Guild Wars 2

Me and about everyone in my guild love this event! It’s a nice breath of fresh air! Thanks.

I think a part of the problem why some people don’t appreciate new events in the old zones is that it’s not easily obvious that those are there and there are little incentives to explore zones again once you have the world completion. A lot of times when you go through zones no events are up near you or just the ones you already know.

If I remember correctly one of the events you are talking about is the event about the guild Modus Sceleris. I tried this event once, weren’t successfull and that’s it. It was awesome but I didn’t came by this area again.

At this time it felt also normal that the world was being expanded with events since it was exactly what Colin told us would happen. (I’m a bit sad that this stopped actually).

A suggestion how I would introduce new ways of going back to lower zones would be frequent field trips with a certain NPC which start in a fixed spot and lead to interesting places all around the world. You could then add this trip to the daily achievement rotation.

example: you go to the center of Divinity’s Reach where a NPC (orange dynamic event marker on the map) calls out: “the next field trip starts in 4 minutes”. He would then open a small portal to the borders of a random zone where you follow him to the start of one of gw2s longer event chains. People now can experience a chain from start to finish. While you stay in the orange field trip event marker during this long chain, you’ll get +300 magic find also, so that people have incentives to stay till the end of the chain + a guaranteed reward.

Some of these events also might be meta event chains which are forgotten by the community. These field trips start every 5 minutes in a known spot in the races home cities.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

(…)

If I could have 1 thing, it’d be more content updates like Sorrow’s Furnace in guild wars 1. Even though it was a reasonably small instance, it had a lot of different pathes and mechanics that were really good and fun.

And… please… missions like in GW1 as well. Those are, in my opinion, the best story telling mechanism there is.

That would just make me so happy <3

This would really give me a sense of a living world. I don’t want to be in a world where everything is different all the time. That’s nice every once a while, but I want the world to evolve. I really don’t feel like any of the Living Story has had an impact on the game.

Erasculio.2914:

snipped due to length

Minor nitpick: That event’s not a dredge event, that’s a grawl event.

Wrt to the number of people in the instance: adding more friendly NPC’s make the game require more resources than necessary. Even if the map was large, and fairly not that resource-heavy, the set mobs spawns and the data necessary to index those mobs are limited (you can see a LOT of aetherblade eNPCs spawn in later on). You could see borking in the pathing in the Rox defend event, in that too many mobs intercross with their paths that Rox doesn’t stop when you’re not escorting her.

The issue I can agree in is that the update works really well from an RPG perspective -if- players were playing with the roleplaying aspect. With a max of 75 per instanced map, six cutout zones and six fight circles, you could spread out the entire area evenly, which makes the events seem not too zergy and still playable.

It’s just that people are attracted to that farm perspective, and not to the roleplaying game perspective.

On the arena points: Totally agree with the camera issue. Maybe they should make the red circles a little bit more visible? The metallic background obscures the red circles, as well as other ground-targeted enviromental effects. With the camera issue, I think it was an oversight, or intended design to give the match a feel like it was a cage. TBH, the attacks are well televised (one thing that people miss is that it’s a one vs one fight – you HAVE to track the opponent on what he makes, and what he does, and react decisively about it. Most attacks have a telegraph time of around one second or more, and even with bad pings of 300-400ms you can react admirably). The low-tier bosses have all their attacks described in their tooltips, and you can take a moment to understand and look at how the fight works.

The issue I can definitely disagree with is with the knockdown chaining. As a player,. it’s there to punish you for not watching a dodge. The chain knockdown forces you to watch your surroundings. Most of the knockdown effects have around one and a half second to two seconds of dodge window, and you can reliably dodge or move out of the way if you have swiftness by then.

With the changes to particle effects, combat in melee range is now easier in NPC zerg events, as you can see the animations clearly now, as compared to before where you get yourself kittened once the ranged players drop a mess of animation attacks on you (AOE attacks, anyone?).

Sure, there were many events that were added, but these events aren’t tied together with the Living Story, thus it makes it feel as if the world is separate from the Living Story concept.

The same thing happens with the Personal Story. It isn’t tied to the Living Story.

Just about everything from launch isn’t connected to the Living Story. It’s been largely abandoned, and that’s the real crux of the problem we are discussing.

There doesn’t feel like there’s any substantial update to the “endgame”.

Here’s a list of endgame activities for groups in PvE (excluding dungeons of course). http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/events.php?serverKey=105&langKey=en

Low-level zone events: The Frozen Maw, Shadow Behemoth, Fire Elemental, Great Jungle Wurm
Medium-level events: Ulgoth the Modniir, Taidha Covington, Megadestroyer, Golem Mark II
Temple Events: Balthazar, Grenth, Lyssa
Dragon Events: Shatterer, Tequatl the Sunless, Claw of Jormag
Guild Bounties/Missions

The only major update we’ve really had, was Southsun Cove, and this was before the Living Story was even launched. A whole new landmass was added, which was amazing, but once again it was abandoned for Living Story, until the LS update brought it back to life.

I’m specifically talking about PvE content that’s been added to the game. Besides this? Mostly temporary stories and minigames, which feel so underwhelming. I haven’t even brought up how underwhelming the rewards are too. RNG boxes, Minis, Backpack items, Gem-Store gear & weapons only. Why not give us full gear sets and weapons from Boss fights, instead of from dungeons or from the trading post only?

In conclusion, when i first read that GW2 was going to have a living, breathing, changing world… i thought the world from launch, almost 1 year ago, was going to change, but it didn’t. Instead, we got fluff content with no real long-term substance.

I reluctantly agree with OP, I liked Bazaar of the Four Winds, I liked the Aetherblade Dungeon, heck I even liked the Haloween jumping puzzle with the slipshod camera on release.

This update however is a mess.

My connection with the game is fine, but this instanced zerg is somehow gives me the absolute WORST lag I’ve ever experienced. I don’t like it because it’s “difficult” but in that it’s unplayable.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thanks for the feedback everyone and please keep it coming. Personally, I find that one of the hardest parts of being a desginer on GW2 Live is coming to terms with the fact that not every update will please every player. We do our best to deliver appealing content with enough variety to keep as many people as satisfied as possible. And If there’s one thing we can do consistently, it’s improving the experience of said content each time. I think we made some great strides with the Jubilee. I think we have a lot of room to keep growing. But our team isn’t done yet. We’ve got some exciting things coming later this month. Things you’ve never seen in this game before.

But in the mean time, please keep telling us what you’re thinking. We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative. Despite this, there are many events I would still like to add. Many zones and bosses I would love to revisit. As we get better at the living world, I strongly suspect we’ll have room to get around to them as well. Assuming that’s what our players really want. You are all the second half of the collaborative process, so thanks for helping!

I think you guys are doing a great job. Ive had loads of fun with everything you’ve pumped out. Dont get discouraged with all of the negative comments!

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

But in the mean time, please keep telling us what you’re thinking. We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative. Despite this, there are many events I would still like to add. Many zones and bosses I would love to revisit. As we get better at the living world, I strongly suspect we’ll have room to get around to them as well. Assuming that’s what our players really want. You are all the second half of the collaborative process, so thanks for helping!

I’m glad the team added the skritt treasure thief along with Modus Sceleris. I hope to see more updates like this though I’m only one man, with very odd tastes as most proclaim.

I always enjoy new content. I just dislike new TEMPORARY content. I’m not complaining about having new titles, items and achievements to work towards; I’m complaining about the fact that we have to do it NOWNOWNOW before it’s yanked away from us.

