Guild Wars 2

Observation: It sounds like the development team is, or at least feels, painted into a corner by the combination of the design up until release and the economic reality of self funding the game (plus in all likelihood making the mortgage payments on the total cost of development). We heard earlier in this thread, for example, that the cost of voice acting, times 5 races, times male and female, times however many languages are supported makes expanding such content prohibitive.

While ArenaNet has to pay attention to all players and those of us on this thread represent a miniscule fraction of 3 million copies of the game, I for one would like to find a way to “give ArenaNet permission” to simply walk out of that painted-in corner, even if it leaves some paint-y footsteps in the game.

I’d be happy to do without voiceovers in dialog I’ll only hear once, so long as the expectation is clearly set in advance.

For that matter, I’d pay US$50 per account simply to be able to record over any sound my character makes (at will, not one time), locally, just as I hear it (not affecting anyone else). But that’s another topic for another day, the point in raising it here is I’m not wedded to the voice acting tied to the races today.

Perhaps there is another constraint we could find a way to remove which would free the creative folks who brought us Guild Wars 2 as it stood at release to do more of that exceptional work.

nopoet.2960:

Galen Grey.4709:

Change doesnt mean new dungeons, change means well things are different then what they used to be before that change. I understand what you’re saying and so does arenanet thats why they promised to get MF back as a fractal after all. That however doesnt change the point that change does happen as the living story plays its course. Those NPCs are just used and thrown away. Both Braham and Rox+frostbite played central part in other LS releases like Scarlet’s funhouse and the refugees where the central theme for the secrets of southsun.

These changes had no impact on gameplay. We have a new area where nothing happens and new npcs that don’t do anything. MMO’s have been doing this forever. I expect more from this game. How hard would it have been to add a heart related to the new town or a new dynamic event to the area surrounding it.

I seriously doubt a new heart will make a difference though yeah I would like that too. That being said its important to point out plenty of living story releases did do that. The Secrets of southsun left quite a few new dynamic events behind as well as crap toss. Dragon bash left the moa race and southsun survival, The Sky pirates left not so secret JP, Bazaar left Blecher’s bluff and Sanctum sprint , The jubilee left the invasions, Twilight assault left the “new” path. Pretty good change the new LS release will leave some new dynamic events behind to at least until we solve this issue if the nightmare tower.

Yet despite all these changes (never mind the story / geography and character changes) a lot of people claim the LS doesnt change anything. You honestly think a new heart / dynamic event here and there will tip the scale?

nopoet.2960:

Galen Grey.4709:

Think what would happen? you got no guarantee you’re going to kill the dragon and you’ll end up with a lot of losses. Meanwhile scarlet’s forces would have an easy time conquering the zone seeing as the warriors are out attacking the dragon. Once scarlet forces take over a zone easily its almost certain they’ll move on the adjestant areas and take advantage from the reduced resistance.

But Scarlett doesn’t take over the zone. She just leaves even if she wins…

The molten alliance did take over towns though. In F&F the razing we had to free both cragstead and hatchery. In Sky pirates there was a plot to take over a seat in the council of Lions arch.

We dont really know scarlets motives so far so its hard to say why the clockwork invasions retreat after 45 minutes. That being said the krait do occupy the map and need to be pushed back and they do assault the outlying villages too.

Not an argument thread – please listen when the devs state that.

bewhatever.2390:

Observation: It sounds like the development team is, or at least feels, painted into a corner by the combination of the design up until release and the economic reality of self funding the game (plus in all likelihood making the mortgage payments on the total cost of development). We heard earlier in this thread, for example, that the cost of voice acting, times 5 races, times male and female, times however many languages are supported makes expanding such content prohibitive.

While ArenaNet has to pay attention to all players and those of us on this thread represent a miniscule fraction of 3 million copies of the game, I for one would like to find a way to “give ArenaNet permission” to simply walk out of that painted-in corner, even if it leaves some paint-y footsteps in the game.

I’d be happy to do without voiceovers in dialog I’ll only hear once, so long as the expectation is clearly set in advance.

For that matter, I’d pay US$50 per account simply to be able to record over any sound my character makes (at will, not one time), locally, just as I hear it (not affecting anyone else). But that’s another topic for another day, the point in raising it here is I’m not wedded to the voice acting tied to the races today.

Perhaps there is another constraint we could find a way to remove which would free the creative folks who brought us Guild Wars 2 as it stood at release to do more of that exceptional work.

I agree. I would gladly made it without VO.
Actually I believe VO is one of the worst things ever happen to MMO and RPGs in general. It’s less impacing on other generes as they usally more linear and “whatever”, but RPG were for me at least always about options, big world and multitude of options.
Costs and time of VO severly limits all those aspects.

Please. Just stop VO, and focus on more meaty stuff. Or if you want VO, well, you have 200 people. Let them VO (;. You don’t need actors for that.

EverythingXen.1835:

I suppose technically they did. But those changes are inconsequential.

Games dont evolve or change because a ruined city gets built in the background or NPCs move somewhere. This is an interactive medium. A game changes when new mechanics, new ways of playing, or at least content that gets players to play differently are introduced. The MA enemies and dungeon provided that, at least to some degree. With those gone, the gameplay… and by extension the world… becomes stale.

Thankfully Anet has started rectifying that to some extent.

I disagree, it has to be a mix. Every MMO adds new content but most of them never change so much as a pixel from content thats been release. When you got zones that never change a single bit in 5 – 10 years time I wouldnt say thats an evolving world, its a static world.

I disagree with this as well. Sure MF was a great dungeon and sure I agree that in a way its a pity to see it go (though its coming back as a fractal sometime in the future) But did it make the game stale? not by a long stretch because after its gone we had to deal with consortium, southsun wild life and canach. Then we had to deal with skypirates and AR (yet another great dungeon), then there was the zephyr sanctum etc… Just cause things get removed doesnt automatically make the world/game stale. New content keeps things fresh much more then leaving old content in permanently in my opinion. In fact I would say its rather the opposite.

If you simply add content without every taking it out you will never have evolution in your game cause you simply will not have any change just additions. Imagine if the Molten alliance LS stayed all in game and was never removed. 1 year down the line we’d still be winning fight after fight yet nothing we do has an effect. They keep coming no matter how many of them we beat. Thats what would really be stale and not what we got, ie actual result for out actions.

As things they are though they’re not perfect, currently change is always in the ideal. It would be nice to have some LS events that might fail and take a different direction down the line based on that result.

Talissa Chan.7208:

Not an argument thread – please listen when the devs state that.

Its a discussion thread, arguments are kinda a subset of discussions. Personally I think its healthy to have arguments (as long as they’re respectful) as they serve to dwell deeper into different point of views.

That being said if developers or moderators feel that discussions between players on disagreements arent something productive for this thread please say so I would personally be happy to leave that for other threads no problem.

