Guild Wars 2

Slightly confused. Can this be a Q&A about the Living World concept for the devs? If it’s just a discussion for the community, we already have wide ranging discussions going on in the LW subforum.

ALso, what do you mean by open discussion after the 4th? Is that discussion on the discussion we had here?

Sorry if my reply sounds weird, I’m all for the initiative, but I’m confused what direction this thread is meant to go in based on what you posted above.

(also..first!)

The living story just feels not epic. I as a player feel like a merc instead of a hero.
I feel replaceable, in a world that is endangered by dragons, I run around and do useless stuff. Why ain’t we going to confront them now, they will only get stronger.

Scarlet is a weak villain, she just feels random. Her character does not fit to the mastermind she is sold as. And she is no dragon. That is a weakness too.

For a year, Zhaitan is dead, for a year the Pact is rotting in fort trinity. Why did the living story ignore everything that was built up by the personal story. It does not feel like a new arc, but like a different game. I do not miss Trahearne, but I miss to be in a cutscene, being part of the story, not just part of the events.

The personal story was sold as one of the pillars, but it is gone, nothing personal at all with the living story.

I’m sick of birthday crashers putting the world at stake.

It would be nice to see something more “serious” for a change. I left the “evilness” of Skeletor in my childhood. Evil characters needs to have more depth.-

and please… no more items… no more currencies, tokens, collectibles, etc… I’m this close to hire someone to manage my bags and banks (also, already failed at bringing 6 friends back to the game because they got overwhelmed by the amounts of items, marks and stuff around the screen they didn’t understand, also the many things and skins they missed and never get back)

Honestly, Scarlet is a very weak villain, her story was dropped on us out of nowhere and it has dragged on for far too long. We have a background story for her on the website with a hilariously over powered origin that ended up being partially contradicted by a German interview. She’s been getting help from the evil races of Tyria, even the ones that specifically don’t work with outsiders, she has an entire world full of expendable pirates and tries to randomly invade zones around the world with basically no point except to ‘cause chaos’ or something.

Please, end the Scarlet part of the LS, there is no reason it should have lasted any longer than a couple months. Do something with the dragons, they’re actually interesting.

Also stop with the grind fests for LS achievements. They aren’t fun.

Edit: Make some single player dungeons, both in and out of the LS.

And: If one of your team members EVER comes to you with a plan to revamp a world event that they think will take the playerbase weeks to complete, tell them NO.

One more thing: No more crazy 10k/15k/100k mat requirements for ANYTHING. That’s absolutely silly. Mats should never have requirements over the 250 stack size that your bank will hold.

I’m a casual player, not by choice (baby), and I find that I’m missing a lot of the content because it is behind achievement walls or for a limited time only. I’m currently trying to finish the Halloween story (the content itself is great) but I’m not sure I’ll finish in time (Nov 11th or something?) — currently at 7/13 achievements.

It doesn’t feel like a living world to me. I wasn’t able to beat Tequatal(tried a few times and failed), I wasn’t able to finish Scarlet (tried a few times and failed), I did catch the start mission for closing ceremonies and this was GREAT. Everything before that I’ve missed.

I’m not asking you to make content easier, but right now I’m just not sure that you’re really accomplishing anything.

Request: Questionarie at the end of every living story, like the ones you had in the open beta.
Reasons: You’d get more player feedback instantly, forums can never compare to that.

My biggest problem with the Living Story effort is the pace is simply abusive. If you were adding new permanent content every 2 weeks that would be amazing. But you’re not – you’re rotating it behind little 2 week or 4 week windows. It’s entirely too cynical (and blatant) of an exercise in operant conditioning. That the most visible permanent addition lumped under ‘Living Story’ banner is the debacle that is Tequatl is not helping either.

Then there’s Scarlet. Words do not convey my horror that a piece of character writing unfit for a 15-year old’s worst ego-projection power fantasy is being touted as the backbone for a multi-million dollar MMO’s evolving storyline. It embarrassing. You (collectively) should be embarrassed. You have capable writers, but somebody needs to be riding herd over them reining in the blatant Sylvari fetishism/favoritism (is there any NPC in the entire setting who doesn’t fawn over them?) and to pull the suck cord when an idea just isn’t going to build a stronger world setting going forward. This isn’t a cry for grimdark gritty-grit-gritism, but we shouldn’t be looking at your star attraction of the last year and thinking “that’s just absurd…” It’s not building good word of mouth for the game and it’s not the powerful force for retention that the Living Story could be. Many of us aren’t eagerly waiting to see what happens next (which we should be), instead we’re dreading the inevitable re-appearance of Little Miss Writer’s-Fiat and her next ludicrously implausible alliance…

OK.

So, it might be really useful from our point of view to hear about the pillars of the LW that have often been mentioned and the reasoning as to why we went to such a hectic 2 week schedule completely out of the blue. It’s pretty tight from our playing point of view (for example the TA meta which was also removed after 2 weeks despite being advertised for October) and it often feels we’re playing to a set schedule – one that doesn’t take into account that we all play to different speeds, styles and timescales. In fact its very design appears to assume that we all invest identical amounts and should someone miss a 2 week chapter, the chances of them going along with the rest of the story is lessened.

It also feels you guys are suffering under the workload and pressure which risks content being released before it’s refined. For example, not having any way of tracking the story or catching up with what is going on. I know this being worked on, but we risk going into a year’s LW cycle without it being implemented and I’d have expected LW to launch with it.

I’m also seeing it shut out so many new players. My impression was the Living World would be just that, new content to evolve the world, not simply a story cut into chapters which doesn’t appear to link together at each stage. Tequatl (despite its pitfalls as a too difficult open world raid) was closer to what I expected the LW would be. Potentially the upcoming tower too.

