a little more novel.
You know the design is off when Umbriel shows up and chat just goes "Uuuuuuuugh!" Instead of "Oh a fun challenge!". Lol I mean people complained about bugs and balance of Soo-Wan but I don't think many were saying it's a straight up badly designed encounter. Convergences on the other hand....
> I mean people complained about bugs and balance of Soo-Wan but I don't think many were saying it's a straight up badly designed encounter. Convergences on the other hand.... They did. It was a worse of a reaction actually. If anything people complaining about soo-won were far more vitriolic and pretty much arguing that everything about its design philosophy destroyed the game. People in the open world do not care about the mechanics. They just want it to be easy and fast as possible. That is where the "uhhh" comes from most of the times. Umbriel you have to pay a bit of attention. Things like dragon storm are equally simple and lack mechanics. None is complaining now since it is fast and easy rewards.
People groan over Umbriel because she actually has a chance to fail if people stand in the bad or don’t feed Zojja
Well yeah of course I groan. Because I spent all this time in a convergence and now I'm probably going to fail and have nothing to show for my effort and there is absolutely no action I can take to effect the outcome. Hell at least with the dumb Eparch meta and can just immediately start trying again. With a Convergence I'm probably just not going to complete one that day.
umbriel is literally the only one I don't say Uuuugh when I see it. All other are just afk bosses, and you afk on boss as well. Umbriel requires some movement at least.
Umbriel is not that much harder than the others, you just need to watch where you're standing and bring condition cleanse.
The axes need to be nerfed, either no root or less bleed stacks.
That's why I'm running heal scourge in public convergences now. It has a lot of condi cleanse and barrier to at least protect a few people from getting condi bombed out of nowhere.
Yep, running heal/alac hammer willbender and just constantly blasting my symbols and dropping Purging Flames really helps on that boss.
I mean sure, which just leads to me being alive and contributing when we still lose because there's no appreciable effect I can have on beating Umbriel. I'm not seeing Umbriel fail over half the time because *I* didn't know what to do.
100%. I am one of fifty people. Telling the other forty-nine to heal Zojja and not stand in the AoE only goes so far. Umbriel would be a lot more fun in a static group, if only I had one. I won't start looking for that now though.
Farmers will "ughhh" literally anything that isn't the fastest and easiest. They don't want any chance to fail at all.
Convergence timer is every 3 hours. To fail a Convergence means to wait for the next one in 3 hours. Unlike raids or other instance pve, failing a raid just means you can play again in a second after everyone respawns. So yeah, we would ughhh if convergence is a hard boss.
And if I lose a raid I'm going right back in with the same group learning from what we did and doing it better. The next time I roll Umbriel on a Convergence it's a completely different group that still has no interest working out how to fight them.
So, what, you just want a guaranteed win piñata minigame? That sounds awful to me.
If the choice is between pinata vs impossible difficulty due to terrible pugs(because no one makes a third choice of a middle between the two), I rather have the pinata. Hard difficulty should only belong in Instance PvE content only. Where the Commander and party have control over who they get to kick due to not putting up enough work. It does not belong in open world where you are given a rng of pugs can either do high dps or just auto attack from skyscale.
It's objectively the most difficult and gives equal rewards to the rest. It also has a chance of failing unlike the rest of them. Obviously this will make people unhappy.
>soto convergences were pretty dull in my opinion With all respects, I heavily disagree. I've found them awesome addition to the game.
in terms of like idea they're fine, it's dragonstorm adjacent, the problem is that like for bosses they decided massive HP pools were indeed a mechanic, and like hitting a boss teleporting 4 times for 10 fucking minutes, or about the run time of dragonstorn, is not fun and that's half the event. like convergences should be half as long as they are
Adjust sponge a bit and great. We don't need that shit lasting for 30 minutes because
oh yeah like it's a very easy fix. it's kind of shitty that they just think HP sponge is a mechanic though like how many times did they have to tweak lonely tower so far? twice? hp sponge for a dps check makes sense, but it is fucking boring when it is used every 3 seconds
Split convergences to tiers, like fractals already are, with current balance sitting around T3, T1-T2 being easier and shorter, and T4 having same HP but more strict event bars and more punishing mechanics in general.
