My two cents.

Temporary content

• Living Story should have a permanent impact on the world. If it is a simple new threat every 2 weeks that is being taken care of, players will eventually get bored.
• New players joining Guildwars 2 community permanently lose an opportunity to experience all the work you have done.

Pace too fast

• Two weeks to complete a content is way too fast for casual players.
• Completionists feel the need to participate in said content in that time frame to complete all achievements, especially when it will be either removed or be available next year. This makes living story more like a work instead of enjoyment. Players should participate in that because they like it, not because it will be unavailable or because they will miss their achievement points.
• Go back to monthly or even bimonthly living story releases with more meaningful content than smashing pinata.

Focusing players in one area

• While it may looks appealing, especially to show how the game is flourishing it comes with few, very serious design drawbacks.
• It makes server lagging very noticeable. Everyone hates when they cannot fully control their own characters because of connection bottleneck.
• A work of designers that create new champions and bosses gets fully wasted. The reason is called a zerg. Because of 5 person aoe limit any champion fighting more than 5 people will have limited mechanics. If said zerg includes more than 30 people a vast portion of them treat those champions as dummies, literally. They spent their time in the game on attacking enemies you spent time on designing without even considering what those enemies can even do. Very good examples are temple bosses.
• Recently, I started to guest on empty servers like Vabbi with 2-3 friends and we tried to do temple events in Orr with our little group. I have never thought I would say that but you can actually design great and enjoyable fight. Bosses like Statue of Dwayna or Risen Priest of Melandru became one of my favourite, on the level of Giganticus Lupicus or Legendary Imbued Shaman. That clearly shows your more than capable of creating engaging fights but this work goes to waste because zerg completely negates every single mechanic of almost all the bosses. Players that do them on daily basis with zergs most likely would have no idea how to fight world bosses in limited group.
• I would say that if you would have moved almost all the temples bosses to Seer path in Ruined City of Arah (path 4) and replaced dungeon version of those priests that path would be the single best designed content you have ever created.
• To put it more simply, focusing players creates zergs, zergs are rewarded equally because of the design of not sharing loot, that in turns leads to very lazy gameplay (you can literally go make a cup of tea while killing world bosses) that completely negates all the hard work you put in creating combat mechanics.

Old content forgotten

• Living Story premise sounds great, a breathing living world. But it comes with the price, a steep one. Old content like dungeons or fractals is completely forgotten, left to rot with its bugs and faulty reward system.
• Replacing old paths with new ones like you did with Twilight Arbor is not exactly an answer, especially when the new path is being designed as a story mode path. This new path has also few issues like relying on AI, length and not enough rewards for its length.
• Last instanced, group based and permanent content update was at the start of 2013 when Ascalonian Catacombs revamp went live. You have enough content, there is no need to forget about it and create new one, there is a need to update it with meaningful additions or revamps.

I’ll bite. There’s not much to say that hasn’t already been said, but I’m gonna throw in my $.02 anyways.

Content Permanence
I’m a sporadic GW2 player (for a multitude of reasons, one of them being the living story) and every time I come back, there’s new events going on that have very little or absolutely nothing to tie them in with what has happened. There’s no real way for me to experience what has happened in my month break, instead I have to hear it from other players or go look around online to read a web page about it.

Content needs to be put into place and stay there (or at least have a way for me to experience it). In GW1, this was handled extremely well by quests and missions. If I forgot how Rurik was killed and/or why it’s important, I could always go back to replay the Frost Gate mission. On my Ranger in Guild Wars 1, I can still go back and finish the quest for Keiran and Gwen’s wedding, or the Shining Blade’s campaign against the White Mantle.

Instead, all I see are a bunch of disjointed quests which have no real impact to me or the world overall, and they’re something I want no part of, especially considering the limited time I have to participate due to the release schedule.

Content Quality
Another problem with the living story is that the quality is not up to par. Players expect an engrossing (or at least entertaining) story. Having Scarlet stand around in Divinity’s Reach, acting like a lifeless doll while threatening the queen should not be acceptable by your own standards…it certainly isn’t by ours. Guild Wars’ story was definitely engrossing, even the parts I disliked. I felt for Jora when she killed her brother. I cursed the Charr when they let loose The Searing on Ascalon. I laughed when I went around punching punching Stone Summit Dwarves with Kilroy. I smiled when Gwen and Keiran finally got married.

Nothing in the living story has moved me. I couldn’t care less about Braham (is that even the right spelling of his name?) and his issues with the Charr/Dredge alliance (notice how I keep forgetting the name of lore?). Hell, the only thing in the personal story I felt any emotion towards was Tybalt's death. Considering this is supposed to be my story, that’s pretty bad.

Content Distribution
One thing that really bugs me about the living story is how it’s used for you to generate revenue. It makes it seem like you guys are pushing out half-finished content so we feel pressured to hop onto the gem store and open our wallets. And while I understand you obviously need revenue to keep the game afloat, I feel the way this is tackled is distasteful. With the limited schedule in regards to the living story, it feels like the game is screaming “Limited offer!”, “Buy Now!”, “These deals won’t last forever!”… so instead of playing a AAA title which engrosses me and makes me want to spend money, it feels like I’m playing with a sleazy used car salesman who’s gonna make me immediately experience buyer’s remorse.

Content Schedule
I’ve already touched on this in the other topics, but I think it needs to be reiterated. A 2 week schedule, even while being handled by multiple teams on a rotation, puts out lower quality content that feels rushed and has little use aside from directing us (sometimes not very subtly I might add) to the gem store. Instead, I’d love to see new content rolled out every other month. This gives your teams time to develop in-depth stories of higher quality and iron out any bugs. I think that by doing this, I’ll feel respected as a player and customer and would probably be willing to spend some cash on gems from time to time (something I’ve absolutely refused to do since launch).

But, I’m not trying to just bash you guys into submission. I really think that there’s lots of potential with the living story. The approach and implementation need some heavy tweaking, but if done right, it can be the success you guys envisioned.

I’d like to enter the discussion since I feel a great gap between the greatness the original GW2 world represents in contrast to the shallowness of the living story. I think all important things have already been mentioned multiple times in this thread, so I will just enumerate my major concerns briefly (in all subjectivity!):

1) The “story” part of the “living story” is its greatest weakness. Not only you have to read it on the web page instead of experiencing it in-game, but it is also arbitrary to a very high degree. There are no specific tension points, let alone a curve of tension with some climax. Characters which could be interesting when the player gets to know them better stay always on the surface (Rox, Braham, Majory, …). Immersion into a story can be generated be emotional bonds to characters and their fate. But there ist nothing really to tell in the current LS (which is a grand contrast to how the characters were presented in some presentation videos where the creators of the characters spoke about them! I see there was some sort, but I don’t need to just see it in a video, I need to experience it in the game!)
2) The foes of the LS are not worthwhile. I do not even necessarily need to fight dragons, but I need some mystical, dark and evil foe. The Aetherblades are a joke, no pun intended to the creators. But in my opinion they don’t look anywhere scary or dangerous, I even find their look rather ridiculous. I have killed them by the dozens alone. An example of truly terrifying, mystical foe: The Iron Ones of Spellforce. Aetherblades? Scarlet (don’t get me started on her…)? Nah.

Now, to really get some discussion, let me stress my consent with this idea:

PanLazarus.5497:

To be constructive: why not put something like >phasing< to the world. In this stage of storyline (Zhaitan has been killed) there could be 2 instances of orr. The first as it already is, for players who haven’t fought him, and the second with maps on which we can clean orr from his henchmen. That should pretty well fit a serverwide cooperative content for weeks in which orr would change its face completely. Put hearts to it that firstly have to be unlocked by fighting a big boss or something else that needs a lot of players (for instance collecting 10000 whatever). Finally make orr a “normal” questing zone, before opening another say 3 maps that lead the players to the next elder dragon (content to last one year or so).

I have thought about this myself a few times and have actually come to a very similar conclusion on my own. I’m not exactly a fan of phasing, but how else could you REALLY make the world living without taking the old content from new players? Why would this idea be a great thing in my opinion?

1) The fate of Orr really touched me since I heard from it in GW1. In GW2, the whole story is told in even more detail if you want to see it. It is such a great tragedy! So, what do we have: Something the player (at least me) is really interested in, something I really like to fix (as I always wanted to reconquer Ascalon for the humans, but I guess this isn’t gonna happen ;-))
2) The personal story talkes about “cleansing Orr” the whole time in the second part. And we actually succeed! How great is that! Now – how thrilling would it be to actually cleanse Orr, fight the remaining undead, re-build cities, help settlers live there in all the ruins and tormented land?
3) The cleansing, building, defending could be perfectly modelled in living story where one stage comes after the other. You could even get more detailed, making LS episodes about a major attack of one just-built base or city players must repel. AND you could even set some score that must be reached by the players and when it’s not, the city FALLS and will be ruins after the episode.

I know that we have – even with the phasing-technique – a major technical problem here since of course players would like to participate in the current dynamic events that are going on. I don’t have a solution for that, I just want to try and show what would get me excited. That is, while this reads like a really concrete and perhaps not realisable idea, the whole thing is an example. You could do something similar easily with a complete new territory right now, no phasing required. Only then we have to tell are story beforehand that gets players excited to fight for the new land… :-)

This thread is awsome! I havnt read EVERYTHING but u have so many good suggestions that I agree with! Maybe it happens that I say similar things again.

