Guild Wars 2

The LW and its evolution needs a model and I would suggest our IRL world as a starting point. I’m not suggesting a 1:1 correspondence, just pick up the important points. While our world is in a state of constant change there is a sense of permanence. Our life doesn’t come and go in two week increments. Evolve the world at a slower pace with expansion of territory, deeper story, and some character impact as a design goal but don’t get too hung up here. Basically, slow down, think it through, and role out permanent content at a slower, more natural pace.

The biggest problem with achievements is that they are time gated by temporary content. If they were permanent the game wouldn’t feel so grindy.

Always design content with a view towards a vibrant, living world which begins with having it populated. Never design encounters that will serve to empty the living world as it is counter-productive. The new Teq is an example of an encounter at odds with LW design goals.

The open world in a living world should be designed for the playerbase you find there. You should not be thinking hardcore or casual, you should be thinking about a diversity of players in terms of skills and interests. You can always consider niche groups in terms of instances, not living world as in open world PvE.

Make it a design goal to have all areas of the game be equally rewarding for a variety of playstyles. Was it really necessary to create champ trains and kill DE chains? Why not focus on making the game generally rewarding for a wide diversity of playstyles. I actually thought the DE chains were more interesting than the champ trains.

I do agree that the living world just dont feel epic. I also have an issue with most of them being dungeon based. Living world events should allow ALL players to particpate and not feel exc;luded because either (a) not high enough level to really run a dungeon, (b) not high enough to get into groups which tend to exclude players not level 80, © or the event is too heavily dependant upon dungeons to complete. I know I am not alone in my distain against gw2 dungeons.

So there are really only 3 area’s of the living world that I think would drastically improve it’s experience.

1. Permanent rewards

The rewards from the living world are awesome I think, but only being able to use them once after all the hard work to get the meta achievement hurts players who have a lot of lvl 80’s. For example, the quarts crystal from the bazaar of the four winds meta achievement and the candy corn node from the blood and madness meta achievement. Since bazaar of the four winds, i’ve switched my main character, but because i already used the quartz crystal on a different character i have to swap between characters to mine the two different nodes. This also applies to the skins you get such as wings from tequatl and other meta achievement skins.

I propose making these rewards permanent, in the same way as the kenith skins, and the radiant/hellfire skins. This would make completing the meta achievement an actual part of the players account and not just a one time thing that gets forgotten later.

2. Permanent changes to the world

Permanent content changes to the world would be amazing. for example this new tower in kessex hills i hope will be there to stay. I enjoy southsun cove, and the changes to the dungeons, but those aren’t part of the actuall “world”. outside of killing karka queen for her loot there’s not real reason to go to southsun, and the dungeons are instanced. Seeing more changes to the actual world that you’ll see while adventuring such as the tower in kessex would be amazing. Seeing the world evolve will add much more feels to the game as well, and increase the players curiosity to explore. Even new players will wonder what happened to cause that change and they will explore it and get them more involved with the living world stories.

3. The Focus is way off

The living world so far has not actually been about the world. Scarelet, voting, a random airship? these seem like extremely minor things in comparison to the threat of the Elder dragons. Zhaitan is apparently defeated correct? Did the other Elder dragons seriously not take any notice to that? The orders and races of tyria have banded together to kill an elder dragon, and the other Elder dragons don’t see this as a threat? The living world in general I believe is supposed to take place after the end of the players personal story, so why are we not dealing with the cleansing of orr? Or the other Elder dragons? Things like the events and and politics and stuff is all good and fine if it lies within the greater plot of the Elder dragons, but for me and a lot of other players, we are confused and unsure what the living world even is anymore. The living world doesn’t give the feeling of any real threat, but it just feels more like we’re grinding our way through a passive storyline that doesn’t truly affect the world. For example, The woman who won the cutthroat politics? A week after that ended I haven’t heard a single thing from her. Where did she go? is she even important anymore? what does she think about the elder dragons?

I’d like to have a pvp/duel option in pve, so i could challenge other players in duel.

- City / outpost Invasion system (simillar to RIFT’s world map events) where waves of mobs attack an entire City or an small outpost and players have to defend it to get rewards
- NPC routines (like in the Elder Scrolls games). Some quests the player must talk to a npc only at day / night period
- Faster Day / Night Cycle (like AION’s Day-Night Cycle) where 24 hours in game time = 2 hours real time
- Weather Cycle ( Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter) which makes the world more “living”. Every week players can see and feel the climate changes like snow particles falling from the clouds / sky and ammounting in the ground, foliage falling from the trees (color changing from green to a brown-like color), trees decaying, flowers and fruits sprouting, etc.
_ Skill animations could be better. There is too many simple animation skills. Personally i would like to see cabal and aion animation skill types.
- Improvement of Aesthetics of GW2: DirectX 11 implementation, better tesselation of equipment and weapons textures, open GL 4.1+ implementation, Global Illumination / lighting, real-time shadows, better water shading and physics (like Cryengine 3 water) or an sea-engine like the one from Assassin’s Creed IV (could implement naval sieges / battles!), etc.
- Housing System: a player can make his house in any part of world map or on a specific area. Player can craft in his own house and can teleport to it through a scroll or skill
- Ground Mounts and Flying Mounts (players like free roaming and adventuring with a mount too!)

P.S.: take a look at Aion Vision trailer on youtube and see what can be useful from that on GW2

Mesket.5728:

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)

I am very onboard with the idea of no more currencies. Its a bit much to have each dungeon, event, etc have its own currency. Guild Wars does a pretty good job of rewarding you and letting you get the things you want organically, as you play. Event based currencies force you to grind something out and I feel this goes against the design philosophy as I understood it.

bjwhiteda.7645:

I do agree that the living world just dont feel epic. I also have an issue with most of them being dungeon based. Living world events should allow ALL players to particpate and not feel exc;luded because either (a) not high enough level to really run a dungeon, (b) not high enough to get into groups which tend to exclude players not level 80, © or the event is too heavily dependant upon dungeons to complete. I know I am not alone in my distain against gw2 dungeons.

you are not. Sometimes I find dungeons fun, but I wished that there would be some open world content which isn’t all about zergs but rather individuals and small groups. We already have some open world dungeons, why not build upon those?

Thanks for this opportunity.

Pacing of the living story

I’m a big fan of fortnightly updates (particularly when working weeks are less fun), but I do think individual stories may work better spread across 4, 6, 8, X weeks.
Not lowering the content density to stretch it out if it can be avoided, just following individual stories for further.

For instance Blood and Madness had the Thorn family history overlapping with Tassi opening the box overlapping with The Bloody Prince feuding with Thorn…
I’m sure that I am not alone in seeing The Bloody Prince in the labyrinth before playing the 1st Tassi instance that released him; instead one whole LS update could have been dedicated to lore & hunting for the tomb, another for the confrontation between Thorns.

Storytelling

I do like GW2 storytelling (why else would I be here!), but it has suffered a little on two fronts recently:

1. The in-game storytelling has been highly variable, with quite a few bare-bones efforts e.g. a perfunctory “go here” letter + a familiar NPC with a couple of chat lines at best.
There are still some great efforts – such as the jubilee party w/ Faren scene – but some LS updates do skimp on the story.

2. Scarlet has had her day, for now – sorry!
I do think she had/has potential as a steampunk villain (especially if we ever get to portal to the steamworld!), but her mastery of everything and dominion over all villain factions was OTT and she needs to be benched for a while.

It’s not just that she is a ‘marmite’ character (though that is a risky quality for the leading villain of LS), but her omnipotence is sucking the intrigue out of the LS now e.g. there’s a big honking neon sign overhead proclaiming that she is behind Teqatl and the Tower of Nightmare, for no discernable reason beyond her Pokemon-like ambition.
Contrary to the air of mystery that the devs do try to foster (with an admirably united front), the fact that these aren’t simply attributed to Scarlet up front just makes me fear that ‘the big reveal’ down the line means more & more Scarlet LS is ahead of as well as behind us.

P.S. It’s too late for the krait, but please abandon plans for an inevitable ‘Scarlet unites the centaurs and Svanir’ LS.

As for recommendations then:

1. Establish a baseline storytelling commitment for LS.

2. As I’m sure you’re tired of hearing; some way to get the stories off the website and into the game.

3. A villain arc for a villain/faction who a] isn’t Scarlet b] has a clear motive (ideally one that they can or will achieve) and c] will die/disband at the end of it.
Sadly the personal story makes a lot of stories/change off limit, but the current LS content is just perfect for giving (non-omnipotent) LS villains a proper send-off.

4. Integration for player dialogue options, with or without personality choices.
Not asking for choose-your-own-adventure because of the inherent obstacles to that, just a few ways to make instances – or ideally plot – play out differently.

E.g. In the 2nd Bloody Prince instance, rather than simply choosing “I’m ready” and have Tassi & The Bloody Prince banter, how about choosing a personality option and having the player character be an active participant.
Choose the charm option and the player character trades (scripted) puns with The Bloody Prince, which enrages him enough to make him vulnerable while launching wild attacks.
Choose the dignity option and the player character tries to make him feel guilt, which ends the battle early after the 2nd door summon.
Choose ferocity and it sparks his daddy-issues, causing him to summon only one door and stay in the fight personally.

I do think that will make such encounters more memorable.
[Continued…]

[Continued from above]
As an alternative to expansion

I think that the logistics of permanent content vs temporary content is over my head, but if I can make one suggestion it would be this; draw up a list of all the non-story content that an expansion would have (skills, weapons, armor sets, upgrades, etc.), divide it into 26 chunks, and start putting one chunk into each LS update.

The drawback to the small & steady pace of updates we are enjoying is that it never feels like their is going to be a ‘big bang’ update where you will pull back the curtain and say “5 new utility skills for every profession!”, " new playable race!" etc. – and I think this is a key reason the LS can feel quite ephemeral.

Yes there will be complaints if not all professions gain equally from each update, but the current peripheral-armour piece centric system of progression wears thin with time.
The LS is of course partially about story (shocker!) but performing the role of keeping the world/game alive it needs to also be concerned with all the mechanical growth people expect of an MMO too.