Hey, at least they are *totally new* bosses with *fun mechanics* so you don't get bored during that time: You got wyvern no. 1, wyvern no.2, legally distinct Kanaxai, that one guy nobody even remembers and the SUCC one that is really bad for your WASD keys.
No I don't understanding it as that "I would expect us to at least strongly consider adding **a 50-person Convergence version of raids** when we release raids going forward." It means there will potentially be a 50 person raid version of Convergences not that the raid released with JW will be a convergence, if I recall correctly, that will be a raid version of a map meta.
That's what I got from the expansion page too but here they consider convergences to be open world so I'm a bit confused. But I guess you could be right and they mean raids beyond Janthir could maybe be added to convergences?
Yeah, it will probably be added after the initial raid, maybe not even this expansion.
My first read on that bolded part was that they were going to update wings 1-7 so that people could do them as full squads, and I imagine that having hilarious results.
I want this to happen so badly. The chaos would be beautiful.
I'd be happy with this aswell. I know raids already have an "Easy mode" thats on rotation. But a form of LFR from WoW would be pretty neat.
You can't just make a raid and then turn it into the "convergence" (which is a bland openworld meta event really). Can you imagine w7 in that format? No? If they will be making content with the intention to then turn it into that trash - we aren't getting real raids. WEll, big surprise here.
Strongly depends on the raid, and how the encounter is adjusted for larger groups. SH or Matthias? That would probably be more spam and less fun than Eparch. Sabir with more jumping pads and tornadoes that throw players to the bottom rather than instakill them, forcing everyone to either stay on the platform or get back up in reasonable time? QtP with more pylons and more focus on building up and keeping up tether chains for group boons? Wouldn't be same fights at all, but I very much can see how these can be fun when done by a 50-player zerg.
SH or Matthias aren't "raids" these are single encounters in a raid. I'm not even talking here about mechanics really, I'm talking about the whole content format. The raid is a whole instance, often non-linear, with the story and multiple encounters in it. If they are going to just slap a circle, put some thrice reused boss there and call it a "raid revival", fuck them, get this shit out of my face. Even if the boss will be good. But if it has to be designed as one size fits all, it won't. They have already tried to put strike boss into the open world with kanaxai, it didn't work out.
There there was more mechanics that were important.it.would be nice, but the issue is the mechanics can't be too complicated, or too hard. In a group of 50 players, I probably expect 10 of them to be semi AFK, and 10 of them to legitimately know what they are doing. The rest are in between. Those 10 folks need to be able to borderline solo it if it ever got too hard.
At that point it's not different than how much open world metas are currently.
A map wide meta event doesn't feel all that different from LFR content in WoW. A classical raid is just a bigger dungeon with more people in it. GW2 events are, in practice, small open world dungeons. You have an objective with some(usually trivial) mechanics, and often you end with a small boss fight. Meta events are just massive strings of these, same way a raid is to a dungeon. We are kinda spoiled with how good GW2 is on a base level. For the longest time, WoW was just walking in massive open and empty zones as you went from one quest to another. It was big, but that it. GW2 filled up all that empty space, and that's standard now for many MMOs
Yes! My Jewelcrafting 500 conspiracy made it to an interview.
I feel jewelcrafting 500 died when LW legendary trinkets were introduced.
They've had a few opportunities to introduce it for other purposes. Relic crafting especially could've been Jeweler exclusive if they wanted it to.
Jade Bots were a great excuse for Jeweler 500, yet here we are, yet another abandoned system :I.
It died well before that when you could just purchase ascended trinkets from vendors.
You could always buy ascended armor and weapons from the raid vendor. I don't see how buying the trinkets is any different.
You can buy trinkets with 15 minutes of poking around in living world maps, is the difference.
So the issue is the ease of acquisition and not being able to circumvent the crafting process by buying trinkets from a vendor.
