Guild Wars 2

Usually I dont complain that much about gw2, and offer constructive criticism, but F&F the razing was initially spectacular, but short lived. Looking back on the entire month id say its a huge dissapointment. Each character, Rox and Braham, were only given one completable mission. That is surely not enough to last a month. The living story aspect completely failed there for me, and was a let down, as it was for many other players. Myself, along with many other players, probably thought a series of missions would be rolled out through the razing. But no, and thats where the living story made a huge mistake. Anet could really improve from this scenario. The Razing was popularized as being the genesis of big content, and the first week of the patch, it sure looked like, but then it was followed by 3 very very blan weeks. Actually there was nothing at all. And im reading now in the retribution content article at a specific section that says " Fight alongside Rox and Braham on this final mission against the combined forces of the dredge and Flame Legion".

Wait..what? Final missoins? There were only beginning missions for each npc!!! Is 2 missions for each char Anets idea of a living story? Lets be honest its kind of a joke. There was very little character development, if any at all, leading up to this finale. Anyway Anet I think your living story team could learn a lot from this when creating future content.

Must read what? The improperly spaced paragraph(s)?

As for what you think is “failed”, it’s not really. These characters are introduced as pawn pieces to drive the story. I’m sure they’ll eventually be added in for future content. This is to say that Braham being Eire’s son is a big deal, just as Rox being a semi-apprentice to Rytlock is as well.

Take note that this isn’t the “final mission” of those two NPC characters, but instead it’s that of the player’s. We the players have been doing missions like saving villages, destroying periscopes, killing members of the Molten Alliance, finding lost trinkets, and even translating spy drop messages. This will be our final fighting push against the Molten Alliance as we raid (not in the instance sense, but more the police bashing down your door sense) their weapon’s facility to destroy their creations.

lol no need for the jab at the beginning buddy. We have barely learned about braham and rox at all. One missions was insufficient for gathering much information. It was a nice introduction but only that. Saving villages? You mean those dynamic events that get stale after 3 tries? I don’t know if you have kept up with the story like I have, but the Razing was supposed to be the big kick off for flame and frost? Relative to jan and feb, it was much bigger, but still not big. Absolutely nothing has happened during the razing besides the content introduced in the beginning of the patch, that lasted a week or so. Im sure we won’t even hear about the side storyline of the involvement of the whispers. I don’t think you are getting my point though. Its like we’ve barely learnt anything about the dredge and flame legion, now we are ending it all by attacking their facility. How is that well designed story content? Its all over the place. Jan and feb were just “teasers” as anet put it. Small hints at whats to come. As far as I can see, March came, we learnt about the big merge of flame legion and the dredge, and now we are going straight to demolish them.

I mean seriously, did you just say “saving villages, destroying periscopes, killing members of the molten aliance, finding lost trinkets, and even trasnlating spy drop messages” as if it is actually good fulfilling content? LOOOOL. That is sufficient content for 1 PATCH, not 3. The only aspect of F&F that had any interest to it were the missions types. The small side activities shouldnt take much time at all to develop, which is why I think they could have easily released this much each month.

So, you think they can only add these new events without very careful planning before?
I suppose you missed the kittenstorm about the periscopes being place “in the way” of other things then.
Had they simply added them randomly without thinking that would probably have been a MUCH bigger “issue”.

Just because the events them self are easy to do (which, btw, you don’t actually have a clue about) doesn’t mean they are easy to implement correctly.

The OP still has a good point. The 4 months we had F&F now didnt deliver much content. I’d say enough for maybe 2 months. With the finale playing out throughout May we then had 2-3 months of content stretched out over 5 months as far as living story is concerned. I’m cutting them some slack because its their first living story chapter but the next story line should certainly be better paced and offer more things to do.

Even SAB offered alot more to do with all the different special achievements, and also had more rewards through gameplay too (skins, fun boxes, legendary craft stuff). I do hope the final chapter will catch up in this regard.

One easy suggestion to beefing up the content with not-so-much writing required is including a task where you grind for optional rewards. SAB does that very well. Its not my thing (made about 120 b-baubles mostly from running world 1-2 when I felt like it throughout the month, then got the skin I wanted and bank some craft stuff with the rest), but I know people that spent so much time in the SAB during this month I barely saw them outside. That’s an aspect missing from the living story for players that swing that way.

+1
Agree with this, Didn’t live up to the ‘Living Story’ as far as getting deep into lore, ore relating to the characters as such
Only introducing a couple of new characters only for an instance each and that’s it, without any chance to know more about them, their past etc
You don’t feel for the content, and the storytelling is very poor

The initial content , described as teaser content, was pretty cool – I was hoping we’d be able to have some similar content to trace these new characters’s past and motivations

Overall , it just seems rushed.

