Guild Wars 2

I realize that ArenaNet is working very hard to dish out content fast enough to make the dormant player feel like he’s being left out by not playing through everything, but I honestly can’t say that I’ve personally had very much “Fun” playing through the content that’s been dished out in updates since the game’s release. I wish ArenaNet would take the time to polish pre-existing content, maybe cycle in some new world events instead of the same old ones that sit on a timer and initialize every 3-4 hours. Hell, I’d like to see some world AI with complexity similar to what I see in the HoTM training area with the different profession training NPC’s.

I could go on for days in ways that they could improve their pre-existing game instead of making events that pull players from the rest of Tyria into Lion’s Arch week after week after week. But I won’t. You can find plenty of that in the Discussion Forum.

Just please – Quality over Quantity.

I feel like they’re taking a decent approach. Essentially each part of the Living Story will take 3-4 months to complete. They have a few groups (I’m assuming 3-4) that are going to take turns releasing 2 patches a month.

If they threw all of those people into one group, it would be hectic and I doubt much would get done (but it would at least look amazing).

Actually they have exactly 4 diffrent living story teams, each team have 4 months to complete their own story arc which will be released as 2 patches each month.

And of course not every story arc will please all.

I really wonder how they organize the teams in order to give each release the best possible cutscenes & story development. Do they have 4 teams responsible for that, each in a team. I like the current style gameplaywise, I see how content is getting better and better. Dungeons improve like a charm and the jumping puzzles (Southsun Cove, Not so secret…) are awesome (except that you can directly Mesmer-port to the end). What hasn’t improved for me personally is the story delivery / quantity & quality. My favourite was the Halloween scavenger hunt. The hunt itself was heavy on lore which I haven’t seen in a later release. You had to think also. The new scavenger hunt is shown on the map with those golden stars…

Imho Anet should take a look at the Halloween lore/story delivery and let this influence future releases. Molten Factory had a few dialogues coming with the scavenger hunt too, but it didn’t feel that important. We helped characters which were never seen after the event and rewards were very bland too. The backback book at halloween (2 versions for casual and hardcore) was awesome also.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I really wonder how they organize the teams in order to give each release the best possible cutscenes & story development. Do they have 4 teams responsible for that, each in a team. I like the current style gameplaywise, I see how content is getting better and better. Dungeons improve like a charm and the jumping puzzles (Southsun Cove, Not so secret…) are awesome (except that you can directly Mesmer-port to the end). What hasn’t improved for me personally is the story delivery / quantity & quality. My favourite was the Halloween scavenger hunt. The hunt itself was heavy on lore which I haven’t seen in a later release. You had to think also. The new scavenger hunt is shown on the map with those golden stars…

Imho Anet should take a look at the Halloween lore/story delivery and let this influence future releases. Molten Factory had a few dialogues coming with the scavenger hunt too, but it didn’t feel that important. We helped characters which were never seen after the event and rewards were very bland too. The backback book at halloween (2 versions for casual and hardcore) was awesome also.

Just to answer a bit of your question. All the teams have several persons in each of the elements. So they have capacity to do whatever they want.

I didn’t play the halloween event due to personal reasons. So I can’t speak about whats better or not.
But I do get the feeling that these events gets better and better – so far they have only releases experiments. I think we can look forward to some extreme and wonderfull things!

i haven’t touched the “sky pirates” thing at all, save for getting a port to the lion’s arch/broadhollow chest. i guess the point of these is each patch is something for everyone. i know mini pet fanatics so this is right down their alley.
although i wish Anet would do more to include wvw players in this. maybe force the pve players to come to wvw instead of the other way around with at least one of these patches?

Keep in mind that they do have awesome stuff planned, and they are keeping the “quality over quantity” prospect in mind, but they have multiple teams working on different things. There are teams working on the quality side of the spectrum. But we haven’t seen what they have got going yet, because, well, “quality over quantity.” The rest we’ve been experiencing is, in a way, for some people, filler.

I have the distinct feeling that they are trying a lot of different things and seeing how people will respond. The different approaches to RNG chests and dungeons, for example.

panzer.6034:

I have the distinct feeling that they are trying a lot of different things and seeing how people will respond. The different approaches to RNG chests and dungeons, for example.

I feel the same way. It definitely seems that they’re trying out different mini-game ideas as well as dungeon concepts (F&F dungeon and Sky Pirates were awesome btw.) I kind of wonder if all the living story story stuff is all just live testing for possible expansion content. That’s what it really feels like.

Setun.4368:

panzer.6034:

I have the distinct feeling that they are trying a lot of different things and seeing how people will respond. The different approaches to RNG chests and dungeons, for example.

I feel the same way. It definitely seems that they’re trying out different mini-game ideas as well as dungeon concepts (F&F dungeon and Sky Pirates were awesome btw.) I kind of wonder if all the living story story stuff is all just live testing for possible expansion content. That’s what it really feels like.

I do feel that they are starting to get a feel for what works and what doesn’t, so in that sense a lot of what we’ve seen so far is experimental (see also iterative design). Regardless of whether this is intended to test ideas for future expansions, the lessons ANet learn from developing and delivering living story content should help them with both polishing the core game and building future content.

The OP has a point as far as Lion’s Arch is concerned. Would love to see stuf happen that doesn’t revovle around this god forsaken lag pit every 2 weeks.