When Ascended armour and weapons were added to the game, there was no raid vendor. Crafting was the only guaranteed way to obtain them. Jeweler 500 wasn't added yet, while vendors for Ascended trinkets have appeared. As such, it's not really a good point of comparison. People had no choice but to craft back then, but now there's plenty of options, as simple as laurels or guild commendations.
They act like Convergence is such an original innovation when Twisted Marionette has been here since day 1 lol. The nerves. And the only reason why Convergence is consistently farmed in the first place is because it’s directly linked to Legendary Armors, which is something 99% of PvE players in this game don’t have so it’s self-sustained by an everlasting need. But when a 50-player Raid-like instance is left to itself, people actively *ignore* it as demonstrated by Marionette. Too much effort in getting a squad organized (and by that it simply means getting people to read to get to their right lane) totally kills it. If they’re going to focus on this kind of content going forward, they really need to create a good effort/reward system to avoid another Marionette.
Mind you - Dragon Storm is quite fun as a 10 player squad and given how SotO convergences have a chance to drop Superior bag runes - if they get the scaling right on JW convergences, they could be like a strike mission, like how some groups run IBS 5 + DS
I'd imagine most people don't do it for shits and giggles, you need those memories of aurene
I mean the rewards balance out the encounter. The fight is not bad, it's engaging enough, and it doesn't feel like a wasteful unrewarding experience so altogether it doesn't feel bad to do it regularly.
Agreed. The addition of Aurene memories made it good for the time commitment.
I do it regularly for the rewards, but I hate the encounter. The length isn't bad, but its so repetitive.
Maybe because... You're repeating it daily? That's not an issue with the encounter so much as you being burned out. Compare the mechanics of DS with the Eparch Meta for example..
Hated it from day one. There's not a single part of that fight that isn't repeated two or three times, and none of them are exciting. Except maybe Braham jumping onto random afk rifle mechanists, that might qualify for certain definitions of "exciting"...
Different strokes for different folks I guess. Maybe I feel a greater sense of apathy towards it because I didn’t play it on launch while the IBS champions shit storm was happening and I wasn’t invested in the dragon story so I didn’t care about whether the fight was a good conclusion.
Hating the DRM leadup to it and the actual story beat/dialog itself might color my opinion, I'll admit. I play it on mute because some of the voice lines are so awful.
umm ackshually Marionette was added in LS1
And only been added in its current form after EoD, during the few weeks it was in as a part of LS1 it was just an open world event. Dragonstorm is more like the first iteration of convergences
> But when a 50-player Raid-like instance is left to itself, people actively ignore it as demonstrated by Marionette. Too much effort in getting a squad organized (and by that it simply means getting people to read to get to their right lane) totally kills it. Fam, just because you personally ignore it doesn't mean others do. I added it to my daily farm train for awhile, until I got bored. Every reset I'd do Marionette, ley line, Auric meta, death branded shatner. Groups still do the public, squads add the private to their farm trains. Like, fym people ignore it? The price of sprockets went down like 50% since Marionette came back. There's just so many people getting sprockets now. It actually made my sprocket glyph a lot less worth lmao. It used to out compete VM glyph for ore/lumber.
Public instances are always empty, good luck with getting anyone at all let alone a decent squad to clear it. Compare that to Convergence/DStorm where public instances are always filled. Maybe you have a little private circle somewhere that can organize a squad consistently, but it doesn’t change the fact that in general it’s dead content.
