Guild Wars 2

You know this isn’t the end of the event, right? How about you wait and judge the meta events that lead up to the new, permanent world boss before making judgement? Not every living story has to end in a 5-man instance.

Stark.1350:

You know this isn’t the end of the event, right? How about you wait and judge the meta events that lead up to the new, permanent world boss before making judgement? Not every living story has to end in a 5-man instance.

Also not every living story has to have 5-min to get achievement leading to total of 1h gameplay.

Sovta.4719:

Stark.1350:

You know this isn’t the end of the event, right? How about you wait and judge the meta events that lead up to the new, permanent world boss before making judgement? Not every living story has to end in a 5-man instance.

Also not every living story has to have 5-min to get achievement leading to total of 1h gameplay.

A new world boss that sticks around seems to be a lot more than 1 hour of gameplay.

DrixTrix.7168:

this is not the final event, i remember before the MF was released everyone hated F&F too.

same kitten, different story.

I still hate F&F. Dungeon was great, had incredible ideas and good implementation of mechanics, but it did not save F&F at all.

I did the story solo dungeon..It was just a bore,sorry to say.I just..didnt like a thing about it,simple mechanics,run around let some bombs explode.Way…Way to easy and simplified.Havent bothered with explore yet.Unless the reward is worth it ,not sure im gonna.

Stark.1350:

Sovta.4719:

Stark.1350:

You know this isn’t the end of the event, right? How about you wait and judge the meta events that lead up to the new, permanent world boss before making judgement? Not every living story has to end in a 5-man instance.

Also not every living story has to have 5-min to get achievement leading to total of 1h gameplay.

A new world boss that sticks around seems to be a lot more than 1 hour of gameplay.

Yea, another punching bag to players will grind to death probably (god forbid we get some harder open world content)

I suppose this is as good a place as any to put my review of the current storyline.

First, while I had the game at launch, I took a long hiatus for life reasons, and did not participate for many months. I missed the Halloween and Christmas stuff, and I missed whatever happened prior to the current story at Southsun. If reports are correct, the prior event was the “only happened over one particular weekend” event so it’s possible people even playing regularly missed out on the story there.

I came back in at or near the beginning of Flame and Frost. While that story got off to a slow start, I have to admit that overall I really enjoyed the arc. I like seeing the world evolve and alter. Super Adventure Box as well was a lot of fun as a one-off event. So with these two as precursor efforts, I had high hopes that the storytelling would continue in good form with Southsun having built on learning from the prior events as to what works and what doesn’t work well.

So into paradise I went…

The story at the outset was interesting, though already there were signs that things were a bit thin. This is essentially a crime style mystery. Inspector Kiel was there at the Islet and said she was going to get to the bottom of this. Frankly I never saw her move, but maybe she’s more on the “administrative” end of inspecting. I talked to everyone I could find, and yes there were settlers and consortium people at nearly every location but they really mainly said the same thing. There are a few books to be read, but nothing super illuminating. I had hoped that I would see Kiel wandering about the island, questioning consortium and settlers alike. We have wandering bounties in the world, a pathing NPC over vast distances would not have been trouble. However she just mainly stood there. At some point later, she did say she had a lead, but how she got this lead I have no idea.

Granted, police authorities do not necessarily need to discuss everything with everyone, but I’m a BDH (big kitten hero, ain’t we just). Surely she could have asked for a little help, or let a few things slip.

The timeline of two weeks I thought was appropriate for this, so I believe ANet did a decent job pacing this. I would have liked to see Kiel with more movement, more inspecting, and a LOT more clues planted around the world. There are a few books yes, but again, not very illuminating. Compare this with just a one time instance in Molten Core where they had inspectable objects that were mainly there for the story (thinking right outside the test chamber). They had those two dead guys with keepsakes.

Now the second half launches. Suddenly — what exactly? I did read the vignette (hate to call it a short story) and there’s this guy Canach throwing down with a Consortium fellow. Okay great. WHO THE HELL IS HE? This is where things start to unravel big time. I have gathered since then that he was a character in that one time weekend event. He seems like he has a decent beef with Consortium to do some evil villain kinds of things, but there needs to be a crapton more foreshadowing when you do story telling. Also, remember this was a widely panned single weekend event that many people didn’t get to participate in. Also, this is a MMORPG which people are picking up and purchasing all the time, coming in fresh to the story. Some backstory would be a SUPER idea.