Well, Add new areas now ands then Like southsun. BUT – when adding one, make it complete with hearts and map copletion ability (pls add hearts an the ability to map-compleate Southsun). This make u spend more time there. But it doesn’t exklude the ability to develop it further as u have actually done on Southsun.

Short Storys – Let them make into the game! Go speak to someone in a Town who can tell u the story with a cinematic or someting… Perhaps one of u’r family members (where are they btw) are this graet story-teller that keeps u informed while sitting at a camp fire or something… An NPC in u’r home-instance perhaps. Would be lovley. I hate Reading walls of text, but I love taking part of the lore.

Scarlet and other evil forces are creating Alliances… We are looking for ONE ally (lower race of some sort) in the Personal story to defeat Zaithan.
Whatabout finding new allies against the elder dragons as a part of LS/LW? We could explore new areas/go for expeditions to find new races/tribes/etc (Tengu, Fauns,… I guess u can think of plenty here…).
This could be an awsome way to open new areas with hearts and map compleation ability. While meeting the ne potential allies (maybe all are no friendly) we could learn new skills, find new pets for rangers, perhaps we could even learn how to use new weapons from them. With this meetings we could also get ideas to new armour skins etc… Loads of things that are “just put into the game” today could come throught LS.

I also agree on that more of the skins that we earn could be Seved where the Zenith skins and the radiant /hellfire things are. As it is now many of my skinns are just collecting dust in the bank due to being soulbound. Over time u change u’r colors/gear for characters… and it would be nice to be able to pick up some of the skins…

I love when I see yellow starts – instances hat u kan do – THAT to me is LS/LW! U get something to solve, a story that moves forward!

Huge zerging feasts are just a way to get gold/luck. I don’t Count Tequatl as a zerg thing… as u need to cooperate here in an organised way. Tequatl is a very good and well made big scale event I think!
In a zerg there are just many ppl running around shooting at everyting in their path, waiting for drops. Big zergs doesnt feel very LS/LW to me. Its ok if they are arranged to be like in the pavillion. THAT is a place that is good for zergs.

I also find grinding boring. Do this X times to achive X. Find X Dragon teeth…. Set X number of effigies on fire… etc. The halloween doors arn’t that bad though – as different things happen when u open them. That is a bit better than doin EXACTLY the same thing over and over again.

Tha scarlet invasion as it is now (popping up every 4.th hour or so) is also a good thing. Then u can go on a zerg feast once ina while if u like. I do it sometimes but not Always.

Another thing that happens when small portions of content is released is that, that part gets overrun with content-hungry players just devoering it! Maybe realease some bigger patch once in a (greater) while that does not follow the 2 week cycle. The 2 weekers are good too – they keep u occupied with SOMETHING to do if u don’t lvl new character etc. But – there would be one team focusing on bigger releases that we could have like 2-4 times a year or so. Those should be SOLID ones – like minor expansions or something (perhaps even adressing the personal story apart from LS/LW).

Thank u for tahking u’r time reading. I love the way u bring in the players ideas by having threads like this! Very much apriciated!

The Living World conept in general? I like it. I am not one of the people who think content should be released in an expansion. I can take it in small doses.

That being said, in the execution, some things could definitely be improved. Other things have already improved.

Living world achievements: you’re doing it right

The way you handle living story achievement has, in my opinion, greatly improved:

• The living story meta should be easy enough for all types of players (including super casual ones) to complete, simply by playing the game, with a minimum of grinding involved. The last few updates got this right by including one or even two daily achievements. I’d rather carve 5 pumpkins on a Monday than 250 over the course of two weeks.
• “skill” or “patience” type of achievements should be tied to permanent content, while “story progression” and “participation” type of achievements should be tied to the temporary living story chapters. The Tequatl and TW Aetherpath chapters got this right.

I feel this is a good direction to go in, and would be happy if you kept it this way.

Is two weeks too fast?

While I personally feel I can keep up with the two-week rythm because I’m relatively flexible with my own schedule, most people on this forum think that two weeks is too fast. I think this perception changed a little when much the pressure was taken out of the achievements (see the paragraph above).

I would like to point something out though in response to your own argument, which I think is flawed.
You once said (I’m paraphrasing): “We monitored player activity and saw that player numbers dropped after 2 weeks, so we increased the frequency of updates accordingly.”
Now that you add content every two weeks, I am trying to get everything done in the first week – a) so I have a safety buffer and b) because achievements, sadly, now have a track record of breaking in the middle of the living story chapter. So I have to try and get everything done in the first week.

No matter what timeframe you choose, you will always have more players in the first half of it – until the point where you push players so far that they can’t even do that anymore and need all the available time to complete the content at all.

Handling bugs in Living World

I’m in two minds about this.

On one hand, I totally get that you don’t want to dedicate all the precious dev time to fixing bugs for content that will be gone in 2-4 weeks anyway.

On the other hand, the temporary nature of the content (including achievements) creates pressure for the players, so the acknowledging of bugs becomes more important.

In my opinion, there should be a separate bug forum for living world bugs. Maybe even on a per-chapter basis. In that forum, any reported bugs should be acknowledged. If the comment is, “We see that this is not working as intended, but we don’t have time to fix it / have other priorities / etc.” then that is preferable to silence, which is perceived as “we don’t care” and/or “we don’t read bug reports”.

Delivery of information in game

I see you’re trying to do a lot of things – in-game mails, markers on the maps, etc. Many people have pointed out that this isn’t enough because it doesn’t necessarily give the player enough context. Some players have made rather good suggestions (ranging, from “short stories in the hero tab” to an “in-game library” to “achievements that encourage players to seek out information on their own”). I know that you’re already aware of this, so, well, keep working on it.

The story itself, style, mechanics, etc.

Some chapters were more fun to me than other chapters, but all in all, I’m pretty content with it. I personally don’t care that the story didn’t feel super epic, I find a lot of pleasure in smaller-scale, more personal stories anyway. And I wouldn’t tell your writers how to do their jobs, I’d rather they surprise me.

I want to say that I appreciate the level of experimentation. For instance, I know that the election chapter wasn’t very popular, but I love that you tried it out, and hope you will try more things like it in the future.

That’s all I’ve got.

My experience of the last updates (well “last” means since April) is, living story is not about the story rather the achievements. The story is just something, that defines the kind of the content, but the way the content is played is defined by the achievements. This is even more extreme since the account rewards.

An other problem is the temporary content, or a bit more unspecific, the game dictates a timetable (this also includes ascended crafting). When I play a game, i want to decide by myself when I do which kind of content. But actually the game defines “If you want to see xxx do it in the period from a to b.” Because of that I’m loosing interest in the game.

Also a problem is the lack of quality. Not just the living story, there are many things that need to be improved. Guild Wars 2 gameplay is really good, for small groups, but actually there just seems to be mass content, which leads first to lags( and other technical problems) and second players to rushing content, this totally destroys the atmosphere of the game and nobody realizes the story, instead it’s just about reaching the achievements. (see above).

Lack of quality also means the kind of content:
– the characters are everything from boring to annoying. Most (living story) characters seems to be simplified stereotypes. The only remarkable characters I really enjoyed playing with were Tybalt and Forgal from the personal story.
– There is so much lore already created (Mursaat, White Mantle, …), but actually I don’t want this cool content wasted for a 2 week temporary update. What GW needs is permanent content, new areas, new dungeons, even a continuation of the personal story would be better than this boring story pieces we’re getting now, etc. But I have to add at the beginning I really liked the idea of the living story, to explore different stories in the world.

This is all that spontaneously came to my mind, i probably continue later, I don’t have enough time right now.

Hello GW2 Development Team,
I think like many other players that the pace in which LW content being released too fast. Here are some thoughts i have about LW and its problems :

You should probably consider that you have the privilege of having a player base who are completionist-minded and well experienced RPG players. Of course there is nothing worse for such a player to miss a content and the skins, minis and rewards tied to it. I think the LW content should be on monthly basis. I dont suggest that every content should be permanent. Its good to be able to have a Weapon skin which others dont, because they missed the opportunity. Its ok. Its makes your Character fell unique.

But, logging in everyday and this being not enough to get everything is just too much. The pace is still too fast. A monthly LW would reach the same goal. And I think, having some Permanent and Temporary LW contents mixed together is the best approach. This can and should be underlined with a strong Story. For an example : Having the Zephyr Sanctum docked for a brief time to get a trade agreement, and flying off again is just understandable, and in this case a good example of a temporary content.
Having Permanent content means changes to the existing world, which is the Core of LW in my opinion. Something happens in the world and stays that way.

Temporary contents can for an example include all kind of Side-Stories like aetherblades and zephyrites and holiday events. Permanent content should have strong bind to the world and its story. Tequatl is a good example. Scarlet not.

Many players co,plain about the quality of the stories of LW events. I think this is a result of making too much time-pressure on players. Im sure that you are overly capable of creating and telling good stories. But, you should also consider the consuming part of the storytelling. You can make the most amazing story and put it in a Dungeon with the most beautiful level-design, sounds and graphics. But when the player means only to get the Meta reward as fast as possible so he can return to his champ train, he will still complain about bad story. You dont leave us enough time to experience and absorb the LW content.

