Guild Wars 2

Chris Whiteside.6102:

gidorah.4960:

also chris any comment on the poor reception of scarlet and when you plan to get rid of her. It seems obvious from this thread that for every 1 person who thinks she is great there is 10 who just get annoyed by her and view her as poorly written deus ex machina. While showing her motivations may lower the ratio she is not a well received villain and it is likely too late to fix that.

Hi Gidorah,

I expect Bobby will speak to this point in more detail.

Chris

bobby already spoke on it and I would love if he went into more detail but surely you have some opinion on it as well?

kdose.5309:

So what does all that mean? German, French, and Spanish players have less to complain about that American, Canadian, Brit, Irish, Aussie, and Kiwi players?

Honestly I think it just means, that everyone who can write English is using the english forum and not the native language one. I do this and all my guildmates also do this since there is much more going on in the english forum and honestly here I get more of a feeling that a dev will read my post and not only the community manager (don’t mean to be disrespectful, they are great guys).

Best LS update: Zephyr Sanctum
I agree with JohnnySupernova, the zone is fantastic, interesting new mechanics, superb scavenger hunt which tied in with the new mechanics and this wonderful laid-back atmosphere which provided a contrast to other areas of the game.

No real “worst” update, but SAB is a very special type of gameplay and I’m not such a great fan of it. Tequatl Rising had major quality issues with the overflow system, hour-long boss camping and AFK’ers. But this new open-world coordinated fight is imho very innovative. I tried to fight him a few times but then I took this as an opportunity to play other areas of the game. So please continue to be innovative and do experiments. I can live with a few rough edges on the way.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

gidorah.4960:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We are committed to quality not quantity.

Chris

the hard adherance to the two week release schedule seems to indicate the opposite. there has clearly been releases that just seem unfinished. Cannach’s lair comes to mind of something that left the majority of players thinking the content was rushed out to meet a 2 week schedule. There have been others but that was the one that comes to mind first. I think its ok to just have a balance patch and delay content that clearly isnt ready so that our enjoyment of great content is merely delayed not ruined by clearly rushed release schedule.

Hi Gidorah,

To be clear we are absolutely focused on quality. We feel that we can have both this cadence and high quality and are continuing to work toward this. If we feel that we cannot reach this balance then of course like everything, we will evolve as necessary. This said there is a lot we can and are doing to meet concerns regarding the cadence and really polish the positives we have already achieved in this area.. My point is the current plan is to continue with this cadence.

Chris

4 months = 1-2 hours content (only 5-10 minutes story/plot progression within that 1-2 hours) and 1-4 weeks grinding.
Develop with the tools and man power that you have, not to the tools and man power you wish you had.
I personally don’t see you guys improving your quality without using the obvious solution: time.

Lostwingman.5034:

minbariguy.7504:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset.

Well, I guess that pretty much tells me everything I need to know about the future development of the game. Honestly, I still feel that whoever is in charge of this decision simply does not want to admit that it was a mistake, no matter how many times people say it. But if that is what you’re planning on sticking to… so be it.

I wish you the best of luck. It’s clear that this game is not for me. I just can’t support a game that insists on prioritizing quantity over quality. But at least now I know.

Ah well. Plenty of other games out there.

I think it is important to note that there are two parts in the “quantity” that you are referring to, this is “frequency” and “content”. Currently we are getting a relatively high frequency of fairly grindy content. Since ANet seems to recognize that LS achievements are becoming grindy we can hope for more story meaty and less grind meaty updates.
Although I am in the same boat as you in terms of being overwhelmed with grind, I think there is some hope.

Although even in saying that the frequency is high now with “grindy” content, I can only image the content will get lower as they struggle to find more ways to make it non-grindy.

Basically, you can copy X, Y and Z for ever and ever, and get a ton of stuff out, but it’ll be very same-y, but if you want to make A and B on the first fortnight, C and D the fortnight after, and E and F the fortnight after that, that will no doubt take you more time to create as it’s differentiating every 2 weeks and thus meaning you just can not create the same quantity of content.

gidorah.4960:

Bobby already spoke on it and I would love if he went into more detail but surely you have some opinion on it as well?

To be fair, it would be a terrible call for Bobby’s boss to come in and speak over and above him when the appropriate department hasn’t had their full turn and are expected shortly anyway.

I may be disappointed that the actual effects if any of the efforts put into this thread by the players will seemly never be revealed outside of closed doors, but I certainly don’t expect a peek at their dirty laundry if there are any significant differences of opinion within their own ranks.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

gidorah.4960:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We are committed to quality not quantity.

Chris

the hard adherance to the two week release schedule seems to indicate the opposite. there has clearly been releases that just seem unfinished. Cannach’s lair comes to mind of something that left the majority of players thinking the content was rushed out to meet a 2 week schedule. There have been others but that was the one that comes to mind first. I think its ok to just have a balance patch and delay content that clearly isnt ready so that our enjoyment of great content is merely delayed not ruined by clearly rushed release schedule.

Hi Gidorah,

To be clear we are absolutely focused on quality. We feel that we can have both this cadence and high quality and are continuing to work toward this. If we feel that we cannot reach this balance then of course like everything, we will evolve as necessary. This said there is a lot we can and are doing to meet concerns regarding the cadence and really polish the positives we have already achieved in this area.. My point is the current plan is to continue with this cadence.

Chris

I hear you say that you are focused on quality but i am not seeing it in the actual releases. I understand that not every release is for me. I am not a fan of jump puzzles but some people are and they loved the zephyr sanctum and aetherblade retreat while i wasn’t as much of a fan. I could however still see the quality in those releases I think there is content everyone can see was rushed and was lacking in quality again even if it is in an area of the game the do not enjoy as much like cannach’s lair. My feelings on it are I would have much preferred you delayed the content than release something that just feels unfinished as cannach’s lair turned what was a great update into something that felt disapointing.

to edit for clarification. upon reading the first sentence seems unnecessarily harsh. I see great quality in most releases it just makes the missteps stand out much more .

Something I’d like to see is more of the Living Story that gets affected by what happens in the living story, similar to the Cutthroat Politics event.

Now, we can’t ALWAYS do a vote like in the Politics event (And anything involving politics is likely going to result in lots of flared tempers and nobody wants that again) so instead… how about something else?

Perhaps two threats are happening in two radically different areas, possibly organized by one person (As an example, I’ll use Scarlet and the various factions she has under her leafy thumb). Perhaps, instead of the Molten Alliance assaulting adjacent areas, she sends out her Aetherblade Pirates on an assault in Ascalon, while she uses her pull with the Nightmare Court to push against the Maguuma.