If you want an answer read these threads, they provide a lot of criticisms on Living story:

“Living story makes me sad”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Living-World-makes-me-sad/page/4#post3111517

“Living story = players not returning”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Living-story-players-not-returning/page/7#post3000610

“A not so living world”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/A-not-so-living-world/first#post3102007

“Living story – I don’t like it”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Living-Story-I-don-t-like-it/first#post3080071

“Best and worst releases – Year 1”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Best-and-Worst-of-GW2-Releases-Year-1/page/2#post2966827

Sirendor.1394:

If you want an answer read these threads, they provide a lot of criticisms on Living story:

“Living story makes me sad”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Living-World-makes-me-sad/page/4#post3111517

“Living story = players not returning”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Living-story-players-not-returning/page/7#post3000610

“A not so living world”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/A-not-so-living-world/first#post3102007

“Living story – I don’t like it”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Living-Story-I-don-t-like-it/first#post3080071

“Best and worst releases – Year 1”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Best-and-Worst-of-GW2-Releases-Year-1/page/2#post2966827

Critism doesnt mean it tells what to change. I am pretty sure that any dev can tell you that it is impossible to please each and everyone in the game. The most important thing is that they make decisions. Each decision can be something we like or dislike. So just linking some threads to people that dislike certain decisions is not helpfull. The team absolutly saw them.

Maybe you would like to try to explain what you want to see regarding to the living story. My contribution so far has been some very old post moved here (but I still stahnd behind the thought), a more general post bout the story and what is good and wrong bout it in my point of view and a post bout fixing the reward system so people both with more then enough playtime and people with limited playtime both can enjoy the story. So try to do the same. What do you like bout the living story? What do you dislike? What would you change if you where a dev? what would you do to please as many people as possible?

Colin asked bout my favourite TV-show. I like many shows but on of my favourites was Lost. What I liked bout it was the surealism and philosophic base they worked on.

Living World vs. TV series:

TV series has a few very simple, clear cut characters + story elements recognizable even by the most casual viewer. Translated to GW2: “In Guild Wars the arch-enemy is Zhaitan”.

TV series has a main cast and gives viewers choice whom they like most and whom they hate. There is no real main cast in GW2 (yet). And as a viewer I have to live with the characters I love and also with the characters I hate. I know I won’t get rid of the hated characters until the very end of the show.

In a TV series, when a character is introduced or replaced, more than one episode is completely dedicated to flesh out the new character(s). Better introduced characters in GW2 Living World story are…? (maybe Roxy, maybe Lord Faren)

@Bobby Stein: Thanks for the explanations of the story development and the restrictions. But for a TV series, this would be faaaaaaaar tooooo complicated. I estimate 70% of the players have already forgotten 70% of the finer points in next update.

Take a detective story TV series: Each episode deals with a very simple plot: X committed crime Y and has to be apprehended by main cast. This story element is used to develop main cast and villain characters or one interesting aspect of the world. Then, after this is accomplished, maybe in season 2, in each episode a small part is dedicated to advance the over-arcing conspiracy story. And special care is taken to tell this story element.

In TV series most characters are so well fleshed out, people can (to a degree) predict their actions or reactions. If players don’t care about the characters they use the LS updates as another opportunity to grind, make gold, etc.

After so many problems caused by the sylvari, people shoud hate them all. Racially motivated conflicts, harassment, scuffles, deaths of innocents. The underground opposition groups… etc. Why not to develop this theme?

I am kinda worried about the feedback regarding content release pacing being too fast and should instead be released monthly instead of biweekly. Thing is I have a feeling having it monthly might make things worst.

Why?

Well every update is kinda split into two part. You got the actual content and the achievements.

The content drives the story + gives new stuff for players to do. The achievement and their rewards are on the other hand designed to keep people busy, giving them stuff to do in between updates.

In terms of content every update has I would say 2 – 5 hrs worth of stuff give or take.
Now still even 2 hrs might be too much for some people, if they’re on holiday or have RL issues etc.. Its entirely plausable to have no time to play at all in a span of 2 weeks. So to be clear I am not saying this issue doesnt exist just that I image for most people 5hrs in 2 weeks is very doable so I suspect the bulk of the issues rest with the achievements.

I suppose the achievements are primary intended to give people who play a lot more then 2 – 5 hrs per 2 weeks something to once they get all of the content done. They basically get people to repeat content a bit for rewards. The problem Arenanet face here is they need to balance these out by making sure that people who dont play a lot can still get a shot at the reward while people who play a lot will still get stuff to do until the end.

Hence Arenanet came with a plan. The Meta Achievement you earn by doing most of the achievements but not all. The rest of the achievements dont provide time limited reward but rather help you get to the overall achievement rewards making it optional. (though an issue for completionists)

So with this in mind how would things change if you move the release schedule form 2 weeks to a month?

All things being equal content will increase from 2-5hrs to 4-10hrs. Achievements now need to keep people busy for a month rather then 2 weeks. Hence those achievements will likely double as well. If thats the case best case scenario nothing has changed. Worst case scenario things got a lot worst. Why? well some people feel compelled to finish getting their rewards before moving to anything else. Such people will now have to grind double the amounts they did before, This will be much more grindy for people who have a lot of time to play because they will be able to fit a lot of it in a short span of time.

Some people like to leave stuff until the last possible time. Seeing you have a month worth of time to complete the achievement I would imagine some people might not start on their achievements properly until 2 or 1 week prior to the deadline and now they will have to cram twice the effort they had before.

Beyond of all this, different updates are geared towards different kind of players. Some updates focus on mini games, others on dungeons, others still on JPs while others focus on the open world. If an update doesnt include anything you like you’ll have to do a whole month of repetion on that content you dont enjoy to get to the reward if the reward itself interests you.

I think this might be something that needs some careful thinking because I am afraid the obvious answer (twice the time should make it less stressful) might actually make it worst. Unless the problem like I said above is that there are months were you’re not able to play for 2 weeks at a stretch of course. For that issue this will work pretty well.

MeGaZlo.9516:

After so many problems caused by the sylvari, people shoud hate them all. Racially motivated conflicts, harassment, scuffles, deaths of innocents. The underground opposition groups… etc. Why not to develop this theme?

This is one of the most original and believable ideas I have seen here. This is the type of thinking that LW needs.

Sadly, humanity (meaning conscious humanoids) tend to have racism. It’s easier than solving problems to just blindly blame a people. And, with the newness of Sylvari, you’d think there’d be a strong racism stripe against them in the game. Furthermore, with Sylvari attacking everyone, that would only fuel this myopic view. This idea is beautiful in it’s simplicity and depth.

Living World vs. TV series:

Feedback: Difficult for TV series to get views feedback. In GW2 there are plenty of
ways to get player feedback. Did players like this episode? Was the plot well understood? Do they know this character? Do they know this fact about the world? … Like the metrics for game balance, instance difficulty, TP prices, etc. you can also gather a ton of information about the reception of the Living World episodes.

I will state. from my perspective, that asking what television elements need to be in game is, quite frankly, the most disheartening thing I have ever seen posted by a Lead, in 10+ years of MMO gaming.

I would look for inspiration in what you have already shown you can do.

Look at how you developed Varesh as a long term adversary. You showed us her motives, how she came to be, showed her progression into madness. You did not throw her into the world going “muaaa haaa haaaa”

Look at your development of General Morgahn. Look how Varesh sent Captains, minions, forces against us while she pursued her goals. And.. she had goals. Goals that became clear as the story progressed. Goals we worked hard to prevent.