E.g. Sky Pirates of Tyria could have bought technological advances to add 1 utility of each type for the engineer and unlocked rifle for the thief, Teqatl Rising could have given the necromancer an elite whirlpool-well and added new leadership-themed shouts for warrior & guardian.

If there could be a middle-ground between big bang and standing still, I think that would be the healthiest way forward.
I do love a constant stream of free content, but a year on from release were I offered what we’ve had vs a purchased content package on par with a GW1 expansion… it would not be a hard choice.

So, I don’t know if this is going to get seen in the giant pile of posts, but I have always thought it might be a cool idea if living story instances/cutscenes/“the campaign of Guild Wars 2” were repeatable in a way.

For all of the people who loved the content, or for all of the people who weren’t able to experience the content.
The “My Story” tab in the hero panel is a fantastic piece to the PvE aspect of the game, where we can currently see what our hero has done. Wouldn’t it be awesome if this section of the hero panel allowed players to “replay” cinematic cutscenes or re-enter dungeons with friends? Maybe make it like a quest log of sorts, where it becomes a hub for current living story updates, and past events (that can be experienced).

I am kinda thinking like your Hero’s Personal Journal, that allows them to dip back into the future and re-live past events.

I think this might solve the problem of people being frustrated that the episodic content passes by to never return (whether they got to play it or not).
I also understand that people will want to be rewarded for experiencing it live… So, I might suggest to only provide the “this special backpiece/title/minipet/whatever” when the players complete it if it’s current. I know many friends who don’t really mind missing out on little items here and there, but are really bummed to know that the content they missed is forever gone.

After all, these events are very well done, why put them in the game just to remove them later? It seems like wasted effort, and reduces the total content that GW2 really spans.

I like to think of it like this: When shows air episodes they release them later so you can watch them whenever (disc sets, Season 1 of ____), or on Netflix where you can stream them whenever.

Just a thought. (Sorry for the long post, this is near and dear to my heart)

I am stoked we are having this discussion. I need to ask some questions first so that I am on the same page as the devs. I don’t want to give feedback that doesn’t fit with what you(the devs) have in mind as to where this whole thing is going.

1.) What are the design goals for this LW that is collaborative?

2.) Can we get 2 week updates that leave the content permanently in the world?

3.) Can we pick up the personal story where it left off at the end of Arah and make the LW stuff with where that is headed?

4.) Can we get dragon minions(smaller dragons like the bone dragons in GW1) as events in the LW events going forward?

I think it would be good on Nov. 4th to give the players an outline of what you guys have in mind so that players have an idea of what to suggest as it pertains to where you guys have this thing heading. It’s like an English teacher that gives an idea of what to write about. If certain things are off the table, then you don’t want us suggesting it in vain and wasting your and our time. Give us a sketch of where this is headed and get our suggestions on what we think should be included in that.

My suggestions are that the story needs to happen in a more concrete way. You may have given us as much content as an expansion, but the story is not as focused as what we would get in an expansion because we can’t play it when we want. It’s like telling us we can only watch an episode of a show per month or so. Once we get to the next one, it’s really easy to forget what we were doing. Also, not every update contains story that pertains to the LS. Sometimes we get holiday events or Zephyr Sanctum or SAB and that pauses what is going on and it’s tough to follow. I love the content frequency, but only if the story can be more condensed. I think that is why the stuff needs to remain permanent. That way I can play 6 months of it in a few sittings and then it all makes sense. I don’t want someone to give me a really good book and tell me I can only read 15 minutes of it a month and sometimes there will be a month I can’t read it at all. I lose interest.

For me, the Living World content is a let down, that has lasted from the start of this year to now. The last world event I thoroughly enjoyed was with the Southsun Cove Karka Queen battle. It had an awesome build up story with the attack on Lions Arch (even if it was laggy, it was still mega fun!), which lead to the amazing final assault on the island! The loot was cool with a special unique 20 bag slot and a first ever celestial jewelry piece! These items are my souvenirs and I remember my friend drooling is awe and jealously as he missed the event. Lesson learnt: attend future GW2 events as they are amazing! Simple superb and one of the best MMO gaming experiences ever for my guild and I.

Halloween and Christmas came and they were both amazing with fantastic scenery. I remember the forums being filled with posts of “Best in-game Halloween Event ever played,” and it was. Then for the new year we hear about the new Living World content starting with Flame & Frost. Excitement builds up again; what could this be, will this involve dragons??!! It sure sounds like it.

No, it’s not. It’s a disappointing part 1 of 4 chain of repairing signs and trying to figure out what’s going on. I remember reading the /map chat comments of: “failed event!” and “is this it?” How was this changing the world? I remember reading a forum post about all this confusion and the favoured response was: “this is exactly where ANET wants you to be,” what confused for months on end with heralds that don’t tell us anything new?

But this was all new trial content. The Living World team only comprised of two people and we know ANET is a big company with hundreds of talented developers, so they must be working on something else…. like an expansion? I believed that to be the case, that your primary efforts were with making new areas/skills/traits/classes/WvW/everything and that the Living World was a small project to keep us occupied until then. Nope, not the case. Can you imagine how disappointing it was for us to hear that Living World was your answer to the expansion.

A while ago, I talked this over with my friend and he said it would of been a lot better if these Living World content had server changing choices. That way, each story would be slightly different on most worlds making yours really feel your own and personal to you.

I don’t know what to say really for adding positive feedback for improvements. It feels like the damage is done and you could of done a whole lot more with this content, but hey no that’s hinds sight for you.

Sorry for the length, folks.

TL;DR version: It’s okay to have things brewing for a while. Constantly having a meta actually gives it less impact. It’s like a drama queen: By the time we get to the part where a leopard ate your face off, we just really don’t feel like leaping out of bed and driving you to the ER anymore. It’s 2am. We need sleep, and we were up the last 7 nights trying to wrangle your drama for you. Also, I do an overview of the events I was here for.

The Flame and Frost story arc was well done, for me. It felt epic. There were people who needed help and it was happening in the world and NPCs would tell me about what was going on if I asked them. It took its time to unfurl. I really love Rox and Braham as characters.
SAB: Awesome. Just good stuff. I wish it had been added permanently. (And I’m no good at it, but it’s a “feel good” zone.)
I barely spent any time in Southsun. That event didn’t grab me. (I didn’t have a ton of time to play, either, so I didn’t really follow it.)
Dragon Bash: Good fun. Rushed. Excellent storytelling- loved the noir feeling. But it still felt crammed in.
I loved the Zephyrites. Best of the bunch, hands down. That was gloriously polished and had something for everyone, but the ending to it felt needlessly rushed, and all the politics just felt tacked on. It would’ve been fun to have the news spread in game over the course of several months, the way Flame and Frost did.
I think the Pavillion update was one of the best updates we’ve had, if you exclude Scarlet. It’s a permanent improvement on a zone in the world, and it had loads of interesting things to do. This one was second to the Zephyrites for me, but I’m left wondering why so much of the content could have been left in (the arena combat, for example) and wasn’t. I like temporary, but leave some sort of marker. Belcher’s Bluff stayed in the game! Why not arenas?
Scarlet Invasions: Interesting stuff. Certainly worked to get people into zones that don’t always have a lot of traffic. Timer was a little unforgiving, and loot seems to be a little buggy there, but overall great rewards for the amount of effort. I didn’t even care that it was a Scarlet-themed thing. No idea about the story behind it at all.
SAB2: Good update. Hard stuff with some nifty rewards. Loads of work from our SAB expert. I never saw the content, but I’m glad it’s being expanded. Also, I LOVE that it’s doable with 1-5 people. Means I can solo, I can go with one friend or whatever. I don’t have to pull in some random stranger(s) in order to do it. Excellent job on scaling, there, though obviously the difficulty ramped up unexpectedly. Fun stuff doesn’t always have to have a huge story tied in, and this is where that point is made in full.
Teq: Epic fight, cool wings, cool mini, cool title…. blah rewards. Poorly done overall. Didn’t even bother trying to get the event done. People in the zone were mean, there weren’t any in-game breadcrumbs, and it wasn’t compelling to me. Felt like it was barely a blip on the radar.
Twilight Assault: Really great content, though I’m not sure why it had to replace the F/U path instead of being an additional dungeon run. Again, this was super rushed and felt barely there.
Halloween: Disappointing. There’s no “Mad King” title, all the festive skins are extremely hard to acquire, even the gem store weapons. The town clothes costumes are quite good, but town clothes only have so much appeal. The mini-game is heavily imbalanced in favor of the mad king’s court (and yet still quite fun- let’s keep this one!). At least it’s here all month- the look of it is fantastic. But it is really quite grind-centric, and the holiday items are pretty scarce. The atmosphere of the Labyrinth is great, but it’s not somewhere people are really going to do anything but farm, and that’s sad.

I know they can’t all be the Labyrinthine Cliffs (the zephyrite zone), but… Maybe stick an anvil in the Labyrinth? An unlockable door to reach the Labyrinth would be nice, too.

Do what WildStar and Everquest promise before they launch:

1) streets to live, houses and furniture

2) tools for build new maps. New sPvP maps made by players

Good luck!

Instead of more items add new titles. Same for personal story.

I will keep my feedback short:

I would very much like to see more living story emphasis placed on the events in all the of existing zones. Currently, the implementation of living world feels very “apart” from the rest of the world, almost like its pasted on top as an afterthought. I would much rather see the events, event chains, etc. have a larger impact upon the world. Certainly, story needs to progress, but I feel a focus on the core of the game would yield much better results.

For those just joining this discussion I read through all 5 pages and the top 2 comments that stand out against all others is almost universally described as:

1. Shallow story and poorly written villain is a turn off. Dragons and GW1 lore is what is wanted here.
2. Pace of content is wayyyy too fast. Various solutions offered, but almost all agree it is too much and the quality and polish is suffering.

Based on this thread those are the two issues that need to be addressed soon.

an additional issue that was mentioned less frequently but still had a lot of mention is:

3. Lack of world impact. Needs to be improved. Having random portals spawn static enemies that just do nothing is not impact. Destroyed lighthouses, new zones, new DE’s, etc are what is fun and exciting.

