Guild Wars 2

I think that the ‘Living Story’ is good in theory. Unfortunately, it has been dominated by ‘find x of these and click on them’. This lasted for literally 2-3 months earlier in the year, and although the Living Story events have improved, I am still finding myself running around LA clicking on pinatas, or clicking a firework 100 times, or running around zones clicking on a dragon statue to burn.

I’ve had more fun doing a ‘kill 10 rats’ quest in GW1 than I’ve had doing any of the above. If the Living Story is truly going to be a core feature in the months to come, I do hope that the achievements/activities centered around them become more interesting.

Any thoughts?

Most “Kill Ten Rat” quests are trivial and get repetitive quickly. “Go to X” type quests are only good the first few times round. Once you memorize the possible spawn locations they become trivial.

I like the idea of minigames that either take some skill, or cannot be trivialised just by rote learning or looking at a guide.

I once played a Chinese RPG that had a minigame that could not be spoiled even if you saw the answer in a guide.

They played a melody for you to memorize, then played four more and you had to choose the right one. It started easy at first, then at the later stages the tunes got more and more similar. It was intuitive in that you got better at it the more you played even if you started completely clueless, and you could not just look at a guide to get the right answer.

Also, the current Living Story has a very noir-ish feel with the introduction of Marjory. Maybe it’s possible to have a Cluedo-type minigame where the murderer is never the same person but dependent on what clues you pick up and what conclusions you draw.

Or maybe one of those games where you have two pictures side by side (scene of the crime?) and you pick out the parts that are different/missing from the original one.