But there’s no backstory, aside from the vignette which still didn’t really do much to introduce the Canach character.

So here we are in the second half and BOOM we’ve found his lair. How? Doesn’t matter. Police stuff I guess. He’s trapped. Why are we after him? Doesn’t matter I guess. Police stuff. Let’s go get him.

And now we come to the excruciatingly disappointing mechanics issue of the story. Single player instance — fantastic. Loved it with Rox and Braham and was looking forward to the same sort of thing. Presentation on entrance, steamy crustacean environment… well okay, matches Southsun. Kiel is there. She doesn’t really say much other than we’ve got him trapped down here. Why do we have him trapped down here? Don’t know. We just do. Couldn’t be bothered to explain anything to the BDH beforehand, but now GO GET HIM.

What?

Okay, well lame story, but it’s an event right? Let’s see about just getting it done and getting the achiement and forgetting this ever happened. Grab a mine detector. Man the walls look really washed out. I’m supposed to detect mines… well I can see the kitten mines but they’re all alike. Ahh, the type is a dinky icon that reveals when you scan. Pity there weren’t WORDS to go with the icon because honestly it’s seriously foggy in here and a text highlight would have been really helpful. Carefully working through the tunnel and there’s a boss area. Just standing there. Defuse a few more mines and he attacks. Silently.

I’ll be the first to admit that monologuing bad guys is very cliche, but holy crap I would have seriously welcomed it. The good guys weren’t telling me jack kitten, so please bad guy, please tell me what the hell you’re doing, why, anything that explains why I’m doing what I’m doing. But there appears (at this point) to be no voice over work. That’s okay, Kiel didn’t have any either and not all stories need it. So after a few attempts I get it done plus the not stepping in a mine achievement. Reward! Wait… there’s some sort of faint sound.

So I turn around and Canach is talking “with” Kiel. A few things to note here about the instance.

It’s a large room.
You may not have killed him near the center.
They put positional audio in the room.
I only barely heard that dialog was happening, I almost missed this.

Now, Canach does have voice acting! Hooray! But… Kiel does not? We don’t even have voice bubbles over their heads, it’s all playing out in the chat window. And with one side having voice acting and the other, it’s seriously ridiculous. It doesn’t have to be a big name. Get freakin’ Sally out of the ANet canteen and get a tape recorder into a conference room and have her read out a few lines for god’s sake.

And there we have it. A single player instance that appears to have been knocked out over the course of a weekend. A villain who has a one-sided conversation about how we’ll never undo his dastardly plan, but honest we don’t even know what his freakin’ dastardly plan is because no one ever adequately explained it. A fight mechanic that is done almost entirely silently. Poor visual cues and ultimately low difficulting. A fight mechanic that completely negates any sort of capability your character in particular might have brought to the encounter.

And yay, we get to do this for a gold piece a day. Yeah. I’ll probably skip this one. I’m not even going to get into Subdirector Null. Exactly same fight mechanics (more or less). Exactly same instance environment with poor lighting, poor indicators (I really hate those icons). Absolutely zero idea why NULL was created (though I understand it was the golem he stole in the story). I didn’t get the impression that Canach was a seriously techy guy. Honestly I didn’t get the impression that he was much of anything because the story never explained him. But I guess he has the capability to rebuild an asuran golem? We got to college for years to learn that stuff!

(Admittedly, knowing Asura, there MIGHT have been a “good golem” / “evil golem” switch in there that was just installed in case it might ever come in handy, just to be completely thorough.)

I’m not even going to touch on overall reward structure for Southsun. I am one of those who have opened MANY chests and gotten ZERO weapon tickets — and I really would have liked one for my mesmer character. But that dolyak has been beat to a bloody pulp in other topics.

So I’d like to end on a lessons learned for ANet here. As in, I hope they learned these lessons.