Both of these big events would be going on at the same time, with forces pushing against them. Realistically, there’s no way to stop them both, so players have to decide… do they fight to defend the Black Citadel from Aetherblade airships? Or do they assist the Asura protect themselves from incoming Nightmare Court?

After a two-week fight (Of course) the result is shown. No matter what, one front of the war would have more attention than the other. The side that managed to successfully defend itself more would return to normal. The other side, however, would have a drastic change, as members of the faction would overrun part of the maps in that region, possibly decimating towns or sending NPCs elsewhere.

The best part is, you wouldn’t have to TELL people this would happen. Most people would assume “Oh, they’ll come and attack, we’ll push them back, everything will be fine afterwards”. Only for, surprise, what you did has consequences. Everyone fought the Nightmare Court because they didn’t want to deal with the Aetherblade’s stuns? Congrats! The town of Naegling has been pillaged and destroyed!

If you can find a way to get it to work this way (And hide the truth behind a “No matter who wins we lose” or “The fate of this battle will change the face of Tyria forever” kind of stuff), it could result in some interesting things. Maybe even open an opportunity for more events in the area.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Part 3

snip…A number of you mentioned consequences for failure. This is something we discuss a lot and is quite complex. I would ask that we continue to discuss this topic in the thread….snip

I was the original person in this thread that mentioned consequences to our actions, so I will reply. Consequences can take many forms, from not being able to access a particular handy merchant to sell your full bags (repair), to the inability to enter a map until it is cleared of hostiles (and many other depending on the tech required to do so).

The main point I was trying to make is that you should not reward failure as you did with the scarlet invasions. Granting a reward even upon failure and ending the invasion there. I understand that the players want to be rewarded for the effort they put into something, but as you have shown with these invasions the consequences of failure are non existent and even rewarded. Why not make the towns “closed for business” until invaders are forced out; at least? I realize this my upset a few of the DE’s in the area, but if everything returns to normal after an invasion then as I have said earlier we are no more than furniture in the grand scheme of things. As we have seen with the invasion of the karka, and more recently with the new tower, it is possible to make changes to the landscape. If you were to make invasion require a rebuilding to make the shops open once more it would at least add a new level of depth to having maunders roaming freely through the town square. This could be done quite easily with a caravan or two (these could be the same NPC’s given the back story of leaving when things got bad) and a couple of dolyaks for rebuilding the town. You could take this to any level you wish, but IMO an invasion should leave some scars upon conclusion no matter the outcome.

Bit long winded but I think I got the point across.
TL;DR: See previous text.

The following list of likes/dislikes is to the best of my memory, and concerns the story, gameplay, dungeons, etc that deals with the Living World itself. It does not include the quality of life updates, WvW/SPvP changes, skill readjustments, etc.

Likes

• Holiday Events- I am enjoying them as they are. I feel ANet is going in the right direction with these events. Only improvement I feel is needed is a hard mode for Clock Tower with scale able rewards.

• Molten Alliance- Dungeon was great! Especially the boss fight. I think the only improvement is to make it a bit shorter. 30 – 40 min sounds like a reasonable amount of time to complete a dungeon.
• SAB- Great job, loving this mini holiday event. My only concern was how long the new world was and the issues it caused when people disconnected. There wasn’t a save mode or back up system.

• Sky Pirates- the Dungeon was great. I love the difficulty and how hard it was to get the last few achievements. I also loved the la Noir cinematic.

• Bazaar of the Four Winds- My favorite was spending the time to get the jumping achievement all around the new city.

• Cutthroats Politics- Voting was a great concept in this LS update. The only issue was the multiple votes casted per player felt like it skewed the results to me.

• Queen’s Pavilion- Queen’s Gauntlet: bring this back, and continue to add onto it. The challenge was perfect for me. Hard enough that I wanted to try again and again. But not overly hard where I felt that it was impossible to do.

• Tequatl- the Dragon improvement is heading in the right direction.

• Twilight Assault- The new dungeon is great, but a bit long. I think making a dungeon take 30 – 40 min sounds more reasonable then an hour to an hour and a half.

• Nightmare Tower- Stomping and Finishers. This is needed in the PvE world. This needs to be improved upon a bit, but so far I love the direction you guys are going. The in-game cinematic was definitely a nice touch in the personal story.

Dislike

• Zerging- Its fun the first couple of times, and then you go into zombie mode. Once that happens, this is no longer fun.

• Lost Shore / Secret of Southsun- I don’t know why, but I hate Southsun Cove.

• Flame and Frost- Everything except for the dungeon.

• Clockwork Chaos- see above about zerging

• Difficulty scaling- Many of GW2’s player base is possibly fully geared 80s. I think it may be better to make the majority of the LS difficult, as opposed to the majority being easy. That way the level 80 players have something that feels like a real achievement rather then what it is right now. Secondly, it will give the new players an incentive to see level 80. That way they can enjoy what they are missing out.

• Scavenger Hunt- The concept is great, but I think the delivery needs work. For example the recent one, Krait Historian, had zero information on where to look for these Obelisks. We were forced to use an outside source for this, and I don’t think that is going in the right direction. Hints and clues, better then what we have gotten before, is necessary for a Scavenger Hunt to feel fun. Instead of feeling like a choir to do to get your Achievement Points.

Overall, there may be more but I think I have taken up of your guys time. Thank you for taking the time to reading this, and keep up the great work!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I was referring to the Clockwork Chaos invasions where the meta designs split groups up in order to complete the objective efficiently. Sorry for any confusion.

So… that would be the event chain where the actual meta that evolved was to stack up as tightly as possible (gather on commanders) to force the individual sub-events to spawn as many champions as possible where they could then be briskly annihilated by that same poorly scaled over-mass of players because the rewards for doing so were a literal order of magnitude greater than playing out the event as you envisioned it (60 champ bags for systematic farming, 6 for event completion…).

I honestly don’t know how I could showcase more clearly that our perception of the game you created is wildly different from yours, and that you are not successfully designing towards the actual player experience.

As I said, I’m less concerned about the two week cadence than by the unusable junk or complete voids each episode leaves behind. If you fix that, then yes, the 2 weeks cycle has some possible virtue.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

gidorah.4960:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We are committed to quality not quantity.