Of course, things that affect the open world shouldn’t stay out there permanently. I wouldn’t want to have Periscopes/Balloons/SAB boxes littering the world forever after, but at the same time, I really don’t understand why content like the Molten Facility, Aetherblade Retreat, or the Queen’s Gauntlet has to disappear. Put a “Memoires” NPC into the Home District that allows you to re-visit this content whenever you like; this allows players to do the achievements and gain the rewards at a time and place of their choosing.

Festival content that returns on a regular basis is fine, as long as players still have the opportunity to complete achievements and gain rewards from the first time around.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thanks for the feedback everyone and please keep it coming. Personally, I find that one of the hardest parts of being a desginer on GW2 Live is coming to terms with the fact that not every update will please every player. We do our best to deliver appealing content with enough variety to keep as many people as satisfied as possible. And If there’s one thing we can do consistently, it’s improving the experience of said content each time. I think we made some great strides with the Jubilee. I think we have a lot of room to keep growing. But our team isn’t done yet. We’ve got some exciting things coming later this month. Things you’ve never seen in this game before.

But in the mean time, please keep telling us what you’re thinking. We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative. Despite this, there are many events I would still like to add. Many zones and bosses I would love to revisit. As we get better at the living world, I strongly suspect we’ll have room to get around to them as well. Assuming that’s what our players really want. You are all the second half of the collaborative process, so thanks for helping!

I find that I am much less vocal about the areas of the game that I enjoy. Coming to the forums to post compliments seems a frivolous waste of time for all involved. If I am enjoying the game, I am playing it rather than posting here. As a result, when I post my concerns, I am marked as a ‘forum troll’ or a ‘hater’.

The reality is, I love this game. I have played Guild Wars 1 for years and I don’t think I have ever posted a complaint on those forums. My love for the franchise is why I come here and complain. If I didn’t love it, I would say nothing about the aspects that annoy me and I would move on to another game. I see potential here. I also see potential that is being wasted. I see, repeated here, mistakes that other mmos have made a thousand times over. I want Guild Wars to step out and take the lead in innovation. It seems, though, there are currently ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’ .

The ‘Living Story’ storyline is disjointed and incomprehensible. It lacks focus and a clear plot theme. It seems to be completely unrelated to the game’s core content. It seems as if the Living Story writers are attempting to create a virtual, living novel. However, the way a story is conveyed in a novel does not translate well to a mmorpg. By the time the in-game plot is fully revealed, the players will have forgotten most of it and will lose interest.

Many of the living story characters are unremarkable and entirely forgettable. I wasn’t here for the first appearance of Canach and his second appearance did nothing to explain anything surrounding the character, whatsoever. Canach was just some cold, random plot mechanic, akin to the ‘swing away’ Louisville Slugger as was presented in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2002 film ‘Signs’ .
Evon Gnashwho?
Ellen Kiel…oh, that crazy, angry woman from Southsun?
Marjory…evil Mae West?!?! Kitana from Mortal Kombat? Who knows and who cares? She is generic as all get-out.
Lord Kaswhat? Lady Farsomething? Did they even do anything in Southsun?

I don’t like how the entire story isn’t told, exclusively, in-game. I don’t do 3rd party websites, digital short stories or book store novels. I want the entire story to be conveyed entirely in-game. If you want Ree Soesbee to write novels, that’s fine. But make those novels available and readable, in-game.

Currencies are, indeed, out of control. Gold, Laurels, Honor Tokens, Karma…it’s almost overwhelming before even listing any of the Living Story currencies. I would suggest leaving Gold, Laurels, Honor Tokens and Karma as-is and normalizing all Living Story currencies into a single currency. Call it ‘Black Lion Claim Tickets’ or whatever you like but use them as the sole currency for every future living story update; one currency that players can save up throughout the course of any number of content updates and use to purchase any current or previous living story rewards.

Dailies…I hate dailies. I’ve hated dailies since Netherwing Ledge all those years ago. Dailies do nothing to add immersion and seem to be more of a mechanic to lead players out into a game world…a game world they would have no need to venture into otherwise.

Idk, those are just a few of my complaints.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare.

Just for the records, I still have no idea which events those were. With a game as big as GW2, just saying “we have added 40 new events somewhere in the game!” isn’t really going to make people say, “OMG those events are so cool!”. Part of the idea behind dynamic events is that often we see events that weren’t active the last time we were in a given area. So, after that update months ago, if I went to a zone and found an event I didn’t remember, I had no way of knowing if it was a new event, or if it was an old event that I simply hadn’t happened to see yet.

I think what many of us are complaining about is the lack of interesting and complex events in the areas highlighted by the Living World updates. The second Southsun update had very poor events – they didn’t really have a story beyond “we’re under attack!”, they didn’t really add any interesting mechanic to the game, and repeating the instigator events twice in the same map wasn’t exactly nice. The Aetherblade update had no events at all. The Zephyr Sanctum update, as cool as it was due to the whole exploration aspect, had no interesting event – just the same idea, “fight Veteran Enemy X”, over and over through the map.

Now, we basically got the “Kill the Champions” events in the Crown Pavilion, and those honestly feel more like an attempt to create farming content than fun content. Who are those enemies? What’s the story behind them? Why can’t they win and fork the event chain so we have to do something other than gang up on a single powerful enemy?

The “older” maps could use more events, sure. I miss interesting events in Orr, and the event density in many of the maps could increase so the current events cycle less often and we have more interesting things to do (for example, one day when exploring the south and west sections of Mount Maelstrom, I found very few events). But this is the kind of thing that wouldn’t be obvious to players, unless ArenaNet specifically pointed it out (“We will make significant changes to Orr, modifying the maps and introducing entire new enemy kinds and dynamic events” – then people would notice). I understand it’s not the kind of thing ArenaNet would do lightly.

The temporary content doesn’t bother me. The slow pace of the main story bothers me a bit (we’re almost one year in it and it’s still introducing the characters; were this a TV series, it would have very, very slow pacing), but it’s ok. Having updates focusing on specific areas at a time is ok, too. But I wish those updates focused more on interesting dynamic events, instead of in achievements or dungeons or farming.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative.

Those extra events made a real difference as they considerably improved the replayability of the zones they’re in. I can think of several zones I’d written off as boring after completing them the first time, but since that patch I’ll happily go back to them (e.g. for levelling an alt) as a result of the extra activity those events create.

Of course, we always want more, much more… :-p

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thanks for the feedback everyone and please keep it coming. Personally, I find that one of the hardest parts of being a desginer on GW2 Live is coming to terms with the fact that not every update will please every player. We do our best to deliver appealing content with enough variety to keep as many people as satisfied as possible. And If there’s one thing we can do consistently, it’s improving the experience of said content each time. I think we made some great strides with the Jubilee. I think we have a lot of room to keep growing. But our team isn’t done yet. We’ve got some exciting things coming later this month. Things you’ve never seen in this game before.

But in the mean time, please keep telling us what you’re thinking. We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative. Despite this, there are many events I would still like to add. Many zones and bosses I would love to revisit. As we get better at the living world, I strongly suspect we’ll have room to get around to them as well. Assuming that’s what our players really want. You are all the second half of the collaborative process, so thanks for helping!

I still think the dynamic event content in the open world is the best feature of GW2. It’s certainly what keeps me here.