Varesh didn’t summon some outlandish alliance of x and y. We knew where her forces came from, why, and how.

Look at other things you have done. Miku. Without her, the “personal” story line of Hearts of the North would have been impossible. We needed her. She needed us. That is how you create connection to an NPC char. You have done it, and done it well. Miku is a huge contrast to the NPC “help” we get in the stories here. It is hard to connect to a bumbling idiot you don’t need, want, and have to compensate for.

For brevity I just put a couple examples in.

Please. Do not look at a popular medium that relies upon entertaining passive, non interactive people as inspiration. Look at your own track record. Look at all the examples of what you did when you did it right. And there is a lot of that.

Anet does not need to redefine their ability to tell compelling stories. You need to just go back to doing it.

Look at your lore. We just now, barely, have addressed Orr. If you wanted to make Scarlet terrifying, you could have had her using her intellect, talents, and forces to track down the Scepter of Orr.. That would have been a threat worth caring about.

BobbyStein.2315:

Player Agency
“Q:What do you guys think about the incredible negative feedback you got for Trahearne?
A:Narrative Designer Scott McGough and I talked about this very topic some time ago. In short, Trahearne was intended to fill a very specific role that, in terms of both gameplay and story, the PC could not fill—an order-neutral character with extensive knowledge about Orr and the magic of undeath who could coordinate a global war effort and make the necessary plans, thus leaving the actual gameplay up to the player. Further, Trahearne’s character design was intentional in that he would be a reluctant hero who, through interacting with the player, evolved into someone who could step up to lead the Pact.

This didn’t resonate well with some players for a variety of reasons.

I wanted to take a moment to comment on this. Because right away with the introduction of Trahearne into the later periods of my personal story, I understood what you were trying to do. And I think it was a great idea. One of the problems with MMO stories is that every character is the hero and you end up just one in a million of faces. Why should NPCs care about you? Everyone’s the same. The introduction of Trahearne fixes that a little. He becomes the focus while the PCs become part of this army that came together to fix the problem. The people of the world then have a specific way of reacting to you that feels a lot less generic than most MMOs.

My dislike of Trahearne stems from one specific moment in the game. Unfortunately, I chose to play the game first as a Sylvari. Had I played with any other race I don’t think this would have been an issue, because my PC would not have already known him. However, when my mentor said “Hey this is Trahearne a good friend of mine.” I was like “Yeah… we know each other.”

Yet when Trahearne and I (my sylvari character) went to visit the Pale Tree she forgot me. Suddenly I wasn’t her son anymore, I was “Trahearne’s friend.” Never mind that he accompanied me on a quest early on in the game. Never mind that I was her avatar for mediating the squabbles between the three orders. Now I was just some guy Trahearne knows. Trahearne’s friend.

To add insult to injury, the pale tree gave Trahearne the sword I got for her during my personal story quest! Without even acknowledging my participation in prior events! Suddenly it was like Trahearne was the favoured son. I was just this guy. Forget what I did. It wasn’t important. Trahearne, now there was a special guy.

Had I played the personal story to that point with any other race first, I would have felt differently. Had I not chosen the personal story path that led me to retrieve that sword I might have felt differently. But there I stood, the person who made all of this possible, and the pale tree didn’t even call me her son anymore.

It kind of makes it seem like all of the choices I made in my personal story were irrelevant because, in the end, I got railroaded through a generic instance that was in no way catered to the way I played the game. I do understand that with a game like this you can’t have deeply nuanced cut scenes for every different possible combination in the game. But don’t you think it makes sense for the pale tree to acknowledge a sylvari character as her child? Or that if you participated in a major plot point earlier on in the story the NPC should maybe remember that?

Anyway, I hope this is in someway helpful. Because I don’t dislike the character or what you tried to do with him. And if the conversation between myself, him and the pale tree had been slightly different, I probably would have enjoyed that particular part of the plot.

John.5732:

MeGaZlo.9516:

After so many problems caused by the sylvari, people shoud hate them all. Racially motivated conflicts, harassment, scuffles, deaths of innocents. The underground opposition groups… etc. Why not to develop this theme?

This is one of the most original and believable ideas I have seen here. This is the type of thinking that LW needs.

Sadly, humanity (meaning conscious humanoids) tend to have racism. It’s easier than solving problems to just blindly blame a people. And, with the newness of Sylvari, you’d think there’d be a strong racism stripe against them in the game. Furthermore, with Sylvari attacking everyone, that would only fuel this myopic view. This idea is beautiful in it’s simplicity and depth.

I’m honestly surprised that Sylvari are even so far up the food chain.
We’re told they’re essentially “the new kid on the block”.
Yet they seem to wield untold knowledge/power (First, Traherne, and now Scarlet?)

I remember when when Fire & Frost was first announced. I thought “nice, maybe the Molten Alliance is some kind of new cult of Primordius instilled with his powers (a bit like the sons of Svanir) and maybe this will lead to an episodal (is that a word? dunno..) story arc about Primordius’s lore”.
Too bad that wasn’t the case which is a pity. All we got after that instead were Power Rangers- style villains with fancy weapons.
Think about it, how can you feel involved and intrigued in a story where:
1- You’re just a bystander following npcs and getting almost no credit at all for what you achieve (storywise);
2- The villains are just.. villains. Random alliances bringing havoc for no particular reason other than “being evil”.

I don’t know Anet, I got the feeling that for some reason you’re not allowed to introduce new original lore content (dragons and gw1 stuff) until a given time temporizing with all this LW arcs.
I guess you have your reasons so I won’t argue with that, but if you can’t add new lore try to evolve the mechanic of elements you already have instead of creating temporary mediocre content (see Ronah on his post and Runeblade on dynamic events).

Oh one more thing, can you please keep LW content out of wvw please?

RaM.8523:

---

snip
I don’t know Anet, I got the feeling that for some reason you’re not allowed to introduce new original lore content —-snip

Scarlett, Roxx, etc…are these not new characters? Scarlet’s invasion, some twisted nightmare stuff going on…all of this isnt new lore or story? It may be very weak lore and story, many people including myself will say that. But from what I gather, it is new stuff that was not in GW1.

Correct me if I am wrong, because I did not play GW1, but in my travels along the forums here I have not seen one post about people comparing Scarlet and her invasions, for example, being related to anything that is already in the GW1 original lore.

Again, I could be wrong.

I’m going to be harsh and say: if you want the living story to succeed in the long run, than you need to completely scrap its current implementation.

The entire Living Story up to now has been short term content. Things have been changed but rarely did anything of substance get added. Even worse some of the “new” content meant ripping out content that was already there. As it is there really isn’t much more content than what the game launched with. Not when looking at how many updates the game has had.

The Living Story should focus not only on updating content short term, but adding content long term. By long term I mean new zones. We’ve gotten many placating, but honestly I would rather say demeaning, comments on how you’ve been listening and new more permanent content will be added. sorry but I’m not seeing it. Even worse content that has been added as “new” permanent content is in fact deserted. IE tequatl and aether dungeon path. These changes only had short term appeal due to achievement points, which is another fail but a different discussion.

