(edited by Ricky Da Man.5064)
IMO this is what living story should be.
So, less like DragonBash and more like Flame and Frost, but with some new zones?
yeah, but with less sign repairs and needle hunts, more exploring, new enemies, tell a real story as you go let dynamic events tell the story as you go.
Introduce new lore along the way.
This new threat dosnt have to be another dragon either lets be inventive.
A real instanced boss you need a party for, canach was on the right lines for this but was really uninspiring.
The thing needs to be an epic finale, and not a button bash.
And not temporary either.
Yeah, F&F’s start was lame, but once it got going I really liked it. The mini instance and the dungeon being the highlights and something I would lvoe to see more of going forward.
I am hoping that with the extra teams being dedicated to the Living Story that the updates will be more world changing and epic, but that remains to be seen.
Right now with the Bazaar of the Four Winds and Cutthroat Politics I am kinda “Meh” mostly because the Aetherblades are not really an enemy I care about. They feel like left overs from the last arc. They killed some random guy we never heard of because of… I don’t now… Reasons? (I might of missed something there) but the killer is behind bars and their base was destroyed. So, they are just kinda lingering. Popping into the Bazaar of The Four Winds and the latest update because they can.
I am digging the bi-weekly updates, but I don’t know… They feel a bit hollow. I know we can’t be fighting Elder Dragons every month, but maybe something like the Centaurs go on the offensive or maybe a campaign to attack the Sons of Svanir.
I’m almost sure ArenaNet is doing something like that, because they’re spreading some of their stakitten on “something new”, and not the current Living World things that are going on.
I’m almost sure ArenaNet is doing something like that, because they’re spreading some of their stakitten on “something new”, and not the current Living World things that are going on.
I’m pretty sure they broke the team up in two so they could bring more living story more quickly, not so one team can work on a secret project while the other team continue with the living story.
likely so they can bring us more shorts and parties more rapidly.
Because parties and short stories are just the selling point here.
(cough)
Seems they want to release new content to give players something new to do, so they stick around. That’s fine, but the stories are just politics and having parties. It’s like everyone in Tyria forgot there’s a 2 massive dragons terrorizing people.
….It’s like real life.
Now contributing to the original discussion, Arena Net will surely have something in mind, they can’t just leave the game in a loop of parties and shorts. There are potential stories like the other dragons and even the other continents! Just have to wait and hope they hear our suggestion.
I like the idea, even if the only part of F&F I really liked was finally getting proper cut scenes.
Bumping this up for more discussion…
I haven’t even been bothering with most of the living story events after Flame & Frost. That was interesting (though the pick-up group for the dungeon elements was freaking frustrating… but then again pick-up groups are hit and miss most of the time anyway).
The issue with Guild Wars 2 is that I expected something different based on their MMO manifesto. But as it’s designed right now, it’s less like the player-driven universe of EVE Online and more like World of WarCraft. It’s a well-designed game, and I do enjoy playing it but I get tired of all the needle-in-a-haystack-metagamey-100%-completion-hunting type goals. The more recent one with the investigation was interesting, but the Aetherblade hideouts were freakishly annoying with the pick-up groups. I didn’t even finish them. A challenge is one thing, but when I die as often as you do in a quarter-guzzling arcade game like Gauntlet, I don’t even want to bother any more.
The Living Story model is good, but it would be more unique and immersive if my actions actually had an impact… saving a refugee caravan ticks off some achievement counter, but really is irrelevant, because the monsters attacking them are back 15mins later and the caravan is down anyway… rinse and repeat. Good way to level, but doesn’t feel very immersive…
Personally I was a big fan of flame and frost as well. The only issue of course is how long will it take for ANet to produce sufficient content to constitute a F&F that we want here. Flame and frost started out slow for a reason (I believe) and that’s because they (ANet) spent most of their time preparing the later phases’ content. If would be nice if we could get larger epic stories with real villains, new maps and dungeons (ideally both being permanent) but the issue does become producing the content (remember ANet tries to aim for 1 content patch per month).
What I really want to see however from Living Story is a real impact on the world (not a deductive impact mind you) I want to see new areas, new dungeons new world mobs etc. Going back to F&F why couldn’t the molten alliance stick around?
Personally I was a big fan of flame and frost as well. The only issue of course is how long will it take for ANet to produce sufficient content to constitute a F&F that we want here. Flame and frost started out slow for a reason (I believe) and that’s because they (ANet) spent most of their time preparing the later phases’ content. If would be nice if we could get larger epic stories with real villains, new maps and dungeons (ideally both being permanent) but the issue does become producing the content (remember ANet tries to aim for 1 content patch per month).
What I really want to see however from Living Story is a real impact on the world (not a deductive impact mind you) I want to see new areas, new dungeons new world mobs etc. Going back to F&F why couldn’t the molten alliance stick around?
2 new content patches a month now, they have poured more people into it…
Quality → Quantity
I would rather have slower Living Story updates and more immersive elements to GW2 than faster but everyone does the same thing.
Right now GW2 is such that it doesn’t feel like my hero had any real impact on the world. I don’t mind not having completed a champion fight with the troll this month because I was defending the resevoir instead, but I don’t like that after all the high-concept talk in ANet’s MMO manifesto, the bandits I put down defending Shaemoor pop back up again in 15min and ruin the resevoire anyway, or that the Champ troll is back 20mins later. This is EXACTLY what Ree Soesbee said they didn’t consider cool in the manifesto video. It’s also what makes GW2 a polished MMORPG that solved many of the annoyances that traditionally plagued persistent world MMOs but it doesn’t really come across as something I could reccommend to a person who hates MMOs. They’re going to dislike this as well.