As to people not mentioning the events added… there may be a lot of reasons for this. Some people never go back to some zones, whether it’s because they don’t like the zone, because they have limited time and other things they want to do, and probably lots of other reasons. Also, it’s possible to encounter a dynamic event one has never seen before and wonder, “Is this new, or did I just miss it my other time(s) through here?” There’s also that people mention things they like 5% of the time, but things they don’t like 95% of the time, and that’s the nature of the beast.

To Anthony Ordon I didn’t like the patch much because even though It was nice to have a challenge in the solo arena. I play an mmo because I want to team with others I understand some thing need to be solo but it would be great to get hard team content. Hope this reaches you thanks for all your hard work on the patch but I prefer patches with team and community objectives.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thanks for the feedback everyone and please keep it coming. Personally, I find that one of the hardest parts of being a desginer on GW2 Live is coming to terms with the fact that not every update will please every player.

For what it’s worth, Anthony, I feel bad that much of the work you and your teams are doing is not appreciated by some of us, even though I fall into that category myself. On a purely emotional level, I know that you folks are working hard to deliver content that will please your players.

And I want to like this stuff, I swear, but it feels like you guys are insisting that I play it when you want me to, rather than when it is convenient and enjoyable for me to play. I just cannot understand why this seemed like a good idea. Honestly, barring annual holiday events, any content released that has an expiration date is always going to get an automatic pass from me.

I can certainly understand your frustration that the 40 or so permanent events that were added around Halloween did not get much player feedback. I believe that the random nature of these events makes it somewhat difficult for players to be able to experience the content in the first place. If it does not pop when you are in the area, you miss out.

I honesty feel that you guys need to focus more on putting the choice of when to play content back into the players’ hands. I, personally, need content that I can decide to play exactly when I want to. That’s why I enjoy the renown hearts more than the dynamic events. I don’t have to wait for them to appear, and I don’t have to feel rushed to complete them before they are taken away.

I don’t know. I’m just really frustrated and disillusioned at the moment. But despite that, I truly do appreciate your taking the time to post your thoughts.

minbariguy.7504

But despite that, I truly do appreciate your taking the time to post your thoughts.

I would just like to echo minbariguy’s remark here. I’m in much the same boat as he is (see my post a few posts above), but I would like to add that I’m thankful for your feedback and comments, Anthony. (And Colin and Martin and everyone else.) It’s quite reassuring to know that our concerns ARE being heard, and hopefully we can all find a mutually pleasant approach going forward.

There are valid points in this thread but it is buried under layers of complete freakoutitude.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thanks for the feedback everyone and please keep it coming. Personally, I find that one of the hardest parts of being a desginer on GW2 Live is coming to terms with the fact that not every update will please every player. We do our best to deliver appealing content with enough variety to keep as many people as satisfied as possible. And If there’s one thing we can do consistently, it’s improving the experience of said content each time. I think we made some great strides with the Jubilee. I think we have a lot of room to keep growing. But our team isn’t done yet. We’ve got some exciting things coming later this month. Things you’ve never seen in this game before.

But in the mean time, please keep telling us what you’re thinking. We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative. Despite this, there are many events I would still like to add. Many zones and bosses I would love to revisit. As we get better at the living world, I strongly suspect we’ll have room to get around to them as well. Assuming that’s what our players really want. You are all the second half of the collaborative process, so thanks for helping!

Anthony , ive made this suggestion for a future zone when more permanent content comes around , try spreading it around the designers if you can. the concept? your newly formed army moves onto the next dragon (since theyre still out there ;-P ) this new zone will have a WvW feel to it , a way to try to make ppl want to participate in it , more then the altars in orr , im talking keeps (or a castle) supply camps , towers , etc. alot of the WvW properites (just not the pvp) where dragon minions can occasionally assault all of these ,i think Jormags minions would probably be ideal for some reason as most of the sons of Svanir seem more capable of “thinking” of plans to attack places vs the Branded or the destroyers. so something in the shiverpeaks perhaps? ( slightly ideal as well since hey , there are mountains there , easier to setup structures like that).

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thanks for the feedback everyone and please keep it coming. Personally, I find that one of the hardest parts of being a desginer on GW2 Live is coming to terms with the fact that not every update will please every player. We do our best to deliver appealing content with enough variety to keep as many people as satisfied as possible. And If there’s one thing we can do consistently, it’s improving the experience of said content each time. I think we made some great strides with the Jubilee. I think we have a lot of room to keep growing. But our team isn’t done yet. We’ve got some exciting things coming later this month. Things you’ve never seen in this game before.

But in the mean time, please keep telling us what you’re thinking. We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative. Despite this, there are many events I would still like to add. Many zones and bosses I would love to revisit. As we get better at the living world, I strongly suspect we’ll have room to get around to them as well. Assuming that’s what our players really want. You are all the second half of the collaborative process, so thanks for helping!

Those events just kind of blend in with the rest of the zone and get largely ignored. Unless they’re large meta events like the dragons, the frozen maw etc.

What are your thoughts on the difficulty of Liadri? She is so far and above the difficulty of the other contenders in the gauntlet that her presence is almost comical.

Also, the Mega Destroyer event chain in mount maelstrom still doesn’t grant a daily bonus chest, despite having all the hallmarks of a meta event.

I don’t really know what to say, other than I am enjoying it. I just enjoy the game in general but whenever I say that screams of FANBOIIII rain down from the high, high elitist tower a number of players are perched atop. Sorry I don’t have anything truly negative to say, or that I don’t think griefing and lording it over casuals are required for a good mmo.

Sometimes I get really frustrated because it feels like the community doesn’t know what it wants. Every single update seems to be met with this kind of hatred and negativity with little to no acknowledgment of the effort behind it, or the fact that it’s a fairly new way of managing an MMO world. Just like WE WANT THINGS THAT CHANGE THE WORLD FOR REAL only to be met with WHY CAN’T WE HAVE BOTH FRACTALS for example.

I did my hardcore raiding elitist time. I don’t want it to happen here. I mean what is so wrong with fluff? This update isn’t even entirely fluff or party. Doesn’t Liadri hard mode satisfy anyone? Good lord.

In my opinion, this is the best patch yet. not just for the event but for all the new content and features released.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I think we have a lot of room to keep growing. But our team isn’t done yet. We’ve got some exciting things coming later this month. Things you’ve never seen in this game before.

This is what I love about this game. More new stuff later this month, and we just had a nice patch a couple of days ago. In a lot of other games you’d be promised stuff that wouldn’t be out for 4 months and be paying a monthly fee in the meantime.

This update was quite decent. The gauntlet is original. It would be nice if there was some kind of training version of that to teach newer players how to play (starting with really simple stuff that veterans take for granted, like turning with the mouse when running), and eventually it ramped up to maximum difficulty. I know there is some complaining about 1-shot mechanics but it’s really the best way to make stuff hard, if you can survive failing on the core mechanics it just becomes more of a gear check or what class you’re playing check than an execution check.

If there’s one thing I don’t like it’s the ground floor part of the pavilion. I see how this design is supposed to work – along the lines of Everquest 2 content like Skyshrine in which people can from parties and farm mobs. But due to the “anyone who hits it” loot system you just end up with one big zerg train running around the zone rather than small parties. And that’s a shame, because the zone would be more enjoyable as an eq-style zone in which you need to join a party to survive. Maybe that’s too old-fashioned and MMO players don’t want to form parties themselves and talk to each other anymore. I don’t know.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I think a part of the problem why some people don’t appreciate new events in the old zones is that it’s not easily obvious that those are there and there are little incentives to explore zones again once you have the world completion. A lot of times when you go through zones no events are up near you or just the ones you already know.