So how to get back on track. First of kill Scarlet in the most humiliating way. So for a “genius” of her level being cut in half, while doing a speech, by a jotun seems quite appropriate. Scarlet isn’t interesting nor beneficial to the game world.

Add a fallen hero to be the new antagonist. Someone who was corrupted by an elder dragon and can move the story forward instead of sideways. The world is threatened by dragons and the player is running errands and partying, hence sideways.

Add new zones through multi phased story lines. These zones will be slowly build to become full fledged world zones with poi, hearts and vistas.

Don’t stick to a rigid schedule. Content every 2 weeks is stifling for everyone and only lowers the overall quality by at least a 100%. Yes you want people to play and come back, but you don’t want to burn people out. The only way to make people keep logging in is by quality content. Not AP, not more of the same. Quality means better writing. Characters need to be believable and that means flawed, very flawed in a lot of cases. For the most part characters have been stiff and perfect. Quality also means no more content that instils a sense of accomplishment, but without the need of having it fed to people by AP. AP is busy work, the current LV is a perfect example of it. It has no meaning and once finished will not be done again. To be honest AP grinding should be removed as far as I’m concerned. This is coming from someone in the top 1000 AP players.

There really is also no reason new players shouldn’t be able to experience some of the previous LV in some fashion. I don’t mean through fractals. Make the previous LV in a singleplayer experience by choosing some of the elements that would give people a sense of how it was. IE dungeons and short personal story like events.

TLDR yeah just read it.

Guhracie.3419:

I am an active player, with a lot of time to spend in-game, and I am of the mind that this constant bombardment of “stuff” is excessive. I wouldn’t mind all the stuff if it was permanent, but this “two weeks and it’s gone forever(ish)!” model is tiresome.

Agree fully. I am a very active player myself (about as active as possible while having a full time job), and the LS updates start to feel more and more like a chore. Now when a new patch hits, the first thing is I open the achievement panel to see the latest “to-do” list. Fun? No. Just a sense of being stressed.

The main reason for this “stress” is that so many achievements are time-gated, starting with dailies. I can’t chose over the course of a week when I would have most time to play and do certain things, the achievement system as is dictates to me what to do when, and the LS achievements just come on top of it. The whole thing feels more like an exercise in trying to optimize my in-game activities instead of me playing what I enjoy and being rewarded on the way.

StarbornStriker.6493

It kind of makes it seem like all of the choices I made in my personal story were irrelevant because, in the end, I got railroaded through a generic instance that was in no way catered to the way I played the game. I do understand that with a game like this you can’t have deeply nuanced cut scenes for every different possible combination in the game. But don’t you think it makes sense for the pale tree to acknowledge a sylvari character as her child? Or that if you participated in a major plot point earlier on in the story the NPC should maybe remember that?

Having all these different paths within the personal story is in my opinion indeed one of the weaker points in GW2. StarbornStriker already mentions the lack of continuity you get to experience when choosing certain paths. It also makes things like the Krait Orb seemingly come out of the blue and cuts the story in predictable pieces (‘for the next 10 lvls I will be doing this and this and after that another chapter starts which will have very little to do with what I’m doing now’). It made me want to go back to the story-lines of GW1, where we were always focused on the biggest threat we could find.

Luckily, with the Living Story, there is probably not enough time to make different paths. However, LS so far is, like many have already mentioned, chopped up in very different pieces. Something I fear is that, as already is happening too many times, the story will be influenced by the existence of different factions (the 5 races, the 3 orders) and that it will suffer for it as all factions will get their own pieces, which are all equal in length etc. The only way to prevent this is to have them group together, as we already did in the PS with Destiny’s Edge and the Pact. Focusing on one group and branching out only when the story supports it will in my opinion make for a much stronger story-line. Unfortunately, the absence of quests forces character development into the main story, which means we may have to deal with less important stuff (in the big picture) to get to know more about the characters themselves.

Circling back to Colin’s post about TV episodic content vs Game episodic content:

I believe someone already referenced Defiance as an example… While Defiance has its own share of problems(still a very fun game), you could take a page from that book. Granted, you do not have a TV show to work off of. However, you get quests and a quest chain that has narrative and story. You see some action cut-scenes.

With the current iteration of Living Story we get a hodge-podge of the following:
-Notice in the mail system from some NPC saying there are refugees in Southsun
-We go to southsun and participate in DEs, complete achievements, and farm champions.
-We participate in a mini dungeon or a 5 man dungeon that some-what told the story. <— this was the only part that had any story telling to be honest…

Thats about it folks. From the southsun patch, all I gathered was that there was a lunatic sylvari that was making creatures go insane, and there were some squabbles with contracts from refugees. Who is controlling this sylvari? Why has he gone cookoo for cocoa puffs? What exactly made the creatures go crazy? If this stuff was told, I did not see it or process it. Either way, it was a bad job.

With the Defiance episodic content, which loosely related to the TV show episodes, it was short and sweet 10-30 minute missions/quest chains that had nice dialogue frequently giving you more information on whats going on. We need things like that. You guys have done a fantastic job with Dynamic Events in the game and when I hear NPCs bicker back and forth after an event is done, that is awsome! We need more things like that, more even chains, etc. But not necessarily event chains that will give way to enormous zergs. Zergs make the content trivial, mindless, boring, and eventually it becomes a means to farm $$ instead of engaging in the story. This is why I wish the living story would be a bit more instanced or like the personal story.

Its really amazing how every bit of GW2 is some how inter connected. We can go from talking about cadence, tying it it into content, which ties into how you tell the story, which goes back to content that connects to how the content is given to you…

I originally planned to write something long winded, but finally decided to make it short and simple.
Anet, what I see is you having 2 separate situations:
1. Players who want a decent amount of story content. Obviously an expansion is the ideal case, since the entire story is dumped in one go, allowing players to go at their own pace.
2. Players who don’t give a toss about the story and are fine with a 1-5 minute explanation on why this map is this release’s farming spot of the month.

I’m sure there’s some who want to mix the two, but these recent releases show how poor and grindy mixing the two together is (eg. halloween achievement grinding to progress the story, which only amounts to about 5 minutes worth of story…wow, unrewarding to say the least).

Anyway, from my understanding, what you want to create with a “living world” is the really the second situation.
You really just want something like the PvE equivalent of WvW with RTS/MOBA/Tower defense elements, and allowing for more “game-breaking” stuff like summoning dragons, golems, siege tanks, pew-pew lazer beams on sharks, pirate ships, ghosts etc to help out. Then add things like buffs/debuffs based on the season and weather…I dunno, anymore.

Mind you, I’d personally prefer more story content/fleshing out lore, but being in the minority sucks and a sad reality.

Okay so here’s my take on the living world. Every other week we are getting new content, eachtime this updates drops I am amazed at how much content is actually in the release. It amazes me every time to see just how much development and hard work has been put into each release, it really showcases how hardworking Anet actually are to continously put in so much effort to the game especially considering the game is free to play. However, this is where the issues come into light. Although we can see the hard work Anet is putting into the living world the effort is going into things which people don’t like. It’s easy to point out some of the amazing releases that have been dropped however a large percentage of the living world content is none replayable, alot of the time it leaves us doing the content within 1 to 2 hours and then there is nothing left to do. Now what I would like to see is for Anet to put this hardwork into more replayable content rather than some events which really get boring after one or two times of doing them. If they could get a nice balance of new ideas which don’t leave a lot of the community bored after a few tries while still keeping the content refreshing and then be able to mix these ideas with the hard work which we’ve already seen go into the game then we could really see something amazing with the living world.