A LW is admirable aim – one I would expect could be better accomplished by fleshing out the existing strengths and unique flavour of the world you launched with incl;

1) Additional DE’s or ones changing/being replaced to reflect the changing world

2) DRagons. OK not them directly, but dragon minions aren’t currently posing a threat. A LW would develop them a lot more. The invasions are good example, but they currently lack motive or reason. They would work so well for minion attacks

3) The World is meant to move on, yet some things haven’t changed at all (Charr/Human peace treaty in the tent outside Ebonhawke. A mini story could be going on here and there could be a whole “where were you when the treaty was signed” rp kind of thing.)

4) Underwater. I love it…but as many thread stated, it needs improvements to mechanics and maybe even a UW heavy zone.

There ya, go…much ramblings

Why have the dragons taken a back seat? I would much rather a long buildup of fending off primordus & jormag while trying to uncover more about the deep sea dragon and the jungle dragon all while kralkatorrik runs amok.

I ask this question in all seriousness. What do you forsee as the lifespan of this game?
5 years? 8 years? 10? It can’t go on forever.

Zhaitan’s corruption is still all over Orr while his minions are still all over the place. There are 5 other elder dragons out there as well.

If the living world built up to each dragon (even overlapping their storylines a bit) over 12~16 months time, that would mean in just six years from now we would be fighting the last elder dragon.

So a 7 year lifespan for the just the dragons. Plus there is so much more going on. Murssat, White Mantle, etc. Plus whatever is unleashed through the mists.

The current build up in kessex hills is sort of what I am talking about.
Oh and if it turn out scarlet is a dragon minion or something… that would not be what I am talking about.

We need to be fighting the dragons and cleansing their corruption, while knowing that is what we are doing.

P.S.
The updates schedule is a little rough. It is so rapid that myself and members of my guild are actively choosing to either not log in or skip the events completely. I truly believe that the 2 week schedule is a lesson for players in ‘be careful what you wish for’ when aksing for more ‘stuff to do’.

Copy/Pasted from another thread.

After playing this game for over a year I would like to give an example of what I believe a true living world should be.

First and foremost it NEEDS REAL consequences for failure. If you have centaurs taking over a town when you fail, why must they end there? If given long enough the centaurs can and should take the whole kitten map, enslaving and forcing the npc’s within the areas to be hostile to the PC’s (similar to a flipped keep in WvW). Waypoints, once the map is taken, should all be contested, making the trip to that map impossible save for entering through a nearby map. And why stop there, if the centaurs form an alliance with the dredge they could start controlling even more of the maps. If however they are at odds with the dredge we could form a temporary alliance with one side to defeat the other or at very least see then openly at war with one another.

Large scale invasions like scarlet should be epic in scope (destroying maps/npcs) until rebuilt/defended by the PCs for an extended length of time. Supply runs similar to what we see in Cursed Shore would be a good start, but much more widespread. IF these rebuild actions are not taken by the PCs then they should just lay there rotting (needing more supply runs in the process to repair) until they are done!

I guess my whole point to this post is that without real meaningful consequences we may as well be furniture. Devs please take a page from the way some things in WvW are handled; leaving WvW to the enemies will leave you having to ACTUALLY WORK to regain your ground, and IMO it should be the same in the PvE world. Until it is done in a way that we can and do get hooped for letting things fail, we are no better than bystanders in your game.

Added after concern was posted in regards to day/night cycle and defeat

The day/night cycle would indeed be a pest, however with the extent of data anet gathers it could be handled IMO. For instance they could adjust the events to “fire” only when the server in question has the population to handle the events. The logic behind this could be the enemies have to sleep sometime too. Unlike in WvW where we the players run the show, in PvE it could be made to more suit the population that is in the current area/world.

Also as to the ressing npcs, it could be implemented as you progress into the map. As you free villages/npc’s their militia (a few npc fighters) would come with you to capture the next town and so forth. These npcs should rez the fallen similar to the veterans around the keeps in WvW. As waypoints are uncovered they should become uncontested etc etc.

I’m not saying that there are not many many things to consider with making a living world that would feel alive, but it would be nice if it were to feel less like trying to breath life into a corpse.

Thanks for reading and for opening this topic for your players!

i cant choose who i play with in lunatic inquisition, clock tower, the christmas “protect the yaks” minigame, crabtoss, etc

all of these come with the living story, but force us to solo in a sorta pvp setting… in future living story releases can minigames have some kind of rudimentary matchmaking with premades of party members + solo fillers?

minigames are a pretty big part of living story and thats cool but they dont let us play with friends, and thats boring and sad and all kinds of bad

I think The Living World will have a very difficult time being impactful to the player base and to the game in general. Arena net’s hands are tied because of the personal story. The Living World can’t change the world in significant ways and can’t kill important characters. Doing so would create a conflict with the personal story.

Scrap the personal story and create a true Living World. Remove the chains that shackles you from unleashing your creativity. Create something impactful to the world and design interesting characters to tell the story.

As an player with play time somewhere in the 10 to 15 hours a week range, I find GW2 at odds with itself when it comes to the Living Story, two week rotation.

Back when it was pretty simple to get geared up, this wasn’t as big of a deal. I ignored the long-term legendary goal, and simply jumped into LS updates as they came available, and played them as long as they interested me. There was some tension, as my goal of getting world completion often felt sidelined while I was doing LS content, but that goal wasn’t pressing enough for it to be a big issue.

Now, however, that ascended weapons (and soon armor) is in the game, I have to way the LS content against my pursuit of crafting and replacing my gear with the new BiS.

Why does the LS always have to have it’s own set of specialized currencies and crafting materials that exist for that update only? With only a couple hours to play most days of the week, I can use my entire time getting my daily collection of dragonite ore or pursuing completion of LS achievements, but usually not both.