I really hate the Living World concept on many levels.

Firstly, as a player with a busy life, every 2 weeks I log on and see new content that I feel I must stress out about where I am going to fit the time into my schedule to complete the achievements required for the event. This is because I know if I don’t in this short timespan, I will never be able to see the content again and will have missed out, and also that I will never be able to acquire the items that are given as a reward for it.

This actually ends up discouraging me from playing the game. I was sold on this game on the idea that it is not a p2p and I can pick it up and play it for a couple of hours for one evening and enjoy the content and feel like I accomplished something and still be able to put it back down and pick it up from where I left off in the near future.

However, I know that if I log in for an hour and do a few Living World achievements, all progress will have been meaningless and lost if I do not get them done within that time frame. Constantly I am tempted to just throw in the towel and quit the game as I do not enjoy being left behind by all of the content and never being able to get those items ever again just because I do not have a life that allows me to play more frequently.

Secondly, I have friends that played this game in the beginning that took a break. They ask me about all of the things that have been added since they left — I tell them about it, but then tell them that it was all temporary and they will never get to see any of this awesome content. And that if they were to start today, almost the only new content they would see is whatever is current. This discourages them from even picking the game back up.

Thirdly, I do not feel the storyline for the ‘Living Story’ has been meaningful or connected enough to justify it all being temporary. I do not see why you could not leave the dungeons, quests, achievements, etc. in the game. If it is a timeline problem then require them to be done in a certain order. But thus far, the connection has been loose at best. (E.G. Molten Alliance and Aetherblades randomly and rather unbelievably siding with Scarlet).

Lastly, I feel you do your game developers a great disservice with the concept as a whole. Who would truly be motivated to spend weeks — even months — on great works of art and design, when they know that it will all be discarded after 2-4 weeks and never be seen again? This is a tragedy that you expect your devs to commit to this, and you should not be surprised if they do not seem to be motivated to tap into their full potential and create a masterpiece.

I agree with the others that the background story in the lw-events comes too shortly. Information about events should be given in the game, not in the patch notes.
I would love beautiful and funny cutscenes for my character as in the personal story. However, the internationalisation would be difficult and the updates would get even larger (now I need always a very long time to download them).

But why there are no little NEWSPAPERS sold ingame in the cities by newspaper-boys, quagans or mini-golems? GW2 is a semi-industrialized world, when there are asura-portals and flying machines, why there are no book-stores selling books about the past living story and no newspapers for actual events, just some heralds, that most of the time have no news? The GW-Graphic-designers did best work with illustration, I think the pics of Scarlett etc. would fit in some newspapers too (with hints, rumors, help-wanted ads, norn-poems and some more of the comedy-style, like in the personal story). And because newspapers need news that could be a new type of task for explorators (find hidden changes in the world and inform the office).

I like GW2 even more than GW1 because of the exploring-factor and the vistas. After one year it would be precious to see something really new. The existing areas would keep interesting, if they would be a more changing without great events. Maybe there could be some slight seasonal alteration in nature, or traveling merchants, caravans, a circus or a fair outside of the great cities. That doesn’t need to change the whole world, it just would be more interesting for traveling around old places.

When you actually play the game, it seems many player prefer to do champ trains. Maybe you could institutionalize this with something like a variable “hunting sprint” in queensdale with trophies. It’s more fun to move through the area with a not too great group of players than to do a static mass slaughter with too much enemies at ones.

Another feature would be if we could do something usefull with the seasonal minipets or town clothing, maybe some minipet-games, a carneval or a costume-contest.

I would like living world to be more than just fight against new enemies.

I’ve read a fair few of the posts in the thread so far, but forgive me in advance if this is repetition. It certainly touches on some of the things that have been said.

There’s a plethora of interesting stories in the game. Incidents. Events. Characters that could have a lot of meaning. Yet, the living story seems to chiefly introduce entirely new concepts, and then take them away. It’s not even that the content is temporary that is my biggest beef, it’s that the base world remains largely unaffected. Most NPCs seem to go about their business as usual, and while the zones are certainly segregated with loadings screens and such, I don’t find it unfair to think that what happens in one zone should emanate across the world.

Progress some of the smaller stuff too. I thought the whole idea was that we were supposed to be able to make a difference in the world, yet we’ve still been helping the same characters to do the same stuff for over a year. I suggest that for every big epic appearance of super villain, have a team make a couple of other changes around the world. Change some dialogue, change a popular or commonly triggered event to continue a narrative.

To really add some sugar on top, change some non-gameplay related scenarios too. There’s a guy somewhere that has been complaining for over a year that he can’t take his job anymore, so he ends up having a drink with a chick. I don’t think he has to worry, because he’s probably been fired at this point. Maybe he should complain about that now.

If you’re going to add dialogue and small stories to the game that are repeated ad nauseam, why not at least make them plausible for lengthy repetition? I know we have to suspend our faculties sometimes, but it should still be possible to make choices here and there to add stories that make sense in the long term. Make some “normal” events span a few days, with a different event each day.

Example of a living event:

• Day 1: Collect lumber for merchant in contested area
• Day 2: Escort merchant to his destination
• Day 3: Merchant is on his way home and his cart breaks down, you defend him and collect materials for him to repair.
• Day 4: You escort the merchant back to the lumber area where trouble has ensued and you have to clear it up.

Repeat! This could obviously be as elaborate or as simple of a story as needed. A few of these in each zone would be gold to have a true sense that things are happening.

Maybe on the days the village gets lumber delivered, something happens? Something is available there. Since the days rotate, people will eventually get to see everything, even if they play on a schedule or minimally. It doesn’t go away, but it has life.

Get the 10 voice actors for the player characters back into the recording booth. Have at least 6 months of dialogue ready, and bang it out over a couple weeks. Yes, that means having a real, long term game plan.

I’m tired of being struck mute.

I’m a very causal player. My husband and I have 2 kids and when the living world storyline started switching to every 2 weeks it got crazy for us. It was summertime – which means kids are up later so less playtime for parents. We ended up missing most of the parties. I did a little but not enough to earn achievements.

You have a mix of kids who have time to grind each event and move on, you have older adults who only can only play when the kids are asleep and only for a limited time since we work the next day.

Causal players may still have story lines and maps to finish. The events are great to keep active players going – but confusing for those of us who don’t have the time.

I would have loved a longer time between changes and more tied to continuing our personal stories. I only have one character through the full story. We don’t do PVP because of the time and group commitment – so the extra content is good for us, but hard if we can’t play all the time and can’t always get out group together (we play mostly with another couple – which is hard to mesh schedules).

We love the game – but we can’t play 15+ hours a week and still do what we need to do in our real lives. And when you have a young kids giving you dirty looks for playing a game instead of help them it is not a good situation.

Thanks for your hard work on the game and the creative content. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of these discussions.

I would like instanced PVE content for players or small groups, that would scale.

So it could be a mission, almost a mini dungeon, included with each DLC that is related to that DLC.

This should also be repeatable…infinitely. And preferably without an interminable grind first ;-)

The scaling would mean that the difficulty could be adjusted manually as well. So one person could scale the difficulty to a group of 5 for example. Or a duo could scale to a group of 4 depending on skill level and the type of challenge a person/group wanted.

This would add an amazing layer of content and achievement to each DLC that a small group of players, or the solo player can enjoy over and over, and at their leisure. This was similar to the Queens Gauntlet type of events, which challenged the player and was repeatable (albeit frustrating at times).

Although what I am thinking is more something along the lines of missions in the Personal Story, just repeatable and with different challenges not all designed for Open World , group/raid play.

In fact…like the Queen’s Jubilee which introduced the Gauntlet, perhaps we could have a Hub created for these DLC Solo/Group missions. I think we had a repeatable mission with the Scarlett content as well. We already have the Fractals type of Hub. Something like that aimed at the Solo, Duo, or small group of players.

I’d like to see more of this. Something that would appeal to a broader base of player styles. And that can be accessed at will. In a year someone may even be able to level up an Alt by playing through these DLC missions perhaps, experiencing something enjoyable each time.

I can see some Asura opening a dimensional anomlay to different dimensions where the players can assist in various ways. And his lab would be the hub or something like that. Numerous story ways to get players into instanced, repeatable content.

I’m not sure that a two week release of DLC really counts if that DLC is temporary (not counting seasonal DLC). I can’t imagine a Call of Duty map being released for two weeks only, for example. The players would riot!

I believe it’s all about the story. There’s a lot of things not working with the LS and a lot has already been said about that.
I don’t like this fast rotation of enemies and characters that I already hated in the personal story. You jump from enemies and plot lines faster than the people in the Clock Tower. It’s like… “So, this is happening. Time’s up. Forget those guys, we have new bad guys! And this awesome villain that came from nowhere. Now, forget that too, we have Krait for lunch! And do you remember those girls from 3 months ago? Here they aaaare!”. It’s frustrating. You had something good with the Molten Alliance: in 3 or 4 month it began and (sort of) ended. And we moved on with a new mystery. You are opening too many doors and not closing one. We like closure, we don’t want another “Lost” series. I feel lost with this Scarllet thing and i shouldn’t, because I love her.

I like Scarllet. You need someone like her in this game, she can be your GLADOS. But for someone who sees/knows the universe, she is harmless. I was hoping for more drastic stuff happening. What if she really killed Jenna? Would we move on to some human civil war, perhaps the battle of DR? Seriously. She’s not being bad enough.

The short stories are great. Do you know what would be better idea? Put it somehow in-game and not hidden in your site. I like those stories and I feel we loose a lot not having it in-game. Make it a quest, a special video, an animation, or even a Priory book in the library… People that don’t read those loose a lot. I started to like Scarllet because of her story and not because what I see in-game. I want to know what’s her plan or if she has one at all.
For Dwayna, I even wanted to join her if I could! This could be something big: Scarllet recruiting players. Much like the election of Ellen and Evon. We could choose if we fight with or against her.