If I remember correctly one of the events you are talking about is the event about the guild Modus Sceleris. I tried this event once, weren’t successfull and that’s it. It was awesome but I didn’t came by this area again.

At this time it felt also normal that the world was being expanded with events since it was exactly what Colin told us would happen. (I’m a bit sad that this stopped actually).

A suggestion how I would introduce new ways of going back to lower zones would be frequent field trips with a certain NPC which start in a fixed spot and lead to interesting places all around the world. You could then add this trip to the daily achievement rotation.

example: you go to the center of Divinity’s Reach where a NPC (orange dynamic event marker on the map) calls out: “the next field trip starts in 4 minutes”. He would then open a small portal to the borders of a random zone where you follow him to the start of one of gw2s longer event chains. People now can experience a chain from start to finish. While you stay in the orange field trip event marker during this long chain, you’ll get +300 magic find also, so that people have incentives to stay till the end of the chain + a guaranteed reward.

Some of these events also might be meta event chains which are forgotten by the community. These field trips start every 5 minutes in a known spot in the races home cities.

Funny thing is, a certain player on my server started to do exactly what you propose He simply stands in LA shouting “today at 8 pm we are doing tour through Iron Marches, we will take a look at fabulous Great Wall, battle ghosts of Ascalon and at the end we will take down one of the strongest Kralkatoriks minions”. Or something along those lines. I never actually attended, but this sounds cool. (Also hint hint you don’t have to rely on ANet to do stuff for you, you can create “your own story”)

Elbegast.6970:

You don’t realize a lot of things…like the gating involved in the living story…you know, the gating that draws everyone away from the world events and funnels them into very specific areas. On my realm, I’ve seen lone players solo pre-events only to leave the bosses up because there aren’t enough people in the zone to kill them.

The living story is acting like a vampire, sucking the life out of the open world and the core game content.

There is something wrong with your perception of the game and the players. The game cannot act like a vampire, sucking life (players) out of the open world. It is the free decision of people (like me) who prefer to do the new content for whatever reason they have. In my case it was the wish to get the achievements and now it is because I like to zerg in the pavilion. You don’t. I do. According to your complains a lot of people do.

The consequence of freedom is that other people tend to do what they like, not what you think they should like.

Claudius.5381:

Elbegast.6970:

You don’t realize a lot of things…like the gating involved in the living story…you know, the gating that draws everyone away from the world events and funnels them into very specific areas. On my realm, I’ve seen lone players solo pre-events only to leave the bosses up because there aren’t enough people in the zone to kill them.

The living story is acting like a vampire, sucking the life out of the open world and the core game content.

There is something wrong with your perception of the game and the players. The game cannot act like a vampire, sucking life (players) out of the open world. It is the free decision of people (like me) who prefer to do the new content for whatever reason they have. In my case it was the wish to get the achievements and now it is because I like to zerg in the pavilion. You don’t. I do. According to your complains a lot of people do.

The consequence of freedom is that other people tend to do what they like, not what you think they should like.

But can’t you see how that is detrimental to the new player experience? And the ‘choice’ (or illusion thereof) you speak of is utterly facilitated by ArenaNet’s current game design. So, they are to be held just as responsible, if not more-so, than the player.

If the content were not on such a stringent schedule, players may be more inclined to take their time and, as a result, may not congregate to a single map location every two weeks, to the exclusion of all other content.

Gibson.4036:

A company talks about their vision for a product.
You think that they are on track to deliver that vision.
Over time, it seems like they are getting off track.

Which makes more sense:

1) Let the company know that you think they are getting off track, that you really love where they were headed, and where they were, but not where they seem to be now.

or

2) Go buy a product from a company that doesn’t even have that vision.

Or to put it numerically,

If they said they were going for 100% what you wanted, started off with 80%, and seem to be slipping down to 50%, does it make sense to express it to the company, or go find someone delivering 2%?

As much as people like to rant that ANet doesn’t listen to people on the forums, there seem to be changes that reflect the feedback made here. So why is it a waste of time?

ANet has always been very slow with processing feedback bur sooner or later they always deliver. The problem for me is that changes come too slow or too late. Back in GW1 I just waited for all the expansions after I realised that trend. Sadly the gameplay changes I see in GW2 feel mostly like bandaid solutions and with no expansions in sight I hardly see any reason to log in anymore given the stale narute of the game (PvE/WvW at least).

Fiontar.4695:

…

Instead, we got this mess.

Queen’s Pavilion is satire of everything that is wrong with really, really bad theme park MMO design, but it seems you guys are oblivious to the joke. It may be the worst part of the Jubilee, but the rest of it isn’t much better.

I find it hard to disagree with most of your posts in this thread. The problem for me isn’t permanence of the content, grind or rewards. I just find every next update as boring as the previous one. The mechanics are generally the same, so there is 0 to no challenge involved. I’m not sure if F&F was so bad but I agree that the pacing was horrible. Most of the people I played with left during the “collect fortune scraps” event and while my guild still has people playing those are mostly a close circle of friends, a few people who just like grinding and a dosen of newcomers that are replaced every month. Lately I’ve been logging in 4-5 days a month to check out if I can do the monthly or just check out the new content which usually can be grinded in 2-3 hours (I haven’t done all the fortune scrap jump around and vote for boring events due to lack of time and motivation).

The problem for me is that the apparent game flaws aren’t anywhere near fixing. Some of those are the lack of build diversity, the lack of motivation for build diversity, the lack of a clear split between PvP and PvE, lack of sizable RPG updates…

I love the core game but the way things are going I will not be around to see most of the new content as I feel it’s just more of the same.

Edit : Elbegast.6970 made a great post about story telling.

To compare this update to previous ones I think that it’s pretty good. My favorite was Helloween – this update really gave me so much hope for the future of GW2. Then we had Christmas and it was good but one class lower.
Then we got updates with dredge – update that was to my liking like dredge face :|
Almost one year have passed and we got no big changes to world.
I thought that what’s to expect is that there will be many places across whole Tyria when there will be things to do, not one place and temporary where all players gather that want to beat new content as much as they can while it’s active (expecially now when there’s rewards for achievement points).
We needed content that will stay and enrich Tyria, not give it short-lived decorations.

When I make a sandwich I make sure that the hunk of bread is not too thin because it could break and not too thick because it would make it hard to bite. Then I add butter, lettuce, cheese, etc. I don’t add a little of pepper here and salt there when there’s no main ingredients and say to everyone – I’ll be better in salting with each sandwich. But thickness of bread is different with each new sandwich. Maybe butter is getting old and I’ve got enough of cheese.

Even this simple thing – making a sandwich can be easily kittened up. Of course everyone new to making them will make poor ones at first but he will knew what to improve.
When we make sandwiches for 1 000 000 ppl we know that not everyone will like them but we don’t deviate from general rules – we make even loafs of bread (different bread) and place on whole surface next ingredients.
If you put too many things it may look interesting but will taste foul or dull.

Now we have big unregular loaf of bread and I don’t know which side to bite. I know that I must be fast because someone will take away tasty ingredients when I find them. Sometimes bread is too thin and only with butter or I feel only cheese I don’t like.

I don’t enjoy this sandwich as whole.
EDIT: And I don’t like the way new sandwiches are made.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative.

I remember this. You went around and added new JPs and events all across the world. This was one of the best additions you guys made. I absolutely loved it. THAT felt like a real living world with new things happening all over.