The two week LS rotation would have been a great idea in the hard gear-plateau game that GW2 looked like shortly after launch. Now that we have these long term goals that give gameplay advantage, it feels like the LS is competing with them. Since ascended gear is here to stay, and presumably not going to get any easier to achieve, it’d be nice if there were more synergy with the LS. The Living Story should be at least as profitable in gold and mats as doing champ trains or world boss farms.

Continuity of Story

The biggest thing that I see missing from the Living World experience is story interconnection. The continuity between each two week release is either not there or oblivious to the player base as a whole. Players seem to be floundering thru the releases in a mad scramble to get the achievements for each one but missing the background storyline the release was built around in the first place.

There is two different versions of connectivity I would like to address here, within each month AND across all Living Story releases.

Monthly Inter-connectivity:

I would propose you 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 a “similar variant” 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. This will allow for a longer time to complete the content and tie the whole theme together inundating us with plot fortification the entire time.

Stream of Consciousness:

This would be the way to tie ALL of the Living Story monthly releases together so we can see a progression of events that makes sense over a few releases and across all releases.

Instead of a Living Story of stand-alone chapters we would have a Living Story of interconnecting plot building installments, each standing on the framework of the story to date, locking previous, present and future content into a interwoven tale epic and intriguing adventure.

My concern with the living world design is that while we see a lot of change, there is very little growth. This has made the game feel somewhat stale as after a living story segment ends, you’re left with little more to do than what the game was released with.

Early on we saw fractals and southsun cove be released, this was great! Later in the year southsun cove got additions like karka queen which was also good. But sadly other than these, and maybe a few other things like mini-game rotations, the living story hasn’t added content of much value.

I’m sure a lot of us have grown bored with this game and are only logging on every 2 weeks for the discontinued skins and achievements at this point. We need the world to expand, not only change, and we need content of lasting value like fractals, not content we do once and never go back to.

Imo, the current direction and pace of the living story is off. I don’t feel like there is any story at all currently. We have so many parties, celebrations, and random mini games that we need to repeat ad-nasium that the whole idea behind the living story is being lost.

Scarlet is a villain no one asked for and it is becoming evident that she is a villain no one wants either. The game was advertised as set in the GW1 universe but with more dragons! It seems that vision has been completely lost. There were tons of interesting, deep, and thought provoking stories and lore in the original GW, and instead we are currently fighting a crazy clown lady who yells DIE DIE DIE.

The biggest change in the living story needs to be the story itself. Tie an old GW story that was never resolved into the next dragon story arch and have it span about 6 months, culminating in facing the next elder dragon. It can involve meaningful DE’s, “mini-boss” style villians who are used, fleshed out and then killed. Chasing one villain around who does the same thing every time is boring and uninspired.

This current krait story line would be a good chance for us to find out why the krait left their homes, why they are consolidating their power, and more lore on the krait. It can tie into the rise of bubbles, and other ancient monsters that bubbles has pulled under his power. After a month of krait we can figure out where this monster is and go face him in his lair. After we kill him the next update can lead us to the lair of bubbles second in command. This can lead to more information on the kakra, all finally culminating in finding and defeating bubbles himself. As this story progresses we should see his corruption spreading throughout the current world, and meaningful DE’s popping up.

What I suspect we are going to get instead is that magic crazy clown lady used her insanity to get two races who hate each other to magically work together in some alliance and then that alliance will magically fall apart after we climb a tower and scarlet will get away… again… And that is the problem.

Finally I would say the 2-week schedule is a bust. The content is made to focus on a 2-week grind to keep players busy instead of actual content. Move back to once a month updates with meaningful content instead of endless grind that is driving players away.

TLDR;

Living story is using shallow repetitive story telling to keep people playing instead of using established lore and the actual threat of the dragons. Additionally the pace of the LS is off due to the literally dozens of celebrations, elections, parties, and mini-games that segment each story.

1. Move to established unfinished stories from the original GW, add depth to the stories, reintroduce the dragons.
2. Reduce updates to once a month to give more polish, more content and less grind
3. Kill scarlet and stop doing the same story every month (alliance→disaster→repeat)

A few points on Living World

1.) It would be really nice if the Living World made more, discernable impacts on the world – specifically the environment.

Remember the Karka invasion into LA, as the lighthouse got demolished? Or the settlements during our 2nd go-around with Southsun? Those were awesome and I think it truly shows a Living World that changes each patch.

2.) Introduce ways to summarize or ‘revisit’ Living Story chapters.

You don’t have to make an instance or a fancy cinematic since those take a lot of time – but you can include in-depth NPC dialogue that explains what happened. For example, for the Living Story episode that involved the Aetherblade jumping puzzle, you could have an NPC in a nearby town explain what had happened here months ago and the impact the Aetherblade have made on the nearby towns.

If you could even involve some dynamic events with these ‘summaries’, all the better. For example, design an escort/infiltration mission into the pirate ship to retrieve x items or rescue Y person. The dialogue could also hint back to the Living Story or the reasoning of the event can be tied to it.

I think it’s time to start getting back to the dragons. I hope you guys have plan for that. It’s been a year already and 1 year a dragon isn’t really too much considering there are 6 dragons.

I like Scarlet. She has more character than all other NPC we met. I hope more about her will be revealed in the future. I also like the story on the website, but I really hope it’s in game.

I want the living story to have even more impact on the actual world. The politic patch we had is great as it decides the GW2 future (even tho my beloved Evon lost). I hope, things like this will have as much effect as that. For example, if certain number of scarlet invasion isn’t cleared, there will be more of her influence in the future. Of course it’s just an example. Or if a dragon isn’t killed for a long time, the reward will double so the players in the server will have more incentive to kill it instead of just guesting to other server.

The main issues I have with the LS are as follows

1. No build up to either antagonists or new environment. It’s all pouf it’s suddenly there. This breaks the immersion of the player, making it easy to just see the LS as a checklist.

