Guild Wars 2

This isn’t so much about the quality of the Living Story (or lack of, depending on your view), but about all the various little aspects of the living story that we’ve seen this past year.

When I look back at the stuff I took part in, as well as the facets that were brought about, I see a lot of one-off things.

From mechanics down to items, there were so many things that were only seen once as a “type” goes.

Examples:
The citizens rescue. A zone wide sort of mechanic/event that required lots of non-zerg group effort.
Queens Gauntlet: a one off mechanic where players go solo against mobs in a 1v1 arena type environment.
Random Portal devices: I can’t remember the exact name, but basically it’s the consumable that opens a random portal to various locations in Tyria

There are many more, as those are just examples, but there just seem to be a lot of things that feel more like Anet was testing the players to see how they would react to certain types of situations or items.

Season 1 was very much an experimentation – I dont think they really hid that either and a couple of devs came out and said it too, since this was new ground for them to tread.
Lots of mistakes were made, lots of successes were had also (something often overlooked) and some successes reversed. The inconsistencies were perhaps the most notable part of the whole season for me.

One of the big reasons for this came down to the speed they push out updates and that they were always working behind on the feedback. By the time we feedback on a piece, it will be roughly 4 months before that ever kicks into an update.

They tried a lot of different things with season 1, so hopefully season 2 will be smoother and less about trial and error.

I’m hoping season 2 is based on what worked from season 1. A lot of season 1 felt like they were just throwing everything at the wall and trying to see what would stick.

Neural.1824:

I’m hoping season 2 is based on what worked from season 1. A lot of season 1 felt like they were just throwing everything at the wall and trying to see what would stick.

I wouldn’t count on it getting better. The repeated a lot of mistakes more than once during season one, right up until the end. They just don’t seem to care. From my perspective, with rare exception, Living Story got worse and worse over time. The closest they ever came to a Living Story that might have contributed to a Living World was Frost and Flame. If they had improved on that attempt with more content; more changes at shorter intervals; a lasting impact on the effected zones and what occurred there; with a climax that didn’t require a 5-man dungeon run? Living Story might have worked. Even with the flaws, you could see how the concept could have been made to work. Instead, they retreated further and further from the game world.

There is much, much more to criticize, but it will just have to suffice to say that I have zero faith and miniscule hope that Season 2 will be any better or do anything to undo the damage Season 1 has wrought.

GW2 has gone from a game with a ton of freedom and a vast world to explore, to a stagnant game world where the main focus has been to retrain players to embrace, or revile, an “Adventure by Checklist”, “Chase the Carrot”, “All content is temporary, but there are always new carrots” sort of game. At launch, they presented a bold new alternative for MMORPG design and focus of game play, but Living Story has morphed GW2 into a gross caricature of everything that has been wrong with MMORPGs for the last decade.

Neural.1824:

I’m hoping season 2 is based on what worked from season 1. A lot of season 1 felt like they were just throwing everything at the wall and trying to see what would stick.

So lots of Marionette-like battles