As a player who plays on daily basis, i must confess my alter ego in game, experiences a stressed state of a depressed man in a locked-in situation. Knowing not what to do, overwhelmed by the amount of content and possiblities, i choose to do….nothing. I dont even try, knowing time would not be enough. I just stay there in LA and read the Global chat.

Dungeons, Fractals, Champ Trains, World Bosses, World Completion, WvW, PvP, Guild Bounties, Jumping Puzzles, Activites, Making new charactes, Personal Stories… there are so many things in GW2, which is GREAT and we THANK YOU for it. But please, to make a compromise between Specialized players and Completionists, do not let the LW content compete with the rest of the Game. Slow the pace down.

This in case , would even let you more time to develop and will result in better content and relaxed developers and happy players

We’re having a LS set in Kessex hills, but we aren’t going behind the tengu wall or into the wizards tower – I think this really sums up what’s wrong with the direction of the LS atm. There’s so many intriguing, unfinished stories already in the game, and yet we are getting a failed joker-type villain who has long overstayed her welcome.

Carxaroth.4129:

My experience of the last updates (well “last” means since April) is, living story is not about the story rather the achievements. The story is just something, that defines the kind of the content, but the way the content is played is defined by the achievements. This is even more extreme since the account rewards.

Yes, that’s true. Instead of playing some story with characters I like, I get an intro video, then a good dozen of achievements to fulfil and perhaps an ending video. Story density: minimal. Grinding for achievements: maximal. Fun: near minimal.

A lot of unreasonable people don’t like the Living Story because it has nothing to do with dragons. I completely agree with your position on that argument: adding significant area to the game dilutes the playerbase and turns existing areas into ghost towns. Feedback: Stop talking about dragons. This is creating the false perception that a new one is coming really really soon: just look at everyone loosing their nuts thinking that the Nightmare Tower is Mordremoth. Talk about dragons when they are on the project plan – not before.

I think the more reasonable people have problems with Scarlet (or possibly the Sylvari in general – far too much of the living story has them as central characters). That’s the impression I get at least. I don’t really know how you could fix her either. The quote in my signature basically sums up what I think is the problem with her (she’s the Jar Jar Binks of Guild Wars 2) and I really don’t know how you can write yourself out of that one. A lot of people have been saying “kill her off,” while I don’t think that’s really constructive I think it might be along the right lines. Maybe have her go on a sabbatical and kill her off in the books between GW2 and GW3 – that way you don’t really destroy the temporal stability in your game.

Or make her get really personal: at least for now maybe you could build up some more healthy hatred (the type that people have for Joffrey in Game of Thrones). It’s a bit of an controversial example (and I have stated it before) and I don’t know how the players would react, but one thing you could do in an upcoming living story is allow her minions to attack players wherever they might be (the entire overworld map, minus dungeons, instances and cities) – and ensure that these minions would kill a lone person. Players would have to group up just to move around (we would actually be intimidated) and we would want to do something to get rid of that harassment. While it’s not something that is necessarily a good idea I think it would be a nice break from her current SOP.

As far as the Living Story except the lore (that’s all Scarlet’s fault) I can’t really argue too much. You guys really mixed it up. I think you should re-evaluate certain repeating events based on perceptions you have created in the past. For example, look at the labyrinth this year – while it was probably as profitable as last year’s you set a different expectation with the crown pavilion. Players got their achievements and simply left. You should have at least matched the crown pavilion. The risk/reward (or effort/reward) was also completely out of whack in some cases, the clock tower has incredibly poor rewards. The only times I finished were for the initial reward and then because some guy trolled me and said “you get 5g for winning the match.” Even though it’s a lot of fun, it’s far too frustrating (especially with lag, it makes the last jump somewhat random) to get a few trick or treat bags at the end.

Your earlier living stories were FAR too grindy (the balloon riding and effigy lighting come to mind). It seems you have moved away from that: don’t go there again, please. There is nothing wrong with your players finishing the content in one week. The living story should be a break from the normal, not a replacement for it.

Regarding stuff like the TA rework: I think you could have dumbed it down for the duration of the living story fortnight. I know you wanted to introduce another more hardcore dungeon into the game (which is great!), but a lot of people felt left out. The fresh content should be puggable, increase the difficulty after the LS forthnight to the level you want it. Another example where you could have done this is Tequatl. (I got into [TKS] before the first kill but I really feel for others who didn’t have a group like this to work through it)

Coming back to the work/other commitments issues – be more aware of this please. I was a MASSIVE fan of tribulation mode, but world 2 was impossible for me because I simply didn’t have the time to sit there and figure it out (world 1, on the other hand, was completely doable and incredibly rewarding).

I think another place where the players feel as though you have failed is that it never seems as though we have made a difference (you have left permanent changes, which is a good thing – keep it up). Scarlet is a clown, so we don’t really feel like we achieved anything when we foil one of her plans. I don’t know how you would make anything we do feel significant, but you guys have a knack for, at times, giving me very pleasant surprises. I’m going to keep playing the Living Story until you figure it out, even if I do ignore/skip anything to do with Scarlet and sometimes get angry because the fun outweighs the anger/frustration (sometimes the frustration is the fun, tribulation mode was excellent).

Keep it up ANet, I like where this is going even if it can be a bit weak at times.

I would like to see the pace of releases slowed. I agree with others who have said that the current production tempo is leading to lower-quality results, and leading to players feeling rushed and unable to play the game at their own pace and direction. These were important aspects to the original design (the original PvE content was extremely free-form and wonderful) that you seem to be moving away from, and that’s not good.

I’d like to see the focus of new development be less on showering players with loot from a new “path of least resistance” loot pinata every two weeks, and instead provide us with less frequent updates which include some depth, story like the original personal story, and NEW AREAS to explore.

I’d really like to see new maps opened up…NOT like Southsun or Orr, but instead like Frostgorge Sound. I’d like more hearts, dynamic events, vistas, POIs, and jumping puzzles…the whole deal. Provide us with more of the fantastic exploration and rewards for wandering that we saw in the original game.

The chunks of story right now are so small and overly simplified that it really has no cohesion and is very difficult to follow. I don’t really feel like it’s a “living story” at all…just quick, shallow content thrown together to provide some stereotypical A.D.D. player with enough shinies so he/she doesn’t wander off. Not the best design philosophy to aspire to.

I think that the living world should be shaped by the community
What I mean like is have community milestones- such as Defeat Teq 100 Times within a given time frame. So basically all the servers will become a greater collective into defeating Teq and depending on if it fails/succeeds the world is changing to suit the result.

Yes it will take a lot more time than what it is taking right now but what I just said would feel truly like a living and CHANGING world that the players have more influence on!

Having forgotten to write this down i must make a second post here :

I have a suggestion about the nature of LW content. They are, in their nature, destructive. In fact I mean this literally. We must kill, burn, destroy and annihilate each time. Destroy scarlet, kill her aetherblades. No? Then go kill Nightmare Court in the new TA. No? You can still hunt down other players in Lunatic inquisition. No? Then go back and kill Champs or shoot a Priory Cannon in the face of Tequatl or the Claw.

No. I suggest you should apply some LW content which is not about destroying but about building something. For an example :
Release a story about the construction of a Fort for the Pact. A month long players can contribute by supplying materials or clearing the vicinity of the building site, guarding supply dolyaks which deliver materials, and help actively in the building. Make players with Smithing craft special items which are needed in the construction.
And at the end, fort is build. With its whole glamour it stays there… permanently. This Fort can be used in future to fight against the Dragons. or New Events spawn around it.

This would be just a example of Permanent LW content where players actually change the world themselves. Help it rebuild and not only run around and kill stuff in rage.

Iv said it once before but i’ll say it again………

I genuinely think that the biggest mistake ANet has made was changing tack to make the updated/living world events so frequent.

While the events last year where not always perfect, the quality and depth of content in terms of new game play, crafting mates, achievements, rewards etc meant that it felt more like a “special event” rather than just an “game patch”. By committing to pushing out new living world content pretty much every month, ANet is no longer giving its dev and writing team long enough to develop new and interesting content. Because of this they are forced to fall back on a set of templates around materials, grinding and limited rewards rather than allowing their teams to make something genuinely new.

This is why each living story update and this year’s Halloween event just feels “less” compared to last years living world content. It is just the same skeleton templates from previous events populated with less content because the dev team is only just getting over writing the last living world event. Same maps, same style rewards. just chuck in some zerg events and champions and push it out there.

With the exception of Halloween, iv treated pretty much every Living World update this year as background noise. If iv fancied a change iv run with the zerg but 75% of the time, i just ignore it.

In summary, I still love this game, that’s why as a 26 year old gamer im still playing regularly over a year since release, but ANet if you want to avoid killing off your own fan base you should go back to doing fewer but bigger, better and longer lasting event. Quality of release, not quantity.

Thats my thoughts anyway.

I’d just like living world to be more affected by my character. You have all of this stuff about character personality types, but it doesn’t go very deep into the game, which makes the system kind of seem a bit.. pointless. The idea of building a characters personality in a specific direction is something you give up on because there is 0 impact. It’s a system with a lot of promise that has been no where near exploited.