HOWEVER you are absolutely right that Halloween stole the show. Most people never even noticed these additions and and when they did stumble upon them probably thought they were there all along. Thats why you didn’t hear people reacting to them. It was a tiny footnote on a patch with no real info about where the changes were made.

However the type of content hit the nail on the head, updating and adding new things across Tyria is much more of “living world” then drawing all players into one zone and out of the rest of Tyria for one month then dragging them all to another zone the next month. This feels like a toxic way of doing things. Players should be spread across the world not a funneled into one zone for a month.

Not liking it so far. Nothing really interesting about the balloons. I, like you was disappointed to see it just teleports you to DR and naturally one of the events was broken. I went to the QP to see it was massive laggy zergvest. You make a ton of money from it but that the only thing going for it. Tried the gambit but since it isn’t instanced you have to wait in line and it’s laggy as well. I don’t even know what the first guy I fought looks like since he never loaded. It might be better later when less people are crammed in the area.

The features that came with it and the new skins are nice though,

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative. Despite this, there are many events I would still like to add. Many zones and bosses I would love to revisit. As we get better at the living world, I strongly suspect we’ll have room to get around to them as well. Assuming that’s what our players really want. You are all the second half of the collaborative process, so thanks for helping!

From release notes of “Shadow of Mad King”:
“Tyria Evolving
The world continues to evolve with new events, jumping puzzkitten sses, mini-dungeons, and achievements appearing across a variety of maps.”

This could be the only sentence in the next few update notes.

I was so busy with Halloween content and I haven’t even paid any attention to these additions

In the living story updates there’s always some content I enjoy and some that I don’t, this isn’t one of my favourite updates, but either way…

The only thing that kind of bugs me about the living story is that I hardly see a connection between all the different parts. I don’t see a plotline… at all.

I feel that there’s improvement in it however by letting earlier met characters come back as well as some enemies, however I still have no idea if there even is a plot other than: we throw a party; something attacks or goes wrong.

I hate jumping puzzles. I hate them in a way that makes me want to build an orbital particle weapon, launch it into space and shoot down every every jump puzzle in the game into a flat non-jump puzzle.

And you know, it feels darn good to say that. But that’s my taste. I prefer beating the crap out things and have it be challenging. I also liked the personal story, despite also believing that Trahearne should have been our second and not the other way around.

So, this is why I love the Queen’s Jubilee. I get to beat the snot out of things and feel pretty good about that. After the whole thing with Zephyr Sanctum and having the whole thing feel like a massive jump puzzle made to drive me into a psychotic rampage, I was pretty happy to have the opportunity to do some pretty gratifying smackdown that fell into a skillset I have. So I think the thing we have to take away from the Living Story is a little of this and a little of that.

Don’t like something? Don’t do it. It’s our responsibility as players to not kill ourselves trying to do content you don’t enjoy. Protest with not logging in to play or not participating in those events. I have to believe ANet has metrics to measure those sorts of things.

Oh and one other thing? I like the Living Story overall, but I didn’t buy this game to be welcome at Zephyr Sanctum. I bought it to put my toon’s boot on top of some jerk dragon’s head and take its lunch money. We really need to get back to that.

My personal opinion about this update:

I like the idea of massive player activity when fighting the bosses, well they are not that hard or complex and what makes them hard is gigantic pike-damage and that is realy not what I like. It would be mutch cooler if the bosses was more like dungeon bosses or even like the gauntlet bosses with a little more strategy than just burn them down and dodge their pike damage. I know it is hard to do as a Zerg content but I know A-net team can do it
Also about that zerg part, I think it is cool but the culling effect takes away alot of fun and there is to much red circles and you don’t see who is hitting you, you get bleed and poison and blown away out of the blue.

The Gauntlet are perfect, I am pretty sure that I won’t be able to do them all in two weeks but all bosses have been realy nicely done and they are cool and good challange. They have no real story so I don’t feel “Forced” to compleate it and the rewards are perfect imo, I wan’t a mini but it won’t affect my char in anyway if I don’t get it (Stats or cosmetic).

The Baloons is like the usual stuff in the world and I like them for the explorers.

Tourch runs was cool and I hope we will get more, they are almost like jumping puzzles and I like that
Also that gave me an idea that I am going to post in the sugestion forum
Edit: That idea " https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Puzzling-Puzzles "

The vendor and “tokens”, these new Crafting component will they disupear after this jubilee?
Anyway, we get them pretty easy atm from doing the event’s in the pavilion and it’s pretty easy/cheap to get the new weapon skins it is actually more expencive to make a superior rune (of the new stuff) than to buy a skin :P
I do like the idea that the “tokens” are easy to get but it will also cost a few silver to gold to get. It’s a good gold sink and it will make it easier and not feel so random to get the cool gear.

I have liked all the living stories, the only thing I was realy disupointed with was the Aetherblade dungeon that was realy fun and hard but temporary so even though I tried every weakend for hours each night I never managed to compleate it and the Aetherblade kills on maps was so rare and random so I gave up that whole living story part.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

snipped

Thanks for taking the time to comment Anthony.

First, I’d just make clear I don’t see this event in any way as a step forward. Concentrating mob grinding content in an area the size of a small baseball stadium has got to be one of the biggest steps backward for the game. I like the story, but the content is just bad.

Second, Dynamic Events. Back when Colin talked about the strategy for adding tons of new DEs to the game, he actually specified that the intent was to drop that content into the game with out fanfare, with each update, so that over time, players would continue to be surprised by fresh, new content in the game world. To now insinuate that the reason you abandoned that approach was because it received little attention and fanfare is just plain bizarre.

Dynamic Events can be added with as much or as little fanfare as you desire. It shouldn’t just be random events tossed into the game, it should be an evolution of events with in each zone in a way that makes sense given the events that occurred there previously. It would make perfect sense to use storytelling to bring focus on a zone where the more dramatic events for each update will play out, while still progressing content in other zones and building the foundation for big events to come. The writers would have plenty to do with out the Living Story framework.

It seems you gave up way too quickly on the content that makes the game special, in order to pursue gimmicky content that would never have made it into the game during pre-launch development. That the gimmicky stuff has been temporary just makes it all an even bigger waste of time, money, resources, talent and potential.

The issue I and others have is really multi-tiered. The wasting of development resources best spent elsewhere, the underwhelming impact and limited benefit of most content created under the “Living Story” and, at least as importantly, the abandonment of the evolution of the game world.

Tyria, outside of the temporary and gimmicky content, has not progressed or evolved. Dynamic Events only produce an organic, dynamic gaming experience if they themselves change and evolve on a regular basis and in a way that makes narrative sense.

Queen’s Pavilion would be considered a satirical representation of old school, mindless, unimaginative MMO game design if it weren’t so clear you seriously believe it represents progress.

The game world has become stale and static. The game has suffered under many months of events that draw people away from organic, free form game play in the incredibly vast and detailed game world, with the trend further reinforced by “jump through these hoops” dailies and monthlies.

Everything you have done this year has been designed to reward hoop jumping, cool-aid drinking, linear game play and then you wonder why so few people still free roam the long static game world ?

IMO, we are way beyond the point where fine tuning the current strategy based on player feedback is going to do much to preserve the ongoing potential of the game. The game, at launch, was an incredible achievement and sparked significant success. Why you would decide to undo everything the core game design and the Dynamic Event approach to content managed to achieve is just beyond me.

Arenanet laid out the case for this world design and the value of Dynamic Events as the core of the new MMO content delivery paradigm prior to launch. The game at launch proved the concept. Then you just toss it all aside because there was no fanfare about the DE content you added last October, after stressing that you would be adding such content with out fanfare? Please, clear up my confusion, because I don’t get it.

