Guild Wars 2

After closely following the Living Story for 3 months I decided to post my own constructive feedback along with suggestions on how to improve the experience within each section of the Living Story.

Feel free to add your own input but please keep it constructive and about the Living Story itself. Complaints about the RNG involved with the Black Lion Chests have their own seperate topic.

Refugee Volunteer

Not much to say about this one, it was pretty straight forward and finished within 20 minutes.

Suggestions to improve it

- Several events which involve protecting the caravans while they pass in Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau, this would give it a more “alive” feeling as the player will get involved a bit more.

Lost and Found

This one was also pretty easy to figure out, two new items to be found each week. The spawn locations seemed very static, even though they were different on each server. I personally liked that every NPC you had to help gave a small teaser of why they were in Lion’s Arch.

Suggestions to improve it

- Whenever you returned an item to the NPC, give the player an extra teaser so that when you talk to the NPC again, it will recognize that you helped him or her and offers you another small teaser towards the storyline.

The Gathering Storm

Not much to say about this one, we have a similar achievement with every other holiday event and they are usually finished within an hour.

Suggestions to improve it

- Add several more tiers, up to 500 or 1,000 kills. This may sound like a grind but with all the events going on, alongside the new dungeons and upcoming content, it would be finished easily within the timeframe of 4 months.

Secret Contact

I loved this one, searching for clues around both area’s and then learning new tidbits about the story was both very interesting and hilarious. I love the sense of humor that’s attached to most of the messages and I wouldn’t mind searching for more clues.

Suggestions to improve it

- Some are very close to each other, spreading them out a bit more would increase the difficulty of finding them all.

- Make the locations random so that no guides can be created, this way it will feel like a real hunt, this will create another layer of immersion for most people too.

Living Story Instances

I’ve done both a few times now and I would like to post both the positive and negative points that I experienced.

Positive

- Beautifull area’s, it really feels like a part of the Molten Alliance

- Fast paced with nearly no cooldowns between battles, it gives a more intens experience

- The NPC involvement is great which adds very nicely to the immersion.

Negative

- Able to solo, seeing how both the Charr and Norn are fleeing, it’s a bit silly that you can solo the instances along with their final bosses.

- Only one final boss, I think one or more mini bosses between the different steps that you take would intensify the experience (if you increase the general difficulty stated as above).

- Not the proper rewards, I will talk more about this at the end of this post.

Suggestions to improve it

- Build it for a party of 3 to 5, mostly for the immersion and the general mmo experience.

- Triple the monsters inside the dungeon, give it an army feeling.

- Add more bosses along with a few small rewards, like a jug of 500 karma after each boss.

Living Story Rewards

Although the content you are adding is alot of fun, I feel the team that handles the rewards lacks experience for properly giving out rewards so I would like to give an example of how you can reward people across 4 months without influencing the economics of your game.

A simple setup that would build a strong core for rewards would be something along the lines of this:

Prelude Month 1

We got the drawing which was a pleasant surprise to most people, I would however made it so that you can use it once, and receive a copy of the drawing to keep forever. Collectors love these kind of small things.

Prelude Month 2

Whenever you helped all the refugees they would like to thank you by rewarding you the following items:

- Refugee Backpack
- 5x Refugee transformation potion
- 5x Karma Jug
- 3 Laurels
- 1 New unlocked title.

Living Story Month 3

Although we are still in the first week, I believe most of the rewards have already been given so that’s why I feel like another example is needed here.

- Molten Alliance Dredge Mini Pet (account bound)
- 1 Ticket for a Refugee Weapon (not the Fused weapons, a new set of weapons so that your sales don’t get affected)
- 10 Karma Jugs
- 1 New unlocked title.

Living Story Month 4

Although nobody knows the rewards yet for the last month, I still would like to give an example of something that would probably work.

- Molten Alliance Flame Legion Mini Pet (account bound)
- Final Living Story Boss as Mini Pet (account bound)
- 10 Karma Jugs
- Final title

All these rewards are once of a lifetime and that’s what matters. In a few years your loyal playerbase has something to showoff and it allows people to attach memories about this part of the Living Story to their character and the involved items.

General Talk

It’s pretty clear that the development in both quality and quantity is increasing in the Living Story team and I’m excited to see where all of this will lead too.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post, I hope it was usefull. If anyone would like to add anything, feel free to do so, but please keep it civil/constructive.

Wow, if the living story really had all these options mentioned, it would have been much better and interesting, rather than following a guide for some achievement points.