Also, I think it would be a lot of fun to see branching storylines, even if thy’re simple, so a player can make choices. This would encourage people to play the new content on several characters rather than people going through, completing, and late starters having no one to help them with content. Your die hards will do them all, while the casuals will just go for completion, and extend out the life of the living story.

My mother in law, actually, plays the game, and one thing she has trouble with is that her comp is VERY low end, so she hasn’t been able to participate in the large zergy groups, which is frustrating her. So in finality, I think for the benefit of some of your less fortunately gaming endowed players it might be nice to add more single player options for replaying as well. Something a person alone can do if they just don’t feel like playing with others that day, or if they have difficulties with interacting with larger crowds. It would be nice to have something to do when you only have 15 minutes or so and running from event to event to try and earn some gold is frustrating.

Those are just things I’ve been thinking about, they may be bad ideas, but they’re mine, and they’re vague, so go with other peoples ideas first, because honestly I have no idea what I’m talking about and am just wishful thinking. Most importantly deeper character development for the player.

Oh yeah, and a dating game for V-day. My girls all want boyfriends.

I did read most post on page 6 and +1’ed some of them.
Many people want new areas like me.

I think one of the concerns for anet not releasing new areas is world completion.
Should we discuss about it?

For me, I don’t mind running a few more maps for the world completion chest than people who did it before hand. This process should be fun driven, not reward driven.

Pace of content is too fast
The two week cadence is too fast, especially when two or more disconnected stories are squeezed into one month. A story should unfold over a month or two, with small changes happened every so often, but the bulk of the story needs to stay around for more than two weeks. It is too much pressure to log in and get stuff done before it goes away.

Attempt more events like Southsun
Instead of the ancient karka appearing once, several attacks on Lion’s Arch could happen, and the ramifications of the attack stay around for days.

Needs more foreshadowing in the actual game world
The changes in Kessex Hills was well done, so all living stories if possible should have a lead in phase with clues as to what to expect.

Living Story achievements need to go
Replace the ‘story’ achievements with a new ‘storybook’ interface, handling the story and unique rewards for that phase.
Keep adding new dailies based on the Living Story, to keep things fresh and interesting, but enough of having to complete dailies to finish the meta, it is not fun or interesting.
Permanent content should have a separate achievement section like Tequatl and Aetherpath.
With those in place remove the living story category in the achievement panel, in order to downplay achievement ‘grind’.

More permanent content
The ratio of temporary to permanent additions is still not good.

Dynamic events are completely ignored.
The promises from just after launch with adding more events over time is completely neglected in favour of going for a more static story typical of other MMOs. It is disappointing that the LS moved the game to being more like other MMOs and neglecting what made GW2 unique in the first place. Scarletts Invasion is not any different from zone events in Rift. Disappointing.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The point of the initiative is definitely to discuss points as group, allowing us all to have a conversation about Living World in this case and share design philosophy that will certainly answer questions on both sides.

I will start with saying I really look forward to see our experience to make a change.

I have to say that you do a really good job in Living Story, but there areas and quite many that feel really bad.
Here is my experience in what we are currently lacking:

1. Scarlet – I hate this character. There is no real reason behind her. You made her as a random factor so she can be sticked to any idea you have. Even if it’s not like this in reality, I feel it like this. So when I hear Scarlet did something in TA my answer is: who cares, it won’t matter at all. Some people make speculations if she is involved in Tower of Nightmares and for me is like I don’t care. She is the worst thing in whole LS story so far, there is just nothing to back her up. Some very smart sivar and what? Suddenly she is godlike flame to start every race to back her up and make it so she is worse enemy that dragons that are about to destroy the world?! That sucks so hard… I’m sorry, it just does…

2. Is GW1 in here somewhere? – Guild Wars world has so much great lore, yet I don’t see any use of that. It’s like you try to make new game for people that love old one. I personally love old lore and there is so much in there that you don’t touch or scratch. You totally forget that I take huge part of this game population started GW2 because they loved GW1.
Don’t get me wrong in here it’s not bad to make something new, but make things also on GW1 base. You can introduce GW1 lore as easy as you introduce your new ideas.

3. Narration – It lacks a lot of lore. I want to hear some informations about what is the base of the story (in game not short story on the site. They are great but there is a need to have parts of that in game as a talk or book to read or any other way). Now its like we start at some point, we end in some point and there is just nothing before or after in each story. It really undermines the picture since I feel more like reading novels instead of living in a story that continues.
Great is introduction to Tower of Nightmares We should see more introduction like that, preferably for a month before and some NPCs that would spread lore about what could happen and base knowledge.

4. Being a hero – When I start another living story and I’m another nameless hero it makes me sad after 1 year of playing. In Halloween NPC suddenly remembered I was in Dragon bash… Thats great, way better than before, but it really sucks, noone really cares that we pushed back attacks in Divinitis Reach or whole (known) world invasions or any other story, you choose. After Scarlet made us her personal goal at the end of Queens story we got as much as gift and no word about it in TA, NO WORD…

5. Secrets… – Like what I have to sit for months to find something out? Even if at first it made me curious it end with at most 2 weeks… So when after few months I hear what Molten Alliance was formed by Scarlet I was like “ok, I once even cared for that”. I really wondered about that, even more I hopped that story would be continued like after one episode you go to another. NOPE, there was nothing in there. Another story started and thats it.
When you say that there is something going on that makes Tequatl gain power and you leave it for more than month… – I don’t care anymore.

6. Over all story – I’m sorry but sucks in many parts. You really need to make continuous story out of important things. I love it when I meet Ellen Kiel in Southsun, then Dragon Bash, then Bazar, then Election it really was great to have something growing. When we saw Queens Jubelee Scarlet attacked and made invasions it was great, When each year Halloween story progresses it’s nice. SAB story is nice.
The problem are loose ends. Ellen Kiel is in council – it’s ended, great. Each Halloween or SAB feels complete in a way.
But Molten Alliance never ended, Tequatl, each Southsun and Consortium was kinda left behind with no real resolve. Scarlet went to TA with no real reason or intention that players could feel.
All those loose ends make players feel really bad and it makes us no invested into the story.

7. Episodes and completeness – Each story that I love hos some outcome and when you make another story on outcome of stories before it is great but it also has to have some outcome. We fought pirates in Dragon Bash and we got Mai in jail – great, we fought Scarlet in Queens Jublelee, Invasions even went after her into TA and what? Nothing some minor achievements but there is no outcome. Noone thank us for defending the world or making Scarlet run from her play house or even freeing TA from her meant nothing and ended like nothing. Lion Guard entered TA fought few pirates and left… Great work, nothing really changed.

8. 40+ people events are just bad. – The best example was Tequatl. People went, name their achievements and left for good. I hard of some guilds that make that fight but really. You wanted to give us a challenge and it was your success, but for average player you made -1 world boss to play. My server does Temples, Karka Queen few times a day and we have a lot of fun (except in Balthazar of course), other dragons and world bosse are fun and many people’s go for it. Tequatl is just left behind cause it takes too much from average player to complete it.

9 World needs to be alive. – When I think alive I think that maps are progressing. Not only LA or few cities progress when there is a celebration. I mean when I’m in southsun there is no progress on making new buildings or in Caledon Forest there are ruined buildings with workers who constantly repair them, but no progress in there. Orr is another example. There should be some green showing and over time some undeads replaced by some kind of wildlife? Maybe Karkas are pushed from Southsun by consortium and will start searching new place in Orr. Temples gathered so much energy that they will be active like they are for years, but other parts could slowly change (as living world but not living story).
You now kinda revive Kesex Hills but those changes have to be permanent and done to maps that usually are left behind – like Brisban Wildlands, Dredgehount Clifs, Timberline Falls or Sparkly Fen.

10. Living world need to expand – We have like 14 months now and we barely got 1 very basic map (not even counting as world map) and few temporary tweaks as LS goes. We need to have more spaces to explore. You kinda force us to run the same maps over and over. I know they are beautiful, I love them, but on my 9 characters I have over 600% world completion and for some of us exploring new places is very important. I loved when you added Bazar map, but I fail to understand why have you cut the map off after LS. You should have left the map only remove some parts of it like most crystals, some buildings, all ships etc, so it would be a real place on which from time to time huge ship docks.

11. Dragons should just stop being lazy. – I know that you could have some big plans (expansion like) for dragons but you have to stop making them like some toy plain coming and going all the time. Dragon event have to have expansion like if you don’t kill the Shaterer (don’t revamp the fight please) he will lead his minions nearer and nearer Ebonhawk. If we don’t stop him on Blazeridge He would come to Fields in Ruins until he would sidge Ebonhawk.

We should lead army into dragons territory
IMAGINE: We get map over Frostgeorge in Living Story? and pact is getting into there and fight off Jormag minions, after 2 weeks we get some bases built in there and for next month story could be frozen as Pact gathers resources (or some little tweaks planed), and the we go even deeper into Jormags map and gain we fortify and in 3rd Map we get to fight Jormag and some kind of event/instance or dungeon can be made in there. Wouldn’t that be great and meaningful story/world wise?