Chris

the hard adherance to the two week release schedule seems to indicate the opposite. there has clearly been releases that just seem unfinished. Cannach’s lair comes to mind of something that left the majority of players thinking the content was rushed out to meet a 2 week schedule. There have been others but that was the one that comes to mind first. I think its ok to just have a balance patch and delay content that clearly isnt ready so that our enjoyment of great content is merely delayed not ruined by clearly rushed release schedule.

Hi Gidorah,

To be clear we are absolutely focused on quality. We feel that we can have both this cadence and high quality and are continuing to work toward this. If we feel that we cannot reach this balance then of course like everything, we will evolve as necessary. This said there is a lot we can and are doing to meet concerns regarding the cadence and really polish the positives we have already achieved in this area.. My point is the current plan is to continue with this cadence.

Chris

Hi Chris,
I have to side with Gidorah on this. You are taking a firm stance on a 2 week cadence when 9/10 posts in this collaborative thread are asking you to slow down the pace of releases. Maybe you are un willing to change the cadence because you have pieces of infrastructure in place, both hardware and manpower, that are designed around a 2 week release schedule and you simply don’t want to undue all of that because it was difficult to put into motion to begin with. Understandable if thats the case, however, the release pace is probably the biggest thing people are harping about in this thread and one of the bigger items on people’s minds concerning Living Story. Thats not a matter of my opinion, I can almost say that as a fact just by reading this thread.

The cadence, for me, is probably the largest issue for me along side of quality of content, which I will touch on. I currently am not playing GW2 because of this and a few other reasons, but am passionate enough to be quite vocal in this thread. Id love to come back, but hearing that Arenanet is taking a hard stance on their release schedule makes me think twice.

At the first least, you should have an internal discussion about it. It would be negligent to simply sweep this one under the rug when it is a top 3 item in this thread(and possibly #1).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Another big topic that was raised was Quality of releases. The work we are doing is new to all of us and therefore we are constantly finding opportunities to improve and course correct in a live environment. This relates not only to bugs, but the understanding of the types of content our community enjoys and how much time you all have to play the content. I believe the quality of our releases are improving and will continue to do so as we hone in our own internal development practices and have a better understanding of how the Living World is performing in the live environment.

I think Quality is two-pronged, and should be addressed accordingly.

1. Bug Fixes- Always should be on a developer’s mind and to be honest, Ive never had a problem with bugs in GW2. I see many people that have issues with them, but Ive never had the problems. Lucky me I guess, but my experience in GW2 has been relatively bug free. Kudos to you! (this does not take into consideration exploits in..say dungeons.)

2. Quality content itself, meaning…Is this fun? Is this at the heart of Tyria and GW2? Is this a solid patch? Is this solid story telling? Quality of content is an over-arcing term Im using to describe the entire patch. Many people like mini games, but they are a side activity. Early on, myself and many felt that a lot of mini games were added with these patches, and very little substantial content. Instead of quality content a new perma dungeon or zone(southshore aside because it is, once again, abandoned ), we receive effigy’s to burn, kite boxes to open, mini games, races, etc.

To put it plainly, these patches have felt more like carnivals each time, rather than content patches. I like a good themed patch every once in a while, but when there are mini games added every other patch, or once a month, instead of real down to earth(or tyria) content, it waters down your entire game and honestly, an outsider would take GW2 less seriously as an MMO and more of a 60$ game you can install on your PC that has more mini-game iPhone-app like content.

Nike.2631:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I was referring to the Clockwork Chaos invasions where the meta designs split groups up in order to complete the objective efficiently. Sorry for any confusion.

So… that would be the event chain where the actual meta that evolved was to stack up as tightly as possible (gather on commanders) to force the individual sub-events to spawn as many champions as possible where they could then be briskly annihilated by that same poorly scaled over-mass of players because the rewards for doing so were a literal order of magnitude greater than playing out the event as you envisioned it (60 champ bags for systematic farming, 6 for event completion…).

I honestly don’t know how I could showcase more clearly that our perception of the game you created is wildly different from yours, and that you are not successfully designing towards the actual player experience.

As I said, I’m less concerned about the two week cadence than by the unusable junk or complete voids each episode leaves behind. If you fix that, then yes, the 2 weeks cycle has some possible virtue.

Well in all fairness all they can really do is give you the content. If players utilize it in a way that wasn’t intended and that some don’t like then I don’t see how that’s their fault. Personally, I liked the way that event played and liked the rewards. I still think players zerg because they enjoy zerging. Of course, a lot also like complaining about it while they’re doing it.

I’m really happy to hear they intend to try and keep up the 2 week cadence. Absolutely annoying to hear players complaining about too much content being added, especially when most releases only take several hours to complete.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The Zerg! This is an interesting problem that we had actually fixed to an extent in an earlier release where we created a meta goal that forced players to split up into groups. I really enjoyed this and the feedback was excellent. Personally I quite enjoy the zerg sometimes in PVE ( I tend to be less of a ‘zerger’ in WvW) but I also really enjoy group play in the open world as many of you have mentioned. I would love to see more of this in the open world

This totally boggles me. Not to be too forthcoming, but are you implying that you fixed the zergy content with the clockwork invasions? The Clockwork Chaos patch brought forth the most zergy content to date, right alongside the Queens Jubilee. After these two patches, which were back to back, I started to feel like GW2 was shifting more toward zerg content than interesting dynamic events.

Everyone is entitled to their likes and dislikes, sure. Myself, and many in the thread, feel that the zerg content is mindless, boring, numb, and grinding. On top of that, I feel that if I am not participating in the ZOTW, I am missing out on a nice sum of money because they have been proven to be one of, if not the most, effective way to acquire large sums of gold for time spent. Therfore, if I am doing anything else other than zerging, I feel like it is time wasted and I should NOT feel that in a video game. This also has led me to step back from the game.

I would implore you to re-think encouraging and fostering zerg content in future patches. Sadly, there is a reason that you see the term ‘ZergWars 2’ appear on these forums.

Can the incredibly small amount of permanent content that’s added with these living story releases not be time-gated nonsense? I’m getting the feeling that it’s going to take a few months to craft ascended armor, when one of the selling points of this game was that everyone would be on the same playing field as soon as they bought exotic. Obviously that was thrown out, but I think it’d be great if the little bits of the game that didn’t magically disappear after two weeks didn’t take longer than the living story update itself.

And I’d really like to see the living story actually have an effect on the world, again avoiding the magical disappearing content problem that’s been happening. Maybe orr could finally be cleansed and we can move on to conquering other, actual threats?

And hopefully avoiding anymore mary-sue esque characters.
And really hopefully avoiding anymore slyvari main characters.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

cesmode.4257:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

gidorah.4960:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We are committed to quality not quantity.