1) Please make the environments interactive for storytelling purposes.
2) Please pay attention to your story. That’s one of the huge draws for GW2. It’s one half of the label “Living Story”. Give it some TLC.
3) Please do not assume everyone knows all the characters from prior events.
4) Foreshadowing is a tried and true technique in fiction to clue the particpant/observer into what’s going on.
5) Never again have characters have a conversation with one half of them have voice acting and half of them do not.
6) Monologuing bad guys may be cliche, but voice and audio clues during a fight are really GREAT! At the very least, speech bubbles is a head’s up visual rather than looking at the text chat box. That was a TERRIBLE idea.
7) If you’re going to make us distinguish things, make the icons big and bright, and consider text labels for those with less than great eyesight. Especially if you’re going to locate this in a foggy steam filled room that has a tendency to obscure.
8) If you’re going to have a police investigation mystery story, you need to have your police investigating visibly. Have your BDH’s help out! That’s what we’re there for. Plus loot natch.

Anyhow, those are my thoughts on it for whatever it’s worth.

nexxe.7081:

Rhaps.8540:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

hey folks,

our patch notes jumped the gun a bit. Canach instance is NOT the ending of the living story. That will come next week. Stay tuned!

Okay thanks for confirming that Robert! I’ll stop looking for a instance that isn’t there yet :P

Give your web guys a kick up the kitten tho, shouldn’t really take this long to update the patch notes on the main site.

The instance is there, but it’s not the ending of the Southsun Cove’s living story.

/facepalm Not talking about the canach cave instances at all. For the 2nd time this thread ill point to what im referring to.

From the patch notes..

“Instances

Added new Canach single-player story boss encounter.
Added explorable multiplayer variant (unlocked if you defeat Canach).
Added new single-player instance for the culmination of the story."

So check off the first 2, where is the 3rd?… The 3rd isn’t in yet as it’s the ending to the story that comes in later.

Didn’t have much time to work on Canach this morning, so I only tried a couple times. Still, my primary toon is a ranger, and (as voiced elsewhere), my pet keeps causing problems for me.

Second, having to use an environmental weapon to beat him with no alternatives just sucks. I avoid all environmental weapons everywhere in the game because they just seem like a step down for me. I’m used to my bows and my pets. Needing to learn a new skill setup just to finish a story relevant encounter is backwards.

I’ll eventually figure it out and finish off the “bad guy”, I’m sure, but I don’t like being pigeonholed into one way to do things. Frustrating.

I’m generally pretty forgiving of the content ArenaNet adds, and I usually am very excited by it (except the RNG boxes — hate those with a passion), but this just makes the story harder to enjoy.

Luna.9640:

“Use the mines to kill him” mechanics is Mad King’s Clock Tower all over again for me for now.

Even the unequip all your gear while fighting him is same as mad king solo nude killing.

Mechanics not good. After playing Molten alliance dungeon this one feels kittened. (sorry but thats exactly the word that pictures the whole thing for me)

I don’t understand how this fight uses the same mechanics.. MKCT was a timed jumping puzzle, for Canach all you use is a mine detector to change the mines to attack him. MKCT you jumped around, this you walk around changing things to kill a boss. That’s it, and it’s only repeatable once a day so.. I don’t understand your complaint.

I think positive, critical feedback is a good thing. The Dev’s have shown that they read our comments; sometimes they enact change based on it. I think they listened to the F&F dungeon feedback from their customers (a good thing!) and shifted gears to end Southsun differently based on that. Here is my perspective on that change and my experience with the instance:

I thought the instance was a little too simple. Well, a lot too simple, if I were pressed to make a judgment call on it. It was a small cave, with a guy, and an annoying mechanic using mines (and not your own skills) to whittle his health down. Now, it took me 4 tries (and a repair bill) to work around being tossed around like a rag doll (please stop with using knockbacks and knockdowns as a mainstay game mechanic), but I learned which mines were which and I eventually killed him.

It was moderately challenging to learn what to do and memorize the mines. There really isn’t enough time to kite and hit that detect mine button plus deactivate before you get slapped around again and blown up. Using a item that replaces your learned skills was disappointing to me. It turned the whole instance into a mini-game feel and I didn’t really like it.

So, positive criticism time. I think its a great idea that you made a solo-friendly instance at the end of Living Story, while also including a group option as well. Giving options to recognize the different playstyles of your customers is fantastic. Thank you for listening and adjusting your content so more people could finish the LS!