Ah, yes: Please introduce some of the other races with a main evil character. Honestly, most of the screwups in this game are sylvari, those lovely blossoms.

The point’s been made a couple times that there’s a difference between the pace of story content and the pace we’re being asked to set with achievement hunting. I think that’s very valid. A two week cycle would be less daunting if we weren’t being asked to do SO MUCH STUFF.

Lheimroo.2947:

The point’s been made a couple times that there’s a difference between the pace of story content and the pace we’re being asked to set with achievement hunting. I think that’s very valid. A two week cycle would be less daunting if we weren’t being asked to do SO MUCH STUFF.

Well, no one forces anyone to do anything. But if you like getting the mini at the end, yes it can be daunting.

Personally, I would prefer if they removed all achievements and minis and rewards that you get, and just give us the content.

This enables you to experience it at your own pace without feeling rushed or obligated to earn extra AP so you inch closer to the next threshold of AP reward. And if on one particular day you would rather do, for example, WvW instead of Living Story, you won’t feel like you are missing out on valuable time to complete the LS achievements…you feel like youre wasting time.

For many, including myself, even though we would rather be doing other things in the game, we want to get the achievements done, for the AP and minis(even though I could care less about Minis) and then back to what I enjoy doing in GW2. It is our choice, but human nature compels us to go after that shiny.

Galen Grey.4709:

nopoet.2960:

Galen Grey.4709:

Change doesnt mean new dungeons, change means well things are different then what they used to be before that change. I understand what you’re saying and so does arenanet thats why they promised to get MF back as a fractal after all. That however doesnt change the point that change does happen as the living story plays its course. Those NPCs are just used and thrown away. Both Braham and Rox+frostbite played central part in other LS releases like Scarlet’s funhouse and the refugees where the central theme for the secrets of southsun.

These changes had no impact on gameplay. We have a new area where nothing happens and new npcs that don’t do anything. MMO’s have been doing this forever. I expect more from this game. How hard would it have been to add a heart related to the new town or a new dynamic event to the area surrounding it.

I seriously doubt a new heart will make a difference though yeah I would like that too. That being said its important to point out plenty of living story releases did do that. The Secrets of southsun left quite a few new dynamic events behind as well as crap toss. Dragon bash left the moa race and southsun survival, The Sky pirates left not so secret JP, Bazaar left Blecher’s bluff and Sanctum sprint , The jubilee left the invasions, Twilight assault left the “new” path. Pretty good change the new LS release will leave some new dynamic events behind to at least until we solve this issue if the nightmare tower.

Yet despite all these changes (never mind the story / geography and character changes) a lot of people claim the LS doesnt change anything. You honestly think a new heart / dynamic event here and there will tip the scale?

You’ll get no argument from me about Southsun. It was well done.

However, a few mini games and changes to an instanced areas doesn’t really make the world feel alive. What would make the world feel alive is seeing how npc react to new opportunities/challenges after the players solve whatever conflict we resolve. For example if I were leading the sons of svanir you better believe that I would be trying to get my hands on molten alliance gear after the players took them down a notch. And the flame legion and dredge just ignore each other now? I find that hard to swallow.

Anet has to think past the initial conflict. It’s not the conflict that makes the world feel alive it’s the worlds reaction to the conflict.

So to answer your question yes, I do think that a few hearts and dynamic events chains will tip the scale. Hopefully we will see something left over from the toxic alliance.

What i Loved about original GW2 was, that you could just dive in and explore.
When a place looks interesting, I could just go there, automatically got the right tasks (=Hearts) and stuff happened (=Events)

Furthermore with Hearts you could always combine a variety of tasks.
You were never asked to kill exactly 45 Bandits or play a mini-Game exactly 25 Times or to complete this specific Event…

Now when a new patch hits, the first thing is we open the achievement panel to see the latest “to-do” list. More often then not, the Archievements do not really explain anything, so we use a Guide out of the Internet.

1. All Archivements request very very specific Actions (“complete exactly this Event”, “find 9 Dragon claws..”)
2. there is a Archievement for every little Detail you could find in the new patch (even for watching a fire-breathing Quaggan).
3. and, of course, most of it is just Grinding.

LS-Archievements should have the advantages of Renown Hearts
- at least as long as they are the Core of the reward system.

As much as I detest the term, “management of expectations” related to the living story has been fairly poor. This sort of relates to the red post relating to what elements of TV should be incorporated. One question that needs to clearly be answered is:

Is the LS a vector for advancing the MAIN world story (i.e. dragons) in lieu of an expansion or is it supposed to be blasts of episodic content (maybe with a separate sub-plot running through different episodes)?
If the former, then the current LS is too random and disjointed to make it clear to a player that we are heading in a direction that advances the main world story. Maybe there is a payoff or major plot twist coming down the road, but are we really expected to wait a year for main plot to even start making sense? I wouldn’t watch a TV show that did that.
If it is supposed to be episodic content, then the current structure is not terrible, maybe just tighten up the in game storytelling and have some resolution, even if it not the final resolution. Flame and frost did this fairly well.

tl;dr - I thought I’d be fighting dragons on an epic quest to save the world. Instead I’m fighting bozo(ette) the clown every other month.

Other
The WTK (What the kitten?) factor.
The lore of the world is one thing that seems to draw players to the game and gives them a real sense of immersion or even personal investment in the world. And then electro steampunk pirates fall from the sky. And then Harley Quinn Scarlet shows up with a laughably unbelievable backstory. And then the notoriously most xenophobic race is forming alliances.

tl;dr - Suit: “Guys this steampunk stuff is hot right now, put it in the game!”
Dev: “Ummm…..it doesn’t really fit with the world or our story plans and will come completely out of nowhere.”
Suit: “I don’t care, make it happen.”

This post is too long already, so I’ll just sum up some other thoughts.
Pacing - Are 2 week releases chosen because there is simply too much good quality stuff for you guys to get it all in or because someone looked at trends in hours played per player, server population or other metrics and wanted to try a cheap way to jack them up? Have you considered that you’re burning people out and sacrificing long-term good for short-term gains?

Achievements overload and reliance on Ach as motivation
Proper way to do it is: Fun content —> Achievement for playing fun content.
Wrong way: Content is repetetive/quickly completed/boring --> Add a limited-time achievement to drive people to do it anyways. May be somewhat related to pacing comment above re:metrics and desire to keep people on at any cost.

Gemstore stuff hasn’t been too bad. I know you guys need to pay the bills. I think gamble boxes prey upon the weaknesses of some and personally find them a little unsavory. Armors, town clothes, finishers, minis – keep ’em coming.

Galen Grey.4709:

Talissa Chan.7208:

Not an argument thread – please listen when the devs state that.

Its a discussion thread, arguments are kinda a subset of discussions. Personally I think its healthy to have arguments (as long as they’re respectful) as they serve to dwell deeper into different point of views.