Enough with Scarllet (I really like her, thanks for creating her, now make her bad/better). If you maintain this LS thing, please don’t mix more stuff. You can have the dragons, Scarllet, krait, a plague of unicorn quaggans, but (please!) do not mix them all. Scarllet doesn’t have to be everywhere and, as I said before, we need closure in the story. Close a chapter! Molten alliance, sky pirates, more people from the sky and Glint, trying to kill Jenna, a mad dragon, nightmare court meets balloon pirates and now krait!? I really believe it’s enough. I’m already lost at what is or it’s not Scarllet. And I’ve been playing everything and reading the short stories.

More stuff to say!!! I like that the LS invites me to go to maps/dungeons that I don’t visit for a long time. I would like to see major changes like what’s happening in Kessex Hills. I know you had a lot of work making it in the first place, but you can destroy a part a map and let it like that (Great Collapse, anyone?).
More difficult stuff like Tequatl would be great. If this next update it’s not an open world tower with different floors (like Monastery of Silence in Lineage2 or the last episodes of Sword Art Online), I would love to have one of those where I could play (and please don’t say Fractals, because people only do that for the ascended stuff).

An please, please, give us closure in the story part. There’s a lot from the first game that was left untold.
There’s a lot of mysteries from GW1 that you could go back with the living story. Or even world/universe/eternal alchemy that you could explore. And I’m not talking about Cantha or Elona… The humans were brought to this planet right? From where? Is there any asura curious about the origin of some races? Why there’s not a single thing in LS about our Orders? Why there’s no Priory guy looking for artifacts like, idk, some scepter from a looong time ago? Why the hell is there a floating castle and a village of people with pet/slave/controlled elementals?
I get it. Sometimes our imagination goes wild and we are a lot of people, but you can and should use our ideas. We would be glad with that because it showed you listen to some of us (it’s impossible to make everyone happy) and you would be making something that we really wanted to play.
About the rewards: enough with the weird back items. But I sure like the home instance stuff.
But seriously guys: Crystal Desert!

I’m an old school MMO player.

My stickiness in a game really depends on

1. My emotional attachment to my main

2. The amount I’ve learned about the world, which enables me to accomplish more in less time — to get a greater emotional sense of achievement, particularly in a fantasy world of grandeur

The reasons I leave a game are

1. Changes which invalidate that learning, as well as changes which will tend to cause me to switch to a different main. Every time content is removed from the game, this occurs.

2. Invalidation of my playstyle, which is small group, small guild, PvE in dungeons and outdoors

3. Taxes on my time in game, such as dailies, monthlies, or world events whose rewards affect my ability to do small group, small guild PvE content.

4. I do not play Nintendo games. I do not platform. I detest jump puzzles and every time I have to do one in this game to pay my taxes it is paying taxes done with gnashing of teeth.

The current Living Story

1. Provides no incremental emotional attachment to my main

2. Provides no lasting content for me to learn, that is, the content is all taken away.

3. Has provided no content of any use to my playstyle

4. Has diverted development resources away from content which would be relevant to my playstyle

5. Has promised to provide dungeon content, however ephemeral, then locked that content behind platforming steps which I have difficulty completing, some of which are disguised as combat but require jumping/platforming which would have been considered an exploit in any of the 8 previous MMOs I have played.

6. Has placed taxes on my time which have been more negative than positive in emotional experience.

So what emotional decision do you think I will ultimately make about this game?

I would much prefer as the paradigm for living story:

1. No content is ever removed from the game. I’ll make an exception for annual events at (stated in U.S. culture) Easter, 4th of July, Halloween, and Christmas/new year, which are annual events and roughly the same every year.

2. Dungeons which exist are never removed or reworked.

3. Hearts and world events are never removed and rarely reworked.

4. Each living story release adds new, permanent content to the game. I was OK with EQ2 charging a few bucks every time another piece came out; since it’s new content it can be licensed that way. (We left EQ2 the day they invalidated small guilds.)

ArenaNet is the “dungeon master”, and as it has been since the beginning of MUDs, the dungeon master has absolute power over the game, and the players have absolute power over whether they stay or move on. I hope ArenaNet wants to keep me as a customer, but will understand if the decision is otherwise. Which it seems to be, right now.

I know you guys said you were planning on adding more permanent stuff, which is great! I think one of the best visual ways to see that would be by slowly adding more regions.

Often times, guildies and friends try coming back to the game to see what all has changed, and they take a look at the world map and don’t see any difference at all really.

ANet, you already seem to be doing all the work that’s needed to add new regions by building some very beatiful maps and instances, they’re just temporary so far it seems. LET’S MAKE IT TO CANTHA ONE DAY! WOO!

A couple more things I’d like to throw out here after some more reflection.

First, there should be a way to revisit past LS material outside of the extremely limited and niche focused Fractal system. Be it through a menu tab in the character sheet or an actual in game NPC (perhaps stationed in the Fractal hub), there should be an in game way for players who miss periods of the LS to catch up and even play certain instanced moments. You don’t need extra voice acting or cutscenes, just let players see the content that’s already been created in it’s original form.

Second, the more I think about the LS, the more I feel the first real chapter with the Molten Alliance was the best. Yes, it started out very slowly and that shouldn’t be repeated exactly, but the slower build up* did allow for a couple of things. First, it let players develop a connection to what was going on in varying areas of the world. Second, and I kind of feel bad to keep coming back to the same word over and over again, but it made it feel like ANet actually had a plan. It felt like one cohesive story that was building up on it’s own merit and actually leading to something. The Weapons Facility wasn’t a perfect ending, but it was pretty good and did feel like a logical conclusion for the entire several month saga leading to that point. Every step along the way made sense and seemed designed to serve the story and not designed to serve Achievement hunters. The current LS may have a plan of some kind but, just like with the rest of the game, it certainly doesn’t feel like it does.

• Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean I have any issue with the two week update period, though I don’t see any reason to feel 100% forced to stick to the two week period every single time. I do, however, feel that more planning and overlap of storyline elements between teams who were working closer together could allow for both the two week pacing and actual proper storyline build/development. Of course, if the two week pacing is something that is deemed a constant requirement then two week updates should be allowed to include pure content updates that add content not attached to the LS. Maybe a weapon becoming usable by a class who couldn’t use it before, or a new dungeon/path, or a major PvP update, etc. This would keep the two week period but allow for more breathing room for the storyline to grow gradually and naturally when it’s fitting.

I like to see so many players contributing already and with such in-depth information about their concerns and propositions.

What I want to throw in:

• The Living World should really feel more like we lived it. Dozens and hundreds of players join a world-changing event on a server. The people participating in it should be able to say something like this afterwards:

“We lost so precious (new featured npc) friends…" (even the good ones are allowed to have a heroic death -e.g. personal story-)
“Divinity’s Reach would have fallen if we weren’t there to save them from the (insert new or old archenemies)”
“Well, it wasn’t thaaat hard actually to fight two dragons at once;)”
“WE DID IT!!!!!”

• Another thing: More lore for fewer people, not huge armies. Like dungeons which you can solo or do it in coop with a normal party. You could also add references to the guild wars lore by that. Having a little bit more connection to the past would not hurt anybody and it would make ‘veterans’ enjoy the game even more:

“Yap, you heard right, we really took them on barefisted. This is how the dwarves do.”;
“Please… If you ever want me to ride a worm again. Just don’t!”
“Are you telling me, this is the place where a dragon killed another dragon?!”
“Ever fought on a ship against pirates while a giant kraken attacks you? Trust me, it’s amazing.”
“You really think we stand a chance against the one and only and real, whole Destiny’s Edge? -Rytlock farts- … Let’s go get them.”
.

These could be implemented in dialogues or texts or anything~ It would greatly improve the presentation of the massive story to newcomers.
Players want to have an experience which they will remember (preferably positive experiences). It’s just great to have an impact !a real impact! So we can be the HEROES that we are supposed to be.

And for that I really don’t necessarily need to sacrifice myself to become a god and save the world… but that’s another story.

Things I like about the LS

1)I like the Frequenz of the contend, it is really nice to have every two weeks new things to do, also the small preview a week bevor

2)the parts where you had to discover some Thing on your own like the Detective at Dragon bash, the Little history Exploration of first Halloween, they where really fun, and i learned a bit more about teria and also found new places. liked it very much

3)That some of the new enemies are a bit harder to kill then averange Mobs, it is really nice to have some places outside of orr where you dont feel like Walking through a hord of Monster which beg you for getting slayed

But their are also Thing i dont like so much

1)Some of the Special items are really grindy, it is not fun to do Mad clocktower 3h to get like 1 out of 20 items you Need for a “Fashion/mini” item

2)Ingame Explanation of what is going on is not so good

3)The Story archs are often very not so well connected as they should be

What i would like to see changed

1)That the LS Releases are a bit more connected, it dont has to be always such a huge Story like the push back of scarlett but some of the more recent release feel like this week we though like this after that next week like that

2)that their are a bit more heroic moments, like as the karka destroyed the lighttower in LA or as the mad king apeared the first time, dungeons like the bloody prince are not funny it was so easy that i never had the Feeling the bloody prince was a danger and then the asura talked so much about Things, the Mad king explain much better while you run around in the maze

3)That their are a bit more NPC explaining what exactly is Happening and explain you also some mechanics, some of my guildies found out after 1 week that the maze has another way to enter then the hide and seek game, not all Player browes the main site to find out all the stuff, such things like the doors all over kryta get explaind not so good in game, that many People have Trouble to even find the new Content

Things i like how they got changed

1) that their is often a Little hint ingame for the new release like the cut down trees in kessix hill, or the tend over the great collaps. They are really fun to find and it is also much fun to guess what will happen their. (also would like to see if their are some workers in some cities befor a big Festival, that would make it a bit more real then puff and out of nowhere are all Thing other in LA)

2) Minigame roation, i really like it that way all those nice mini games dont get lost and with the roation they also get less boring, really like it

3)that more of the LS get permanent, like the Invasion or the Change of some maps or the implementation of the minigames

Okay, what I’ve said may have been said a million times before, but I’m putting it out here in the hopes it will either reinforce what has been said already or will offer something new.