I do think that the instance is overly simplified. One room, one guy, and an annoying game mechanic for filler as challenge. Perhaps in listening to the feedback about F&F you went too far over on the left? Maybe it was a time constraint so you couldn’t build a more expansive dungeon/instance? If it was a matter of swinging too far over to your idea of Easy Mode, I’d like to comment on that for a bit:

It is possible to do a dungeon (a real dungeon) that doesn’t require a full group to run. I’ve played many games and I’ve always been an avid fan of spending hours delving into the depths grouped and solo. If you have experience with EQ2, think Fallen Gate or Stormhold as the classic dungeon style I am imagining. They are intriguing, you explore, you have fun boss encounters, discoveries, and they’re generally pretty cool.

What was presented with Southsun was the polar opposite of that. I hope that isn’t the result of the feedback to having more options and accessibility, because if it is you completely missed the mark. People didn’t ask for simple (one room, one guy), they were asking (mostly) for scaling so a dungeon could be done with 1-5 people.

Whatever the rationale for the design decision, I thought it was a very shallow experience, with the same annoying throwbacks and knockdown spam that we’ve seen before. It felt rushed and overly simplified.

I also was able to complete it on my 1st try. My only real gripe about it is that it isn’t long enough. The mechanics didn’t bother me….at least A-net is trying something different. I haven’t run the multiplayer version of it yet…..is it also just one boss, or is it like the others?

Absolutely tedious, if this is the kind of content we have to look forward to then the sooner Class 4 is released the better.

The hate for this boss is absurd. I’m with Idocreating – NULL is superb. There are a lot of mechanics to the fight, it’s complex, but not unfair. You have to stay on your toes and you can’t just wail on it and expect it to melt in 2 minutes. You need to actually use some mechanics to injure it.

I wonder how many of you people whining about how easy it is to cheese this boss looked up Dulfy’s guide before doing it yourself?

This shouldn’t even be called a dungeon. its just a hallway + rooms with mines and 1 single mob.

*The mines are an absolute nightmare for rangers. * Pets trigger it, and since theres no way to control the exacts paths of pets, the mines explode whenever the stupid pet runs over them to you. And since we cannot perma stow the pet, its absolute frustration. Its like the people who designed this bloody thing didn’t think it through. Surely you cannot forget there are players with pets. Its half of the ranger class.

Disappointed with this 1 mob “dungeon”

Robert Hrouda.1327:

given the time the designer had to work on the instance, I think he did a great job.

Hm, all you’re currently releasing is living world content as far as I’m aware of, and most of it doesn’t seem to require a lot of work except the Molten Weapons Facility. How can he not have had enough time to work on this, and why did he have to do it alone? Makes you wonder how many designers there are to begin with.

I still didn’t play the istance, i will asap.
Robert i i can, i agree that probably the time and resources were limited, for the istance and for crab toss in particular..
and i can’t blame you for that, why in the world would you put more than that in temporary release?
I know you cannot, but you have to agree with me that the issue is is not the small team, not the player base having too high expectations, but probably mmm.. time limited content?
Well it has pros and cons though, as i was sad to see sab or mf go away i won’t miss cab toss from achivements.
Again, this is not a complaining on the istance, i still haven’t played it, i surely will, and i won’miss telling my grats to you if i apriciate.

p.s.
i love your work with dungeons, gj!

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Yeah, I was a bit perplexed on why it was called a dungeon as well. Coming from the dungeon team previously, it really felt more like a boss instance, but I don’t write the patch notes or do the marketing.
I didn’t build the Canach encounters, but I did enjoy them. It’s a neat variation that changes gameplay, and I liked the mechanics. Sure there’s a few things that can be done better (as is with everything), but given the time the designer had to work on the instance, I think he did a great job.

For me I did not mind the fight with Canach, but my 2 major pieces of feedback are:

1. Outside of gw2.com I have no idea who Canach is. Was there anything in this living story arc that actually explained who he was? The only thing I saw was that awesome short story by Scott, but I feel like the story needs to be in-game.