That being said if developers or moderators feel that discussions between players on disagreements arent something productive for this thread please say so I would personally be happy to leave that for other threads no problem.

On top of this… part of the reason that we get legions stomping onto the forums complaining about changes “ruining” the game for them is that they were happily playing while someone else was on this forums complaining about the very thing they liked, and what they liked wasn’t being represented or defended.

It’s important to get both sides of a discussion.

Galen Grey.4709:

I am kinda worried about the feedback regarding content release pacing being too fast and should instead be released monthly instead of biweekly. Thing is I have a feeling having it monthly might make things worst.

valid arguments

I think this might be something that needs some careful thinking because I am afraid the obvious answer (twice the time should make it less stressful) might actually make it worst. Unless the problem like I said above is that there are months were you’re not able to play for 2 weeks at a stretch of course. For that issue this will work pretty well.

I agree a lot with this, though I consider the achievements attached to the LS as a seperate issue. (a good one too)

I dont have problems keeping up with the content given out every two weeks, Im lucky in that regard. My issue is the content itself being held back because the pace is so fast.

I wouldnt support a ubiquitous mandate from an update every two weeks to an update every month. Ideally, the content of the update itself would determine how much time “in the pot” the update would take.

If the grand finale of Scarlet’s plan is a huge epic event with a confluence of NPCs, big open world events, a huge dungeon, and whatever else needs to be put in final chapter… but it needs more than 4 months to create all that, then allow that to happen. Naturally, such a massive event would be in game for quite a bit… it would be very disappointing if the final showdown with Scarlet lasted only two weeks.

Basically, I dont feel, as a player, held hostage by the pace of the LS… I feel that the quality of the content and plot is.

(so many good points in this thread… only so much I can post at work! blagh…)

I’m wondering if I can distill some of this down. Let me know if you guys think this accurately represents what the majority are saying here.

For players who play the game a lot, they appreciate the fast pace of content and additional things to do, but many would like to see more depth to the releases.

For players with limited time, the frequent releases (combined with temporary achievements and temporary content) feel like a constant rush. And a not-very fun one, at that.

Across the board, it seems as though the story is missing on many points. If there is a motive and strong story behind Scarlet, it hasn’t been presented in-game clearly enough for most players to appreciate it.

My suggestion, based on the above, is to add new story-filled, repeatable, permanent content. Really, I think what you should start to look at adding are dungeons.

Those could be dungeons in new zones (which, as an explorer-type, I’d love!) or existing zones. Here’s just some random ideas…

1. Consortium Headquarters (Southsun Cove) – a dispatch from Ellen Kiel warns that the Consortium seem to be building a new golem and planning on using it to sabotage the Black Lion Trading Company. While Kiel is no friend of Evon Gnashblade, her top priority is protecting Lion’s Arch. In the dungeon, you infiltrate a Consortium facility on Southsun. You can choose to 1) avoid detection and sneak through a side path, where taking aggro means huge spawns of mobs 2) fight your way straight to the laboratory or 3) create a diversion, splitting into two groups where one must protect an NPC who draws out enemies from the lab and the second group must enter the lab and destroy the golem.

2. Desert’s Edge (Fields of Ruin) – a team of Ebonguard went beyond the gates to the Crystal Desert from Ebonhawke but haven’t returned. You must set out and rescue them. You can choose to set out via 1) airship (which would crash-land during the path, leaving you to complete it on foot) 2) borrowing an Iron Legion transport (which would eventually get stuck) or 3) teleporting to the last known location of the team (which would require you to then find them via foot.) Something like that…

Obviously, the devs wouldn’t use these ideas directly, but my thought process here was to take existing stories and try to add detail somehow. If they got the full dungeon treatment, we could learn a lot more about things which exist in game but have a lot of question marks.

On this issue of achievements and their relationship to the LS:

1. Achievements force artificial participation in the LS. Rather than having a compelling story to motivate players to explore the story, players are forced into the “story” in order to complete their checklist of achievements. I can honestly say that since the F&F event, I have very little idea of what the story actually is simply because I did my checklist and called it good.

2. Achievements obscure the story. Stemming from point one, the concept of the achievement list tends to obscure the story. Rather than explore the new areas or new events and simply enjoy them and the story, most players tear through it to get the achievements done in the two-week window. The story, then, plays second fiddle. This is a huge contributor to the confusion I, and others, have concerning “what’s going on.”

3. Achievements prop up shoddy storytelling. The example of the Quaggan fireshow is a perfect illustration of this effect. Rather than the story or new area being compelling enough in and of itself, it took an achievement to point out to players significant parts of the story. If the Living Story is going to continue to sell itself as a “story” then it must be a good one. Or it’d be better off being dropped entirely.

4. There is no point number four.

5. Achievements are unnatural rewards for completing the story. By that I mean this: rather than the LS actually changing the world permanently, it’s a glorified instance that resets at the end of the two weeks. Thus, the only reward is in the achievement system. However, in the real “living” world, any catastrophic event fundamentally alters the course of history and the world. The “reward” is entirely dependent on the nature of that alteration. Thus, the in-game LS’s natural rewards should be new areas, access to new merchants or resources, unlocking previously seen but yet inaccessible areas, the reclamation of a “lost” area (imagine having to retake LA as a server). These are “natural” and far more compelling reasons to complete the LS than “do 15 achievements and get a mini.”

Just some thoughts. I, for one, would love to see the achievements for the LS removed entirely.

For the Living World concept to become what it can be, I think there should be more ‘Living’ and more ‘World’ to the content we already have.

‘Living’
A large part of ‘living’ is the players having an impact on the world. The difficulty here is the 4 months we have to wait for new content to be developed conform our choices. Remember we elected Ellen Kiel? That feels like a long time ago, and we should be seeing her again next month. I hope we can find a way to make players impact the world in a direct way, perhaps a way that isn’t dependent on a completely new batch of content. For example, when we finally get to discover the Crystal Desert, let the players actually build the first outpost in that area. There would be escorts of supplies, protecting the build site, maybe a raid on an enemy’s lair to lessen the attacks for a while. The building would only continue if there are enough supplies and the build site and if it isn’t overrun by enemies (enemies could even destroy what we already have built). This would fill a progress bar, which could even take weeks to complete. Sounds familiar? Yeah, that’s right, WvW elements in PvE!
If the real necessary stuff would already been given, the next update could expend on exploring the region, independent of the progress of building the outpost. Perhaps the local inhabitants don’t like us being there and will launch an offensive, making completing the outpost even harder, ‘punishing’ us for not completing the outpost faster.

‘World’
Right now, I don’t think the world feels like a dangerous world but more like a playground. Any place in the world can be reached within minutes and any mob or event can be ignored. Want to go somewhere? Take a waypoint and run no more than 5 minutes. Bridge collapsed? There is probably a way to get to the other side, usually right next to the bridge. A mob in your way? Well, just walk right past it. Waypoint contested? Travel to the one next to it.
To be honest, I don’t have any realistic idea how to fix these issues. Removing over 90% of the waypoints is not something I think we’ll see happening. Perhaps a return to the ‘Ress shrines’ from GW1 would be something to consider. Another element from GW1 that might help: more larger mobs that actually patrol the area, making it more difficult to just mindlessly run past them. It might be a start looking into these things, although I don’t think it will be enough.

everything here would make for the most epic PvE Living World ever.
and for those who haven’t been on in days/weeks there should be some kind of replay option to get caught up on all that has happened. there is already the Herald that gives announcements, add it to them.