Chris

the hard adherance to the two week release schedule seems to indicate the opposite. there has clearly been releases that just seem unfinished. Cannach’s lair comes to mind of something that left the majority of players thinking the content was rushed out to meet a 2 week schedule. There have been others but that was the one that comes to mind first. I think its ok to just have a balance patch and delay content that clearly isnt ready so that our enjoyment of great content is merely delayed not ruined by clearly rushed release schedule.

Hi Gidorah,

To be clear we are absolutely focused on quality. We feel that we can have both this cadence and high quality and are continuing to work toward this. If we feel that we cannot reach this balance then of course like everything, we will evolve as necessary. This said there is a lot we can and are doing to meet concerns regarding the cadence and really polish the positives we have already achieved in this area.. My point is the current plan is to continue with this cadence.

Chris

Hi Chris,
I have to side with Gidorah on this. You are taking a firm stance on a 2 week cadence when 9/10 posts in this collaborative thread are asking you to slow down the pace of releases. Maybe you are un willing to change the cadence because you have pieces of infrastructure in place, both hardware and manpower, that are designed around a 2 week release schedule and you simply don’t want to undue all of that because it was difficult to put into motion to begin with. Understandable if thats the case, however, the release pace is probably the biggest thing people are harping about in this thread and one of the bigger items on people’s minds concerning Living Story. Thats not a matter of my opinion, I can almost say that as a fact just by reading this thread.

The cadence, for me, is probably the largest issue for me along side of quality of content, which I will touch on. I currently am not playing GW2 because of this and a few other reasons, but am passionate enough to be quite vocal in this thread. Id love to come back, but hearing that Arenanet is taking a hard stance on their release schedule makes me think twice.

At the first least, you should have an internal discussion about it. It would be negligent to simply sweep this one under the rug when it is a top 3 item in this thread(and possibly #1).

Hi Cesmode,

The cadence is something we discuss frequently. We are a very collaborative team and do our best to never sweep anything under the rug (-:

Chris

Thanks for the response. So, if it is not being blindly swept under the rug, one can assume that either the development team simply feels the cadence is doing well and the majority of players like it, or that you have too much invested in it to stop(to which you dont have to go into details here).

I just find it a hard pill to swallow that this is one of the larger, if not the largest, item in this thread and sadly your answer is not something that many of us want to hear. If I could pick one thing to change, it would probably be the cadence.

Chris, my favorite and least favorite releases:

Putting aside theme’d releases and holiday releases that I feel werent not really connected to the living story very well…

Favorite: Cutthroat Politics. I liked the mini dungeon where we needed to fend off waves. I liked that we could tune the difficulty to what we wanted. I felt like I had the most impact on the game out of all of the releases, via the election. I honestly felt the most relaxed during this patch which is a good thing.

Least favorite: Clockwork Chaos. While this patch didnt introduce the open world zergs that run wild now, and some of the minions were pretty cool looking, I felt this was the downfall for me and led me to stop playing. It was just achievement after achievement, grinding out zerg content for $$, etc. Horrible. I was so minimally engaged, if at all. It took me out of what I enjoyed doing in the game ‘just to keep up’.

And I do not like that achievements drive these patches.

I love the 2 week cycles. 99% of the time, the forums do not speak for me or anyone I know.

I don’t feel compelled to complete the meta events or associated achievements. I see them as a way to introduce me to how the game is evolving and what’s new/updated/here-for-a-bit.

ANet could do better at communicating goals and changes, but I hope they continue along the same lines for at least another year.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

However the points raised around achievements being too time consuming is something that I do acknowledge and something we have already taken steps to address both in terms of overall time to complete and the nature of the repetitive achievements. We will continue to make strides in this area and are aware that the current time requirement also cuts in to the player’s ability to achieve goals in other aspects of the game.

I don’t feel that the actual amount of time is the problem or the specific number. The bigger problem is that they are not enjoyable to do. Take for example Toxic Spore Cleanser vs the sonic periscope thing. Neither are particularly enjoyable but Toxic Spore Cleanser is worse even though the number is lower. At least with the periscopes I could have done one today, two tomorrow and ten the day after. Toxic Spore Cleanser just seems too random or maybe it is not actually random but the mechanic is just very badly communicated(non-existent?).

Repetition plus random is a horrible combination.

Then there are the ones like the obelisk transcription where if you accidentally miss one you have to waste a lot of time backtracking. Yes there are workarounds such as pen&paper but that is a bandaid solution.

Inspired.6730:

Nike.2631:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I was referring to the Clockwork Chaos invasions where the meta designs split groups up in order to complete the objective efficiently. Sorry for any confusion.

So… that would be the event chain where the actual meta that evolved was to stack up as tightly as possible (gather on commanders) to force the individual sub-events to spawn as many champions as possible where they could then be briskly annihilated by that same poorly scaled over-mass of players because the rewards for doing so were a literal order of magnitude greater than playing out the event as you envisioned it (60 champ bags for systematic farming, 6 for event completion…).

I honestly don’t know how I could showcase more clearly that our perception of the game you created is wildly different from yours, and that you are not successfully designing towards the actual player experience.

As I said, I’m less concerned about the two week cadence than by the unusable junk or complete voids each episode leaves behind. If you fix that, then yes, the 2 weeks cycle has some possible virtue.

Well in all fairness all they can really do is give you the content. If players utilize it in a way that wasn’t intended and that some don’t like then I don’t see how that’s their fault. Personally, I liked the way that event played and liked the rewards. I still think players zerg because they enjoy zerging. Of course, a lot also like complaining about it while they’re doing it.

I’m really happy to hear they intend to try and keep up the 2 week cadence. Absolutely annoying to hear players complaining about too much content being added, especially when most releases only take several hours to complete.

I am disappointed in the 2 week cadence because sometimes they clearly release stuff that they didn’t have time to finish. the cannach’s lair or this years halloween bloody prince “dungeon’s” are pretty clearly rushed and not up to the quality of the other content they have put out. I don’t mind not having a release because i still enjoy actually playing the game. If they delayed some content so that it meets the quality we all know they are capable of I have a week or 2 where I dont feel rushed to do Living story acheivements and can do more wvw do some extra fractals explore the world on some alt. the game is fun enough that people aren’t going to abandon it if they release ls content a week or 2 late so that the quality is on par with all the other content.

The problem with Clockwork Chaos invasions as an anti-zerg example is that the most profitable way to complete the invasion remains to not complete it at all. Yes, not zerging is the best way to finish the invasion, but why would anyone do that when Aetherblade Pirate zerg farming is the the most rewarding output available from it?