What GW2 got right:
- Content moving on a regular basis. Compared to other games launching story expansions on several-month (if not several-year) basis, having a regular continuation of story-related content makes GW2 stand out.
- Completed story arcs. Some of the earlier living story arcs – Flame and Frost, Lost Shores, Secret of/Last stand at Southsun were interesting to do because, at the end, we could say it felt like we’d accomplished something.
- Group LW content. I am of the personal opinion that, in general, Living World events or items should not be soloable. This does not mean there shouldn’t be some things that are possible solo, but in general the events should demand some level of cooperation both to encourage group play and to avoid the inevitable paradox of each character being single-handedly responsible for dealing with X drastic threat.

Things GW2 got wrong:
- Scarlet. Ohgod Scarlet. I’m going to get this out of the way immediately. Scarlet suffers from numerous writing problems which have been amply expounded on in this thread; I would add that one of her biggest issue is that she often violates the writer’s rule of “show, don’t tell.” We are told Scarlet is some kind of super-genius, but never shown it; instead, she seems to orbit somewhere between “kids’ cartoon villain” and “student of The Joker”. We are told Scarlet passed all kinds of Asura tests – but not shown what or how; given how hairbrained some Asura seem, Scarlet might have passed a grade-school exam for all we know. We are told Scarlet founded the Molten Alliance, but without being shown how or why it feels like just an empty “awesome credential”. Was she aiming for recruits? A distraction? We don’t know.
- The frenetic pace of Living World arcs. I commented earlier that regular LW updates were a good thing. However, “regular” doesn’t mean “blink and its gone”. The two week schedule is obviously painful for players and devs; when I think back to some of the most fun LW arcs it isn’t lost on me that most of them were allowed to rest for a month before moving on – and some took multiple month-long stages to complete. This allowed for players to choose how they played – roaming for discovery, WvW, or whatever – along with getting their LW achievements.
- The lack of long-term results for LW events. Aside from the actual lack of any consquences whatsoever for many of the individual events – Scarlet’s invasions, the individual events at the Bazaar, etc – which have again amply been discussed above, there is a bigger problem: In many cases, it feels like LW events are spontaneously hopping from one theme to the next; this is exacerbated by the above-mentioned short time each LW event happens in. “Hey guys, Dragon Bash! No wait, it’s some sky pirates now! SUDDENLY ZEPHYRITES! They don’t matter, now Krytan stuff! Oh wait, AETHERBLADES AGAIN!” Not any of the completion of these blink-and-they’re-gone ‘arcs’ contributes whatsoever to any world changes. After a while it starts to feel like no single arc can be “finished” – which is again frustrating, as it reinforces the lack of consequences.

The only problem I have with the living world is Scarlet, I don’t at all mind the pacing of the releases it’s really fun for me to speculate about whats going to happen next.

Scarlett is aggravating though, especially considering that there is so much more lore that could be expanded upon. I feel that in order for the living story to work it needs to build on top of things that are already established.

Everything about Scarlett feels like filler in Naruto or the flashbacks from Dexter when they need to give the audience a reason to sympathize with something thats going to happen immediately after the flashback ends.

idk….Scarlett is my only issue currently

Let me start off by saying I love the idea of the LW. For the most part it keeps me entertained. Unfortunately, it doesn’t keep me entertained for long. I think the stories themselves should be slightly extended and way more in depth. Maybe 3-4 week intervals between LW updates? I think that would be enough time for everyone to enjoy the content at a decent pace. Especially the gamers who can’t make it on everyday.

Also, I understand that maybe mass stuns and immobilizes was probably an attempt to put a stop to zergs or whatever, but it creates an extremely, extremely frustrating time when one wants to do the LW with just a few friends. I’m one of those people who hate running with the zerg, so naturally I have some malice towards the way some LW is done. I really haven’t a clue how this can be fixed(stopping zergs from face rolling everything) but I’m sure you guys can think of something.

It’s just not fun constantly being stunned and immobilized and not actually being able to use my class skillfully. Oh, and I believe I’m not the only one here who despises this whole being one shotted for making one mistake. I understand paying for making mistakes, but insta-kill is just not cool.

Personally, I would like to see more use of unique mechanics in LW. Not just for epic boss battles, but actual open world mechanics that involve actual thinking and making use of certain profession skills. Again, Zergs would be able to just ruin the fun of it once people understand it, but it could still be a good step forward and maybe eventually even help you guys better understand a way to put the nerf-hammer to the zerg mind. I think special mechanics in the open world is key to making this LW thing even better. It creates fun and challenge.

Also, I think Living world is the PERFECT opportunity to help us understand more about the “missing” lore of, oh idk… GW1? Loved that game and it’s lore and things felt so well connected. Yea, people can just go read about what happened to the Gods, if you ever tell us, but people like me would much rather play perhaps a glimpse into the past. It’s a good chance to put the GW1 players mind at ease as well as enlightening the minds of those who haven’t played it.

SO, I don’t even know if any of that makes a lick of sense, and it’s all probably in a crap order, but that’s just me.

Love the game, I spend a lot of my free time, if not all of it, playing this game. I’m not going anywhere, but let’s see some changes for the better.

I BELIEVE I BELIEVE I BELIEVE I BELIEVE
[IMG]http://i41.tinypic.com/ru01s9.jpg[/IMG]

The Living Story feels like a filler arc right now. The reason for that is that updates are disconnected from each other. From release to release the player jumps from one point of the map of the other, to fight “the evil of the day” which happened to pop up just in time for another release. In order to write a good story (which is the main reason I visit the GW universe for) there needs to be a lot of planning. Basically, the entire story arc needs to be mapped out prior to even coding anything. Otherwise it feels disjointed. This is a problem the Personal Story had as well.
Even though I’m not a big fan of Scarlett, I feel like there was something there. “Finally,” I thought. “we have something to focus on.” But soon the supposed dangerous Main Villain was replaced by other happenings without any warning or build up. By sticking with one villain/problem to focus on and having the entire story mapped out beforehand, the arc can feel much more immediate and urgent.

Also, flooding the playerbase with skins, items, tokens, titles and other rewards is no incentive. It just dillutes the value of the already existing rewards. Bling can only incentivise so far, a good story can be engaging on its own.

I don’t really have any preferences about what storyline the developers tackle, as long as they do it right. I know anet always had problems of delivering the story of their amazing universe to the players, but this is something that MUST change, not only for the Living Story strategy to be taken seriously but also for arena nets future.

Best regards to the devs who are spending days, months, and years of their lives for our enjoyment!

Kaiyanwan.8521:

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.

This so much :/

I agree that the pace of release is maybe a bit too fast for a casual player. I have almost got several achievements only to log on with 1 or 2 remaining and its gone. A few areas where the LS could be enhanced I think would be:

1. Make the content more random. And I mean by that if actual events would or could happen on a large unannounced schedule. Dragons do not announce when they fly over and burn a big swath of destruction across the country side. The Karka event at its kick off was cool where they attacked Lions Arch. Our guild banded together and went to Southsun to take the fight to those fools. The queen while being a hard boss was do-able as you pushed her across the map back to the hive. We all achieved and were happy. Much of the newer content Unfortunately does not have that same feel to it. The dungeons look cool and the entire game has had much polish but much of the releases since feel more grind related. And alot of it ends up not being completable. Some of the zerg aspect is OK just do not make it the core staple for each event. Jumping in a zerg to level a toon is fun too. But when too hard or complex people start quitting due to the sheer repair bill and the grind of failure. The change to the re-spawn while anyone was in combat now meant that once you died, you just sat there waiting for the others to fail to get back into the game. People left here too. Bad idea. The dungeons as a whole are cool but suffer the same. Most are too hard and people get through once and say hell no I’m not ever doing that again. Tequatl is a good example of that. I have one achievement left to get there are no toons doing it now. Don’t get me wrong here I don’t think everything should be easy by no means but it also should not be a pulpit to say hey I’m the designer and there are 75 things that must must all fall into place exactly as planned or you will never succeed. The casual player does not nor will ever be retained by this. They just get frustrated and go away.

2. The guild tools are also a sorely lacking aspect to support this as you cannot properly reward those who are still remaining active or boot those who are not. The guilds are either mega large and impersonal or you cannot maintain an active roster. This forces you into the pug situation as mentioned above.

3. The money sink aspect of the game I feel should also be looked at. Not the gem store aspect as I know this pays the bills and affords expansion and development. Money for travel, money for repair, money to reset skills etc etc. all the things that make it hard to gather wealth. In GW1 as you figured out a build and could go solo for ectos you felt achievement points without any further reward. You could mentor others in your guild to learn to do it too. 2 man or 3 man Rit farming UW, or solo Vettir or 55 monk are a couple examples. Many game hours were spent this way on vent. Community. The current cost of success is too steep for a casual player. Convert the cost of a Legendary to real world money. After you cry for a bit you will give up and not bother if you have any life outside the game or a job. GW1 if you got a awesome Green skin you were happy and could brag a bit. Here it just says you have far too much free time on your hands. And get rid of the soulbound on use for weps. It was nice to use weps on different toons or as hand me downs to lower level players in your crew. Now you can just salvage them or burn them in the forge. It was nice to use one for a while and then when you get a cooler skin you sell off the old one or give it away.

3. The skill build aspect too is weak compared to GW1 most do not understand how to put together a build. And you cannot save them. It is not very clear the mechanics to putting them together. New and returning players state that this is frustrating.

I mention these last 3 because some of these underlying issues and others like them that need polish or adjustment are keeping people from remaining in game as they burn out due to these types of issues. If they do not log on for the new content it really doesn’t matter how cool it is. I think some focus should be put into this infrastructure before further LS content so it will be more successful and better received.

In closing the whole of GW2 is fabulous and a huge undertaking. The art is top notch and I find myself just running around and looking at all the little touches from early Betas till now still finding cool stuff. The Living Story content while evolving needs some of this sub structure in place and shored up to maintain the activity levels to make it more robust. Slow down on the content releases and evolve the skills, Guild tools, activity boosters and get rid of some of the useless money sinks that discourage players from logging in.