One quick thought about achievements in the LS…

I really dont like the trend of achievements gating off content of the LS. This has happened both in Scarlet’s Invasion and this Halloween… in Scarlet’s case actually walling off previously accessible content I had been enjoying up to that point.

I’ll grind out achievements if I choose to. Requiring me to in order to access content that likely is going away pretty soon really rubs me the wrong way.

Remember Tybalt? I don’t. Because an interesting and fun character was killed off 3 missions after he was introduced, meanwhile a joyless robot continued to function for the entire story despite his power switch clearly being in the “off” position. How else could you explain his monotonous reaction to fighting dragons? Did he ever once raise his voice or laugh? Its fuzzy to me, probably because Trahearne excreted a mist of narcotics wherever he went.

The point is Tybalt is an awesome and entertaining character that should be your model when deciding on future characters we’re supposed to like. As far as characters we’re supposed to hate, rather than just be annoyed by, they need clear motives, believable methodology, and ideally they shouldn’t think they’re the bad guy.

But my personal feeling on the Living Story is this; if the goal is to have temporary content that really isn’t more than busy work to keep people logging in while you’re building larger scale permanent content in the background… then I think by and large it’s mission accomplished, and you really DON’T need your fans to tell you that.

But if the goal is that what we’re getting should be the meat and potatoes going forward… then Arena.net is going to be disappointed when the game flops tragically by the end of its second year. There’s been plenty of time to develop the next chapter of the main thrust of the game. We’d like to get to it sooner rather than later.

One thing many seem to have brought up is the temporal nature of Living Story updates. Personally, I’ve missed a number of updates when life has has been busy, so when I recently came back to the game it really is not a good feeling to find that I missed out on some permanent content; most notably for myself are the permanent home instance nodes, titles and back items. This isn’t as bad as of a thing as some players make it out to be, but the best perspective that can be had from players who have missed some content is a passive acceptance of the situation, which doesn’t foster the personal involvement and interest I would assume the writing time is trying to engender in players.

Now, I think that making these releases temporary is a vital part of crafting a living world, and I believe that you should continue to craft more and more engaging and surprising releases. However, since you are taking some inspiration from the format of releasing episodic television, remember that many people who missed out on the original airdate enjoy getting the DVD boxed set later to catch missed shows, or simply wait until they can go through the show at their own pace after it has been released to physical media.

I think Guild Wars 2 has a way of doing that in a way that fits in with the world of Tyria through the Fractals of the Mists.

What I imagine would be a good solution to players missing out on temporary content would be to create a fractal for a Living Story arc once it completes, allowing players a chance to experience the highlights of the story arc, and getting them caught up with the world of Tyria. Firstly, I think this would probably give the developers a good way to reuse temporary LS content assets to create permanent content. I could see this going a few ways: one way having a large, permanent fractal added for a full story arc, another way with smaller, time based releases that show what happened during the last one or two LS releases, or a combination of the two. These could either be a traditional fractal group instance, or perhaps a new group entrance or solo instance. You could also choose to give players another opportunity at some or all of the rewards of the released LS content they may have missed.

Wow, a lot of content in this thread already…

Temporary vs Permanent Content
LW content motivates players to log in to experience the content while it is fresh. The time limit on the content temporarily concentrates player activity, which smooths the open world experience (e.g. dynamic events). Once the LW cycle progresses, however, some great instanced content (dungeons, story arcs, …) is essentially lost. Rather than increasing the amount of content available to players, one piece of content is swapped for another. Essentially, this leaves players with the same number of content options they had before, which causes a feeling of stagnation. Though individually small, these portions of LW content would accrue if made permanently available, offering players a greater variety of choices when they have tired of other content.

Hello,
I’ve been a little hesitant on adding my two cents – but after reading some of the DEV replies, felt I should…

First – THANK YOU!!! I’m not seeing this enough on this thread from my peers and players when it comes to the involvement that is accomplished in all of the Living Story’s we have had since Flame & Frost (one of my favorite events yet) down to our Nightmare that has changed the landscape.

I haven’t seen enough “bullet point” constructiveness from my peers but instead a lot of negative issues and what appears almost as a demand by a handful. I know that you (the Devs) are reading most if not all of these posts – and thank you again for that as well. The Living Story is such a monumental aspect to any game that has existed I feel. I mean, here I am just a guy in Indiana who has paid 60.00 to play a game with constant updates, interaction with a great team and this thing called a Living Story? Hot kitten!
Anyways – enough of my praise and to my bullet points.

• Scarlet Briar –
o A hot topic it seems on here. I LOVE HER CHARACTER and I’m not sure why others don’t. My request is to bring her Minion Attacks back to life – no one plays this now and it saddens me. It’s such a great event for players to team up. I cannot wait to see where her story goes but I admit I also confused with the random involvement – but! admit I know its part of her own plot over Tyria. Keep Scarlet Briar storyline going – I know she has a secret.
Idea: Don’t let the map reopen for XHours if players fail
Idea: Throw in Watchwork items that we can earn
Idea: Throw in a Watchwork Box to store those items

• Tequatal and the Great Boss Update –
o I’ve seen this around too. I love that the bosses are harder and more difficult (The Maw / Fire Elemental be my biggest praise) but Teq is on to large of scale now. Players have lost interest and this goes back up with Scarlet Minions as well. There is a huge gap here and it drivers me insane to the membrane about this! I personally can’t reach those achievements now. I believe it needs tweeked for this reason as I know I’m not the only player(s) like that.
Idea: Bosses also need a certain “item” award to reach for to trade in. Fire Elemental? Could it be a Fire Elemental “pet” for classes after trading in 100 rare/semi-exotic Fire Elemental Residues? We already have Tamed Earth Elementals that residents in SW Kryta use.
Idea Having the rare-rewards are great but it isn’t enough to sustain interest and a big fault as to why Tequtal no longer is played after this update. I’m not sure how but this style of Living Story update needs looked at I believe.

• Lore and Living Story:
o Nightmare Tower – Digging it right now, loving the team-play that it pushes players (much like the Minion Raids) to do. It also gives player and insight on the Nightmare Court. Downfall right now is participating in events but due to the mass of players, not getting credit.
o Living Story – We have so much Lore from Guild Wars that we haven’t invoked it. I saw one great article about Glint and her Baby Dragon, suggesting we’re about to see something soon due to one of the living stories (The Trade Winds one?) and what it brings. We need to bring this back – the Lore. I love advancing the stories but it makes us as players wonder if some of our gaming efforts are worth it?
Idea Draw from the past and make it known to players. Personally I love all of the Living Story reguardless but our past (Been a player since month 1 of Guild Wars… Holla!) is rich. We need to revisit and be involved in it.
Idea Living Story being Bi-Weekly should almost overlap. Right now with Blood & Nightmare going on (overlapping for a minute) is just way to much fun. It lets players not feel rushed and finish everything. 1 week overlap on releases?