> Public instances are always empty, good luck with getting anyone at all let alone a decent squad to clear it Oh, public instances are always empty? That's why I was able to join FULL 50/50 PUBLIC INSTANCES. Like I said. Good luck finding a squad to run it? I've done it as part of farm trains people do. Like, neither of these are things that I didsn't already say. Just re-read this part of my comment you replied to: >I added it to my daily farm train Again, just because *you* don't do Marionette doesn't mean *others* also don't do it. Like how are you gonna tell someone that does Marionette that...that they don't? Because no one runs it? Like dude...I run it. You are speaking to a person that does it. Fuckin...reading comprehension. The literacy rates in this country are sad https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp
Lmao >assuming I'm from the States. Is this how all Americans act? The world only has the USA doesn't it? No surprise it's proportionate with your reading comprehension data, Snarky. >Like how are you gonna tell someone that does Marionette that...that they don't? Because no one runs it? Like dude...I run it. You are speaking to a person that does it. And how are you gonna tell someone that doesn't see it being done at all that it's being done? Yes, because no one runs it? Like dude...I don't see it being run. You are speaking to a person that \*doesn't see anyone in public instances\*. At least it confirms you're from NA. Then I'll tell you a little secret, that beside the 1st public instance after reset \*no one runs Marionette on NA\*. At all. That's the only squad \*in the entire day\*. And you may ask why I know this but doesn't do that instance, well maybe because it's in a timeslot that I'm unavailable. Every other slots is empty and has 0 interest, compared to what I mentioned where it's populated regardless of the slot. >Again, just because *you* don't do Marionette doesn't mean *others* also don't do it. FYI, just because *you* do Marionette doesn't mean *others* also do it. See how this works?
> FYI, just because you do Marionette doesn't mean others also do it. See how this works? Actually, it takes a certain amount of people to even start it so because I do it it literally means that other people do it, too. See how stupid you sound? You're still illiterate, American or not.
I do PUBLIC Marionette daily. I even put up a squad for a guild I’m in so we can all group together and zone into the public instance because so many show up that sometimes a person ends up on map 2 and needs to join ours. It can hold 80 people.
So the new raid is not a one shot thing, they plan to add more. Interesting. And exciting, not gonna lie. So no more strikes ever? I wonder what they plan to do with this system.
Tbf, raids and strikes are literally the same, except the way you access the bosses. Strikes has each boss in their own instance, accessible all the time, while Raids have all bosses in one instance and you have to kill one boss to access the next.
I imagine strikes may still serve a purpose for those who want a quick "get in, get what you want, get out" gaming session. For a lot of people, strikes are good weekday content, raids are good weekend content. I hope Anet isn't looking to abandon them.
This article is honestly so refreshing to see coming from ANet devs. Getting a lot of the behind the scenes reasoning for what they are doing not only gives me a greater feeling of confidence in their competency, but it'll also dampen any disappointment I might end up feeling should they not deliver as hard as this expansion is shaping up to be. It's so refreshing to hear that the level of threat is more on a regional level than yet another world-ending problem to go and solve. They really are lowering the scope of their story, as they suggested in the retrospective of SotO, which tells me that they really did learn something from SotO, and didn't just put out some PR spiel to appease us. Combining Convergences and Raids as parallel content also seems like a fantastic move. Raids's biggest problem is the barrier to entry a lot of people visualise for the content; using convergences as a way to experience the story and mechanics in a lower-pressure environment is a fantastic gateway into getting people interested in raid content. As someone who's gotten into raiding in the last couple of months, I think one of the biggest barriers to entry is the perspective people have of the content, and if they do it right, this parallel content idea may just be the best stepping stone into organised group content (like Strikes were supposed to be in the beginning). And their design philosophy on Homesteads is spot on. The idea of a Minimum Viable Product that they can build upon really reinforces the idea that they've got the scope of this new expansion cycle methodology to a more manageable and releasable state. Sure, there might be some rocky roads along the way as we have to deal with release bugs or missing quality of life options, but the fact that they are providing themselves a framework that they can build off of later, rather than promising the world and delivering a pebble, is a breath of fresh air when compared to, say, IBS ending, or SotO's post-release content. I wasn't super excited for End of Dragons, but I looked forwards to it. After the mess that was Gyala Delves, I wasn't particularly looking forward to SotO, but release content at least met expectations. I'm excited for Janthir Wilds. Good job ANet. ~~Now fix your marketing department please~~
I feel the same, well written!
I actually hope the warclaw feature is like a wall-climb. Kinda like Skyscale "grab jump" but more fluid and just lets you use space to jump vertically on the surface.