They should have included a scene or a mission, where your toon is gonna be killed, or in a very dire situation , and either Rox or the Norn help you out at the risk of their lives.. ( like taking a killing blow from the weapon specialists or something )
Then , add another quest to fetch some medicine, or get them out to a special NPC to get healed or something

In terms of Living World of changing the world overall for everyone, yeah, it does do that , especially with the sonic periscopes ,

~TNE

SkylightMoon.1980:

Usually I dont complain that much about gw2, and offer constructive criticism, but F&F the razing was initially spectacular, but short lived. Looking back on the entire month id say its a huge dissapointment. Each character, Rox and Braham, were only given one completable mission. That is surely not enough to last a month. The living story aspect completely failed there for me, and was a let down, as it was for many other players. Myself, along with many other players, probably thought a series of missions would be rolled out through the razing. But no, and thats where the living story made a huge mistake. Anet could really improve from this scenario. The Razing was popularized as being the genesis of big content, and the first week of the patch, it sure looked like, but then it was followed by 3 very very blan weeks. Actually there was nothing at all. And im reading now in the retribution content article at a specific section that says " Fight alongside Rox and Braham on this final mission against the combined forces of the dredge and Flame Legion".

Wait..what? Final missoins? There were only beginning missions for each npc!!! Is 2 missions for each char Anets idea of a living story? Lets be honest its kind of a joke. There was very little character development, if any at all, leading up to this finale. Anyway Anet I think your living story team could learn a lot from this when creating future content.

You know what you got this month?
a F&F mission…

BUT

also the Super Adventure Box, three new sets of skin: Guild, Super Adventure, and fused.

I’m no white knight and there are problems in the game…

Not a one OP posts about, is relevant.

Soulstar.7812:

You know what you got this month?
a F&F mission…

BUT

also the Super Adventure Box, three new sets of skin: Guild, Super Adventure, and fused.

I’m no white knight and there are problems in the game…

Not a one OP posts about, is relevant.

It is unrelated to F&F but I agree SAB was a success in my eyes. I really want to continue through the other worlds in the future. I do remember hearing that their Living Story team was busy, with what I dont know, but it was a big reason on the lack of content in the first two months. Hopefully it changes. I really wonder sometimes if anet is lacking on the manpower to pull off some of these projects.

Yes SAB was well done, but its unrelated to this forum which talks about the events of the F&F chapter of the living story.

Sadly I agree with OP. We got a mission for both new characters and now we suddenly have a last mission. It feels like ANet stretched a normal content update into 4 long months. I feel like I got MUCH more to do during Halloween or Wintersday updates than here.
Imo calling those updates after living story is a bad idea b/c LS is just a small part of the real dish which are the new features like guild missions, spvp etc.

What SAb showed us a smaller team than LS team managed to make a bigger impact on the game than 3 months of the F&F updates. i think this shows how slow or lazy the living story team is.

QSatu.1586:

Sadly I agree with OP. We got a mission for both new characters and now we suddenly have a last mission. It feels like ANet stretched a normal content update into 4 long months. I feel like I got MUCH more to do during Halloween or Wintersday updates than here.
Imo calling those updates after living story is a bad idea b/c LS is just a small part of the real dish which are the new features like guild missions, spvp etc.

What SAb showed us a smaller team than LS team managed to make a bigger impact on the game than 3 months of the F&F updates. i think this shows how slow or lazy the living story team is.

What makes you think that the dungeon will be the only living story addition with the update?

ANet would have to revamp the whole zone for me to be impressed by F&F now b/c for the past 3 months it’s been very underwhelming. 2 months of teasers and apparently last month the story was supposed to really kick off. Well it didn’t.

I hadn’t partaken in any of the F & F content until yesterday, and completed all the achievement categories in a few hours, and while I did truly enjoy it, I can certainly see how it would have been found lacking for an extended period of time. But, by the same token, I didn’t consider it to be a major release or game update or anything of that nature — more along the lines of something else to add a lil flavor to the game, and it did do that. I hadn’t even known what a sonic periscope was until I ran past one and got knocked flying. So, in the end, if folks were looking for something that would have occupied them for days or weeks on end, yes, I could see how it would be disappointing. But we haven’t even hit a year yet … any additional content at this point I think is frosting on the cake.

It didn’t feel like it really changed the world.
I don’t want instances, I want those things I did in instances to happen to the world.

Maybe this could be accomplished by turning the instances into “world events” like the frozen maw or claw of jormag, so it actually feels like it affects the world, you can do it with or people (party) or do it solo around other people.
You could get a mail when the event is going to happen soon (10 then 5 minute notice?), or the event could be broadcast in chat (like beta weekend yellow text in chat)

Fixing signposts, collecting mementos… that stuff is just plain boring, I don’t consider it a game! That sort of content needs to change into something more meaningful.

Very, very underwhelming.

I thought maybe some Frost and Flame events would temporarily replace some of the current hearts or dynamic events, then when it’s over, the old events go back to normal.
That way when I’m leveling up my character the content would feel new.

To me that’s a living world…

Even if they just reskinned and reworded things… like in Wayfarer foothills where sons of svanir attack the sacred bears. Change the quest wording, names, and art so it looks like molten (svanir) are attacking refugees (bears). Do that for only a few of the quests, so the beginner areas still feel like their respective beginner areas. Or alternate the quests so that for the most part it triggers the normal one, and 25% of the time it triggers the Flame and Frost modified one.

It’s not much, but it would atleast feel like new content, and that the world changed.

The problem with Living Story? It spans way too long. All content can be finished in one day, then we need to wait 1 month for more? Sounds ridiculous.. By the time the next installment of Flame & Frost came, i was already disinterested in the story. I prefer large patch updates instead of these smaller ones that will have 1 month intervals..