Potential fix: Use DE’s to set the scene some weeks before the LS goes live. I.e use the game engine and NPC’s to drive the back story.

2. 2 week Cadence is too short. This makes every LS feel like a rush with a time limit, thus suspending normal gameplay for most players. For example. the hourly invasions seemed like a day job with barely any downtime due to the nature of the achievements.

Potential fix: Slow down on the actual LS events, but use the 2 week cadence to introduce mystery and then tie up loose ends of the previous LS. I.e
2 weeks before. Introduce DE’s and back story for LS, introduce LS, 2 Weeks after wrap up LS with more DE’s and back story.

Since LS’s overlap it’s possible to have the player have several LS’s on the go and each LS would last longer.

3. LS rewards and achievements. Currently it seems like LS rewards are yet another clutter inducing backback plus some AP’s. Again, this leads to gaming by checklist which diverts attention away from the LS being told.

Potential fix: Revamp reward to stuff players will actually use. E.g a token after which a set amount can be traded for an ascend weapon. Make rewards less of ‘open 100 presents’

4. playerbase expansion. Unlike and expansion, currently the LS does very little to entice new players to the game nor old ones back again. IMHO it’s a life support drip, keeping the status quo. I.e the game would seem to be on a slow spiral of inactivity, esp with new AAA MMO’s out next year.

Potential fix: Slow down the cadence, divert the resources to a full blown expansion

5. Overflow and server systems. This causes player fragmentation and frustration when they cannot play with their friends or complete the content (witness the Teq feedback). It also breeds server bigotry, splinters the community and fractures guilds.

Potential fix: Separate people’s WvW server choice from the PvE servers they play on. Keep transfer restrictions in place for WvW server choice, but allow world wide, free and unlimited transfers for PvE.

I agree with some other posters, I feel like my character is not as involved With living world as normally the hero of an rpg is. Also, the amount of grinding it takes to finish several living story objectives keeps a semi hardcore player like myself put off from achieving them. I would rather jump into a dungeon than do 50 door events. They’re normally more rewarding, and not boring, to me anyway.

Something I do really like about the living story meta achievements is the ability to do the daily parts that count toward the meta. This is basically the only way I was able to finish the twilight assault or the Halloween events. It was nice to have that option.

I don’t feel the Living World is creating a growing, living world. It’s seasonal parades that offer some change, but I don’t sense any changes that are bigger than the rotational status of the Lion’s Arch statue. There are little remnants of the past here and there, but they don’t make the world any bigger or deeper.

I miss the idea of there being new Dynamic Events sprinkled into the world. That concept was one of the reasons I was excited for the game. As well, we haven’t gone anywhere new except Southsun. There have been many refinements and expansions of pre-existing concepts, such as inventory systems, loot tables, and rewards. Most of these refinements have been aimed at directing players towards the world as it always has existed. So, after a year, the bells and whistles of the game has grown, but the world of the game hasn’t made much growth.

Instead of growth, we get arrows pointing everyone to one place to be, and then after that event is done, everything recedes to the normal with minor changes.

Delete Scarlet. Wipe out every memory of her. Seriously, it’s for the betterment of the game. Start introducing content that makes sense to Tyria.

You have a game world with so many loose ends, it’s like an endless smorgasbord of stories you can pick up and build a true living world around, but instead you introduce a stale villain, unplausible alliances and an unhealthy amount of steampunk, all of which has contributed to my complete dismissal of PvE.

Living World/Story per se isn’t a bad design. It’s kinda cool actually.

Is the handling and the priority it got that are breaking the game. I mean, the whole game.

1-frequency: 2 weeks is a too short timespan for everybody. You make rushed and poorly designed content, usually resorting to uncalled grind and achievements to slow down players. Us feels like racing without stop ever since the bi-weekly schedule started. By the time you’ve finished a piece of LS, the next one is kicking in. Regardless of how you play (grinding every single AP or just chasing the interesting stuff here and there).

2-storytelling: it’s incredibly poor both in the little and in the big scheme. In the little, every LS piece so far has been underwhelming to say the least in terms of getting what’s actually going on. Even by reading the stories posted on forums. On the big scheme, the story is actually at the same point of the end of core campaign. There seems not to be a long-term story to carry on, even a new objective to set, nothing. The only thing that is moving in that direction seems to be Scarlet – which is a terrible walking lore/plothole of senseless MarySueing for no apparent reason. But that’s another topic.

3-priority: LS doesn’t equal to PvE endgame, no matter how hard you focus on it. It’s not that we do no want LS. Temporary content telling extra stories would be cool, IF paired with real content releases like areas and dungeons. But LS it’s all you’re giving us. Last strictly and big DG-related patch has been AC revamp. TA new path (taking away existing content…off-topic so let’s move on) is actually to consider part of LS. Fotm is almost one year old, and has still the same problems of 12 months ago. Almost the same bugs, literally. LS content is also temporary, which is another huge flaw in terms of making a proper endgame out of it. It almost looks like you simply gave up on making a proper system of content for endgame (DGs left in the shadows since March or so), then tried with open world – but that didn’t work too (so resort just on making it a casual farmfest – see champ/metaevents farming) – and now you’re starting to see that current “endgame focus” on LS isn’t cutting it.
On top of all of that, your problem is that WvW and Spvp have even bigger issues. If you pvp branch was good, nobody would’ve a issue with a lackuster pve endgame. Why? Cause pvp is better suited for endgame than pve. See Gw1. Instead, your pvp branch is a pile of crap. Thus, either you (player) are fine with it and carry on wvwing/spvping, either you’re fine with Ap hunting grind and LS temporary biweekly cashgrab, either you carry on repeating to death the same old 8 dgs, or you leave the game.

In short: slower paced but better polished/made/perfomed installements, a bigger scheme for carry on the main storyline, and LS becoming part of endgame, not the only part carried on with updates.