I haven’t seen any map so much as try to complete an invasion since probably the middle of the Clockwork Chaos event. The mechanics of it are still far too skewed in favour of rewarding farmers. It should have much, much fewer Aetherblade champ spawns, more random Twisted champs (since this encourages people to split up and spread out in order to find them), and better rewards for event completion.

Inspired.6730:

Well in all fairness all they can really do is give you the content. If players utilize it in a way that wasn’t intended and that some don’t like then I don’t see how that’s their fault.

In all fairness, speaking as a person who has earned their living for the last 12 years as a game designer, managing emergent behavior from a fairly simple set of rules IS the job. When things like ‘Aetherblade farming rather than goal pursuit’ happen, it’s not just their fault… Avoiding those scenarios in the first place or fixing them fast is their essential job description. Some of the patches that hit within 30 hours of that episode’s release were a bit ham-fisted but they weren’t wrong (oh look, elites that drop NOTHING replace 70% of the champion spawns).

A mass of 200 players may have a lot of individual nuances and quirks, but as a body, they’re easily understood as a liquid, and that liquid will always settle downwards to the path of least resistance between them and their goals. It will permeate soil, it will seek crevices between stones, it bursts pipes, and erodes weak barriers. Its what players do: optimize their path to the goal. The goal of killing Scarlet for an achievement and 9 loot bags was a one-time deal (assuming you even care about achievements). The goal of walking way with enough champ bags to tangibly advance almost any other goal in the game was valid every single hour of those two weeks. The game has revealed time and time again that all players need to do to destroy the expected progress curve is find a place were lots of mobs spawn really fast. And then congregate there. Zerg on!

Khisanth.2948:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

However the points raised around achievements being too time consuming is something that I do acknowledge and something we have already taken steps to address both in terms of overall time to complete and the nature of the repetitive achievements. We will continue to make strides in this area and are aware that the current time requirement also cuts in to the player’s ability to achieve goals in other aspects of the game.

I don’t feel that the actual amount of time is the problem or the specific number. The bigger problem is that they are not enjoyable to do. Take for example Toxic Spore Cleanser vs the sonic periscope thing. Neither are particularly enjoyable but Toxic Spore Cleanser is worse even though the number is lower. At least with the periscopes I could have done one today, two tomorrow and ten the day after. Toxic Spore Cleanser just seems too random or maybe it is not actually random but the mechanic is just very badly communicated(non-existent?).

Repetition plus random is a horrible combination.

Then there are the ones like the obelisk transcription where if you accidentally miss one you have to waste a lot of time backtracking. Yes there are workarounds such as pen&paper but that is a bandaid solution.

i think its just poorly communicated. there are 3 champs in kessix that almost always have the buff and spawn semi regularly. this achievement took the most time but even still killing champs is very rewarding so i didnt feel like i was wasting time like an acheivement like stand next to 50 things and press f feels. I agree about the obelisks though i missed one in an map i did before i found a guide and it took me finding about half the obelisks again to get the one i missed. I preferred the way they did the mad king scavenger hunt again where the clue’s to find the things are in game and we don’t need to spend s a few hours searching blindly or just go to a guide.

I’m glad the Tower of Madness came out before I decided to post.

Shockwave.1230:

1. DVR
Being able to jump to different parts of a story and watch at our convenience, and go back and watch the story again. This is not a main feature of the living story, I’ve been out of the loop for a while, so I’m not sure if this exists at all currently, but it didn’t when I paying closer attention to the living story. This also doesn’t exist for the personal story, but that’s a separate issue.
.

2. On demand
Being able to view whatever story we want whenever we want. This has challenges with the combination of having on demand temporary content and a persisting world, because that combination does not mesh well together. Without putting in much thought, there are a couple of options to resolve this, but the development effort seems huge:

A. Create Party Instances for “On demand” content (previous 2 week content releases)
B. Create separate persistent versions of areas players can join
.

3. The best T.V. Shows provide context
This may be easier to accomplish now that these living story filler stories going on with the main storylines have created their own context. However, having more cutscenes and dialogue to properly introduce characters and story components, or summarize previous happenings in the stories would be extremely helpful. When a new content release happens, sometimes this lost feeling comes over me, and things seem disjointed.
.

These are high level things, and likely require A LOT of work, but I really feel like they are important to the demographic that is playing your game, which is likely largely Gen Y and Gen Z. A big reason I stuck around so long in GW2 after even with the issues I had with the game is because in my experience with GW1 those three ideas above were executed pretty well, I fell in love the characters and stories of Tyria through Guild Wars and stuck around because 1) you already had me, and I trusted you as a company, but 2) I had context during the personal story (the Dragon’s from Guild Wars: Eye of the North were awakening and going to destroy the races, organizations, and cities of tyria I had fallen in love with). So it would be my job to repay Primordus in full for the struggles he inflicted to tyria and my HoM honored hero (furture achievement maybe? defeat Primordus with HoM armor). I wanted to fight an unfrozen Drakkar, and turn Kralkatorrik back into some harmless scenery while avenging Glint, and seeing what her Baby Dragon has been up to.

This; I like. I dislike the temporary nature of the content because ‘once it’s gone; it’s gone’ which detaches me from the LW. As stated above – ‘context’.

Having callbacks and/or progression makes the world feel big. Experiences shaping future events (ToM – Kessex Hills change, reference to the ‘Molten Alliance’ and who was leading who).

The TV analogy is a good one. Shows considered great are ones with continuity. Overall it gives us a reason to watch them in order because events lead from one to the next and so on. As quoted; you can always go back and rewatch shows because of advances in programme distribution. You can’t here. It’s rush-rush-rush for the reward and then on to the next ‘epsiode’.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Some of you posted about your favorite releases and least favorite. It would be really cool if you have the time to post your single favorite and least favorite and the reasons why for each. This would help a lot and I will share my learning with you etc. from the posts.

Favorite: Tequatl
I like this one because it is permanent content and I still do this event almost every day.

I still think he would be better suited to be an instanced encounter, and I still think the RNG factor is ridiculous, when it comes to the rewards from this boss.
I still think it would be very nice, if he became more accessible by lowering the spawn timer. However: I like the general idea and I enjoy the fight itself.

I rather liked, that for once an encounter was released, where full berserker gear was not necessarily the way to go. I had some additional fun obtaining PVT gear through dungeons and wvw, so this particular event affected my time in game (in a positive way) more than any of the others.
One of the main reasons is still the simple fact that he is permanent content. It became worth it because he is.