It almost seems that you guys didn’t have the patience for the long game, didn’t get the instant gratification you wanted from adding Dynamic Event content, so then started working on tossing out flashy gimmicks, hoping no one would notice that you gave up on the game world.

The game, at launch, was extraordinary, perhaps the best MMO at launch in the history of the genre. In 2013, the perpetual drum beat has been to drive a march towards the extremely ordinary, under the cover that you are “doing more than almost any other MMO developer has done”. Quality is probably more important than quantity, but it has been sorely lacking. That this year’s content actively undermines the core game content, rather than supporting it, sadly means that the game would probably have been better off with nothing than what was actually produced.

Stop designing live updates as if this were just any other ordinary, stale, quest driven, last generation MMORPG and start supporting, expanding and renewing what made the game special and successful at launch!

Personally, GW2 lost so much due to insecurity on ANet’s end. The game was praised for its new concept of a living and breathing world that came with dynamic events that told stories of specific and sometimes overlapping zones. What we got was great, a game that truly felt like an RPG. A game where your choices and actions mattered. In a small scale true and on a timer, true, but it still mattered.

ANet then turned away from the very core pillar of this game. It replaced most of the new content with quests. One time quests, that tell a story, but it is executed so badly that many people miss a lot of lore, because of bad presentation. I am not against story pieces forming slowly and painting a bigger picture, but everything feels so disconnected, fragmented.

Instead of adding player-driven content to the zones and expanding on the DE system, we got heavily scripted quests on a timer. Players need to rush through content, so they don’t miss an achievement or some hint on the backstory. I don’t want to be rushed, because playing is my leisure time. I want the game to wait for me, not the other way around.

From my point of view, GW2 has degraded a lot and lost a lot of the true potential it had in the beginning. Everything feels so generic and meaningless. Sure, we can vote on something, but does it really change anything. Like the story of GW2, which starts good and then gets really bad and bland, GW2 has devolved into something I don’t like and don’t support.

Some time ago Colin said that making expansions helps devs and players sync what they want. So far ANet has been doing whatever they want and a small percentage of players is throwing hundreds and thousands of dollars in their direction. Please, give others a reason to do the same.

After release, there hasn’t been a single content update I’d consider worth my money. And no, quality of life improvements is not content. This is how you build long lasting customer relationship.

Fiontar.4695:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

snipped

Snip

This right here hits the nail on the head.

Perfectly expresses what myself and I’m sure plenty of other people are thinking.
Good job writing that.

With the massive global market for theme parks, I don’t know why one would attempt to use the term in a derogatory manner?

I believe what might be an issue with the living story is it’s abruptness. That if things were to come online progressively, it would be more interesting and less jarring to the players.

I’m more concerned about the progression in difficulty of each Living Story. This appears to be catering to a small group of players that love suffering, stress, etc. I on the other hand, appreciated the Zephyr Sanctum and hoping it returns soon. I’d much rather have an expanded Zephyr Sanctum to act as a new Lions Arch.

The most disturbing feature of the update has been that it pushed me to spend over 10g and 100 laurels on new gear. Frankly, I’m annoyed as I’m now stuck with new gear I’m not thrilled with. This is 2.5 months worth of dailes and monthlies lost. Please allow us a place to test our PvE/WvW gear like there is in sPvP. Laurels are still a very bad mechanic for a currency. It’s unforgiving and very alt unfriendly.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative.

To be honest, I had no idea you guys had put new events in until I started levelling one of my alts. It’s a shame they were buried by the Halloween hype, because they were pretty entertaining. Certainly got me to roam around for a while longer than I would have at launch.

I’d like to have something to contribute to OP’s topic, but truth is I haven’t managed to even properly play the new content, the massive zergs swarming the bosses make the whole area unplayably laggy for me. I guess all the advice I can take away from that is: For the love of Grenth, stop making content that makes entire servers flock to the same couple of m^2. Also, enough with the bloody monthly LS currencies already.

Gizmo.8623:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative. Despite this, there are many events I would still like to add. Many zones and bosses I would love to revisit. As we get better at the living world, I strongly suspect we’ll have room to get around to them as well. Assuming that’s what our players really want. You are all the second half of the collaborative process, so thanks for helping!

From release notes of “Shadow of Mad King”:
“Tyria Evolving
The world continues to evolve with new events, jumping puzzkitten sses, mini-dungeons, and achievements appearing across a variety of maps.”

This could be the only sentence in the next few update notes.

I was so busy with Halloween content and I haven’t even paid any attention to these additions

I didn’t notice them either, but to be fair, in late October of last year I was hospitalized and nearly died in the grips of an unidentified virus, so I think I have a reasonable excuse.

It makes me sad to see that quote, actually, because if that had been repeated with every patch since, the game would have been much the better for it. An evolving world of Tyria, with new Dynamic Events, Mini-dungeons and, yes, even jumping puzzles, is pretty much what I’m talking about and what Arenanet was talking about before they got ensnared in the pipe dream that has been Living Story.

DeWolfe.2174:

With the massive global market for theme parks, I don’t know why one would attempt to use the term in a derogatory manner?

I believe what might be an issue with the living story is it’s abruptness. That if things were to come online progressively, it would be more interesting and less jarring to the players.

I’m more concerned about the progression in difficulty of each Living Story. This appears to be catering to a small group of players that love suffering, stress, etc. I on the other hand, appreciated the Zephyr Sanctum and hoping it returns soon. I’d much rather have an expanded Zephyr Sanctum to act as a new Lions Arch.

The most disturbing feature of the update has been that it pushed me to spend over 10g and 100 laurels on new gear. Frankly, I’m annoyed as I’m now stuck with new gear I’m not thrilled with. This is 2.5 months worth of dailes and monthlies lost. Please allow us a place to test our PvE/WvW gear like there is in sPvP. Laurels are still a very bad mechanic for a currency. It’s unforgiving and very alt unfriendly.

I’ve always made the case that there is no black and white dichotomy between a Theme Park MMO and a Sandbox MMO, it’s more like a graduated scale. Even predominantly Sandbox titles can benefit from some structured content and story. Theme Park leaning titles definitely benefit from content that makes game play less linear, more free-form and at least tries to provide a convincing illusion of a living, breathing world.

When I say Queen’s Pavilion is the worst kind of example of Theme Park content, that’s exactly what I mean. GW2 has allowed us to scoff at titles that still think it’s ok to make a quilt work game zone, with pockets of mobs just standing around waiting to be killed by players in “kill ten rats” style questing. This update features content that is a blatant example of the absurdity of extreme theme park MMO content design.

More pointedly, Queen’s Pavilion reminds me a lot of the amateurish trash content produced by fans for games like Skyrim. The kind that usually only get’s a 2 star community rating for quality, but still is among the most downloaded. “Cheat content” designed to just provide players with a way to quickly accumulate wealth and advancement by continually grinding dense pockets of mobs with a higher than average reward to time ratio.

That kind of kitten just trivializes game play and all the content that the game’s developers spent years creating. In the end, it also cheats the players who decide to take such shortcuts out of the enjoyment the game was designed to offer.

That Arenanet would design and inject such content into this game is probably one of the biggest warning signs that something has gone horribly wrong with the Live Team and the management that is supposed to oversee them.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative.