I think a big problem is the way storytelling is handled. The amount of content where some permanent depth to the world is implemented is quite small. It feels like fast food content and to take whole maps out of the game again (Labyrinth Cliffs)… I don’t get that. This map could have been filled with new events, interesting stories and lore (kind of like Southsun Cove).

The living Story may be a good thing “in theory” since it keeps the game “alive” and fresh. However, the amount of problems around it overshadow everything else about it:

Temporal content: Yes, is “LIVING” Story but the fact everything is temporal turn the whole thing into a “Rush or Lose” content.
I like to take my time to play. My objetive is not get to lvl 80, explore the whole world in one week and then start whining about the lack of content.
I had to create a character exclusive to make this kind of content since it would be impossible to keep with the LS just playing normaly.
Additionaly, the LS is a total inmersion breaker. Even if it’s just a bunch of easy-to-do activities, we have to spend a lot of time on it so when I return to my regular game-play is just like: Wait, what am I doing here again?
And the worst, you are turning the whole game into a temporal content. The new dungeon path and the upcoming update is proof of this. Now if players aren’t completed the whole game yet, we are going to miss a lot of things.
At most, the LS should be a short serie of temporal activities leading to a new and permanent content and never affect a well established content. Achievements should be linked to the permanent content and the temporal activities should be at most, be linked with the daily achievements .

Lack of content: the LS is just a grindfest of achievements. It lacks of a strong “story” to support it. Right now is just do this, repeat 50 times, move to the next. Kill the annoying NPC, kill her again, maybe kill her one more time, wait to the next update to kill her again.
And the worst, you keep putting uncharismatic/annoying NPC’s as the leading characters. The players are just the idiots who do all the hard/boring job and Logan/Marjory/Scarlet get all the attention.
You did it with the Personal Story and you are doing it again with the LS.

Bugs: The LS is not only highly bugged when you release it, you are introducing more and more bugs in parts of the game totally unrelated to the LS. Not only we have to deal with the old-well know bugs, we have now to deal with new bugs.
Is really hard to be excited about the upcoming update knowing it going to bring new bugs.

This is all I have to say about the LS, sorry for the long post and I hope it helps even a little bit.

I dislike the direction that the Living World is going in for several reasons.

Zerg content: Massive amounts of players spamming auto attacks in a laggy and boring environment is not a fun execution of ‘Living World’ to me. Examples of this would be Scarlet’s invasions, Queen’s Pavilion (not gauntlet), Mad King’s maze champions, new Tequatl (large amounts of players just show up and go afk, ruining it for everyone else).

Scarlet: She doesn’t seem very frightening as a villian and doesn’t seem to add anything to the current lore. I’d rather the LW draw and build upon in GW1 lore instead of go in a direction that involves scarlet uniting different enemies with no real motive.

Rewards: Queen’s Gauntlet had nice rewards but was overly nerfed in my opinion. Main pavilion area farming was alright. Scarlet invasions loot was nerfed too much and the Aetherblades gave a disproportionate amount of loot. The new TA path is quite long and I don’t think 2g is balanced, though many of the other dungeons have questionable amounts as well (SE p2 1g, HOTW p3 1g, etc, Arah p3 1.5g, etc.).

CC/Condi Spam: This is mainly directed towards aetherblades but some other mobs fall into this category (Mummies). I enjoy mitigating CC and Conditions (preferably through dodging) but some of the aetherblades for example are in my opinion over the top when it comes to CC/conds. I would like the attacks to be diversified a bit more; the cc/condition ones to be put on cooldown in between other well-telegraphed attacks.

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The good: I thought Queen’s Gauntlet (excepting annoying camera and nerfed rewards), Molten Facility and AR weren’t all that bad. The new TA path is quite interesting also – but the unskippable ‘cutscenes’/dialogue are annoying, as is the overemphasis on NPC aggro (generators, oozes, electric floor room). I want content that has interesting mechanics/enemies that is preferably instanced to prevent zergs from occuring (they ruin all enjoyment of the game for me). The daily rewards for resealing the Bloody Prince are also good I think though the fight itself is quite boring (no real mechanic except standing on the candy corn puddle and spamming auto attack on prince…). I also like the champions in Mad King’s Labyrinth, they are quite cool in a small group; I would prefer it if they were in an instanced dungeon instead of a lag-fight with massive particle effects in 60 person zerg.

One more thing.

Skins earned from the living world also need to be ‘living’. By that I mean much more user friendly. Like the zenith and hellfire/radiant skins.

I have earned several of the back pieces and while they look nice, they mostly rot in my bank because they are actual soulbound items instead of reusable skins.

The two most saddening of which are my wind-catcher and my mad memories: complete edition. I would love to use these more often, but they are soulbound. Even if I transmute them to better (ascended) or more suitable stats they remain locked onto characters, that due the evolution of the game (mechanics, playstyle etc) I no longer log into that often.

Also stop discontinuing skins. I get that you want them rare or exclusive. Eventually though they will be all but removed from the game (replaced by new skins, no longer played etc) and that seems like a shame. In my opinion having them available all the time creates more variety for people to choose from and thus more diveristy in player character appearances.

Just a quick question. is this the only topic for collaborative discussion or are we getting other ones for the other hot topics (e.g ascended gear, guild systems etc)?

Shanaeri, back in the original Collaborative Devleopment thread, he said if the initial topics were productive, they’d continue on with others in the future.

I want to second Xar’s post above.

It’s obvious part of the goal of specific rewards like cosmetic backpacks is to motivate getting involved with that LS installment. I like what we’ve heard about the new skill coming with the Krait installment tomorrow… namely that it will be easier to get during the two week chapter, but available afterward.

