Greater Interval between Content Patches
I agree 100%, also, I wish occasionally an entire patch would be dedicated to balance and fixes. Giving out a lot of stuff doesn’t cover bugs and imbalance.
Well it’s a two part dilemma.
First part is, living story is great, and fulfills a void for the playerbase constantly begging for more. Instead of substance, we are getting temporary substance on a two- three week timers. This is not to criticize, but to summarize what it seems like. So some, two weeks is to much time interval between story.
Second part is what the OP is saying, to little of time, that the events would be better in one month persay intervals, using the in between two weeks to tweak balance.
In reality, 1 month is great if it’s not time gated content, also, I would love to see them when introducing new non festival based content such as flame and frost dungeon, actually leaving it in place and expanding on it. In my view, the living world is what they spoke about as far as your character was supposed to literally impact how the world changed, living story should bring changes more permanently to the world.
This would work great, as it could lead to expanding the story more based on player activity, it could also tackle bringing the community closer together. Plus, its a unique way to bring new dungeons to light, expand on new fractals, introduce new traits and skills, give reasons to expand weapon skills by giving them different styles per weapon type (sword,mace,staff,etc). For me its this immersion that is lacking from guild wars 2 from all aspects, it doesnt make the game bad and I will play it because despite its flaws, I like it. I merely expand to point this out to offer constructive criticism.
But yes, the OP is right, that we would rather have complete substance over quick substance, and it would allow more time to expand and tweak.
Although the updates are 2x/month, the achievements stick around longer. We don’t have to rush.
Further, there are different teams working on “substantive changes” vs event-related content. Some updates, we’ll just see an updated living story. Other updates, we’ll see rebalancing, new mechanics (achievement rewards), dungeon updates, and permanent new content.
I like the new system, but I have found that I need to retrain myself to maintain my slow & steady approach. It’s all too tempting to chase after every new shiny change in the game, instead of taking my time and enjoying all the game has to offer.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
They do twice a month because they noticed that player activity dropped off after a week or two. All of these living stories have been capable of being completed in two weeks.
I often just dedicate the first night of release to doing the new content and then finish the rest as I get to it.
(edited by Ayrilana.1396)
This is a dangerous suggestion. If you pull on this thread the whole Living Story might unravel.
As a person who generally plays almost every day. I tend to blow thru content pretty fast. Now I am not saying I rush thru things and miss the flavor but just by playing every day and having good time management skills, you can consume a lot of content in a 2 week time period.
That said I would suggest to keep at a two week schedule but make a slight change.
Continue to make your huge beginning of the month Theme release. In that patch have most of the long-time requirement items and let them run for 4 weeks. Now 2 weeks after that do an Update release using the same theme as the first patch but with the less time requirement stuff.
This way you have a month long theme but continue with your 2 week content updates.
Just my 2 coppers worth