12. Stop the grindfest – its no fun. You should stop with the grinding festivals. You make Halloween rewards some kind of grindfest lust like wings in Dragon Bash. Wings dropped often so noone cared, but 15k candies for 20 slot bag? Why add reward like that that is really not usable if you don’t have bank full of sweets from last Halloween.

Rewards should be available for everyone not only rich and grindy people. If you state something as a reward and then you make it unreachable or not good moneywise, really think before you post something.

That also goes for all Halloween skins, WHY are their needs revamped so much?! So they are more exclusive? Great so you will go the way – if you make it fast it will be easier you just punish new players that you want to encourage to play.

13. Time gating and content rush – when you added ascended gear it only served those with money. Crafting gating meant only they needed to buy things instead of making them by theme selves so at first day I saw people with ascended gear. What does that mean? It’s unreflective.
In Halloween we had to make meta to progress the story, so instead of having fun with people to play in instance I had to wait not only my 3-4 days but until they will make their meta. It was only frustrating.

You add content every 2 weeks and most of it lasts 2 or 4 weeks and the what? We can’t take a break to enjoy making maps or take a break form GW2, many people for some time have very strict time limitations (exams in school or work) it doesn’t benefit those people and only frustrates them.
If you stop time gating content execution and add permanent content you will make it so people will be able to sit form time to time and complete past content. If permanent content is added people will have to play it anyway since they won’t want to have a stack of things to be done but make it as it comes out, but it wont be lost forever.

14. Minigames – fun are even more fun with friends. I like a lot of them, I love them changing and its great. I would really want them to have 2 modes – solo and party. For those than can be partied I don’t see party option in sanctum sprint or Suthsun survival for example. But parties in some games like Kagbrawl or Lunatic inquisition would just be great.

15 Separate maps – so annoying. I just loved Crown Pavilion but being forced to run out by foot to the door each time I wanted to go for a world event was painful. Please make map markers to switch maps to outside map and inside map so we can teleport inside the pavilion (and similar places) and outside with world map.

16. Orders – Please use them finally, Its hard for me that I walked in an order and I don’t interact with them at all. It makes it feel like totally unimportant while in the story it was like one the main things. You can make orders to be present in the story, just try to make it.

1) I love the idea of new content flowing out. And while I do not want to beat a dead horse I do want to add my name to the list of people who suggest spreading out the release. 2 weeks is simply too short a time to deliver polished material and for players to play through the content while still working on permanent content. So please help yourselves a little bit and take a load off. Slow it down a bit

1.5) My guild has a running joke that everytime new content is released there will be 5+ patches to fix bugs both for content and the things the patch broke. While this is hyperbole, I think not having to release every 2 weeks will help in the number of bugs introduced with each patch.

2) I see lots of people asking for Elona and Cantha. Let’s be honest, I’d rather see those as expansions instead of living world content. It will allow them to build a polished continent like Tyria.

3) While some people have complained about F&F I’d like to say that while some of the achievements that built it up were not that great (fixing sign posts and what not) the amount of time it took to build it up was appropriate. Stuff was going on and we could pursue it but didn’t have to dedicate our entire play time to figure out what was going on/completing it.

4) Sentinel stat crafting. It was really cool to see the release of a new stat set and the dungeon that gave us the material to craft it. When I saw it released I thought it’d stay around and that would be the only place to farm the mats, but then it went away! I’d like to see LW content that gives us the mats (and recipes back) that is permanent so we can always make it.

5) Like others have stated please no more talk to this or interact with this x times. I thought we were getting away from that in this game.

6) Please keep up the hard work. I know you guys are doing the best you can and I hope this helps inform the changes we’d like to see.

I love the Living World as is but of course nothing is perfect and there is always room for improvement.

What I would personally love is seeing the LS affect the world more. Stuff like cragstead being rebuilt after the refugees moved there from southsun. Or the forest cut down allegedly to serve as raw material for the tower of nightmares. It would be nice if said events had an effect on the npc population as well. Example woodcutters create a DE chain with regards to the cut down forest. Nothing fancy… Event 1 might ask you to stop the krait from cutting down more trees. Event 2 might ask you to go to escort a caravan with saplings to replenish the killed trees. Event 3 might ask you to kill some krait to deter them from doing it again. etc.. These events can be updated of the course of several releases to evolve in relation to changes. For example 2 releases later it will not be about getting more saplings but rather getting fertilizer or tending to the saplings themselves etc… rather then defend from kraits that try to cut down the trees it could be stop wildlife from eating the saplings etc.. It would make the whole thing feel more immersive and help shine a spotlight on the changes if there is content even simple content around where changes actually occur.

Rewards… I am personally fine with this but I see a lot of people having trouble with the 2 week content release. I get the impression that in some cases this more has to do with the getting the rewards then rather doing the actual story content which generally doesnt require more then a few hours. I think it might be better if achievements would be for the month long rather then 2 week release. Have the big meta reward being give out at the end of the month as the event ends for those that finish off the achievements perhaps sent through mail or just a chest next time they log on. This is very important imho because if the reward is given at the time the achievements are completed people will still feel completed to grind the thing as soon as possible. if they have to wait until the end of the month anyway it might be enough to slow things down a little bit.

Ohh and one more thing, I get the feeling from a lot of these posts that there is the impression that 2 weeks releases mean Arenanet works only 2 weeks on each update. They already explained that its 4 teams working on 1 month worst of content each. So each release is developed for 4 months not 2 weeks. Just thought this might be a good clarification to put out there.

What I liked about the Living Story:

The surprise arrival of the Tower of Nightmares. We need more things added in secret, without being announced on the front page.

The Marjory cut scene, and the detective quests.

I liked the characters of Marjory, Faren and Lady Kasmeer. I think they are well written.

I liked the Tequatl update.

I liked having new explorables added to the game.

I liked having new jumping puzzles that are there to stay. Same for dungeons.

I love Super Adventure Box. Please keep releasing more content for it. I also love Tribulation Mode, that was a great idea.

I like reading the stories on the website, but wish they were included in game some how. Maybe add in-game book items we can collect and read?

I like having permanent additions to our home instance, but I wish it was elaborated on. Please consider the idea I posted earlier about a portable door, and players choosing their own housing. No one wants to zone back to Divinity’s Reach every time to harvest a node.

What I disliked about the Living Story:

Constant temporary content. I hate having to rush things every week, or it will be gone forever. Please build things that are there to stay.

The weekly achievement grind. Every Living Story update comes with it’s own achievement grind. It really makes it hard to enjoy the content.

Scarlet. I think she comes across as a very superficial villain, and she seems rather forced into every single Living Story update. I prefer a more dragon focused story.

Lack of mystery. We need more content that simply appears in the world, without being announced with a trailer, a poster, and an elaborate article. Allow us to discover things for ourselves.

I dislike how disjointed the new explorables are from the rest of the game world. Please connect them to expand Tyria’s land mass. I dislike having these separate islands.

I dislike the story not focusing on the Elder Dragons, or expanding on the lore in general. We got very little lore from the Living Story at all.

I dislike so much of Halloween requiring the gem store, or having to grind insane amounts of items. This is the reason you see no one walking around with Halloween weapons during Halloween. Surely that can not be the intention? I like to earn my rewards, and not having to buy them.

Temporary content is a real issue with the game in general. After scrolling through several pages of opinions from fellow players, it seems that everybody wants Permanent content. You’ve got such a great game, and you’re ruining it by rushing out Living Story that has no impact on the world. Personally I’d like to see:

1. Permanent content – In the form of new zones
(What happened to labyrinth Cliffs? Why delete that place? It’s just stupid. We all know it’s there on the blurred map.)

2. Temporary content – ALONGSIDE PERMANENT CONENT
(Halloween and Wintersday are festivals, they don’t need their own LS quests. You can still add all the fun challenges, jumping puzzles, skins, dungeon-like instances, but you really don’t need to give the festivals their own story arc.)

3. More personal story
After you’ve levelled a character to 80 and killed Zhaitan, what have you got left to do that relates to your personal story?

I guess what it really boils down to is, most players here really want to experience NEW ZONES that are PERMANENT. We’re talking new hearts, new points of interest, new vistas, and new personal story within the new zones.

Basically, the majority of people want the equivalent of an EXPANSION onto the game. (By expansion I mean and expansion onto the map.)When I bought Guild Wars 2, I thought that living story would mean that you would add updates into the game that added new zones and new personal story quests. And those story quests would relate to the other dragons. That’s the living story I wanted, and that’s the living story that players want. Temporary content is great, but it’s not a substitute.

IMPORTANT
On another note, 2 week LS updates are far to fast. I’d rather wait a month or 2 and have a better quality permanent content update that includes new zones and personal story.

Give me some new zones and some more personal story that relates to dragons!

It would be great if there were more ‘story’ in the game. More dialogues, more cutscenes, more readable books, more discoverable secrets and an easy to find list of official lore stories on the site.

At the moment, I try to keep up with both the game, the official site. the forums AND twitch tv and I still feel like I’m missing out on everything. But currently, there’s no real way of knowing where all the lore is because what little there is seems to be immensely scattered.