It’d be great if that could be true of every reward that is part of the LS. Festivals that repeat yearly are no problem, if you can work toward last year’s reward a year later. Other stuff, like molten alliance items, should be available forever. Make it harder to get, so there’s still motivation to do them during their chapter, but development needs to be creating more and more options for players of the game, not steadily mothballing each bit of variety after two weeks has passed.

Along with the backpacks, we need some way to store novelty items like the journal or zephyr model. They’re just not useful enough to use up bank space for, but it’s painful to delete them after earning them during a chapter. We really need some sort of trophy case in our home instance along the lines of the Hall of Monuments so that we can display these kinds of items, and interact with them years later, rather than cursing them for cluttering up our bank space.

Thanks again for providing us this opportunity to engage in open discussion about the game we all enjoy and would see become even better.

For Living World, I tend to think it comes down to 4 major issues:

(1) Replayability and/or revisitability (yes, those are now words). As several have mentioned, the pace of the LW installments and their subsequent removal either creates a sense of “better do it now before it’s too late” or, particularly for new players, “you weren’t here, so you just missed out”. I’ve seen it mentioned in several other threads that people who have missed different chapters would love to be afforded the chance to revisit the previous chapters for the story/lore, even if they weren’t able to complete to metas/obtain the shinies/etc. So even if it wasn’t possible for the content to be replayed several months later (ala GW1 Bonus Mission Packs), if it could be included within game as tomes in a library that woul;d allow players to still keep up with the story, many folks would be greatly appreciative.

(2) Additonal Depth — While each chapter may be moving towards a point that draws together all the separate pieces into a cohesive conclusion, from many of the threads that have been created there is a significant opinion of the LW not possessing any depth. NPCs seem shallow, villians seem weak, the player seems to be more of audience member than a participant — these are all points that have been brought up and, as someone else mentioned, the writing team is more than capable of addressing. I think over all, it would be that folks would prefer to be actively involved in something complex and perhaps even a bit twisted, rather than feeling as if they were parked on the couch watching a Saturday morning cartoon.

(3) Less Achievement/More Accomplishment — many have stated each chapter feels like a race to rack up achievement points, not only to increase their AP total, but to complete the X number of Y that will be reward them with Z. If the focus shifted more towards accomplishing a particular goal rather than amassing the required number of AP, players might feel a greater degree of satisfaction in the end result. And what I mean is that the LW chapter would not be bash x number of pinatas, or collect x number of dragon teeth, but have several “missions” that involve actually accomplishing something — take the clockwork invasions, for example … the LW chapter could have begun with them actively taking over portions of maps and the “missions” would involve coordinating and then initiating the effort to repel them, taking back the maps. And, at the end of the chapter, the invasion would be pushed back and the zones would return to how they had been before … to an extent, which brings me to the last point …

(4) Lasting Impact — very little changes in the world with the chapters that have been released. True, Southsun and Cragstead were added, Teq and TA were updated, the Tower of Nightmares could be permanent, but there doesn’t seem to be any impact to what the LW chapters present for the players to do — the new areas are added for the LW, not because of what the players have accomplished in the LW chapters. And the chapters don’t appear to impact the overall world itself. For example, there was an attempt made on the queen’s life … an impact of that would be an increase in the number of lionguard actively patrolling the Upper City and the Royal Palace, perhaps being more suspicious of “unsavory” looking individuals, maybe even stopping and asking the players who they are and what they’re doing. While nothing spectacular, it does demonstrate that something that happened during one of the LW chapters had an impact on the world.

So, those were my four contributions to the discussion and I honestly thank you for taking the time to hash these issues out with us.

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Just a quick question. is this the only topic for collaborative discussion or are we getting other ones for the other hot topics (e.g ascended gear, guild systems etc)?

There’s a wvw running atm in the the subforum. I suspect we will have one pve one wvw running at a time for now

As difficult as it may be, I must be the voice of dissension here. I enjoy the Living Story updates (usually), and I like Scarlet. When an update isn’t one I am particularly fond of, I skip it, and eagerly await the next installment.

I understand this last year has been preparatory toward a time when more resources can be spent fleshing out more of the ‘story’ in the Living Story. I hope the two-week cadence remains intact; when updates are released I am not fond of, there is already a month or two wait until something comes out I am interested in.

Keep up the good work, you are appreciated by some of the players.

I guess the elephant in the room is that the living world is just not very interesting. Instead of the great lore from GW1, all the locations we wanted to visit and people to interact with, we’re getting new characters, new places and new lore.

Also, if we break it down to event level, the very thing you guys said you wanted to avoid is still there – nothing truly changes. You have said you have created epic, world-changing events. But everything still returns to status quo. Either you need to stop saying you’re changing the world or truly change it. Rewards need to be one time only. Lion’s Arch gets destroyed ONCE. Then it’s rebuilt, eventually. Ogres trash some outpost, you release a new map where it’s a flaming pile of rubble. The scale needs to be bigger. Your attempt is mediocre at this point, either lose it or up the ante.

And yes, making the whole living story emphasis be on Scarlet was a horrible mistake. I’ve lost all interest in all the storylines where she is involved.

I like the frequency of of the releases. But I woluld like to see more unannounced events like the forest clearance in Kessex Hill or the stranded whales in November 2012. Hints that something is going on will spice up the living world. Player will talk about it.

The balance between temporary and permanent content is much better now. I some cases it is not clearly stated what is temporary and how long it will stay. This communication should be improved.

The storytelling has some bigger issues. I feel the informations are too spread out. You have to follow messages in the game, blogs on the official page and interviews like Tower Talk Lore Special to be up-to-date and to have the whole picture. This is very exhausting on the long run. In the game I am missing a compendium as for the Personal Story where you can read and catch up past events and encounters. This would also be a nice place to store a the little things like balloons miniatures (Zephyr Sanctum) or books we earn(ed) in different chapters of the living story.

The “Living World” isn’t living.