2. I wish that it was more than just a boss encounter, but ah well

Iruwen.3164:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

given the time the designer had to work on the instance, I think he did a great job.

Hm, all you’re currently releasing is living world content as far as I’m aware of, and most of it doesn’t seem to require a lot of work except the Molten Weapons Facility. How can he not have had enough time to work on this, and why did he have to do it alone? Makes you wonder how many designers there are to begin with.

There are a lot of Bug Fixes and other enhancements to the game that they are working on like a proper LFG tool. The living world content is mostly something to keep us busy and entertained while they work on polishing the core game. Once that is mostly done they will likely shift a lot of members on over to the Expansion team.

TL;DR multiple teams working on multiple things. More is released in a patch then just new content.

Ayrilana.1396:

deviller.9135:

ps: the last de-buff from boss clarifies that heavy DPS is the only crucial thing in this encounter. (compare to path 2 AC boss, heavy DPS check, controller check, 1 – 2 ghostbuster check, 1 supporter check.).

The boss has been done with low DPS. It’s not as bad as you are exaggerating. Also, AC Path 2 boss is NOT a DPS check. Perhaps you need to refresh your memory on what a DPS check is.

Heavy dps make the boss melt faster (you dont need it actually, but you still need DPS to damage the boss or you will have long encounter). Thats why I list 4 job you have in that encounter, supporter for support (heal,boon), DPS well he will do DPS directly once boss can be attacked, ghostbuster to make sure traps working, controller to control the boss (aka agro). 1 people can do 2 jobs (DPS+control). Looks how the encounter should be. Path 2 AC is far the best encounter (some people called it annoying) I have ever seen.

Serbaayuu.3051:

I wonder how many of you people whining about how easy it is to cheese this boss looked up Dulfy’s guide before doing it yourself?

No need to cheese, this boss does not even need the guide. No cheese or bug exploit I use in my first encounter. Boss like this is CoF path 1 effigy category. Big DPS, the better. (at first encounter, we all bring mine-sweeper, but in 2 minutes after he makes shield, we realize, you only need 1).

How my team beat this boss;

We had 3 Rangers. They stacked Healing Springs on top of one another when he got to 25% health and we kept all the mines around him up as often as possible.

It is quite easy when people know wth they are doing.

Then I’m looking forward to the next release I guess. Won’t blame you for things you’re not responsible for now, I usually like your work.

anzenketh.3759:

Iruwen.3164:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

given the time the designer had to work on the instance, I think he did a great job.

Hm, all you’re currently releasing is living world content as far as I’m aware of, and most of it doesn’t seem to require a lot of work except the Molten Weapons Facility. How can he not have had enough time to work on this, and why did he have to do it alone? Makes you wonder how many designers there are to begin with.

There are a lot of Bug Fixes and other enhancements to the game that they are working on like a proper LFG tool. The living world content is mostly something to keep us busy and entertained while they work on polishing the core game. Once that is mostly done they will likely shift a lot of members on over to the Expansion team.

TL;DR multiple teams working on multiple things. More is released in a patch then just new content.

Designers don’t work on those things, they’re designers, they design content. As you said, there are multiple teams that are qualified for different aspects of development.

I didn’t really like the encounter, but for a different reason.

It made Canach seem really stupid. Guy juts chases you around and runs into his own (highly visible) mines. I can maybe see Null doing that, artificial intelligence and maybe not programmed to deal with that sort of thing, but Canach? He’s a sentient being who, according to the blog post, has managed to stay alive and out of custody for half a year while being hunted by professional assassins, and managed to create a toxin to drive the island creatures insane while developing immunity to it himself. Seems pretty smart, and yet one random adventurer grabs a mine control gun, takes over a few mines, and he just smashes his face into them until he goes down.

It’d be a different matter if you had to use the 5th ability on the mine gun to throw Canach into the mines forcefully, but thats obviously not the intention given the cooldown on that skill (it’d take you 20 minutes to kill him if you did it that way probably). The intention of the fight is clearly to just make him into a complete moron by walking him into mines over and over. And its just silly.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Our next schedule is much more relaxed than this one is though, so I’m very eager to see what we can do with it.

So in other words “expect less from the next release”?