If you take anything from my post though, please let it be this:
If you post any ingame information on a another site, please post a link on the official site to that site. That includes reddit and twitchtv. Thank you.

a big thanks to all people who use bold text and headlines in their posts, it makes reading this thread just so much easier

There are a few main topics that could be discussed during this week,
I’ll try to give a short summary of the things I could take out of the tread till now.

Topics

- plans on future content (pemanent against temporary)
- release cycle (is two weeks too fast?)
- feedback on Scarlet
- storytelling of the LS
- plot of the LS
- handling of achievements an rewards
- catching up/replaying past releases
- what content is possible to release as LS

Now we have to actually discuss about these things,
there are already a lot of good suggestions on the previous pages, but none of them are perfect or without their own problems.

What direction is the LS going, how does the development process work at the moment?
We already heard in other treads that 4 teams are working on the releases, each team has about 4 months to develope their release (the first team to have this 4 months shoud be the november team if I’m correct) which is then split into two updates.
The target for future releases is to develope permanent content instead of too much temporary stuff (exept fot holidays).
If thats not true please correct me.
How could that be further improved, whould more time realy help?

What time should be between releases?
I do actually like the two week releases and I think it would be a shame to go back to a slower cycle. Is the main problem actually a release every two weeks, or is it the content that is not accessible anymore when the next release hits. We shoult think about this a bit, because there are entirely different solutions depending on which is the actual problem.
Would it be a solution if you have more time to play the content and get your achievements? If so, what time woult it take?

What do you like/dislike about Scarlet?
There are already a lot of threads which cover that question and the result is mostly that some people like her and some dislike her. It’s a matter of preference I asume.
The thing that is actually worth a discussion here would be how she could have been introduced in a better way. There are people who didn’t find the hints on her ingame, so it was an instant apearance of here as an evil genius. Her background was only told in the webstory (if I’m not mistaken) and I’m not even sure if my character knows more about her than her name and that she’s somehow bossing the aetherblades and molten alliance arround.
The intruduction of the Mad King last Halloween was much better in my opinion and something like trying to find out about her as a quest would have made a better entrance.

How could the storytelling of the LS be better/more accessible?
Something like a journal is already in developement at the moment and will be released when it’s ready. A short statement on that would be nice to have, before we start to thinking about something thats maybe not possible anymore or already finished.

What whould you like as a plot for the LS?
Much said about this on the previous pages, the dragons would be the topic thats mentioned the most. Even though the dragons are stuff of the main story, it would be nice to know that they are still there somehow.
Which specific plots of GW1 would you like to see again?
Would you like the story to be epic in scale and player collaboration, or rather small and doable for one player alone?

What would you change about the LS achievements and rewards?
I don’t have a problem with the way the meta works at the moment, but I’m putting a great deal of my time in this game anyway and I don’t care about getting every and all achievements that are possible, so I’m kind of in an optimal position to play that content.
Do you think it takes too loong to get the things you want? How would it be more accessible without destroying it for other players?

How could you replay past content without interfering with current releases?
Would it be enough to be able to read the story, or is it a must to replay it?
The most problematic would be to replay open world content in some kind. Imagine that every release would still be in the different zones, it would just be a big mess.
What is the content that should be replayable, and in which ways should it be?

I’m sorry for any grammatical or spelling errors, I’m not a native speaker.

Hi i think that all the work done it’s very great and that in particular in the last events… not for the content but because of the possibility that they give. Having some events with more easy task give a pause to hardcore gamer and something to complete to other player. For example this event of halloween i think it’s very easy to do staying a few hours in the mad king labirynth, but releasing the wvwvw event together with this one give to hardcore player a large number of stuff to do with a lot of hour of gaming. i think that it’s the right road: 2 events at the same time with one long taking some weeks and ranks, and another easy to complete.

personally i loved the scarlet’s events and the change that it made.

i also like the continous release of item and the arrive of ascended items….. now i’m waiting for some events related to new skill and areas or something else….

I got the feeling that many players are missing the final goal of the Living World arc. Where does it go and finally end? At the moment the story transfers the impression to be tumbling around in a chaotic way.

Maybe the devs and narrators should release the final goal like “In the next eight months you will face the final and epic encounter/battle with an Elder Dragon.” Clear enough to give the story a direction but vague enough to put in a huge amount of unpredicted twists and hurdles on the way to the goal.

Bilbos goal was to reach Erebor and to help Thorin to reclaim the Kingdom under the Mountain. The goal was clear, but most things happened along the journey were unexpected and unpredictable: Goblin Town, Gollum, The One Ring, ride on the barrel, flight with the eagles, the battle of words with Smaug etc.

I completely mean to write a longer post when I can find the time.

But in case that never happens, I just want to comment to the daily achievement portion of the LS achievements: I love it! I could finish halloween and I did not have to do stuff I did not want to do. I especially adore the pumpkins, clocktower and trick or treat bag ones.
Concern is, that these have been required for this halloween. Maybe it was the case with some of the earlier ones? I can’t remember now.

Another thing. I absolutely love Scarlet. She is so much fun.

What I’m going to say is echoed throughout the community and most certainly said more than once on this thread, but for the sake of reinforcement:

1.) Less hurried, recycled content.
2.) Less frequent updates, increase it the time in between to a month or even two.
3.) More permanent content

Here I will speak for myself a little, you’ve utterly failed to immerse me into any sort of story. I’m not even sure whats going on in the living story any more, I just find it anything but interesting. I’ve never found a reason to get into the story.

Story: I don’t enjoy the living story at all. I think there are multiple areas where it could be improved;

• Delivery of living story; The cut scenes(like the rest of gw2) doesn’t feel very good. characters look weird and are literally just “talking heads”. I long for a delivery cut scene system like the lines of the “Painted” trailers or the order cut scenes. Or maybe pictures with sound effects and voice overs similar to how max payne told it’s story.
  there could be a narrator telling the story and feelings and events of characters in a storybook-like fashion. I wish the entire games story could be re-done doing this way of telling the story.

• Characters; Tassi, Kiel, and other characters introduced through the living story are not very memorable. You remember characters from games like Mass Effect because they have well written dialogue and go through character development. It’s hard to identify with villains like scarlet because not only does she look really unappealing, it’s also hard to find sympathy or any feelings for an insane looney.

• Motivation; in some stories the games ask general morale questions. Is the centaur attacks on human lands an argument for permanent conquest of their lands? is enslavement okay in the fear of an emerging threatening power? should the asuras be held accountable for some of the experiments that have gone wrong and have had a negative effect on the wildlife? how does the other races deal with the sylvaris ignorance and immaturity from lack of experiences in the world? what happens when a legion of charr rebels against the human-charr treaty and attempts a coupe of black citadel?
  In many ways players need motivation and problems that goes deep in their hearts. its not that interesting to have a new world threat. we already have the dragons.

• confusion of what to do. many players feel its hard to get into the living story. it comes in a mail (very unpersonal and not very exciting). you usually have to read a few lines of text from an npc who you dont even remember who is and then go out and loot something or do a narrow linear dungeon. its quick band aid fixes and not something you remember.

• weapons; I have not enjoyed the design of almost all the weapon sets myself(except for the guild weapon sets) but on the other hand I am amazed that you have introduced new weapons steadily every 2 weeks for many months. that is awesome. However I think the method of getting them is not always nice. its frustrating wanting to get claim tickets and only have 4-5 scraps after hundreds and hundreds of hours of gaming. it drives you insane.

• + the great thing about the rewards of the living story is that you would have had to have been there to get them. my slickpack is only mine. nobody will ever get it who didn’t did those achievements, and that is really cool, because it increases the uniqueness level and history of the game. we can visually see on our characters that we suffered.
  i think a way to expand on it, would be to make more a few items(visual armor, accessory, unique pets, skill effects etc..). its really the highlight of the living story. im running out of storage room for all my skins and packs.

Please no more needing thousands of items to make one item in the living world. With the lousy drop rates that I have seen, it is impossible to get the recipe for a gift of souls within two weeks or even a month. Change it to requiring 250 of an item. You want to make them exclusive still, then make it so it requires 4 items that required 4 items each. However make some of those 4 items not depended on the LS.

I’ll come back at a later date to add more to this thread. However at the moment I feel like the biggest changes I would like to see with the Living world are as follows:

More permanent, easy-paced content for people to leave and come back to.

Expending onto the painted-over areas of the map that already exist.

ANYTHING to do with the other dragons. It’s been a year and we’ve only dealt with one. Theyre the most interesting part of this game’s current lore in my opinion and I feel that the game is losing a lot of potential by ignoring them simply because its more profitable to make quick-cash 2-week content (no offense intended, it’s just how I’m beginning to see it)

More Interesting villains! Any would do but I feel that if you guys do a better job with the dragons than you did with Zhaitan (as in give them a personality as opposed to just a giant beast) you would draw more people in.

Kill Trahearne. Make his tragic death an excuse to fight a new threat (such as the next dragon.) This would make uncountable players extremely happy, get rid of the pressure on the dev team to deal with his character, AND open the way to new enemies! It’s Perfect I tell you!