If memory serves, you (Anet) specifically went out of your way not to reveal what was added or where it was. Do you seriously expect fanfare and interest without advertising? NC Soft has been guilty of exactly that in the past (Aion), but they and you (Anet) should have learned from that.

Those events, the ones I know were added at the time (of which I don’t know many because that was NEVER REVEALED) are good. The mini-dungeons are even better. The meat and potatoes of GW2 was supposed to be the dynamic event system, but what we actually have is a pre-recorded tape of events set on a loop. There’s nothing dynamic about it. Yes, it’s extremely difficult to design a system that is truly dynamic and changing, but additional content can go a long way towards creating that illusion.

Also, please don’t judge reaction to something when it wasn’t properly advertised or described. Telling us “We added 50 events around the world” isn’t enough. What events? Where? What stories are they trying to tell and why should we be interested? If you feel you didn’t receive the response you were looking for, it’s almost certainly because you didn’t give us the information we needed to provide you with that response.

I believe there are several issues with how Living Story has been handled, but not all of them are due to the content designers, but due to the limitations of the dynamic event system and the combat system.

People have already expressed clearly enough in his topic how they want to see the living story improved. I feel that GW1’s Beyond content was better at the living story concept than GW2’s own content patches. My wishes are:
1. More cutscenes and story-driven gameplay instances (why is all the additional lore information posted in the official site, while players get to know little or nothing about the characters in-game?)
2. Replayable story that is not under a clock. Really, Anet, you SHOULD introduce a Mission System like GW1 had. This way, new players don’t miss the story from old patches, while any player can replay it whenever they want. Add in an hardmode version for the more dedicated players, and you would appeal to a lot of people. Missions in GW1 were an excellent system for linear story-telling, for story-driven gameplay sequences, for replayability and for team-driven content. This, in my opinion, was always a fault with GW2 since the very beginning.
3. Make Tyria exploration more exciting. There’s no enemy patrolling the area, no strategical enemy formation teams, no unpredictable hard encounters. Explorying the world of Tyria does not expresses danger and the excitment that would come from it, because it’s so clearly structured and predictable. There’s a dangerous enemy there? It’s labeled a champion, so if you’re not in a party, just ignore it. Anything else? Trash mobs that can be easily beaten. Improve the unpredictability, improve the diversity of encounters, turn each encounter more unique, and Tyria becomes a more exciting place to explore. And of course, with good rewards there, and people will surely do it.

However, I feel there’s some faults with the dynamic system and with the combat system in group-play combat.

The dynamic system is cool, but needs to be expanded: it needs to incentivate more adventure/ exploration (by having players explore the map and look for goals that are NOT marked on the map), it needs to have a better structure (beginning, narrative development, climax, ending), it needs some more non-linear elements outside of winning/ losing consequences, it need to force players to spread out to not fail (especially in zergy events, have the system generate many small and distinct sub-events within the area that the open-world community must complete around the same time or lose – this way, you can prevent them from becoming mindless zergs), and they need to have more permanent impact. But how would they have a more permanent impact when they can cycle every ten minutes? Maybe by not having an instant permanent impact, but by building up something more permanent slowly. For example: a swam of dynamic events that revolve around building an entire city from the ground: depending on the non-linear choices, players would decide the placement of several houses or areas, or be responsible to which areas get harassed by enemy encounters or not. This massive sequence would cycle several time a day, but it would not revert the situation each time it would cycle: it would build upon it. So for example, if an event cycled 100 times per day, three days after, an entire city would be build, unlocking a different kind of dynamic event, one set to destroy that very city, and would cycle 100x times a day, each cycle reshrinking it until it completely destroyed it three days after.

Expand the dynamic system so that they contribute to building a situation everytime they cycle, across the several days, instead of building and destroying a situation every single time they cycle. And then have each cycle bring unique gameplay elements that would be generated by the system, depending on non-linear consequences. This way, players building an entire city from the ground wouldn’t need to repeat the same gameplay sequence every time the event cycles, because the enemies generated, the strategy behind the encounters, etc, would greatly vary.

The dynamic event system is the future of MMORPGs, imo. But the current system is still an infant, it still doesn’t differs much from a traditional quest system, outside of being more streamlined. There’s so much that can be done to make dynamic events have more impact, or create more unique scenarios, or contribute to world’s exploration, etc. And, in my opinion, the living world team should take existing areas and try to improve how they are played, besides the current generic “go there, do heart, go somewhere else, get the wp” system. I feel that the southsun content patch was a first step in that direction, but it was restricted by the very own limitations of the dynamic event system.

Pawlegance.7012:

Personally, GW2 lost so much due to insecurity on ANet’s end. The game was praised for its new concept of a living and breathing world that came with dynamic events that told stories of specific and sometimes overlapping zones. What we got was great, a game that truly felt like an RPG. A game where your choices and actions mattered. In a small scale true and on a timer, true, but it still mattered.

ANet then turned away from the very core pillar of this game. It replaced most of the new content with quests. One time quests, that tell a story, but it is executed so badly that many people miss a lot of lore, because of bad presentation. I am not against story pieces forming slowly and painting a bigger picture, but everything feels so disconnected, fragmented.

Instead of adding player-driven content to the zones and expanding on the DE system, we got heavily scripted quests on a timer. Players need to rush through content, so they don’t miss an achievement or some hint on the backstory. I don’t want to be rushed, because playing is my leisure time. I want the game to wait for me, not the other way around.

From my point of view, GW2 has degraded a lot and lost a lot of the true potential it had in the beginning. Everything feels so generic and meaningless. Sure, we can vote on something, but does it really change anything. Like the story of GW2, which starts good and then gets really bad and bland, GW2 has devolved into something I don’t like and don’t support.

Some time ago Colin said that making expansions helps devs and players sync what they want. So far ANet has been doing whatever they want and a small percentage of players is throwing hundreds and thousands of dollars in their direction. Please, give others a reason to do the same.

After release, there hasn’t been a single content update I’d consider worth my money. And no, quality of life improvements is not content. This is how you build long lasting customer relationship.

I agree 100% with everything you said. I have some hope seeing the people who have posted to this thread and even if they don’t 100% agree with me, at least “get it” and appreciate that the game has been really failing at living up to it’s potential.

There have to be developers at Arenanet that get this as well. There is no way a studio that produced this awesome game could be devoid of developers who understand why the game worked, nor do I believe all those people left. I think my biggest hope is that discussions like this hear will get the developers talking about these issues and that the “Manifesto-ites” will once again overwhelm the “Last-generation-ites” and get future development back on track.

The sad thing is that at this point, we will need more than just a flip back to a focus on Dynamic Events. IMO, there has been very real damage done to the core concepts in the way that players have been systematically “trained” away from free-form, open world game play and towards jumping through a linear progression of hoops in exchange for flashy rewards.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative.

I think this is a “problem” with the dynamic event system in general, it’s luck whether or not you experience them.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen or played through these 40 events you added, I might have walked right past where they play out several times on different characters when they weren’t running and never known they exist (or rather that they potentially could occur) at all. If I did play them I certainly don’t think I would recognise them as “new” because they might have been there since the start and I might just never have seen them before.

I think that that might be why you got so little feedback on them.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thanks for the feedback everyone and please keep it coming. Personally, I find that one of the hardest parts of being a desginer on GW2 Live is coming to terms with the fact that not every update will please every player. We do our best to deliver appealing content with enough variety to keep as many people as satisfied as possible. And If there’s one thing we can do consistently, it’s improving the experience of said content each time. I think we made some great strides with the Jubilee. I think we have a lot of room to keep growing. But our team isn’t done yet. We’ve got some exciting things coming later this month. Things you’ve never seen in this game before.