At first, I thought this is a farm-free game like what you guys advertised. But after about a good year long serious playing experience, I must say this game is just simply not rewarding, or I should say this game is just a grind feast like other F2P mmo out there. The farm is even worse than TERA and gold-farming games like Spiral Knights, which, at least, I can see what I am going to get from 2 hours of farming. I agree that this is what players will get when the devs decide to use RNG system. But what really disturbs me is that the game is all about big numbers: 100,000 damage seems a bit off, but 1/100,000 of getting something is just totally wrong.

Three of the most annoying things developers have done to me are: Ninja nerf on heavy loot bags, mechanism change for dungeon tokens, and Diminishing Returns. I feel like I have invested so much of my time in the game but I got nothing in return. How does this make your Living World a engaging content without any reasonable reward? Please do not being up things like “achievement chest for living story”, don’t you already knew that your achievements are mostly about pressing either F or 1 multiple times? I have witness less than 15 exotic equipment drops to me during my year-long experience, and one of them, due to server crash, never got retrieved. I played like 10+ hours a day back then: wvw, dungeons, and occasionally Orr farming. Now you tell me whether your game is rewarding or not.

On the other hand, I do acknowledge that you guys did some good stuff like buffing the badge drop in wvw.

A lot of my feelings about the living world have been repeated many times already in this thread so far, and perfectly eloquently at that, but I’ll sum up my own thoughts as simply as I can.

1) The updates are too frequent. It’s a startlingly oppressive feeling. My personal preference with MMO’s is to glut on them for a few months and then take a few month break to play other games. This allows me to get the most enjoyment out of my play time, while not ever feeling spread out or without anything to do. If I do that with Guild Wars 2 however, I would miss huge amounts of content that I will never be able to Come back to. I don’t want to miss anything but I feel I am much more likely to burn out on the game and give it up for good if I don’t feel able to take breaks without missing large amounts of content than if the schedule was less intense. Frankly, I resent feeling like I’m being trained to log into the game habitually just to keep up, rather than go at my own pace. The solution here is to both slow down the content updates (one a month, or once every two months) but make the updates bigger, but then also make them primarily permanent.

2) On the note of permanence, the transient nature of the content is frustrating not only because it makes it hard to keep up, but also because elements that are enjoyable are often quickly lost again. Permanent content in general has more value to the development of the game than temporary content ever could. Festivals and Dramatic moments in the vein of the earthquakes that led up to the release of Eye of the North for Guild Wars 1 work, but sustained story content, or even whole zones (Zephyr Sanctum) being temporary seems like a wasted opportunity to have a world that is growing as opposed to merely changing.

3) As far as the actual story itself goes, it is disjointed, incoherent and nigh-impossible to follow month-on-month. Scarlet Briar, seems like a character invented to tie together the Aetherblade, Molten Alliance and other plot threads which did not feel like they were part of the same story at all. It occurs to me that this is probably a result of having four different living world teams. The plot should be managed by one single team of people in order to keep it coherent. Too many cooks spoiling the broth and all that, but also because it reduces issues of communication.

3b) Scarlet herself is an awful character. She strikes me as someone’s attempt to do a Joker-style lunatic-genius but written with much less depth. Instead of finding her to be an antagonist I want to fight against, I dread the next time she turns up, because I’ll have to listen to her awful dialogue. even more infuriating is how frequently she seems to be able to escape not because of her skill or preparedness or intelligence but because of a cheap Deus Ex Machina. Specifically during the jubilee fight where the player had beaten her and then can continue (as I did) to shoot at her ineffectively while she monologues was one of the most infuriating moments in the game. It felt like I’d won and it should have ended there but then she got away because… well, there was no good reason for it. She got away because the team decided she needed to come back again. The only thing I want from scarlet at this point is to kill her so we can just move on from that plot line and get back to what Guild Wars 2 was, I thought, supposed to be about…

(hit the character limit? will continue in next post)

4) The Dragons! Where are they? Seriously? I was super excited for this when the game launched and over a year on they have done precisely nothing and we the players have done precisely nothing to fight any of them (Zhaitan being the on exception due to the nature of the personal story). I assumed with Flame and Frost, way back at the start that the Molten Alliance were going to be Primordious’ minions and the Flame and Frost thing was referring to heading north into the mountains to deal with him and/or Jormag in some way. That was exciting, conceptually. Instead we got Scarlet and Aetherblades and… Just… I don’t care about any of it. The dragons were the plot hook we were all sold on (or at least I was). Where are they? All of that said, I find myself somewhat glad they haven’t been done yet, because if the dragon stories were treated in the way the story has been treated so far I would be gutted. Game play etc. aside, the writing and storytelling here (which based on the name, I would assume was the point) has, for me, been pretty appalling. Bad, boring, characters, a lack of focus, and often bad dialogue (seriously, NPCs referring to Divinities Reach as ‘DR’ was just horrible. That’s how players speak, sure, but I wouldn’t expect a game character to do it. it pulled me right out of the experience.) has all plagued the experience and lessened the game for me.

5) Probably my biggest issue with the Living story is also my biggest issue with the Personal Story too: as the player I want to feel as if I am the hero in whatever situation I am playing in. It is, for the record, impossible to feel heroic in a game when you are just one of dozens, scores or even hundreds of people fighting the same fight as you are. Events like Tequatl or Claw of Jormag or the Scarlet Invasions don’t make a player feel heroic, they feel like a soldier. Playing Second fiddle to Trahearne in the Personal story was not great but even that felt better than events like the jubilee where I literally stood there and watched Logan (a character I personally like at least a little) be the protagonist of the scene while I did nothing. I wanted to be in the arena fighting those Clock knights. I wanted to be focus of the action. The same is true of the TA Aetherpath, where the players are essentially just running around causing distractions for Caithe. We are bit-players, background characters, extras to the story. if we weren’t here the other chracters would get by just fine. Destinies Edge, Braham, Rhox, Queen Jennah et al more or less seem to have it covered. It’s frustrating and boring to be ‘along for the ride’.

I’m sorry but I have to give a failing grade to how “The Living World” as a concept has been constructed. The big reasons are as follows:

1. We all play at different speeds. The beauty of GW1 is that I can fire up any of those games at any time and play the content and not miss a beat if I have to take a few days, weeks or months off.

2. The above alludes to the reason I play games. It’s a release, a mini-vacation…a retreat from the real world and the pressures and the activities that I must apply myself too. The schedule y’all are trying to adhere to with new content has turned the game into what essentially feels like a grind…this isn’t the ideal feeling for a vacation spot from reality. Especially since life so very often gets in the way and I can’t play every day/week. When I come back online, I feel like my character is at a huge disadvantage because the world moved on without him. That’s simply not fun.

3. GW1 with it’s episodic content kept the epic feel of my character and what was happening in the world around him. The cut scenes were involving and developed the NPCs into characters I actually cared for. Honestly, the only NPC I’ve given a kitten about in GW2 died way too soon. RIP Tybalt.

4. Because of the hectic and hurried schedule y’all feel the need to adhere to in order to give us new content I feel the story lines and story writing have suffered tremendously. I’d much rather go 6 months to a year and get a huge epic expansion (like what you initially planned with GW1) than a bunch of poorly written checklists involving mundane, confusing and not epic content (which is what I feel has happened.)

I do apologize for being mostly negative but I’ve seriously felt sad about this game since release. The obsessive compulsive in me still plays because there are boxes to be checked but in all honesty, I’m just waiting for something better to come along. This just doesn’t “feel” like Guild Wars to me at all. And that’s mostly because the story and story telling simply isn’t that good.

Step 1: Kill Trahearne off before the next Elder Dragon. Or….let the next Elder Dragon kill him. That way we can take over our personal story (and possibly living story…if those are different things now) from the hijacker and feel conflicted when killing the dragon that did us such a favor.

Step 2: Add in player housing b/c there is almost literally no reason to visit the home instance. Why even call it the home instance, if I don’t have a home? I know I started as a street rat, but still, the Hero of Shaemoor should still have some kind of housing, right? Let our achievement points effect the quality of house that we have. Let us view trophies from living and personal story there. Let those nodes that have no business being randomly placed at a random locations inside of a sector of a city be placed in some kind of backyard area. Let us feel like our characters actually live in the world, instead of poofing in and out of existence. Let us see our impact, visually, in a nice, player housing area.

Step 3: Focus on Elder Dragons. There are five (six) reasons that we shouldn’t be focusing on Scarlet as a major threat to the world, and they’re all dragons that are out to get our magic (hide yo kidz, hide yo wife.) Honestly, I thought Flame & Frost would be leading to Braham chipping Jormag’s Tooth and leading us to fight Jormag as was hinted at the end of the personal story, but it didn’t happen. Now there’s Scarlet, and she could potentially provoke a dragon to attack, but…like…that just kind of makes the elder dragons look like mindless animals, like they’re somehow inferior to Scarlet, even though they’re more compelling villains and were built up as the primary antagonists of GW2.

Step 4: Stop being so Sylvari-centric. I find it hard to enjoy a personal or living story that consistently seems to be more interesting if you’re a specific race. I’ve played the personal story with every race up until the part where Trahearne takes over, and the story seemed obviously more coherent and engaging when I played as a Sylvari. For Norn, it was more like, “Norn hero-intraining? Hope to defend Hoelbrak from the forces of Jormag? Here’s the Pale Tree, go kill Zhaitan. BTW This Sylvari is now the main character of your personal story.” Now it seems that the Living story is following this trend…just this time, they’re hijacking the role of main antagonist instead of min protagonist.

• Personal Story: Trahearne(the Kanye West of the GW2 story) hogs the spotlight.
• Southsun: Canach plays with giant crabs and plant pheromones (love makes people enraged, too…it works…right?)
• Flame & Frost: Oooooh a Norn and a Charr might be the focus. This lady with red hair who set up the Molten Alliance sounds interesting.
• Dragon Bash – Queen’s: Okay, some humans, too. Variety is the spice of life for the racial focus of this next story. I wonder who Scarlet is and why the Aetherblades are scared of her.
• Pretty much everything else: sees Scarlet…..%$#@, another Sylvari is the real focus of all of this. I bet she’s in cahoots with Canach and Trahearne. Time to go burn down the Pale Tree before it creates anymore of these role-stealing characters.