I REALLY Love Gw2. Ive played since the headstart. I have 9 80’s and im just finishing my first Legendary. I will continue playing for a long time, probably even if things dont change much (and that’s depressing.) This all said, I’d like to share my biggest concern: That the corporate people who are ultimately in charge of development decisions and making the money are going to do away with anything permanent and world changing (like going after the dragons and going to new areas) and that we will be forever stuck with short two-week content to make quick cash for the game. I’m REALLY scared that nothing can be done about it and that the devs who really want to make a difference in the game are bound by the higher-ups who are only interested in making the money. I’m begging you. I love this game and I dont want it to happen, (if it’s at all avoidable.) And for the record: I’ve spent more money than I can count on this game’s gemstore (Hundreds.) Which may mean I’m part of the problem = /. Either way there needs to be a balance.

My biggest critique of it atm is that WvW leagues shouldn’t be listed under living world, because it’s not. It belongs in that nice little WvW section of the achievements. Theres nothing living world about it, you just put it there to get people’s attention.

A lot of unwanted attention I might add. It gives people the wrong idea on whats expected of them when they play that game mode, and only wanted to participate to get the meta. But still only cared for their own meta instead of actually helping their team.

As far as the living story goes, here are my critiques:

Permanence

• EVERY update to the LS should add SOMETHING that will last in the world for at LEAST 6 months, if not permanently.
• EVERY update should have a summary available IN GAME so people can catch up.
• Suggestion: Lore Book that chronicles player/account participation in the living story…provides cosmetic rewards/armor/weapon skins as it becomes more and more complete.

Presentation

• I would like to say that having fully voiced additions to the game every 2 weeks must be a daunting task…
• We were told that the game would have a painterly feel…and your art department is amazing. Use that art, especially the moving art, to help tell the story.
• For instance, the stories on the front page that accompany updates have been great. A simple narrator and different artwork for each section would be a good way of presenting the story and setting the mood IN GAME.
• Don’t be afraid to go darker. Even as a rated T game, you can do a lot with ambiance illicit feelings of sorrow, anger, and horror.

Character Development

• I remember heroes from GW1. From Mhenlo, Eve, and Cynn to Talon Silverwing, Koss, and Gwen. Your NPCs NEED to be involved in the story…you need your core group to be actively involved in every event in order to build their characters. Destiny’s Edge, Rox, and Braham should always somehow be involved.

Dragons and GW1 Lore

• Keep the over all conflict at heart when creating content. As players, we have slain only one elder dragon…there are many more out there. There are conflicts that started hundreds of years ago that need to be resolved. There are places from the past that players DESPERATELY want to experience again.
• You should NEVER have to worry about not having a enough lore to last the game…because even if all of Tyria, Cantha, and Elona are explored… that’s MAYBE 1/4th of the map that you have available!!

Don’t be afraid to give us the juicy stuff!

There is a very general problem.

You cannot have content that creates an evolving world on the one hand and make it stay forever on the other hand. It’s a contradiction. If you defeat the dredge and flame legion, that invasion is no longer there and it makes no sense to still have its dungeons around. Either evolution or persistence. You cannot have both.

I choose evolution. It means, I cannot repeat old content and it will be forever lost and only in my memory or in the history books. That’s the price to pay for an evolving world.

I would like to talk about the rewards.

Maybe my post will seem a little angry. But in reality, it’s just a harsh statement of fact.

I think in this halloween developers simply went too far. In some sense the situation with the grind has reached its climax. This is simply ridiculous. This game has worst rewards for world events from all that I’ve seen.

I used to love collecting mini. But now it’s just disgusting to me. Every couple of weeks the developers added a half dozen of minis. Almost all of them we will have to simply buy. I can not remember even five miniatures, which can be obtained through some kind of quests or action in the world. It’s just not interesting. There are 3 options. Grind of achievements. Grind of money. And JUST grind, as we can see in the example of mini prince.
About this on the details:
20 candy corn cobs for mini = 20.000 candy corns =~150g. After spending the whole day you can collect ~1000 candy corns. It mean 20 days of grind to get ONE mini?
But
We have on option to buy cobs for money. If you spend all day in a dungeon or digging resources of grinding champions you could get ~30g. So, it will only take 5 days to buy it (keep silent, that not… everyone is able to spend in game 5 full days, eh?). In other words, all came down again to the accumulation of money.
But the issue. How average grind is related to the event?

So that’s how you see your players, A-net? Killing monsters in one location 24 hour, 7 days a week nonstop to get something in memory of the event? Or engaged in their “usual grind” to buy it, or buy something on your trading company?
Against this background bag just looks like as mockery. Bag for 100-120 gold, or 15 days of grind? Omg, A-net, are you kidding? Fire the one who invented it.
You have added new ingredients, which are ONLY needed for a weapon that simply is not available to the average player. Because of sky-high prices and the amount of time needed to receive it. It is absurd.

To summarize: a sane person just can not get any memorable things from this event.

I love this game a lot more than any other. But even I think that the ammount of grind here goes beyond all possible boundaries. But less and less fun… Perhaps you should reward players for the fun things but not for the grind…

About minis as reward.
Very bad idea. Miniatures, as I recently realized – the most useless thing in this game. Look around you. How often do you see a person with a miniature nearby? I almost never. They look weird if it’s not a small animal pet. They would look good on the shelf, i thing, but not runing near you. They do not have any function. I mean.. well… you can not play with them as in wow, for exaple, can’t pet them or play ball, fool about… It’s just a thing, occupying a slot in your inventory and prohibits the use of the “deposit all” function.

In other words, the miniature – just highlighting a slot in a collectible box. Personally, I’m already more annoying of lack of certain “highlighted slots” in my bank than rejoiced of presence of others.
It not worth 150g, and especially 400hrs of life. I invite developers to think hard about ways minis are received and about Importing it to world exploration.

Where all sorts of nonsense, like.. donno helmet-pumpkin or pumpkin costume? Not town clothes for which you need to throw a lot of money and perhaps you will see it only once because of it’s useless. I mean the things that remind you that you took part in this event. Which you can please yourself and others? Armor skins, unique emotions, some items that can be activated. Like a table with snacks or pumpkins, which can be carved.

Back items.
You add cloaks and wonder why players complain about it? I’ll explain. Let’s say a person has one character. He just got a cloak from event. And bam! You add a new cloack for the new event. In other words, he must either buy a new stat cloak to use this skin on it, or cover the previous? Bu-u-ut… this cloak is unique. Now imagine that he already has 5 cloaks. They just lie in the bank… The problem is their disposability.

Some solution
All of event rewards must be in the form of unlock. So that the player could obtain copy at any time from the achievements window as like as with zenith weapons, for example. Thus you can add whole sets of armor piece by piece at different events. Fused armor, for example.

Many people said it better than i would but i still want to add my voice.

1) story in living story is bad because

a) it’s shallow
b) characters are forgettable
c) it’s disconnected from the rest of the game

2) temporary content is a problem

a) it’s a problem for people who would like to come back
b) it’s a problem for “achievers” who can’t play the game for a few weeks (work, family, exams happen you know)

3) 2 weeks release is too fast and the achievements are grind based

a) it forces you to log and do the LS instead of playing the way YOU want
b) it pushes you toward the store because the achievements are too grindy and uninteresting and it’s not a classy way to make us spend our money

4) the ressources used in LS could be better used to do real content (dungeons, new maps, new dynamic events which should be well integrated in the existing maps etc…)

5) the LS doesn’t make the world feel living at all. It’s just random stuff who don’t make any sense happening around the world and it’s immersion breaking

6) LS, instead of encouraging players to spread and explore the world, making it feel alive in the process, encourage gathering/zerging which isn’t quality gaming imo.

7) please leave WvW out of the living story the grind for the WvW achievements is ridiculous. 225 sentinels and doliaks ? so i should just stop being useful for my server and chase sentinels and doliaks around the map ?

8) please give us quality content instead of achievement (carrot) based grind

Thanks for reading and thanks for this collaborative dev initiative. I have to admit i had lost hope in gw2 (that i already left twice) and i was looking around other games. I really wished i could call tyria home for a long time and now it’s all up to you to deliver.

Halvorn.9831:

There is a very general problem.

You cannot have content that creates an evolving world on the one hand and make it stay forever on the other hand. It’s a contradiction. If you defeat the dredge and flame legion, that invasion is no longer there and it makes no sense to still have its dungeons around. Either evolution or persistence. You cannot have both.

I choose evolution. It means, I cannot repeat old content and it will be forever lost and only in my memory or in the history books. That’s the price to pay for an evolving world.

I don’t think people want the entire event to be left behind…but there SHOULD be “scars”.

Scarlet’s invasions are a great example of how to do this. Tequatl stays back as well, and the TA dungeon has been changed.

• For instance, imagine if at the end of Flame and Frost, there were permanent DEs that would spawn in the Shiverpeaks and Ascalon regarding escorting refugees to LA…or helping refugees rebuild?

• Or if after the queen’s jubilee, you could use the arenas to duel other players in preparation for next year?

In addition, if a player has completed an event, specific small DEs could occur in those areas. Let’s say a player completes flame and frost. Periodically, a veteran molten shaman could ambush a player in the shiverpeaks, or a veteran molten gunner could perform the ambush in ascalon. A simple one line voice over “You’ll pay for destroying the Molten Facility!!” would be all that’s needed.