But in the mean time, please keep telling us what you’re thinking. We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative. Despite this, there are many events I would still like to add. Many zones and bosses I would love to revisit. As we get better at the living world, I strongly suspect we’ll have room to get around to them as well. Assuming that’s what our players really want. You are all the second half of the collaborative process, so thanks for helping!

Thanks for the answer. The second paragraph has me wondering though, what exactly are you judging the level of reaction on? I really hope it isn’t the forums since, as in common in pretty much every form of customer feedback, people who give feedback most often do it to complain and then if they are quite surprised in a positive direction – those who are content or getting what they are expecting will not voice their opinion. An example of this from the “real world” is eating at a restaurant, if a customer gives feedback it is more often because something was not to their liking (cold food, over cooked, etc) and besides a habitual “compliments to the chef” it is usually only if the food (significantly) exceeds the customer’s expectations that they will give positive feedback. Essentially what gap 5 in the gap model of service quality refers to.

The Halloween update probably suffered from having the permanent content being overshadowed by the extremely flashy Mad King events (and to be fair, it was pretty much the only thing advertised about the update) so players didn’t really pay attention to the new content until later on. It might also generated a lesser amount of feedback because it was the first major content patch and the players didn’t have anything else to compare it to. This might even have been a cause of later dissatisfaction with the focus on temporary content, Halloween added several new events and mini dungeons, and the Karka event added a new zone – after those two big patches with lots of permanent content added the following patches have felt a bit lackluster once the awe-factor of something new has worn off.

The problem and benefit with temporary content in my opinion is that it can be made very flashy compared to the permanent content. It’s kinda like eating desserts compared to real food – the sweets might taste better and have a high appeal but they’re lacking in nutrition so once the initial sugar high is over you’re left feeling drained and quite tired with it.

AnthonyOrdon

Some negative comment: you are the worst designer team I ever encounter IMHO, your content is not tested and unbalanced and I’m astonished that you’ve made good mini games like southsun survival, puzzles, sanctum. I’m guessing your team is very mixed that’s why we’re receiving very good but also very bad content and ideas, please invest in more beta-testers or someday major bug can destroy whole game economy or God know what else.

Fiontar.4695:

Gizmo.8623:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative. Despite this, there are many events I would still like to add. Many zones and bosses I would love to revisit. As we get better at the living world, I strongly suspect we’ll have room to get around to them as well. Assuming that’s what our players really want. You are all the second half of the collaborative process, so thanks for helping!

From release notes of “Shadow of Mad King”:
“Tyria Evolving
The world continues to evolve with new events, jumping puzzkitten sses, mini-dungeons, and achievements appearing across a variety of maps.”

This could be the only sentence in the next few update notes.

I was so busy with Halloween content and I haven’t even paid any attention to these additions

I didn’t notice them either, but to be fair, in late October of last year I was hospitalized and nearly died in the grips of an unidentified virus, so I think I have a reasonable excuse.

It makes me sad to see that quote, actually, because if that had been repeated with every patch since, the game would have been much the better for it. An evolving world of Tyria, with new Dynamic Events, Mini-dungeons and, yes, even jumping puzzles, is pretty much what I’m talking about and what Arenanet was talking about before they got ensnared in the pipe dream that has been Living Story.

There are a lot of people claiming that they like roaming around in the world exploring and “having fun”. Problem is… I don’t see them so often. And that’s why I consider claims like yours as a utter BS. Some random events scattered all over the world would never put any interest in most of the players. New content always needs rewards and challenge mechanics.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare.

Hey Anthony, I can only speak for myself, but I was still finding my feet back then and the mini dungeons went completely by me at the time. I’d just got to 80 and wasn’t going back exploring the zones, I was busy with the Mad King and getting my first exotics but I love them now, they are awesome for small guilds like mine as well. Adding the kite was a good way to get people into one of them as we’ve had a lot of new players since then.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I believe there are several issues with how Living Story has been handled, but not all of them are due to the content designers, but due to the limitations of the dynamic event system and the combat system.

People have already expressed clearly enough in his topic how they want to see the living story improved. I feel that GW1’s Beyond content was better at the living story concept than GW2’s own content patches. My wishes are:
1. More cutscenes and story-driven gameplay instances (why is all the additional lore information posted in the official site, while players get to know little or nothing about the characters in-game?)
2. Replayable story that is not under a clock. Really, Anet, you SHOULD introduce a Mission System like GW1 had. This way, new players don’t miss the story from old patches, while any player can replay it whenever they want. Add in an hardmode version for the more dedicated players, and you would appeal to a lot of people. Missions in GW1 were an excellent system for linear story-telling, for story-driven gameplay sequences, for replayability and for team-driven content. This, in my opinion, was always a fault with GW2 since the very beginning.
3. Make Tyria exploration more exciting. There’s no enemy patrolling the area, no strategical enemy formation teams, no unpredictable hard encounters. Explorying the world of Tyria does not expresses danger and the excitment that would come from it, because it’s so clearly structured and predictable. There’s a dangerous enemy there? It’s labeled a champion, so if you’re not in a party, just ignore it. Anything else? Trash mobs that can be easily beaten. Improve the unpredictability, improve the diversity of encounters, turn each encounter more unique, and Tyria becomes a more exciting place to explore. And of course, with good rewards there, and people will surely do it.

However, I feel there’s some faults with the dynamic system and with the combat system in group-play combat.

The dynamic system is cool, but needs to be expanded: it needs to incentivate more adventure/ exploration (by having players explore the map and look for goals that are NOT marked on the map), it needs to have a better structure (beginning, narrative development, climax, ending), it needs some more non-linear elements outside of winning/ losing consequences, it need to force players to spread out to not fail (especially in zergy events, have the system generate many small and distinct sub-events within the area that the open-world community must complete around the same time or lose – this way, you can prevent them from becoming mindless zergs), and they need to have more permanent impact. But how would they have a more permanent impact when they can cycle every ten minutes? Maybe by not having an instant permanent impact, but by building up something more permanent slowly. For example: a swam of dynamic events that revolve around building an entire city from the ground: depending on the non-linear choices, players would decide the placement of several houses or areas, or be responsible to which areas get harassed by enemy encounters or not. This massive sequence would cycle several time a day, but it would not revert the situation each time it would cycle: it would build upon it. So for example, if an event cycled 100 times per day, three days after, an entire city would be build, unlocking a different kind of dynamic event, one set to destroy that very city, and would cycle 100x times a day, each cycle reshrinking it until it completely destroyed it three days after.

You are right. To really leverage dynamic events, they need to evolve, there needs to be some sort of progression and they should never be reduced to just timed, scripted events with no variation.

What I would like to see is a continual, systematic refresh of DE content in each game zone in a way that progresses events with in that zone over time. Existing events modified to provide twists that make sense in context with the events that have been playing out in the zone, new events to progress the state of the zone, including changes to structures to reflect the waxing or waning of the influence of various NPC factions.

DEs do a good job at providing the illusion of life to a zone during the first half dozen hours you spend there, but when nothing changes at all in the weeks or months since your previous visit, the immersion and sense of an organic, living environment are completely lost.

I also see a role for instanced story content in all that. Not new story content to accompany every new influx of content for each zone, but the spotlight could be put on an individual zone every 2-4 weeks with Story Content accompanying dramatic goings on for that zone that are presented via new, narrative advancing, DEs for the zone.