Good to hear ty

I liked the first chapter of southsun a lot.
This one is a lot smaller(so far, as Queen is not in yet), but it was still pretty enjoyable.

Canach fight is kind of buggy (boss randomly reseting HP and walks away…mines randomly flip back to red…)but the concept is pretty cool. Reward is pretty generous for something that can be done in 4minutes.

Null is a great fight, a lot of little things to worry about. Not too hard so even disorganized pugs can do it.

deviller.9135:

Ayrilana.1396:

deviller.9135:

ps: the last de-buff from boss clarifies that heavy DPS is the only crucial thing in this encounter. (compare to path 2 AC boss, heavy DPS check, controller check, 1 – 2 ghostbuster check, 1 supporter check.).

The boss has been done with low DPS. It’s not as bad as you are exaggerating. Also, AC Path 2 boss is NOT a DPS check. Perhaps you need to refresh your memory on what a DPS check is.

Heavy dps make the boss melt faster (you dont need it actually, but you still need DPS to damage the boss or you will have long encounter). Thats why I list 4 job you have in that encounter, supporter for support (heal,boon), DPS well he will do DPS directly once boss can be attacked, ghostbuster to make sure traps working, controller to control the boss (aka agro). 1 people can do 2 jobs (DPS+control). Looks how the encounter should be. Path 2 AC is far the best encounter (some people called it annoying) I have ever seen. .

Well that works for any boss. The more DPS you have the quicker you will defeat a boss. The typical DPS you have in pugs will require you to set off 3 traps on average. Assuming you have two people that are ordinated and know what they’re doing, this shouldn’t take more than 10 min.

A DPS check is where you cannot progress without having a specific level of DPS. Think of Simin before the nerf.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Thankfully due to the schedule of our release, our team was staffed with some of the fastest iterative folks from the company to get something good out in a short time.

I think you might be over emphasising the word good. I think embarrassing is a more appropriate word.

Quality>Quantity, Ironically the majority of the time neither of these are met.

If all the future updates are going to be continuing to focus their attention on “e-sports” and dead on arrival “living story” then I’m genuinely counting the days till I can jump ship to wildstar.

It’s been a year and the only reasonable content we have seen is FotM, SaB, and MWF. The last of the two are now gone from the game.

I really don’t understand the design decision to drop the focus from permanent content while your “innovative temporary content” receives all of the attention from you but only caters to the people who log in once every month to see it. It’s like you actually only want people to play your game when you add new things rather than play it daily because there are lots of things to do.

TL:DR you’re delusional if you think this living story is worth your efforts every month. Take your lumps, it’s not working.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

He did it alone (or as alone as we all develop things as a team) because it was only a couple bosses in a small area – he didn’t and shouldn’t have needed any assistance with it, and it was finished within the scope of our initial plan.
I can’t give estimates on how long our team was developing this content, but it was an accelerated dev cycle for our team. Thankfully due to the schedule of our release, our team was staffed with some of the fastest iterative folks from the company to get something good out in a short time.
Our next schedule is much more relaxed than this one is though, so I’m very eager to see what we can do with it.

This explains quite a lot about how this part of Living Story has run. Appreciate the insight and looking forward to what comes next!

Use the “Guard” shout to send your pet to one side of the area. It will stay there for 180 seconds, at which point you can do it again.

It seems to me there’s been a lot of apologizing from Anet the past 5 months regarding the Living World content/concept. From too little content spread over much too long a time, to excellent quality content players enjoy being removed after two weeks, to flubbed patch notes, to developers not having enough time to create content at the same level due to the insane release schedule. Not to mention the bugs that seem to get through under this system.

I hope you guys at Anet figure out a way to make this whole Living Story work. It’s a neat idea and different and all… but I have to say it doesnt seem worth all the trouble so far. (At least from my perspective as a player. I’m sure from a profit perspective the LS exclusive items are doing right by y’all. )

To me, it feels like we are in the middle of an enjoyable experiment – one in which the developers are trying to find the right balance between top notch content and the time it takes to develop/release that content.

That they are willing to take chances and tweak how (and how fast) they develop content bodes well (at least in my eyes) for the game’s future. You don’t build something unique by doing things the same every time. And, taking chances sometimes means missing the mark.