• This is ALREADY done for the personal story

I think they are taking a step to more permanence, but need to go a bit further.

Halvorn.9831:

There is a very general problem.

You cannot have content that creates an evolving world on the one hand and make it stay forever on the other hand. It’s a contradiction. If you defeat the dredge and flame legion, that invasion is no longer there and it makes no sense to still have its dungeons around. Either evolution or persistence. You cannot have both.

I choose evolution. It means, I cannot repeat old content and it will be forever lost and only in my memory or in the history books. That’s the price to pay for an evolving world.

So, you favour removing mobs from the game too relative to their progression in the LW?

Dredge and Flame paired up…were defeated…surely they should be limited in numbers or completely removed as a means of the defeat being a part of the “evolution”. Or restrict the zones which they patrol at the very least.

From a personal standpoint (and one I know my friends who I group with on a daily basis) feel that, over 2000 hours in since launch, the Living Story isn’t filling enough of a gap for content once most goals have been achieved. More content doesn’t mean faster LS additions, it means more areas to explore, maybe new dungeons, places we all have yet to see/experience. I know there’s so much work needed to achieve something like this, but LS alone just isn’t cutting it anymore. Ideally (personally i would LOVE to go back to Cantha) but I expect the next area/s to open will be on the existing map which will also be awesome and hopefully leading towards the next Elder dragon story/encounter which, given the voiced opinions of a LOT of people is much needed/wanted.
My other issue, which again is shard by a fairly large group of friends (we all played GW1 to death) is the amount of lore from GW1 that remains untapped. So much rich lore from GW1 could be implemented and brought forward to GW2 but is seemingly ignored in favour of the LS content and such.
More than once comments like “GW2 really isn’t related to GW1 by anything more than the name now” has been hurled around in guild/map chat, and, as much as I do dearly love GW2 it does feel like its missing a little of the mystique of GW1 (this isn’t a ‘rose tinted view’ post btw).
Thanks, and keep up the great work on the game, but please don’t forget the longer serving players from GW1 who know the high standard you all kept during those years, you set the bar so high for yourselves quality wise, here’s hoping you guys continue to keep it so high.

Hi,
I don’t want to be the voice of the community by any means, nor do I wish to take away from the hours of fun you will spend pouring into these posts about what we like/dislike and what works/does not work.. but from reading a bunch of posts in this thread I have discerned the following:

1. People in this thread believe the story is shallow and lacks any substance. It is disjointed and does not flow smoothly. Theres little explanation as to the WHY. Why is scarlet hell-bent on doing what shes doing? We understand that she is doing some harmful things, but why? Little details like that.

2. People in this thread believe that the content is shallow and grindy. People are getting tired and burnt out on the achievement grinds.

3. People in this thread believe that a 2-week cadence is too fast. They believe that the 2 week cadence jeaprodizes the quality of content that the developers have to offer. They feel that the casuals(people that play one or two hours a night) will not complete everything in time before the next update.

4. People in this thread believe that there is too much of temporary content being released. I for one believe that this has been alleviated some-what but it is still running wild in the game.

5. People in this thread believe that mini’s and grind for currency is a poor reward for the time and effort put into rushing to complete the events.

Those are the five large discussions I see going on.

Most of the problems I see with LS were already mentioned by others, so I will mention something which I haven’t seen in this topic yet (didn’t read all posts unfortunately):
One of the the problems in the living story AND personal story is that the NPC’s are so kitten useless. They never help us out, or at least it feels that way. The only npc that was contributing to the fight was Rox during molten alliance dungeon. She would go around, heal our party members, get those who died up, and she fought the bosses at the same time. All the other npc’s are like zombies: they deal almost no damage, they don’t help during the fight (no buffs, no healing, nothing), and they go down almost instantly. This is ridiculous because many of them have legendary status- members of Destiny’s Edge for example, but they go down almost instantly during any kind of story or dungeon. It feels like they are liability more than help. Like they are there to watch us do all the work and take all the credit for it at the end: look Trahearne. It also annoys me that so many characters in the game just go and give us something to do for them and they just sit back and make us do all the dirty work. Why are they even there if they are not going to help?! Look at the Twilight Assault content. Caithe one of the best thieves in Tyria (also npc with legendary status) meets us at TA and then asks us for help… and disappears, not helping us at all during the whole dungeon. At the end she magically appears when all the enemies are dead and says “good job”.
That kind of thing makes me want to punch all those useless npc’s in the face, srlsly.
Who comes up with this stuff? If the npc does nothing at all don’t put it there.
Another thing is lack of rewards from those npc’s after we help them out. And when I say reward I don’t mean the useless 2 silver and 200 kama for hearts for example because this is not a reward. In rpg’s when you go on a quest and help someone you get rewarded by that npc with substantial reward (family heirloom, gold, jewels or something). In this game there is no such thing. NO matter if you do the living story, the hearts, or the dungeons, you never get anything of the sort. And that just leaves me with the feeling: why should I care? Instead of 2 silver and 200 karma or just “thanks for your help my servant” from useless npc’s there should be rewards for any kind of help we (heroes who deafeated Zhaitan and no one knows who the hell we are) offer. Those rewards should be skins, and mementos of that quest. Mementos that would go to our home instance which is totally useless right now. It’s useless. I can’t remember the last time I used that place for anything. Our home instance should reflect what we had done in the pesonal story as well as in living story and the maps. Right now there is no such thing. Lack of this is really making me question myself what was I doing all this time. So I beat molten alliance… so what? I have nothing that would show that I really did that. Npc’s most of the time don’t know who the hell I am, and they don’t give a kitten . Besides the meta achievement rewards there is really nothing that would show me that I actually did something.
One last thing regarding LS, hearts, dynamic events and personal story (because they ae all part of the living world), give us a journal of some sorts. This would really help to immerse ourselves in the story and the world, and would show us what we did. We could go to the journal and read up on what happened in the past. It would help to give us some lore as well.
And make cutscenes for LS like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjCehYrEbO0

Living Story…I looked at reviews of a different MMO the other day, and the moment a comment in there seemed to relate to content similar to LS in GW2 I literally shrunk back, thinking “Oh no, not anymore temporary content”.

While LS could have a lot of potential, in its current incarnation it is mainly a checklist to be worked through as fast as possible. If LS actually extended the world, adding content, it would be fantastic. Current players could play at their own schedule, new players would not have to fear they missed something for good.

When I finally take a break from GW2, this temporary content will be a huge setback to my motivation to start again. Whereas a good chunk of new permanent content would be something to positively look forward to.

Temporary content is not bad per se. It becomes kittenoon as it is the only meaningful content of an chapter in a sequence of several chapters. In the optimal case temporary content should promote/announce the permanent content. It is like having an opening ceremony for a new restaurant/opera or the press conference with party to introduce a new car or movie. The party is nice and enjoyable but the remaining thing like the restaurant or the new car is much more important.

In GW2 players have very often the feeling you remove the opera or restaurant together with the opening ceremony. Leaving nothing for us to enjoy. This encourages some unhealthy consumer behavior: consume as much and as fast as possible before everything is gone. This creates very unhappy people with a lot of stomach ache.

Please make the permanent parts more prominent and meaningful and reduce the pressure temporary parts cause

I personally believe that “Living World” Should be directly connected to Personal Story, because it seems a bit strange that a world that is “Alive” and characters that had a major impact in the reality of the story and in the changes the world as seen, are now absent, parked in a fort, and removed from the “Spotlight”. if they are to be replaced, that should be presented to us accordingly so we don’t feel that the story line has been “Broken” or even worse “Neglected”. Consistency is pretty much about continuance. Also i believe that the Living World, as a means for players to keep on performing constant battles to defend the world, and to make people interested in doing so, there should be “awards” that are worthy of Heroes who give their best to defend their realm. It is obvious that evolution is the purpose of Role Playing game. as it is in real life. People expect to grow stronger. Wiser. Richer. Mature. Evolved. But performing Living world tasks, are somehow pointless. Boring. Tedious. and with very little rewards worth the time and the dedication. Heroes don’t wanna waste their time pointlessly. Noobs do. A grid for allocating “Points” Using the same way you inserted the new “Luck” system would be amazing. But for all stats. by performing living story missions, you would be granted “essences” to allocated in the grid, allowing us to make our Heroes coming back over and over, to grow. +5 Power, +5 vitality, +5 condition damage, etc essences would be given at the end of each living story. Heroes could chose the stat they want to add to their accounts, choosing what path in battle performance suits them better. Thank you for considering our opinions, and lets hope Guild wars continues to captivate people to join in the cause. Keep up the good work

Raziel.4216:

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

Brilliant suggestion.

Halvorn.9831:

There is a very general problem.

You cannot have content that creates an evolving world on the one hand and make it stay forever on the other hand. It’s a contradiction. If you defeat the dredge and flame legion, that invasion is no longer there and it makes no sense to still have its dungeons around. Either evolution or persistence. You cannot have both.

I choose evolution. It means, I cannot repeat old content and it will be forever lost and only in my memory or in the history books. That’s the price to pay for an evolving world.

Except that the world hasn’t ‘evolved’ through the LS. You take away the current LS patch and you have essentially the same exact game that was around a year ago. What has evolved?