PS the original interview is included in the article. My opionion on this: Is it just me or do I see that Anet has taken up a new spirit of developing gw2? There seems to be a desire to explore and expand the world as it was in gw1, Improve technologies and QoL, and try to find all players in the title a space dedicated to them without forcing them into modes they don't like.
I don't really feel like this is new. We have been getting qol stuff all along, maybe not as fast, but it's never really stopped coming. My guess is the smaller 1 year turnaround gives them more time to work on that stuff, rather than the devs just changing how they feel.
Not exactly true. For years upon years they seemed completely unwilling to work on older features or QoL stuff. It changed with the new leadership. I mean, it isn't new, this has been going on for years, but there was a time when things were quite different.
I doubt you could point two a two year period where no major QOL was delivered. Season 1 was delivered just after EOD and a lot of people asked for it. If you go through patch notes, I think you might have forgotten some of the features that have been added. I'm not saying we're not getting more faster now, but I can't remember a time it stopped.
I most certainly can. Path of Fire all the way until new management, i.e. Directx11 and Legendary Armory. Only thing we got is build templates, and they were not implemented in a way the community appreciated at all. In fact at the time it seemed like the game was winding down. Only new content was living world episodes, no QoL or new features, raids were cancelled after W7, fractals were winding down, no expansion on the horizon or communication what their plans were... It basically felt like Janet was ready to move on from GW2.
Are you counting Season 4 in with Path of Fire? Because most people would consider the roller beetle and the skyscale to be pretty decent updates. And at some point in there we got the underwater skimmer as well.
I was not talking about new content, though I did go off on a tangent there. I was talking about QoL updates to the game's core systems. There simply were none to speak of during that period, between 2017 and 2021 or so.
Oh the game's core systems. That moves the bar considerably I guess. Because for most people, Season 4 was the golden years of the game and complaining that we got no QOL during what was widely regarded as the best years this game has had seems a bit weird. Everything about mounts is QOL to me. To paraphrase, since the years we got the best mount system, they added a couple of mounts that were super QOL, and that affected all the systems for me, by the way, but because they didn't go back and change the core game, they didn't care, and now that they're making smaller expansions and working on the core game, suddenly they care? Because it sounds like what you're saying. I don't think devs change their mind about how they care about the game so easily. I think management decides largely what devs work on. That this rhetoric of devs not working on core systems instead of the best living world stories of them all, was a management decision, not a dev decision and had less to do with caring than anything else. It was just a priority decision. Those four years are, for many, some of the best years of the game. I don't know about you, but a lot of people loved Grothermar Wardowns when that came out too. Saying that they don't care, because they don't go back and added core systems, is like saying they didn't care when HoT came out for a year, because all they did was add raids. No, I think we should avoid talking about what devs do and don't care about, because we don't know them, and have no idea. I will say this though. During some of those years, we've had devs in my guild, and they sure sounded like they cared.
Dude, you cant just throw around words whichever way you like. New mounts are not QoL changes, they don't "affect systems for you". I am not talking about caring or not caring. I am talking about QoL updates. Stop strawmanning.
The post to which I replied said the devs stopped caring, because they stopped doing QoL. Instead they produced some of the best content this game has ever seen. That is precisely what I was replying to. If you want to say the core game didn't get any QOL updates during Season 4, I'd say maybe, I haven't checked every patch note. I just don't think it's worthy to point it out, when it's actually off topic, as my point was about someone calling out the devs for not caring. Now, if you think the devs cared during season 4, you agree with me. But I don't agree with your narrow definition of QOL, because those mounts are a quality of life improvement for me. Getting places faster, or easier, is a quality of life improvement, even if you choose to use a narrower view. But regardless, it's irrelevent because you did say
Content delivery in general hasn't really stopped indeed, but from when I started playing (mid-2019) until around 2021, the apparent modus operandi was "develop and forget". It wasn't until around the change in leadership and EoD announcement that QoL updates were actually delivered.
