Guild Wars 2

Lions Arch needs a library added to the game, and with each website lore update you could add a book hidden somewhere in that library with the same text that you add to the website. Books should totally be handled like they were in GW1, give us that little ability to flip the pages with our mouse too.

ColinJohanson.2394:

While we love the website stories and they won’t be going away, we are working on ways to try and get more of that experience (and story) available to see, and read in game.

Any solution will likely include our plans to try and make Living World, and stories around it easier to access, understand, and find out more about even once they have past.

Do, or do not. There is no “try”.

You have set yourselves a hard path. Now is not the time to wonder if you know how to walk it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Keep the suggestions coming, we’re always listening and do want to resolve getting stronger, more approachable, easier to understand stories as part of the Gw2 experience.

You had a solution to this in GW. The books. Not only did they have a purpose for game play (turning them in for rank), they also gave players keep-sakes of the things they accomplished (dungeon books), let them recap their progress up to a certain point (story books), acted as a checklist for completionists, a reference for lorehounds, and were repeatable in case you lost one for whatever reason.

Why try to invent new complex systems to replace something that was efficient, effective, and wasn’t broken?

Because it most likely wouldn’t work in a game that is built completely different without some major changes?

ColinJohanson.2394:

While we love the website stories and they won’t be going away, we are working on ways to try and get more of that experience (and story) available to see, and read in game.

More of our high-quality cinematics isn’t really an option, since they take months and many people to make and we’re at max (or over) capacity on those at is most of the time.

Any solution will likely include our plans to try and make Living World, and stories around it easier to access, understand, and find out more about even once they have past.

Keep the suggestions coming, we’re always listening and do want to resolve getting stronger, more approachable, easier to understand stories as part of the Gw2 experience.

What do you mean by high-quality cinematics? Does this mean I’ll never hear my character talk to other characters again? It kind of feels dumb to just stand by quietly as the others characters talk to each other and ignore my character.

Why not bring back guild wars 1 books….

Except make them for gw2 and living story content ? As you gain progress a new chapter unlocks or something that you can read or have narrated idc.

Floreum.3684:

Lions Arch needs a library added to the game, and with each website lore update you could add a book hidden somewhere in that library with the same text that you add to the website. Books should totally be handled like they were in GW1, give us that little ability to flip the pages with our mouse too.

Right? What city doesn’t have a library? Please build a library in LA if not all cities!

i suppose it was already posted somewhere here, but i think the easiest way would just be to spam the world with books. this way there’d be no need to make time consuming cutscenes. there are a lot of bookshelves in tyria, just fill them. make those items inventory items on pickup and you’ll even make monetary profit through limiting inventory-/storage space if people want to keep one or another of those.
i think there’s no shame in copying good stuff from other games and i think noone will disagree that TES has shown how to efficiently implement written story into a game.

I would be fine with in game books that tell various stories of the many characters. Some decent concept art, page turning, it would be like how The Elder Scrolls does it. We could even have a bank tab for collecting them all, perhaps even a librarian in our home instance.

It is not far fetched, Guild Wars I had similar books.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Storybook

Realistically though we will probably just get a tab on our hero panel to scroll through similar to the personal story.

DarcShriek.5829:

ExAstris.8527:

DarcShriek.5829:

Gene Archer.8560:

lordkrall.7241:

Suddenly knowing something that only two people “alive” would know can however not be explained.

Sure it can.

“A new chapter has appeared within the pages of the Mad Memories, revealing to you a past that up to now has been known only to the Bloody Prince and the Mad King.”

And then they tie that together by releasing a new scavenger hunt that leads to yet another upgraded Mad Memories.

Look at that, justification for putting it in game and I thought it up in under a minute.

Bad example. The only way that the informatin in the latest short story could show up in game is if the blood prince stopped fighting you long enough to give a long and boring expository of what happened.

Extremely few people want to read the wall a text that won’t even help them play the game better. Usability tests consistently show that players simply do not want this.

In this example, Anet actually used the best method available to get this information out.

Disagree. The Elder Scrolls games are quite popular and use the book/text format in-game to convey lore. Certainly not everyone reads them, but it is an appreciated option.

But how many of the players you describe would be willing to watch a rad cut scene?

Anet has already stated that your rad cut scenes are too expensive, they’re not going to happen.

You can choose to agree with the results of real test data or not, the choice is yours. Typically, disagreeing results in error.

They are not “my” cut scenes. They are an ideal means of communicating plot without using “your” dreaded wall of text. If Colin says they are too expensive to implement on a regular basis (as he did after my initial post), I will accept his expertise.

I was not trying to call you out. Rather, I was agreeing with fellow players that the current situation is not optimal. In that respect, I disagree with you; the news feed stories are not the “best method.” There has to be another way, and the devs seem to acknowledge this. Again, this segment of the playerbase has indicated that lore books (a la The Elder Scrolls) would scratch an itch.