• Dragons
o The Next Chapter – Players should know and should not be asking for Dragons right now. They are the reason we are playing this game, yes; however, they are what pushes the next 40 levels of play, pushes us to break the barrier down to Cantha, makes us visit the Fire Islands again. I expect to buy this update myself, not as a Living Story add on and not something that will be free.
Idea: Give players a taste, let us work for it and drool over it as it approaches.
Idea: Give us an idea of whose next and when we can buy this next chapter just as us Vets had done with Cantha, Elona and The North.
Idea: Remind players that not everything is free

• Misc:
o Items – Every release we get more and more items. I’m running out of room and can’t always buy more space. Some items need to shift into the Achievement box to pull out and use on other characters too (Wings of the Sunless for example).

These are my two cents to the entire topic. I’m really hoping we can build more on what we already have while introducing new characters and plots at the same time. Its important to pay homage to that which made this game what it is and why this game has such a mass fan base at the same time.

@ Neriandal Freit.2810

Sorry but Scarlet’s invasion is badly done too. The mobs are not organized at all. They have like 30 portals, almost A to Z, that they spawn from. The players are sent on a wild goose chase around and around everywhere like headless chickens. At the end the players are defeated by the clock.

“Go to portal B!”
“Go to portal J!”
“Go to portal G!”
“Go to portal X!”
“Go to portal P!”
“OMG only 30 minutes left and so we already fail. So let’s just farm champs now. Defeat won’t affect the world anyways.”

Very badly made. Even worst than Teq. People may like it because its champs gives good loot. But loots aside this event is badly done.

GW2 really need to introduce organized enemy armies. We have plenty of mindless and leaderless enemy swarms already. Battles should be “waves after waves” of enemies, not “running from portal to portal”.

If people feel that the amount of achievements to complete is too much for the casual player, maybe the meta achievements should be structured like the achievement reward chests? Have a low tier reward for those who get half way and a fancier version of the same goodie for the go-getter? You get a mask for half way and then can upgrade it to an elite mask with effects on it, kind of like the mad king tome from last year’s Halloween. Maybe an elite version of the obelisk shard could just be bigger. It doesn’t have to be amazing, just a little different to reward effort. Or have two rewards and let the person select, like zenith weapons.

My only concern with this is that people might get devisive about the loot separation. I just haven’t had too much of an issue with the achievements, so it’s hard for me to think of solutions. If anything I thought completion was a little too fast. :x

My feedback is very similar to most of the posts so far so I will keep it brief.

Pacing: I agree that the two-week cycle is very short for both players and, presumably, designers/developers. It tends towards punishing rather than refreshing for myself, at least. I’d like to see either slightly less stuff to do per two weeks, or preferably longer and more flexible timescales and space between patches.

As an addendum to that, I would ideally like to see more permanent content, even if it is done via some kind of ‘flashback’ access point. Which leads onto my next point…

Story: Not only were we promised a living world, it was described as a Living Story. We’ve had some plot lines and characters introduced, but it feels like pushing it to describe it as a story. There is very little in-game lore or background provided; I understand that some of it is/was to maintain mystery around our nemesis (Scarlet), but there have been so many bits and pieces thrown around that it can become frustrating and hard to follow. We get some tantalising hints now and again (Braham as Eir’s son and their relationship, Marjory and her special weapons) and even evidently make some decisions (the Kiel v Gnashblade vote) but there isn’t a lot else divulged and I feel like we are left hanging.

Overall I think the Living Story would benefit from more story elements, to work more like the personal story line, and less laundry-list achievements which are tedious and do not flesh out the actual story much. I know the GW world isn’t really about linear questing but I think the Living Story would benefit from something more along those lines to give us goals to achieve whilst maintaining a more cohesive storyline.

Finally, while I enjoy the ‘working together to reach a common goal’ aspect of MMOs, I am a bit concerned about what seems to be the current trend towards ‘zerging’ in many events and areas (Scarlet invasions, the Divinity’s Reach arena bit, the new spore events and ‘champ trains’ in general.) For me, at least, that kind of play feels rushed, mindless and not very enjoyable as I am not able to play at a pace I would like. I am not entirely sure how to move away from that whilst still encouraging cooperative play but if it can be done I think it would improve the story and play experience.

If we are looking at successful TV shows in our effort to progress the Living Story then let us consider the similarity of 3 successful shows of different genres(SciFi, Comedy, Drama).
Star Trek, M.A.S.H and The Sopranos
What do all 3 of these hit shows have in common?

1. A strong likable main character: Kirk/ Hawkeye/Tony
2. An small contingent of noteworthy secondary characters(just to pick a few): Spock, McCoy/ B.J, Radar/ Christopher, Junior
3. A common Location: Enterprise/4077/North Jersey

• There is no mention of an Over-the-top Nasty in these shows as they weren’t needed to progress the storyline. Sure there were some temporary Baddies from time to time but more important than the Antagonist is the conflict that the Heroes face. We can leave the cardboard cutout Villain to the Saturday morning cartoons. “And I would have gotten away with it if it wouldn’t have been for you meddling kids, now DIE DIE DIE!”

The story being told is the MOST important thing. Not the money, achievements, or the shineys; it’s the smooth story progression from week to week that keeps us coming back.

At the end of an episode the greater conflict may still exist but the lessor problems get solved and we move on.

Another issue I’ve seen brought up a number of times is the tendency of LS releases to add dynamic events that cause players to create giant, map-circling zerg groups to complete them, simply because that is the most efficient way to complete the achievements or farm for LS release-specific drops. This can be fun in moderation, but the WvW aspect of the game already gives players who are looking for this type of gameplay all of the opportunities necessary to play this way.

You should consider funneling players into different parts of the world based on their choices made at character creation and during the personal story. This would accomplish two things: break up the zerg, and bring more personal involvement with the player character into the LS. The most obvious distinctions between characters are race, profession, and the PC’s order.

It would make sense to send Vigil, Whispers and Priory characters to different fronts where they could focus on events, or send players back to defend or take part in events within their racial homelands. Either way, you would really need to make it worthwhile for players to stay in these separate fronts to split them up, and you could balance events accordingly.

You could split up players by profession, either individually or by the soldier/adventurer/scholar categories. Each group of players could approach a twist in the LS with not a unique experience, but one that is at least more tailored to their personal playstyle based on their choices.

Also, the time was taken to add a personality roleplaying mechanic to the game. Why not use that system in LS releases to funnel players into needing to do different things, or at least say different things while participating in LS content? A ‘brute’ and a ‘noble’ character wouldn’t always deal with Scarlet in the same way. Consider developing and using this system more, or do away with it.

Neriandal Freit.2810:

• Scarlet Briar –
o A hot topic it seems on here. I LOVE HER CHARACTER and I’m not sure why others don’t.

Then you clearly haven’t actually read anything we’ve posted.

Neriandal Freit.2810:

• Scarlet Briar –
A hot topic it seems on here. I LOVE HER CHARACTER and I’m not sure why others don’t.

Others have stated why they don’t like her character…some in extensive detail. It would be good to hear a reason why you think her character is good?
(Besides from just saying “I like it”)