Flame & Frost went in the right direction… Dragon Bash less so, though the Sky Pirates got back into a good direction with investigation and so forth… The thing is, these feel like the instanced versions of Guild Wars, rather than a truly living, evolving world where what I do matters. It doesn’t… at least not until the next update and even then the same bandits keep trashing the resevoire on a regular basis, and Shaemoor doesn’t even bother adding patrols.
I’d love to see living story where I might not have been there for the epic first fight, but I can come along and help build fortifications or fend off patrols, conduct espionage missions. I would love to see the environment change and evolve depending on if Shaemoor Garrison successfully repelled the last centaur attack and at what cost?
Xanatos, IMO, the DEs should be far longer chains of events, and not reset for far longer periods of time (6 hours maybe? As much as 12? I’d love to say “never” but then people would be getting left out.)
The living story should have left marks on the world, with each installment. As it is, I’m actually pretty vague on what’s been going on, since the Dragon Bash. Not that the information isn’t there – just that what’s happening is exactly what we did already, with different skins.
F&F should have left dredge strongholds everywhere, and roaming bands of displaced Charr and Norn who may turn criminal to survive. Dragon Bash, well, was kind of pointless, in world-event context, but still could have changed something.
Blarg – wasted potential – wasted potential everywhere.
Slate, I sent an email to ANet as well outlining much of this. Based on their manifesto video I thought I was getting something more living and immersive. Dragon Bash did lead to Aetherblade and Cutthroat Politics, but since I don’t have any high-level characters I cannot really participate much in it, and pick-up groups for the dungeons are usually crap. You spend 2+ hours trying to complete a dungeon and most of that is dying because no one is coordinated and PUGS don’t listen to chat strategy.
ANet doesn’t help by pulling stunts like making targets invulnerable to rangers or elementalists raining arrows or fire down on them from a bridge or across a chasm.
I was thinking that for dynamic events and longer chains one could even go to monthly cycle-resets. Say a group defends Shaemoor or locations in Kessex and totally routs the centaurs. A bunch of centaurs retreat, now the DEs are scouting, building fortifications. Elements from WvW and bases need to be added to PvE. But it’s makes it feel like such a chore when every. single. mob. in the densly populated forest is hostile. Come on. Single Coyotes are not going to go after a fire-slinging mage. Get stalked by packs of them sure, but I find exploring to be such a chore when it’s kill for less that 1% of my experience needed to level every 15s, and then when I need to retreat I get a bajillion spawns dropped on me. It’s like all critters breed like E. coli.
It’d be fine if it was just ghosts, elementals and shades. That would make that something unique about them. Give players the option to drive off an attack by forcing the bandits and centaurs to retreat or they could persue and massacre them all, but then the consequence would be the more you massacre the more hordes of undead prowl around for the next X time intervals…
I thought that this was done very well in GW1, with their Guild Wars Beyond concept, and the “War in Kryta” and “Winds of Change” content. They built upon the existing story, and continued its direction further. This is exactly what I expected a ‘Living Story’ to do: instead of having little steam-punk carnivals every couple weeks, taking the actual storyline content and pushing it further, with an element of responsivity to player decisions during the content.
Instead, I feel as though we’ve just had a bunch of little gimmicks thrown at us. Dorky, not in a subtle way that complements the overarching serious storyline, but in a way that completely deflates and deconstructs any sense of epic thrill. This is at the very core of my discontent with the game: the narrative is almost completely centered around comic relief, and it just isn’t working.
@DrProfessor: agreed, I’d also like the living story to be less fetch-questy. Have the achievements actually mean something, not “You found all the kibbles Snuffles the Warthog spilled!” Another nice touch would be the option for challenging solo-dungeons, because, right now, it’s hard to get through any of the dungeons, not the least cause of which is the current insanity that the game doesn’t let you use terrain and strategy to dispose of targets. You cannot clear enemies by knocking them off cliffs, but they can do that to you, and you can get rid of annoying gankers in PvP by using a knock-back skill on them and clearing them off the cliff or platform.
If you don’t want champs to be too easy, just give them immunity or resistance to knockback effects (many already have this anyway). In GW a huge part of combat was placing your Rangers and Elementalists on the high ground to reign destruction down, but frequently in GW2 enemies are simply immune to your attacks if you attack from a strategic position. They also have this thing about “Sorry, you’re not allowed to target the leader with your ranger from the bridge above, because we require you to go through the gauntlet.” This is as annoying and immersion-breaking as Left 4 Dead 2 or other FPS that don’t let you climb fences at all or prevent you from climbing over fences until you purchase the fence-climbing-augment (Deus Ex: Human Revolution).
Guild Wars 2 was supposed to be the MMO for people who don’t like MMOs and it was supposed to be immersive and your actions matter, instead it’s everyone running around killing the same champ again and again, and the fact I did it or worked hard to do it matters no one whit right now… nor does any of the living story really seem to matter, everyone’s going through the same instanced event, except that there are some rare item drops that you have to grind the dungeon/event for…
Something else I’d like to see, that is much easier to implement: stop having coyotes drop weapons and armour. There is no reason they’d have weapons or money or armour. Let us use their pelts for crafting and so on, but have the drops make sense for the target that had them. Let me salvage bits from bandits or make use of their lockpicks and repair them…