Step 5: Base connective Living Story events between Elder Dragons on GW1 and GW2 established lore. I mean…ya’ll wrote the stuff….use it. Also, don’t leave loose-ended mysteries for us to draw our own conclusion to. It’s only satisfying for getting us engaged in the world and caring about the story if it is eventually resolved. We’ll only care enough to guess what’s next if there is a what’s next.

Step 6: Add in lore books for the personal housing to catch up players to living story. Send new lore books (newspapers?) to players in in-game mail (like those stories ya’ll post online that most people don’t pay attention to.)

Step 7: Listen to WoodenPotatoes and take into account his analysis and criticisms.

Step 8: Connect the personal story to the living story. Living personal story? Or at least give us a way to look at the story steps, such as with the lore books, or with a panel like the one for personal story. Heck, at the end of the personal story, add in a series of cut-scene like things (like the opening after character creation) that will bring the player up to speed on what happened in the world after the fall of Zhaitan. If you want to add in new areas with story related to living story and evolves with the story, keep it in the world and bar players who haven’t completed the personal story from entering the area. That way, at least everyone playing the content has an appropriate context of for the events and a grasp of the story prior top entering the living world.

Step 9: Keep the story steps consistent. No, “And now for something entirely different because we revamped Tequatl”, or, “It’s Halloween so Scarlet can’t be a part of this story, because we don’t mix our chaotic evil aligned characters with our comically mad characters (would Mad King Thorn be Chaotic Good?).” Honestly, Halloween would have been more interesting if it involved the story segments leading up to it. Scarlet would have gone well with the Mad King’s personality. She could have been his “Queen for a day” like the live stream comment for Valentine’s Day (making Scarlet scarlet). Scarlet could have been involved in uncovering the Bloody Prince. Tassi could have led us to the reliquary just in time for us to see Scarlet mess with it/steal it/etc causing the Bloody Prince to awaken.

Step 10: ??????

Step 11: Profit

I’d like to float a concept about having a Historic Living “Book” Server where players can guest to go back and visit content that has been removed on the current servers.

I realize that there are both technical and conceptual issues with this.

I feel it’s important to address the basic issue that the Living Story creates:

The entire premise of an MMO is grounded in the concept of a persistent world.

Living Story breaks this unwritten covenant.

That is the main issue.

Content occurs that players may miss, cannot revisit, cannot replay, cannot do in their own timeframe, at their own pace. The content is not saved. It is neither MMO content, nor even RTS content (because the temporary “campaigns” are not even saved.)

Beyond that, there are two psychological issues:

1) The pace and (lack of) substance of the temporary content can create “aversion therapy”.

2) The pace and demand can create unwanted performance pressure which is the antithesis of what an entertainment medium is ostensibly designed to create. In other words: an MMO should be a device for relaxation and/or enjoyment.

Regarding 1)

Anecdotally: (clipping from a post I’ve left elsewhere):

I observed that after I deliberately skipped the last two sets of temporary content (anything done was totally accidental), that I became immune to the “pull” and the “excitement”, to the point where I got (forgive me for using this word) disgusted when the Halloween event went in, and I had been looking forward to that since it ended last year. It reminds me of aversion therapy, where a person gorges so much on something “forbidden”, that not only do they not want it anymore, they also can’t tolerate it. (See: movie: Brewster’s Millions). For me, the Living Story feels like candy – overly sweet, empty calories and not something required for sustenance. Much nicer taken as a treat every once in a while than trying to use it as a meal.

It’s not just GW2. I had the same reaction when Trion started churning out “special events” on a continual basis in RIFT. And though I took a lot of flack for it, I was one of the first players to support another player on the forums there who felt Trion needed to slow down. Turns out, we weren’t alone either as later posters demonstrated.

Regarding 2)

See: forum posts since first temporary content was introduced.

It’s easy to say that not doing the temporary content is really player choice, however, as a lot of players have expressed on the general boards, the (psychological) pressure to do it is always hanging there. That’s not a comfortable or enjoyable experience to have with something that should be providing fun and relaxation.

Back to the concept at the top of this post:

Find a way to make temporary content permanent, or slow down the pace, or continue to alienate players like myself with every single 2-week release.

Much of everything I had in mind has been voiced out already in this thread.
I will just add a bit more, not necessarily just in regards to the living world, but the game as a whole and its root problems from my perspective.

I think the foundation of keeping GW2 as a casual game is where all the “dullness” and “no sense of progression” derived from; at least the idea of “casual” Anet had in mind. Arenanet aims for a casual and friendly community, that is great, but it should not be at the expense of the game’s fun-level.

There are no invisible barriers stopping from one player grouping with other regardless of level. The game itself= endgame already as stated by anet’s devs; No hierarchy, no individualism, not much to show off for your toon thus the lack of strong attachment with your toon, everyone is too equal, no sense of personal value, etc.
Solo-play imo lacks any sense of great fun. I believe I speak for most when I would like to feel like a hero. But most contents of the game can only be done with a group of other players, at least under a reasonable amount of time which leads to everything said in the above paragraph.
Being put into overflows really doesn’t help the matter; it personally strikes to me as I am an insignificant player, “sorry bro, no room for you”, I am just a number. I am well aware this is to keep the area from being a lagfest and whatnot, but maybe using Gw1’s method of having multiple channels that we players can MANUALLY choose from would be nicer. I don’t like the idea of just being thrown in into a random server like a ragdoll. It is a lot more convenient to join up with your friends as well as opposed to having to party that friend to join into his/her “overflow”. The name “overflow” itself really reeks of negative connotation as well. Maybe I am just overreacting x)
All in all, I guess what I am saying is that I would like more incentives, more of a vertical progression to be applied to the game. We need more accomplishments, not “achievements”.
The living world would naturally be a lot more rewarding this way. So far, whenever I think living story, I think zerging, achievement points and skins.

Guild Wars 2 is a huge world, but a huge world of not much depth. I don’t mean to be a party-crasher, but if it’s one thing GW2 has taught me, it is to never mainly cater to casuals. Casual players don’t need much to keep them happy and engaged. The other players (midcore/hardcore) who spend more time on the game suffer. Near perfect game for RPers though! :-)

I just woke up, so my early apologies for my horrible literature and its subtopics being all over the place haha. I will return with amendments and edits.

P.S Thank you Arenanet for this thread. It is a great step towards making GW2 a better game we all want it to be.

My main problem with the Living Story so far has been the rapid release schedule. Not only is this difficult to keep up with from a player’s standpoint, but it seems like its compromising the quality of the updates. I feel like the updates that get released don’t have nearly enough thought put into them. I’m you know that it takes time to release balanced, fun, and rewarding content, but whatever amount of time it takes currently is not enough.

A marvelous example is Clockwork Chaos. Spending the entire game farming aetherblades was extremely rewarding, and actually doing the minion events rewarded basically nothing. The consequence of this is that many players never actually completed an invasion. However this could have been predicted if there was enough time to think this through. Players are predictable, and they will do whatever makes the most money, or whatever rewards them the fastest. Its your duty to make sure that the predictable behaviour of players will not interfere with the principle goal of the encounter.

If that weren’t bad enough, I genuinely feel as though as soon as a team completes an event, they immediately start on another. There’s basically no time to reflect on what worked and what didn’t, and no break to actually balance some of the content. It was perfectly clear after the first few days that the reward structure of clockwork chaos basically ensured that no players would bother trying to complete it, but nothing was changed, because the team which produced it was probably already working on Tequatl Rising or Twilight Assault. There’s only time for some quick hot fixes for the most glaring of issues.

You also need to spend more time putting yourself in the players’ shoes. This halloween event is a lesson in that. You have released content which is basically fun for nobody.

• The labyrinth doesn’t reward anything that warrants the trouble of going inside, and even in the most crowded servers, its a ghost town most of the day, so much so that latecomers are having trouble completing the meta.
• The clocktower doesn’t award anything besides stuff you’d get from normal jumping puzzles, only much easier, except on the first run. On the first run you get exotic gloves where you can pick the stats, even hard to get stats like sentinels, celestial, and cavalier’s… if you get light or medium. If you get heavy, you’re left with standard craftable prefixes. Which is the bug? I’m not sure. Either you didn’t test it and made heavy unrewarding by accident, or you didn’t test it and made light and medium TOO rewarding by accident.
• Lunatic Inquisition is completely unrewarding unless you deliberately suicide and get lucky enough to get a villager kill…. which is very difficult because most of the villagers have also committed suicide and are hunting down the handful of people who don’t realise that as a villager they can’t win and won’t be rewarded.
• The only new skins are from the gem store. I understand its an important source of revenue, but its a real bummer when you can’t get the only new skin content from the game.
• The cost of the recipes for the gifts and the mini are absurd, and its impossible to get them unless you buy the candy corn and rare mats on the trading post. Because of that, it becomes a matter of making money, not participating in the event.

I’m not saying that all holiday events have to be more rewarding, monetarily, than frostgorge, but they need to at least be fun. Players are willing to miss out on money for fun. Players are also willing to miss out on money for exclusive rewards. But when the event isn’t fun and you can just buy the required materials as with the halloween event, it just falls apart.

Thanks to Arenanet for taking the time to do something like this.

I’ve been a huge fan of the GW series since the original. I even made people come back to GW2 7-8 months after they initially left. Praising the living story and the content every 2 weeks.

But Thinking about all of it again, there’s some stuff that I thought could’ve been handled better.

When Flame and Frost started, it was kind of slow. But I expected that, you guys were adapting to this new living story concept, and needed time to work on the content. It was slow, but the story lasted multiple months, slowly building up on the intrigue and ending with a “finale”, taking down the molten weapon facility.

Throughout that story, we got introduced to two new NPCs, and we also helped them out in their current crisis, giving us a bit of backstory on both. Both of those characters got more lore added to their baggage with their respective short story on the blog.