Personally, I am enjoying the content they released this week, even though I do understand some of the counter arguments.

As far as the disconnect between development and marketing, I definitely agree that is something they should look into fixing. The patch notes and pre-publicity ended up causing a fair bit of confusion and angst among players.

I say continue with the living story. It’s better than getting a chunk of content once a year and then nothing else.

Arenanet… this content is bad and you should feel bad. Uninstalled.

Blaeys.3102:

To me, it feels like we are in the middle of an enjoyable experiment – one in which the developers are trying to find the right balance between top notch content and the time it takes to develop/release that content.

That they are willing to take chances and tweak how (and how fast) they develop content bodes well (at least in my eyes) for the game’s future. You don’t build something unique by doing things the same every time. And, taking chances sometimes means missing the mark.

Personally, I am enjoying the content they released this week, even though I do understand some of the counter arguments.

As far as the disconnect between development and marketing, I definitely agree that is something they should look into fixing. The patch notes and pre-publicity ended up causing a fair bit of confusion and angst among players.

I agree. if GW2 was a subscription based game I’d be a bit miffed at being part of this experiment, but considering it costs me literally nothing to experience and give feedback on what I do and don’t like with each leg of the living story and its releases I’m just thrilled to see the vast quantity of content that’s been pushed in such a short time, despite the fact that some of it is better than other bits.

I think they’re figuring out all of the nuts and bolts, and considering it doesn’t cost me anything to NOT log in I’m perfectly happy to play only when the game is interesting… Which is a few hours a day for dailies, a bit more for living story content or when the guild gets together for missions, instances, or WvW.

IDK, this sort of pace fits my lifestyle and play patterns I suppose

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Yeah, I was a bit perplexed on why it was called a dungeon as well. Coming from the dungeon team previously, it really felt more like a boss instance, but I don’t write the patch notes or do the marketing.
I didn’t build the Canach encounters, but I did enjoy them. It’s a neat variation that changes gameplay, and I liked the mechanics. Sure there’s a few things that can be done better (as is with everything), but given the time the designer had to work on the instance, I think he did a great job.

The fights themselves are good (people cry just because it’s not another faceroll boss battle), but they feel like:
“Hey look, here’s a dude, catch him”
“Oh… ok!”
“Good job! Btw there’s another one, catch him too”
“Em… ok…”
Maybe I missed something but there is no story before and between the encounters.

Well Robert, I personally think your team did a fine job in the short amount of time allotted to you guys. Your team had to come up with content with expectations from players higher than F&F (Which that team had more time to produce). Kind of like how a concert works with 3 bands “You always expect the next band to be better than the previous.”

With one exception of the Harvesting tool which was not up to par (not sure if that was your team though)

Mathog.3157:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Yeah, I was a bit perplexed on why it was called a dungeon as well. Coming from the dungeon team previously, it really felt more like a boss instance, but I don’t write the patch notes or do the marketing.
I didn’t build the Canach encounters, but I did enjoy them. It’s a neat variation that changes gameplay, and I liked the mechanics. Sure there’s a few things that can be done better (as is with everything), but given the time the designer had to work on the instance, I think he did a great job.

The fights themselves are good (people cry just because it’s not another faceroll boss battle), but they feel like:
“Hey look, here’s a dude, catch him”
“Oh… ok!”
“Good job! Btw there’s another one, catch him too”
“Em… ok…”
Maybe I missed something but there is no story before and between the encounters.

Read the mail, click Show Me and read the two bits there, and talk to Kiel at the entrance of each version.

I don’t know if you were expecting a lot of exposition detailing everything involved, but there’s definitely something there.

Although I do find it interesting that the two nobles seem to act as if everything is completed.

Vahkris.6847:

Mathog.3157:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Yeah, I was a bit perplexed on why it was called a dungeon as well. Coming from the dungeon team previously, it really felt more like a boss instance, but I don’t write the patch notes or do the marketing.
I didn’t build the Canach encounters, but I did enjoy them. It’s a neat variation that changes gameplay, and I liked the mechanics. Sure there’s a few things that can be done better (as is with everything), but given the time the designer had to work on the instance, I think he did a great job.

