Guild Wars 2

So far every living story addition at some point or another vanishes (gets removed) from the game. What is the point of focusing on content like this which only achieves two things?

1) It does nothing to actually effect the game world in a permanent way. It’s like watching a sitcom, knowing everything will be back to exactly what it was when you started.

2) It disrupts the regular functioning of guilds and communities. How? Well you guys keep introducing these grinds, which you seemed so against before, for people to just zombie out on in one big herd. What are we actually accomplishing besides getting your new achievement set completed and blending in with the crowd?

What we need is creative and permanent content. Stories and adventures that rival that of GW1 missions, which I’m shocked wasn’t used as a basis for this living story setup. The Molten Alliance was following right along with that type of story line, each month was a new part of the mission until it came full circle.

Now we’ve had the Scarlet story which was a grind, followed by a grind. Teq is a grind half the servers can’t accomplish since half of their populations visit the servers which can beat it. Instead, people zerg up and run champion trains to farm all the rares that drop. Funny, I remember when you guys changed CoF p1 to stop the farming. Now you just add in a new grind every 2 weeks and call it a content update.

I was really hoping with the Bazaar of the Four Winds we’d at least get a peak at the Crystal Desert but no, dream smashed. No offense, because I really do love this game and have high hopes for it but we need an actual living story. Not a grind fest you added a narrative to.

How would your idea work though? I mean I understand that the open world is on a loop, but that’s because any linear design where players’ actions cause any significant permanent change wouldn’t work very well in a multiplayer environment. For instance, if killing Tequatl caused a permanent change to the world (i.e. he stays dead), then only those players who first fought and killed him would have ever experienced the event. “You missed it? Sorry Charlie; you should have been there it was awesome!” Such a thing would be fine in a single player game since you would be the one killing him, but in this multiplayer game, the next person coming after you would have nothing to do, because you just permanently changed it.

GW1 worked much in the same way. Not much of that content ever permanently changed as the result of the players’ actions. All of the missions could be played over and over. It has to be that way so that all players have the chance to experience most of the content. Sure, you can add a few permanent changes, such as the Scarlet events still popping up where previously they didn’t, but the bulk of the game has to be put on a loop in order for it to work.

I think what you’re looking for is expansion packs, complete with new areas to explore and with another storyline to pursue. You might also be looking for a new series of storyline instances within the current content, where a player’s actions can permanently change the story path within those instances. Otherwise significant permanent changes to the open world effectively controls what other people will experience or not experience; and not in any good way that I can think of.

As for introducing grinds: It’s the players that choose to repeat events, not the developers. It is entirely possible to play this game and experience every event and storyline without ever having to repeat a single one, if you chose to do so. The choice to grind is yours.

The difference is the amount of content in GW1 versus GW2. I would personally be fine with reverting back to the GW1 system of travel and do away with the WPs everywhere. I think it ruins the entire point of building wondrous landscapes that people simply zip by. Exploring in GW1 was much more rewarding and entertaining.

On top of that the GW1 missions felt much more alive then our current story quest chain and the living stories. For every dungeon in GW2 there is roughly 6 missions in GW1. The whole grinding thing is totally on the developers as well. While I see your point, the developers are the ones introducing content like Scarlet and Teq and have also taken measures to ruin farming while destroying content.

No offense to the people who do really care about these things but single day events are awesome. I remember opening AQ in WoW and how awesome that was up to the Karka event in GW2. Does it suck if you miss out? Sure does but sometimes events like that are necessary for progressing the world.

Would I like an expansion to the world? Yes. In my mind I’m not seeing anything permanent being done to the game world and we’re over a year in. Considering ANet has said they don’t plan on conventional expansion packs that means we’ll be getting it in small installments. How hard is it to give us a new PERMANENT zone? The last one was Southsun almost a year ago. They have created quite a few dungeons, including the Super Adventure Box, which just get removed at the end of the event. Why?

The problem is ANet is focusing on these small installments of content that don’t stick around thinking two weeks of a grind will interest the core community and the people flip flopping between games. Meanwhile they have forsaken multiple story lines which you can see by simply leveling a character, keeping the old living stories alive, and making permanent changes to the game. Upgrading stuff we already had a year before isn’t going to cut it once the new MMOs get close to launch.

I was hoping the Halloween event this year would be the same as last year so I could finish it. Sadly it’s not. I would much rather the new living story be instanced. At least then we could get through it at our own pace. I’ve yet to complet one dew to time constraints, work having a family. Heck I’m lucky if I get on 3 times a week, let alone have time to do my dailies. I was enjoying flame and frost and almost finished that. I just has to do the dungeon. Sadly I just couldn’t find the time/group to do it.