Least Favorite: Clockwork Chaos.
In my opinion, the problem with that event was, that is was too profitable to not do it, it was way too laggy and it was very time consuming to get the Invasion Canceler achievement. I did this event several hours every day, because it was the way to go in order to save up champion bags (Essence of Luck), crafting materials, skill points, gold etc. I did however not enjoy the content much. In my ideal Gw2 world, the living world content itself, should be rewarding and fun to do.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset.

I find this very, very disappointing. Nothing more, nothing less.
I understand that you most likely have your reasons for this, but just as you are being honest about this, I will be honest too.

limited time living story achievements should not be too hard to achieve

Reesha.7901:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset.

I find this very, very disappointing. Nothing more, nothing less.
I understand that you most likely have your reasons for this, but just as you are being honest about this, I will be honest too.

One of the hardest (yet most rewarding) things to do is to question something about which you feel very certain. All we can hope is that, with quite a few ArenaNet folks reading this thread, they’ll continue to discuss release cadence in the future and consider alternatives.

I’d pose it as two questions for them to think about:

1) Is it feasible for us to lengthen the cadence? Can we, as an organization, switch to a three-week cycle? Is it worth the negative press (because you know its coming, even if the players want it)?

2) If we lengthen the cadence, can we make DRAMATICALLY better content with the new schedule? Does it allow us to undertake projects which we cannot do now? Does it mean that we can include more high-quality content (voice acting, for example)? Does it lead to a RICHER experience, or is it just more of the same per cycle?

I’m an engineer, but I’ve never worked in the gaming industry, so I might be missing something. But those are the questions I’d be asking myself if I were in their position.

Anyway, thanks for all the feedback, Chris, it has been very interesting! I think that it’s very helpful for us to hear where you’re coming from and why you’ve made the decisions you’ve made, even if we don’t agree with all of them. Cheers!

My favorite release was Zephyr Sanctum. Just some great stuff in that one. Least favorite was Southsun Cove- I didn’t play it, didn’t feel the need to play it. Teq was also pretty low on my list.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset…

How disappointing, but if that’s your mindset now there’s not much we can do to convince ANet that it is folly.

It would be really cool if you have the time to post your single favorite and least favorite and the reasons why for each. This would help a lot and I will share my learning with you etc. from the posts.

Well if we can’t convince you to change the cadence we can at least rate the current products that have been released.
My vote for “Best”
Flame and Frost (All four parts)
Individually they were weak, but together you created a story introducing two new characters and concluded it pretty well.
I’d go so far as to say if the Molten weren’t allied with Scarlet this would have still been good on its own.
Since you won’t change the cadence at least have a series of releases close enough to encaspulate the story being told.
The Prelude was boring, but eventually the players were given a great dungeon and good back and forth between Rox and Braham with the last one.

Here’s the least favorite:
Clockwork Chaos
Okay it is the big moment to take down Scarlet.
We’ve been pumped up to finally see this vicious villain.
And….her invasions practically do nothing when they win.
I did like how she took over the celebration and we had to fight her in order to win them back.
I did like how you used Faren and Hobo-tron for humor.
I did like the massive battles open world for the invasions.

I don’t care much for the fact I now have about 8 queen jennah minis and I can’t do anything with the surplus.
I don’t care anymore about the Scarlet invasions because even if she wins the map is just the same.
I don’t really remember why Scarlet went trolololo to the humans at that time.
Was she trying to test the Humans? Kill the Queen? Just there to steal the clockwork?
Is my confusion brought about because we actually stopped her from completing her plan?
Because if so I’ll gladly step back and let her win something just so I can see why she’s doing half this stuff in the first place.

Honorable mention to the recent one:

Tower of Nightmares
I have never found a release which excited me so much and yet bored me at the same time.
Exciting:
-New Skill! YES you can do such things!
-We have altered Kessex! Holy Six this is awesome and now it feels like the Living story is altering and growing things!
-My fave lady team up Kasmeer and Delaqua are starring this one. Good to see this because they needed another case.
-A big tower which looks like the Krait’s doing, Oh yes I’m so excited!
-The Krait, a minor villain in GW1 and GW2, looks like they might be making a power play!

Bored:
-Oh. Wait. It’s Scarlet’s doing huh? (Sighs) Okay let’s see how she managed to convince xenophobic sociopathic religious snakes to follow her.
Apparently we can’t have anyone try something on their own unless she’s behind it, and it looks like the next release isn’t looking good either since she’s on the preview thumbnail. What’s the big motivation for yet another alliance? Will she make a hybrid, leave holo clones of herself, and get away scott free once more? Because I’m predicting the next release to be that.

I actually listed out every release and noted why I loved or didn’t love it, but you said pick one of each. I did the best I could. If you want a full breakdown just ask!

Most people already have said what I think.

What I would like to add though, is an issue with living story and thematic skins.

So far, we have many many weapon skins. Yet only the SAB, Aetherpath and a few other skins are really 100% free without any real grind. Dream thistle, Aetherized and molten are all tediously difficult to get, either from RNG tickets which.. Ugh. Or. You grind 100 gold, which isn’t no meager amount.

What I hope is that we could have more skins via currencies. A good example was the sovereign skins, and the zephyr sanctum skins aswell. Perhaps in the next LS update there might be currencies from the new content, which can be traded in for different types of skins. Sure, the cost wouldn’t be very high for them resell wise but it’d give more oppurtunity for players without needing to pay or grind.

Guhracie.3419:

My favorite release was Zephyr Sanctum. Just some great stuff in that one.

Zephyr Sanctum is also very high on my favorite list. It was a lot of fun.

Favourite LS/LW Update(s):
Flame and Frost (taken in it’s entirety)
Flame and Frost, to me, felt like the best overall chunk of the Living Story simply because it told a complete story. The initial pace was glacial and the actual ending wasn’t the greatest, but it felt like a well designed story arc from start to finish with lots of individual bits of content that work on their own but felt very cohesive. From the beginning of the story with it’s mystery and intrigue to the in your face climactic battle in the Molten Facilities, it remains an example of how to do the living story right. It also introduced two characters in Rox and Braham that had some interest and life to them without making it feel like they were the only important characters in the story.

Labyrynthine Cliffs + Bazaar
Just a really nicely designed area from top to bottom. The actual story of this content was a little in the background, but I did like the player choice in the election (though I still doubt what real impact the election result will have) and I loved the nods to the original lore established in GW1 that made it feel like an actual GW related update. On the gameplay side, however, it just provided a really nice variety of meaty experiences like crystal collection and the races that a largely solo/small group oriented player like myself could actually invest myself into.