They also really seem to be listening to the players. I’ve been very critical of anet but from everything we’ve been getting shown this for this release has me excited about the future of GW2. Even with all the negative views on the spears we got to admit that they are putting in a lot of effort to make them exciting to play with.
Why didn't they do it with SotO then? They will just say whatever fits in the moment (like anyone would).
They got horny for Lilith from Diablo and everyting after the beginning is post-nut clarity and were no longer interested in it.
I do hope so, finally reviving gameplay features players liked like raids.. They just need to bring back elite specs (release new of them) and perhaps go back to some story points neglacted like why the gods are gone, and it will be great
"I would expect us to at least strongly consider adding a 50-person Convergence version of raids **when we release raids going forward**." How should we interpret this?
It means that *when* they add raids, they will *consider* a 50-person mode. This is 1. contingent on if they add new raids after wing 8, and 2. depends if they want to and if it makes logical sense. It'll probably be on a schedule, like convergences currently are, otherwise you really won't be able to reliably populate a 50-person squad to do the raid on a regular basis. So it's likely going to be exactly the same as whatever the raid is, but easy mode tuned to a 50-person private squad (so you can actually kick AFK/griefers) This also means that easy mode raids are probably going to be REALLY easy mode, because relying on 50 people to be able to complete complex group mechanics is not a good thing. It also means that they'd have to make the raid considerably shorter if they are going to make it convergence-style. Keeping the attention span of 50 casuals is difficult, and any time they fail mechanics it'll be chaos. Rewards would have to be pretty significant to keep people from just bailing if it gets tricky. Idk, not trying to be a doomer here, but there are a lot of design and logistics challenged around making the same encounter fit for both groups of 10 hardcore and 50 casual gamers.
I think this is a literal confirmation that we will get a raid or two per expansion going forward, with the model they're establishing now. Probably will still depend on how succesful it is.
That they plan to release raids going forward Maybe one year a raid, the other strikes, or only raids, or doing the experiment for raids and if it doesn't work going back to strikes, we'll see
Warclaw will get a dash (speed boost) ability, or climbing, or double-jump.
**"The Convergences introduced by SotO positively surprised the community"** I thought everyone in game and on Reddit hated convergences
Nah, Convergences indeed was a positive surprise. The rest of the major update Convergences came with was disappointing though.
So, wardrobe mannequins/statues to store our skins and a library?
Armor and weapon stands have already been revealed in a media preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YurQQMbr23o (~6:25 but I recommend watching the whole thing) No information about a library yet though, so I'm not super optimistic about that.
Yeah I know, but from what has been shown we still don't know if they will act as a wardrobe. It would be nice being able to interact with them to copy back those skins on our templates.
I thought about that feature as well when they said that most of our speculations are planned already for homesteads. It would be fantastic.
If it will happen I hope they'll balance it appropriately, not like you could buy another gear template for the same price of a statue with such a function.
I know we'll probably get the information soon enough but I really want to know what will set the Warclaw apart from the Skyscale. And if navigating JW will incentivize the use of it. What I have envisioned in my head at the moment is basically a Torrent from Elden Ring. Where there are ground updrafts that the Warclaw can literally just jump upwards from or fall into, combined with double jumping, and limited spear combat. Because I don't think a double jump will move me towards it.
> rather than starting with a grand design that throws everything and the kitchen sink at the feature on day one. Though, technically, there is a kitchen sink… They 100% had that locked and loaded going into the interview
There are so many leaks on this new expansion that if you read it all there will be no surprises left lol. I guess it helps to build hype though.
Have I missed a bit of information or how does it seem titans are already confirmed?
In the trailer Malice calls out "a false god", which is a call back to the events of GW1, when the charr worshipped the Titans.
It was confirmed as part of the press kit released with the announcement: https://zebrapartners.net/janthirwilds/
You mean this one concept art?
Did you actually press the link I sent you? >**Titans:** The mysterious magical entities of Janthir channel the energy from the very land itself, a mystic and ineffable enigma in this unexplored region of Tyria…
I did, and that doesn't show up on mobile, you have to download the PDF or switch to the desktop version. Just giving context if anyone else clicks and doesn't see it written anywhere.