What we get is a random rhubard boss and various “new” factions that have no real (or even imagined) connection to old existing lore. No connection, no story, not real involvement by my character (other than boarding the loot train/zerg).

In other words, disconnected and BORING.

Give me dragons.
Give me mursaat/white mantle.
Give me krait with no rhubarb.
Give me a tangible reason to be there other than empty achievements & backpieces/minis
Engage my curiosity.
Tell a story, make the world change, let me actually be a part of my story.

Living Word as a design philosophy is a good initiative. It keeps the game fresh, and provides continuous updates so that we never feel as if the game has been put on a set of tracks and left to it’s own devices.

However it has a really bad drawback, one that I am currently suffering from. When you are unable to play the game all the time, and you come back, you find that you missed a patch of the game, which then simply disappears. You fall behind basically. For a completionist like myself after a while I start to feel like, I’m so far behind then what is the point in trying to catch up?

The constant updates, while good, also don’t provide a player with the ability to go back and experience the content, or receive the rewards that were available from it. Then there is the part of achievement points. They were simply bragging rights before rewards for achievement points were introduced. Now there is a physical reason why a player (like myself) would feel disenfranchised and behind the curve if they need to go on a business trip or have some other thing that keeps them from playing Guild Wars for any period of time.

I really wish that this was addressed, so that I don’t feel like I will never catch up to someone who plays every day/week for an extended period of time.

In terms of mechanics, it would be nice to feel we are actually accomplishing something during each chapter of the Living Story…
So far, I think there were only 2 kinds of Living World releases:

• those that introduced good farming opportunities (Crown Pavillion and Scarlet invasions), which I quite unexpectedly enjoyed in hack’n’slashy way;
• those that introduced completely encapsulated activities, that are imho niche at best and definitely cannot keep me busy for 2 weeks (Super Adventure Box, new Aetherpath, Tequatl). These are completely self-contained and cannot really be said to be part of the Living World imho.

What I would like to see is a story that sends me on some kind of mission, instead of just putting more random stuff on the table. This would be a good opportunity to bring back the open-world cooperative gameplay that was praised so much when GW2 started: send us all on a mission to accomplish something epic! Make it so that when we have achieved a set of objectives, new stages of the mission unlock, changing the world at the same time. The objectives could work like renown hearts, but the progress gauge would track the progress of the whole server instead of that of my character only. As an incentive, there could be different outcomes depending on the performance of the server.

This way we could really be part of the Living World, instead of just passively watch it change.

Will be a short one.

I’d love to see Living Story updates based on already existing lore – both GW1 and GW2.
What happened to Mursat? Where did Gods go? Why is there a floating castle? Why can’t we access Dominion of Winds, Elona, Cantha, etc. There’s so much lore already.

I’ll add more later.

A while ago, you noted that the Kiel vs. Gnashblade vote was the “tip of the iceberg”, so to speak, in regards to how Living Story would be a gameplay-driven vehicle in which players could change the world. I’d like to see more of that, because while the Living World offerings have been pretty fun and engaging, none of it — neither the story, nor what gets left behind — has been in any way shaped by the players’ actions.

I’d like to see that change sooner rather than later. I know such ideas are hard to coordinate and implement, but surely by now you must have ideas.

Not that the dragons have ever been a major part of any Living World offering aside from a festival referencing their existence (please tell me Dragon Bash is a yearly event, btw!), and with good reason that some people here seem to forget: The war against the dragons is primarily relegated to the Personal Story. But in the months leading up to the next major campaign release to engage against the next elder dragon, I feel there should be a Living World build-up where, across a long period of time and several Living Story installments, the players actively engage in the turning of Orr. This could create a more leveling-friendly zone akin to the others, and by permanently changing the temples, that could reduce the number of major events happening during the next major installment of the game; events that could otherwise result in a fracturing of the player base or, more likely, events that simply don’t get done.

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Just a quick question. is this the only topic for collaborative discussion or are we getting other ones for the other hot topics (e.g ascended gear, guild systems etc)?

No, this is what we got. I hardly believe living story beat class balance (and the many way players have to call it) but oh wel… class balance doesn’t sell on the gemstore. Living story does, so lets try at least to get this one right.

Living World in my view:

- day and night visible difference: sleeping foes, new different foes and events, less awake merchants and npcs, the night should be a sort of “hard mode” compared to the daytime.

- players involved as a community into building something that will be permanent: example: people could gather materials and donate them for the queen to build the Pavilion. The pavilion would have been made only when the necessary amount has been raised. This is a game wide activity not server wide

- destructible environments other than the ones that can be selected. You can do it. Just make most of the things have a life bar that is not seen by players and the objects can’t be selected and they are not a part of an event or quest: fences, walls, barrels, trees, small unimportant buildings, etc. They will be destroyed by the players accidentally while using skills in the aria not purposely. Seeing things break makes the environment more attractive. think about all the zergs in the open world events like Scarlet Invasions. They would transform a forest into a desert that would stay like this for a day or two while watching the trees growing up
The reconstruction of these will be done in phases: NPCs will come to rebuild them or place them in the same spots.

- foes should migrate in a zone depending on the success or the failure of the events. it could happen that some zones will be conquered by the same foes. similar to Orr where we only see the zombies running around.

- dragons should be seen in the sky in ALL zones and drop some flames, poisons, minions etc from time to time. They are the main threat so they should be seen everywhere even if they are not necessarily landing on the ground. Imagine a new player seeing a dragon flying over the sky in Queensdale. He/She will be amazed and intrigued to fight one of those.