Least Favourite(s):
Return to Southsun
It just felt like a rushed mess of zerg focused content that didn’t follow up well at all on what Flame and Frost started. It also really became the starting point for putting important story related content outside of the game, which is something I can’t abide by at all. It added little to no continuous content to an otherwise interesting but lacking area of the map and introduced the theme of the world boss that no one bothers doing. It also ended with the extremely lacking Canach “dungeon” that was so easy and quick to describe it as a lead balloon would be doing it favours.

Tequatl
Put simply, this update took an event that was maybe a little lacking but still fun and doable for everyone and made it something that nearly only an organized mass of players who have to game the way the server system works can complete. Updating content is one thing, but stealing it from a mass of players who enjoy it and giving it to a small niche of your player base is terrible design.

Atlas.9704:

I actually listed out every release and noted why I loved or didn’t love it, but you said pick one of each. I did the best I could. If you want a full breakdown just ask!

i am interested in your thoughts on the other releases

gidorah.4960:

Atlas.9704:

I actually listed out every release and noted why I loved or didn’t love it, but you said pick one of each. I did the best I could. If you want a full breakdown just ask!

i am interested in your thoughts on the other releases

It is a lengthy post, I’ll await what the red banners say.
At the absolute minimum I could message you the thoughts.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Psycho Robot,

I was referring to the Clockwork Chaos invasions where the meta designs split groups up in order to complete the objective efficiently. Sorry for any confusion.

My point was that whilst it is clear that we are working toward this in the above method and in balancing of individual creatures, i really liked the idea put forward in the thread of even more focus on individual group play in the open world in releases.

Chris

Sorry Chris but the Clockwork Chaos Invasion isn’t good. It was a wild goose chase where players spent more time running around from place to place than actually fighting.

Yes there are multiple commanders going all over the place and waypointing everywhere. But it is total chaos. A player that joined into this event would have no idea what to do. The only way it is done is by being on Teamspeak. But Teamspeak is not part of GW2. We cannot assume that players will have Teamspeak.

The mobilization required in this event is crazy. If the great commander Sun Tzu sees this, he would say that the Lore Slayer (this is Scarlet, if you are wondering ^^) already won this one. Why? Because:

“Whoever can control the movement of his enemy already won the battle.”

Think about it. The Lore Slayer is able to force the players running around and around in circles to chase her portals. Look at how many chances she have at ambushing the players. Look at how tired the players would have be. How can the players who are tired beat an ambush?

Of course these ambushes never happened. The Lore Slayer could have easily won. But she held back. And at the end the players lose because they ran out of time.

Ran out of time. That’s the worst thing ever.

The mobs didn’t kill the players. They didn’t actually conquer anything in their invasion. They just retreat when the timer runs out. And that count as a defeat by the players. What kind of defeat is this?

Wild goose chases=bad
Defeat by timer=bad

The mobs needs to be organized like soldiers. All these portal spawning mobs won’t work. They isn’t fun.

Split the players up by using tactics. For example the mobs’ right flank is about to encircle the whole player zerg. Well the players better split up and send reinforcements to help the players’ left flank. Do not use portals please.

You guys really should look at the Total War series from Creative Assembly. They are very good at setting up battles. Use those as examples.

Atlas.9704:

gidorah.4960:

Atlas.9704:

I actually listed out every release and noted why I loved or didn’t love it, but you said pick one of each. I did the best I could. If you want a full breakdown just ask!

i am interested in your thoughts on the other releases

It is a lengthy post, I’ll await what the red banners say.
At the absolute minimum I could message you the thoughts.

I would encourage you to share it with everyone your post was well written and i find myself agreeing with it for the most part. but if you don’t want to share your thoughts with everyone feel free to send it to me.

My favourite release: Halloween LAST year. The scavenger hunt was leages better than any scavenger hunt after that. There was a huge impactful lore / storydelivery, you actually had to solve the riddle to get to the next part and I loved the mini-games (Hylek poisons) quite a lot too. Mysterious characters (the Largos guy) and the ghosts… Awesome. I felt like part of a greater story.

Then we had quite a lot very lackluster scavenger hunts. The worst: Tequatl-teeth. No storytelling, no interesting characters, no riddle solving, no minigames… seriously? I though now that the teams have much more time for each release, the results would be at least as good as previous iterations.

My least favourite release: Tower of Nightmares mostly. I thought the few events were the key to unlock/open the main content. Instead those are the main content. The story-part was again very very short (5-10min) and I can’t see how this can be seen as engaging. When the dungeon with Braham and Rox was released, because of all the conversations, I had the feeling that this works for me. The npcs talked to each other and I felt immersed. Now we got 5min of story and the rest zergish grind for certain loot-drops. I’m not sure what these are for, I think the pollen are supposed to give you the new healing skill from Marjory, but with the hundrets of skillpoints I had left I bought it directly.

I’m sorry, but in the end I can’t say anything positive about the writing. I just feel that we’ve seen the best of it in the beginning of the living story (Halloween scavenger hunt, Braham and Rox) and now it’s far too little for having an engaging story. Personally I feel like I read a page of a comic book every two weeks. Kind of frustrating. I wish the writers all the best so that they find the best solution for the game.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Some of you posted about your favorite releases and least favorite. It would be really cool if you have the time to post your single favorite and least favorite and the reasons why for each. This would help a lot and I will share my learning with you etc. from the posts.

Most favorite :
It’s hard to decide between Shadow of the Mad King, Bazaar of the Four Winds and Super Adventure Box. The first reason why is that all of these releases were packed with a ton of new fun content. SotMK, even if it was based around a festival, had a lot of lore-related content too. The Blood and Madness release was a bit of a let down in comparison because there was barely any lore and many content was removed from last year. BotFW was great because we got a new zone with new interesting mechanics. Even if the zone was relatively small, it had plenty of exploration to do due to the vertical layout and hidden crystals to find. It was the best content exploration-wise that you have released so far. As per SotMK, it had a ton of new fun content as well. For SAB, it’s the whole package that is tremendous. Again, a lot of new fun content at once that was a delight to explore.