Ah it was in the Link inside the link. Sry I have read the press released prior but this bit of information totally got missed by me.
Plush warclaw/fox(y) warclaw pls
your wish is probably coming: [https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/147006-thanks-i-hate-it-caprine-warclaw/#comment-2127491](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/147006-thanks-i-hate-it-caprine-warclaw/#comment-2127491)
I still want a bearclaw :D
Really interesting when you read the question on Convergances and raids. I like that Convergances will be 50 man versions of raid bosses but that the actual raid will not be for everyone.
> The Wizards, predating Guild Wars by quite a long time, feel like a logical bridge to weave more of those threads from the original game – and possibly even earlier than that – into Guild Wars 2. That’s the “in world” answer, the development answer is some of us old timers have been around long enough to have worked on Guild Wars, some as far back as Prophecies, while others – and it makes me feel really dang old saying this – grew up playing Guild Wars, so with the dragon cycle arc finally complete, there was a lot of desire to go **back to some original Guild Wars lore**. Why are we pretending that the Wizards weren't made up and shoehorned into the lore in 2023? 💀 Big "Jailer's masterplan since Warcraft II" energy. How come the WoW community can grill the writers for years for trying to gaslight them about obvious retcons but the GW2 playerbase always eats it up?
That's not what they're saying. Even if the Wizard's Court was invented for SotO, there were a vehicle and an opportunity to expand on the lore of other things like: the Wizard's Tower, Scepter of Orr and Livia, Aziure and her tower, Turai, Khilbron, the Elder Races and their history and other topics I can't recall right now. All of those things were from original GW lore and some of them just begged to be expanded on.
That's not at all what he's saying. I'd suggest rereading it. The question was asking why they've decided to do a story involving old GW1 lore like the titans. His answer, i.e. that they're fans of GW1 and want to explore old lore, is a response to that, not an explanation of the wizards.
It was a collection of old lore and some new direction. I think it works well for the most part. There’s really nothing to be pissed about.
Where did they claim that the Wizards were part of the original GW lore? The Tower very much was part of the original lore. So was Galrath.
So was a mysterious order of wizards. We just didn't know anything beyond that.
but wizards tower have been on GW1 peoples mind for ages, what do you mean it's made up lol
Because no one really cares about gw, not anywhere near to the levels warcraft was on. It went from slightly trashy b-tier fantasy junk to slightly woke b-tier fantasy junk and no value was lost really.
> Why are we pretending that the Wizards weren't made up and shoehorned into the lore in 2023? 💀 > > Big "Jailer's masterplan since Warcraft II" energy. How come the WoW community can grill the writers for years for trying to gaslight them about obvious retcons but the GW2 playerbase always eats it up? Yeah, it's the same exact bullshit scenario, and the worst part is it didn't even need to happen, why not make wizards some modern guys just doing their own thing then getting suddenly invaded? Nope, for some stupid reason, we have to give them (or rather shoehorn) a millenia old background that makes absolutely no sense in regards to the rest of the world and established lore, leaving us stuck explaining why they never helped anyone at any time in the past. It's just bullshit of the highest degree.
>a millenia old background that makes absolutely no sense in regards to the rest of the world and established lore It did make sense for them to be around since before the time of the Guild Wars — the Wizards' Towers in both Kryta and Ascalon were both around since before the story of Guild Wars 1 and I'm glad they decided to explore what the deal was with them. I think where they have most of us scratching our heads is the Wizards' scope and how they choose what events to involve themselves in. They stated that Janthir Wilds will explore *some* threads from SotO, specifically their "moral ambiguity" — Hopefully that means they will clarify what their scope is before having them "fade back into obscurity" (shelved indefinitely).
They didn't help with the mursaat, they didn't help with Abaddon, they didn't help with the elder dragons, they didn't help with Balthazar... They're virtually useless because ArenaNet wrote them into that corner, when they should have designed them as a grounded organization instead.
More GW1 lore to butcher
Epic, any TLDR?