The fights themselves are good (people cry just because it’s not another faceroll boss battle), but they feel like:
“Hey look, here’s a dude, catch him”
“Oh… ok!”
“Good job! Btw there’s another one, catch him too”
“Em… ok…”
Maybe I missed something but there is no story before and between the encounters.

Read the mail and talk to Kiel at the entrance of each version.

I don’t know if you were expecting a lot of exposition detailing everything involved, but there’s definitely something there.

Although I do find it interesting that the two nobles seem to act as if everything is completed.

Mail? I didn’t notice that when I logged in yesterday. I’ll have to check it out. Thanks.

That’s pretty good! But not my point. My point is that I laugh at people who complain and threaten to leave the game for free content. As I said, I get constructive criticism. I just don’t understand that mentality of threatening to leave a free game. Plus, in your analogy, you don’t mention the hit and miss quality – Molten Facility is regarded by the same community that is bashing this ‘dungeon’ as one of the best ever put out. And SAB was a hit. So it isn’t fair to say it’s been all crap since release, is it? And yeah, I laugh at people who don’t know a good thing and complain about it. Leave? I’m not stopping anyone. I also won’t think twice about throwing my two cents in if I don’t like something – but I don’t think anyone would care if I threatened to leave – why should they?

Rebound, I’m sure you knew I was going to say that no one is forcing you to use the Gem Shop for anything. Unlike a non free to play system where you either hand over the $15 or you get to sit at a login screen. It’s no comparison.

mjhungness.8059:

Let’s see, $15 a month just to play anything was the norm a few years ago, and still is for some of the games out there, at least in some form or other. So, at $15 a month and starting…..

aaand CUT. That’s exactly why I didn’t play these games.
I bought this game to fight the dragons of Tyria, I’m still waiting to see the others, until then I’m free to complain about "new ""free"" content" that I don’t like. Because free isn’t free, every programmer used on this shoddy patch could be used to develop the missing parts of the story I’m still waiting from September.

DrixTrix.7168:

this is not the final event, i remember before the MF was released everyone hated F&F too.

same kitten, different story.

…It shouldn’t have to be the final event for things to start getting good, it shouldn’t have to be the final event before there is actually a hint of a story. People might say, ‘wait it out, the final event will make it worth it’, but that’s not much of a story if everything but the final event is trash.
I love this game, there has been a lot of great content, but Living Story, simply isn’t living up to its name.

mjhungness.8059:

Rebound, I’m sure you knew I was going to say that no one is forcing you to use the Gem Shop for anything. Unlike a non free to play system where you either hand over the $15 or you get to sit at a login screen. It’s no comparison.

I’ll give Anet $15 per month if it will encourage more emphasis on designing better content rather than more mini pets or other gem store items. Where is the horizontal progression we were promised. My guild would enjoy having a hall to build and furnish. Why can’t we have new dungeons to explore that don’t disappear after a single month?
However it’s not just that. What they are releasing is lackluster, and that’s being kind. I am not going to rage quit because of one poorly conceived instance, but I will leave eventually due to lack of interest. I love GW2 and hope to play for the foreseeable future but there game design discussions kill player longevity.

If you combined the initial release of southsun content with the molten dungeon style concept you’d have something. Put the meta- event somewhere in the middle of the story.

Outside of a few orr temples there really aren’t any challenging dynamic events. Molten Facility final bosses were much more difficult than most dynamic events and the whole dungeon I thought was kind of fun.

What I don’t want to see is living story content ending in a 11111111 auto attack meta event (ala jungle wurm, fire elemental, jormag, etc.).

I can’t believe people are whining about the boss instance and story dungeon. I for one, thoroughly liked the idea of a single player boss instance. Go in there myself, and get this guy down. 5-10 minutes and out! We need more like this for solo or two players where they can zone in, small instance map, kill a few bosses rather quickly, and get out..20-25 minutes tops. I LOVE this type of content. Rift does it well with Chronicles, and I hope GW2 takes on that type of stuff as well.

As far as the multiplayer, I havent done it. Read up on it, seems neat enough.

Concerning your marketing team: This is not the first, and wont be the last, time that your marketing team poorly chose its words. Who is governing them?