“Boring expository” lies in the eye of the beholder, and your test results are hearsay without a link or other evidence. I may be wrong; but a declaration of error necessitates more data. You know, since we’re being technical.

If we are to engage in supposition, I would suggest that the players who are interested in lore represent a loyal base, and their concerns may not be yours but they do represent a contigent that translates to revenues for the developers.

Mechanics are fun, but I’m here for a story.

I just wish they would stop calling it " Living World" or “Living Story” so far neither is true..and it doesn’t seem they want to change it… So i will continue to do what was not intended for this game and FARM FARM FARM! Because without any Real story or Plot that is whats left…

Here’s one thing I love. In the ESO series, specifically Skyrim, I always grab a bunch of books, and toss them in my house. Then, when I’m bored, I literally grab a few books, sit in a chair, and read a lot of them. I’d rather do that than to go to the site, and randomly see lore… it’s so unengaging, I don’t even bother to read it. We don’t have missions like GW1, the personal story only went so far, but the missions were how I learned the lore for GW1 so well and so fast.

Chesed.2890:

This thread is silly and I hope the devs ignore it. I think the website stories are fine. I enjoy reading them. People that agree with the OP seriously just need to lighten up.

and people like you are defending THE WORST WAY POSSIBLE WAY TO DELVER A STORY.
i hardly can control my responding to you white knights who are defending this awful storytelling and every other poor decision anet makes you need to just LEAVE your the ones ruining this games narrative. I should never have to leave the game to know the story IN THE GAME

A book system would address also some of the problems with people who leave for a while and come back. The Living Story has progressed and they have no idea what is going on. There have been a number of threads and complaints about this.

Put the cutscenes from each Living Story in an interactable book along with some explaining text. A person who wants to read up on it can go to the lore library, chose the book on that part of the Living Story and read the text and see the cutscenes, such as the one where Logan goes to the Tavern and meets Marjory and Kasmeer there.

Personally, I love the Durmand Priory idea, and that would make perfect sense since Durmand himself was the source of quite a bit of lore in GW1. However, for a delivery mechanism I’m surprised that no one in this thread has mentioned the GW1 Bonus Mission Pack, which allowed you to actually play through the historical events referred to in the lore, as the historic participants themselves. You had to talk to Durmand in LA to access those missions, so why not put an NPC in the Priory library somewhere who serves the exact same function? It makes little sense to reinvent the wheel.

Instead of being some lame book or difficult-to-implement cutscene (or even worse yet another gem store ripoff), lore installments could be released periodically as instances via the Living Story mechanism, and those specific instances made persistent for replay simply by talking to a hypothetical Priory researcher in the library after the meta event completes (any rewards from the instance could be first-run only, or something). Frankly I’d rather see deeper in-game exposition of the lore put out via the LS format rather than new and apparently random content that has virtually no in-game backstory. Quit trying to cook up “new” content that frankly amounts to little more than the biweekly Bug Grind, and instead work on developing the rich, deep backstory that Tyrian/Canthan/Elonian history already provides.

Just to add: what I suggest takes advantage of existing mechanisms within the game, so it shouldn’t necessarily be all that difficult to put into practice.

• Method of adding new playable content? Check, Living Story has that covered. Just add the Priory NPC to make it re-playable (and make it fit into their mission of historical archiving and research). Maybe a meta event to seek out some long-lost descendant of Durmand, who then fills this role?

• Way to temporarily turn your character into someone else? Check and then some. See Briarthorn Den, Xolotl, costume brawl, Moa Morph, Skritt Burglar, golem suits, etc.

• Rewards only on first completion? Check, see achievements & numerous champions.

• An existing precedent? That would be the bonus mission pack, which ANet has used before to roll out well-done and engaging “flashback” lore that didn’t necessarily make it into actual gameplay, but which was both fun and provided depth to the existing story.

It probably won’t happen, but honestly I think this would be the most engaging way to bring lore into the game, as well as maybe improving the currently random and haphazard feel of the LS events.

OMG ! I got an awesome idea !

They should put a book shelf or a library in your home instance, much like a node, and then you could go there and these website stories would be in books and you could read them in-game. Like in GW1.

If they added a living story element, where we would have to do stuff to get this that would be cool too.

OR EVEN BETTER!! Add a storyteller to the home instance !! And you can click on him and ask him which story to read to you and then he will read it to you, like an in-game audiobook !!

Dude, I’m genius.

Why not just utilize the in game interface already developed that is being used for the character’s personal story on the hero panel?

Just copy that and make another tab just like it that tells the living story instead.

I’d actually prefer a library of some kind in the home instance, or one in every major city, instead of restricting the lore material to the Durmand Priory libraries that currently exist. That’s rather limiting, and I’m sure that characters of non-Human races would like to read up on this stuff without having to travel to Queensdale or join the Durmand Priory to gain access to the archives in their headquarters.