- wild animals like white and yellow ones would run away from the players not just standing in there like they are not afraid. I bet no stag or deer will just eat grass when a human hunter will come around

• Quality Dynamic events, not Quantitative. Quality Dynamic event is one of the strength of Guild Wars 2 and it is extremely fun. Do not abandon this design. Story-driven Dynamic events makes it less like a grind and more of a adventure. Why do Aetherblades appear out of nowhere? Dialogues helps a lot. I rather have 20 good Dynamic events every week than 100 grindy ones. Have those 20 DE be the achievements required to finish the Living Story achievements instead of killing 100 stuff.
• I found that exploration in Zephyr Sanctum fun. I didn’t like finding the Tequalt stuff in Tequalt rising.
• First Halloween scavenger hunt was fun because of quality Dynamic events. I prefer if it was linear so that I don’t have to port as much. Waypointing is immersion breaking.
• No more Scarlet, she is the Jar Jar Binks of GW2. Instead, I want to kill more Dragons.

EDIT: I want to be the hero! I want to be the hero of the living story, I want it to revolve around me!

runeblade.7514:

• Quality Dynamic events, not Quantitative. Quality Dynamic event is one of the strength of Guild Wars 2 and it is extremely fun. Do not abandon this design. Story-driven Dynamic events makes it less like a grind and more of a adventure. Why do Aetherblades appear out of nowhere? Dialogues helps a lot. I rather have 20 good Dynamic events every week than 100 grindy ones. Have those 20 DE be the achievements required to finish the Living Story achievements instead of killing 100 stuff.
• I found that exploration in Zephyr Sanctum fun. I didn’t like finding the Tequalt stuff in Tequalt rising.
• First Halloween scavenger hunt was fun because of quality Dynamic events. I prefer if it was linear so that I don’t have to port as much. Waypointing is immersion breaking.
• No more Scarlet, she is the Jar Jar Binks of GW2. Instead, I want to kill more Dragons.

I hope someone is reading this stuff. Most of these posts have been hitting the same point home from subtly different angles. The living story isn’t enjoyable. You’re introducing some grindy new activity to keep hardcore players busy for a few weeks, casual players can’t enjoy it, the story isn’t very good, and its far from fun.

For instance: Something like “Centaurs invade Lions Arch/Divinity’s Reach” would be way more fun than “Tequatl is more difficult. Please run around 4/5 zones looking for something for a few days. Thanks.”

You could unlock items by participating more in the event, but you could participate and enjoy the story without defeating 350 centaur waves.

Like, why am I closing the doors? Aren’t the mad king and the bloody prince fighting? Why aren’t their minions fighting each other?

In WvWvW, would it be possible on low population servers to “team them up?” I know that is defeatist with regard to server loyalty, but might allow 2 or 4 under served wvw populations to co exist vs a high population server like a BG or JQ ?

Same could be said for instanced encounters like Tequatl, which you run overflow’s for now… but make it more of a permanent overflow for certain low pop servers?

I actually love the “concept” of the living world as it was presented to us, but it doesn’t feel as if the world is living and changing/growing. It feels like going to work actually. You go to work and you have different situations and projects, but it is still the same job. Not much changes about what most people do. This is how the LS feels to me. There is no permanent impact on the world, just more of the same with different players.

My personal top 10 things I would like to see in the LS are :

1. Permanent content introduced or permanent changes in landscape, people and creatures.
2. Content that impacts and develops existing content. Many have mentioned more with the dragons. I think it could be anything existing or from GW1. Maybe new NPC’s are introduced into the orders or we get to see other area’s of the different orders bases. Maybe the Mursaat make an appearance and it affects Orr in some way. Maybe risen from Droknar’s Forge start to appear in the water. Maybe another stone dwarf NPC can be introduced. Maybe the grove suffers a fire in part of the city and we can watch it progressively heal like any vegetative area would. Maybe address the Charr/Human uneasiness that still exists.
3. I would like to see lore from GW1 be introduced into the living story and have it be a significant impact upon current lore.
4. I would really like to see maybe an extended break from the LS in order to bring an expansion size LS content into the game. I miss the epic amount of places, things and creatures to discover and not be given to me piece meal.
5. New maps.
6. Explanations for things that are missing from GW1. Gargoyles, Hydra, weapon skins, etc.
7. Story lines that feel significant. Scarlet is funny and BSC, but she doesn’t feel threatening. More annoying than anything. The story lines just don’t feel as rich in GW2. The living story has done nothing to remedy that IMO.
8. New skills and traits. If the world is really evolving through the LS, shouldn’t those thing grow and expand as well?
9. Personal story progression.
10. I am sorry for repeating but most importantly, permanent content. I hate seeing the wonderful things you people work so kitten and that we really DO enjoy being taken away. The Molten Dungeon for example.

Mesket.5728:

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Just a quick question. is this the only topic for collaborative discussion or are we getting other ones for the other hot topics (e.g ascended gear, guild systems etc)?

No, this is what we got. I hardly believe living story beat class balance (and the many way players have to call it) but oh wel… class balance doesn’t sell on the gemstore. Living story does, so lets try at least to get this one right.

So this mean we will never get other topics about Asceded gear, conditions in PVE, guilds and others? I thought we will discuss other topics with devs after this one…
Discussion about just one think won’t help anything. We need to discuss every major topic to help to make this game better.

Me and dozens of guildies want more GW1 related lore. Really looking forward to an expansion. Don’t forget to make tengu playable!

daros.3407:

Mesket.5728:

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Just a quick question. is this the only topic for collaborative discussion or are we getting other ones for the other hot topics (e.g ascended gear, guild systems etc)?

No, this is what we got. I hardly believe living story beat class balance (and the many way players have to call it) but oh wel… class balance doesn’t sell on the gemstore. Living story does, so lets try at least to get this one right.

So this mean we will never get other topics about Asceded gear, conditions in PVE, guilds and others? I thought we will discuss othe topics with devs after this one…
Discussion about just one think won’t help anything. We need to discuss every major topic to help to make this game better.

This is the first pve topic discussion as said in the original post. If successful, they’ll move to the next popular one (prob class balancing or ascended – I haven’t personally tallied the votes)