The multiple months story arc gave the story time to evolve, and it also gave us time to discuss/speculate what was going on. So I do think that Flame and Frost was neat as a multiple month event, but was lacking meat to fill a full month of content during the first two months.

Let’s move to Dragon Bash, Sky Pirates, Bazaar and Cutthroat politics, because I find this is another Story Arc that kinds of tie in together.

Dragon Bash was a nice little festival, but with way too many fetch quest(of high requirements) This was the first time I didn’t complete my Living Story achievement. I got bored doing it, especially since we had to go make runs to burn the effigies, and then do the exact same run for Sky Pirates with a ridiculous amount of time to get the achievement. I think this has mostly been fixed now, didn’t really find any annoyingly high “fetch” achievements since. What I did like though was the finale event, with Theo Ashford getting killed. I felt that instanced pretty neat, and it really gave the sense of urgency that Lion’s Arch was under attack, and you had to escort the survivors.

What I would’ve liked to have a bit more depth was what came next. We had to investigate the event, find people on the map over multiple days, content/story evolving over 3 days if I remember right. That concept I did love, the evolution of the story within the game, without having to update each day and knowing yeah something is new. What could’ve made it better though is, less guidance for finding the different NPCs, more like cryptic hints/scavenger hunt to find them. Leave clues behind, talk to NPCs, to see if they’ve seen a certain someone pass by. It would’ve been a bit more involving than just GO here behind this rock.

That lead to the sky pirates update where we went inside the aetherblade lair, which was nicely done and a great piece of content (happy to see it coming back as a fractals). Now we had an extra council spot to fill, which tied in really nicely to put the NPC we’ve been following around these past few months in the council seat. But she wasn’t alone wanting a spot on the council seat, because we had to have an election. So out of the blue, we get Gnashblade come in, basically no one knew who he was, that places him kind of at disadvantage to Ellen Kiel who we’ve been following for months now. But I have to admit, having a player driven election was a marvelous idea, although poorly executed, like some have mentioned previously.

Bazaar of the four winds I have nothing to say here, the content for this update was just amazing and really well executed. Lore bits were hidden everywhere on that map, if you took the time to listen.

[continuation from above]

Cutthroat Politics Back to the election, Tying achievements to representing each side was really a bad idea. It should’ve been, the first you decide to support was the achievement “path” you would have. and that would cast a single vote for that NPC, not just dropping tokens to cast multiple votes. But all in all, I did like that has a player, I had a choice to make that would impact the game (yet to see the fruits of this though)

After this we’ve been introduce to the new villain, Scarlet, which people seems to hate. She’s suppose to be the mastermind behind all this. Flame and Frost, the Aetherblades, but we haven’t seen much tying all those together. I mean, we know she commands them, but why? why are they at her command? Who are the Aetherblades?

I do like Scarlet, especially after reading her short story. But before we move forward more, I think loose ends need to be taken care of. Which brings me to my main problem with the living story.

Each month we get 2 content update, closely related to the same storyline within the month. But each month’s story doesn’t seem to be linked much to what came before and what comes after. Which feels like reading a book and skipping a couple of chapters. We’re missing information in between. The living story doesn’t flow well. Although, you might have learned from this with this recent update.

During the Blood and Madness update, you stealthily changed Kessex Hills, in preparation of what was to come, that alone is a HUGE step in the right direction, to make these story flow together. So this way, we kind of know where the story will be moving, in the world, in the upcoming updates. I do think it could still be improved though. Why give us the map changed when Blood and Madness came out? Why not add an event in there, of defending against Krait invasions that are coming to attack the shores of the lake. Chopping trees, pillaging villages. You wouldn’t be able to stop it from happening, make it so that after a while the places gets overrun and then you can make it so the trees are chopped and villages are destroyed… but yeah a step in the right direction.

tl;dr
Add more flow to the story, like you did in Blood and Madness. Release the main content, and hide stuff that’s coming up next, just to know where we’re heading. And not just adding it in, tie in events around some stuff. But don’t advertise it, people there will experience it, and the end result would still be the same.

Add more story to the living story, more npc interaction, make use of the personality trait that basically does nothing.

Add Longer events/permanent events. Instead of containing a LS update within a month, make it last more than one month, so we can experience more stuff, and it gives you more options to push the story forward in game.

Firstly, I want to say thank you for for the Living Story and dedication to continually improving the game. Below are my opinions and suggestions regarding the LS. I hope that you find them useful.

1. Timeliness. I agree with many of the posters here that the 2-week schedule is exhausting for players (and can only imagine that it is exhausting for you as well). A longer time between LS events would allow more time for developing and bug-testing them. Quality over quantity.

2. Storyline Cohesion. Here I disagree with others. I like that there are several stories running throughout the LS, some with tenuous connection to others. This allows you to experiment with different story ideas. I look forward to the next part of the story featuring Kiel and that it might have little to do with Scarlet.

3. Scarlet. Again, I disagree with others who outright hate Scarlet. I think she is a good villain archetype. However, I do believe that there is room for improvement. There are many different types of villains, and her character is refreshingly quirky. But quirkiness isn’t enough. Currently, there are no known stakes with Scarlet. She doesn’t feel like a threat, which makes many feel that her quirkiness is too cartoony. My recommendation is to let her win. Give her a storyline where she comes out on top. This is what made the GW1 villains work. Khilbron effectively deceived us. Shiro killed us flat out (don’t do this again ). Varesh massacred our forces in a well-laid trap. Even Zhaitan was responsible for the death of our mentor. Give us a reason to hate and fear Scarlet. Make it hurt and make her look powerful doing it. I want to hear her taunting laugh of victory so that we’ll all want nothing more than to punch her and put a stop to her. Not because we don’t like the character, but because she’s our villain. Right now her cackling looks delusional because we whipped her so many times. It’s hard to take seriously.

4. Don’t focus on the dragons. Again, I’m probably in the minority here, but with good reason. I feel the dragons need more than what the LS can offer…yes, an expansion. The issue is that once a LS is complete, it’s gone. That event doesn’t happen again. Fighting the dragons is something that all players should be able to do whether they started the game late or took breaks from it. The LS risks denying them that. However, the LS may be a good vehicle to introduce a new dragon, but the story to take it down should be more like the Personal Story.

What a brilliant community! Yet, developers somehow still do not understand what players want.

Also, please invent a tool that can modify players’ achievement as soon as possible. Some achievements are not fun and I do not want to do it again due to your server crash or buggy event.

Psycho Robot.7835:

You also need to spend more time putting yourself in the players’ shoes.

Not meaning to go completely off topic here, but I think this is a very important point to reiterate.

I appreciate this Collaborative Development approach and even hold out hope that it will truly help the game in the long run. I don’t, however, really get why it had to exist in the first place. All of the topics brought forward in this thread, and many of the topics suggested in the initial Collab threads have already received a healthy amount of debate and discussion.. some even nearly going back to the game’s launch. I understand that many of the developers at ANet do play and probably enjoy the game, but it doesn’t seem like they have truly viewed the game as the players do for a long time.

Not sure if it has been mentioned and I’d like to read every post, but time is tight. So here goes my input, which focuses on the continuity of the living story. I wrote this around Queen’s Jubilee patch (edited and added things now), but still stands true, more so than before due to not being any changes to this:

What happened to the people that were suppossed to get their homes/jobs back after the Shining Blade finished repairs on the Great Collapse? What about Riot Alice? Didn’t even matter. Was never mentioned. No dialogues outside cutscenes and the forced comedy pair of the minstrel and the drone. No mention of the noises that were being heard down there. NPC’s still have that chapter’s dialogues. Someone just decided to completely delete that part of the game and build on top of it without further explanation or consequences.

http://i.imgur.com/vAiFGVO.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/G5QbfVS.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/lyZYWtu.jpg

What happened to Mai Trin? Why is she stuck in that cell for months (in-game time too) without even a different dialogue considering Aetherblades have been a big part of this “living” story and all that has happened?

http://i.imgur.com/wqTXb1f.jpg

What happened to Kiel? She won the election and now she’s standing on the same spot for over a month, they didn’t even bother to move her out of the fountain, just built on top of her with the same dialogue. (They moved her out now, but same dialogue.)

http://i.imgur.com/86ueJS4.jpg

What about Braham and Ottilia? She was going to leave with a merchant and go on her merry way MONTHS ago. But she’s still sitting there. Braham still crying about it with her three feet away, with no mention of whatever happened in the pavilion. Cragstead is the same as before, stuck in time. On that note also, it justt pooped out of nowhere, which makes little to no sense. This has improved with other updates gladly.

Honor Guards are still waiting for emmisaries, for what? It’s over. Should have been removed a LONG time ago.

We got “invaded” across 13 different maps (more like invaded random patches of wilderness standing to be killed). And still are. But it has no real impact. It doesn’t change anything. I doubt anyone even cared, they just wanted to farm it.

Zephyrites? The dark magic/hidden stuff in the sanctum? Will we have to wait another year to see the next part in that story? Which was really interesting actually, so I hope it’s not like Halloween where we wait one year for the next part.

What happened to The Pact? The Vigil? The Order? The Durmand Priory? Everyone related to the “personal story”? Destiny’s Edge? What’re they so busy about always sending us to do stuff without taking part? After over a year they’ve not considered at all facing Elder Dragons or champions? Just sit there saying they’re busy without commenting what’s going on? I understand it has taken a lot of time and deaths, and need to recover, but little updates on activities would makes us feel more involved… plus, we’re the kitting second in command, yet we have nothing to say or do or even been informed of.

I think I wouldn’t even mind if we weren’t forced to swallow the living world concept, that its an ever changing evolving world. Call it “story” and no one would mind it. But, as with the personal story, you’re selling us something that you’re not delivering as expected.

You sell us bacon, and give us ham.

On a positive note: for example, what you did with the next update was really interesting. There was no mention of it and we just had to find it by chance and word of mouth. That’s the kind of mystery and introduction to updates that, I’m sure, most like to have.

Also, I’m sure no one would mind not having updates every two weeks, don’t force yourselves. Quality over quantity. I think it’s both tiring for us and for your teams.