Least favorite :
I can’t decide between Tequatl Rising and Cutthroat Politics. For Tequatl Rising, it’s because of how the content has been implemented. Unless by being lucky or using a guild like TTS, it was impossible, depending on your server, to simply have a chance at completing the content. Waiting hours to be able to reach a main server with a chance to success was unacceptable. Cutthroat Politics is also a problem of implementation. The idea to make us chose between Kiel and Evon was great. I’d like more situations where we, the players, can have choices between different paths to take and where the story will go. However, the only gameplay element we had in relation to this was putting tokens in voting boxes and having a tag on while doing events for “representing” the candidates. I thought it was quite dull and lazy. On top of that, people that voted extensively to participate in the event were penalized, stuck with representative tokens while players that didn’t vote were able to sell the unused tokens. It was like a slap across the face for us that “played the game”. I still have stacks of those tokens laying around to remind me to never participate more than the game asks for achievements. (speaking of junk collecting dust in our inventories, can you do something about the ascended mats that are account bound? it feels cheap to destroy them but what else is there to do with them when you don’t need those anymore?? we should be able to sell them on TP or simply to merchants)

Maybe it would be a better solution to let the players unlock new dialogues / npc-interaction not in one bit (all at once when the event is released) but in small doses. Every few hours a new piece of storytelling. I don’t know. It just bugs me that the story-part is done in a few minutes and then there is nothing left for the next two weeks, but grinding stuff.

Chris, Colin, Bobby:

Thank you very much for the time you have spent on this thread.

Your responses, what has been said, how it’s been said, and what has been left unsaid have been enlightening. I’ve learned more here in a few days than I have in months from other developer sources. Appreciate the forthrightness.

Sounds like there are decisions that have been made that may take a while to play out. And some that players need to make in response to those already at play (accept, tolerate or vote with their feet.)

Hope the communication continues on an on-going basis for the sake of a positive trajectory for the game.

-Probably voting with feet (although nothing is off the table).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I was referring to the Clockwork Chaos invasions where the meta designs split groups up in order to complete the objective efficiently. Sorry for any confusion.

Speaking of Clockwork Chaos, I liked it when it was first released but since the content went away, the invasions that still occur in the world are kind of pointless? For some reason, when the waves got split in 5 instead of 3, the event got harder to do. Before, we could solo Molten tunnels easily, now they take forever to kill with a full group. The whole invasions event feel harder/longer to do but we have the same time as before and less people do them. On top of that, everyone aims for the champions farm (and I understand it, it gives pretty good loot) which prevents progressing furthermore. Now, with the new content (since Halloween), I don’t think I’ve seen an invasion go beyond the 3rd wave just before the Aetherblades. I’m wondering if it’s still possible to completely finish an invasion right now. I’ve seriously never seen Scarlet spawn on my server in an invasion over the last 6 weeks. Far from it. So… what’s the point in having content that absolutely can’t be completed at all?

It’s difficult to say what events of LS I like because I hadn’t enough time to play them before they where gone.

Maybe Bazaar of the Four Winds would be my favorite, from what I read, but I never had the chance to see it myself. I hadn’t time to play Southsun but I visit it regullary for collecting materials and like the setting and the beach.

I played “Queen’s Pavillon”, “Clockwork Chaos”, “Tequatl”, “Blood & Madness” and I’m playing “Nightmare Tower”.
I haven’t played “Twilight Chaos” because I don’t like dungeons, which can be only solved in groups. (I’m generally a solo-player and prefer to play PvE.)

I definitely most dislike Tequatl, because the event lasts too long and you didn’t get enough for the efford. I fed up after the second time.
Clockwork Chaos was better, but I have generally technical problems when too much players are at once in a mass slaughter – I often get disconnected then, or the game reacts not quick enough so that I get killed in the meantime. So I prefer to kill champions with fewer players.

There was I good aspect in “Queen’s Pavillon” that there was a couple of different types of archievements for different sorts of players. I was very proud to get the little balloon-trophy by visiting several balloons in the world – that was my very first achievement in LS! I think there is no need to get every type of achievement but you get lucky, when you have the chance to get one of differing rewards.

I also liked the background-story behind Blood & Madness and Nightmare Tower, but you did not use their possibilities. The Bloody Prince may had more potential for storytelling. The possibly most interesting part of Nightmare Tower – its uncovering – was told in a one-minute flashback. It’s a pity…

I would like to see new regions of tyria, like southsun-cove, and would be very lucky if the players would become the chance to build up something in tyria via the Living Story, so that you can see and feel some kind of progress/development/evolution, not only to fight every time against new enemies. (Maybe the progress can be realized per instancing, like in home-instance.)

I have a feeling the cadence has to do with money. Most notable, Black lion keys. Seeing as that’s the only way to get the claim tickets. Which get you the new skins that normally come with each LS. But maybe that’s just me looking at it from a money making angle. And to Ecco what someone else has said, I feel like a merc in the LS. Apart from flame and frost, I feel no connection to the events or story. In Guild Wars the story gave the land it’s misteque. Every quest took me somewhere where I thought “wow, I’m glad I took this quest or I might have never seen this.” And this is what I feel Guild Wars 2 is lacking.

As for the Yays.

Halloween 2012, Flame and Frost. The length was great and the story’s where fun. I loved all the exploring to get my Mad Memories Complet Edition. This years Halloween was fun, but was not a patch on last years. I love the bloody prince dailie fight. Tower of Nightmears seems fun so far.

The Nays.

The first South Sun. My god it was buggy. My experience with that LS was so bad I didn’t see it past the first day( I have been to South Sun and I have to say, I do not care for it, it is a dead area every time I go there.) and didn’t play again till bazaar of the four winds. I semi enjoyed it, but I didn’t see the relevance in the story. It felt like it just ended but with out a conclusion.

Politics seemed pointless. I had no connection to aether candied so I didn’t really follow or couldn’t find the story there.

Jubilee was fun at first but again story didn’t seem to progress so stopped going there and did other things.

Tequila tried for three days to bring him down, with out success. Now he just sits there on an empty map, at least on my server.

I didn’t bother at all with the twilight assault. Seeing as I didn’t see the end of the jubilee, I had no idea who this tree woman was nor did I care. So scarlet means nothing to me.

Halloween 2013 was fun as I said, but was very short story wise. Was very disappointed with the end, I’ve felt out of every MMO I’ve played Guild Wars has always had the best Halloween.

Tower of nightmares. Fun so far, but the story just seems to stop. I did everything to get the new skill expecting it be the trigger for the story to continue, but it didn’t. I’m hoping the story will continue with the next update.

I’ve liked all the fixes and changes that have been added along the way, Acended weapon etc. my only problem with them is the over complicated crafting, not to mention the shear amount of mats needed. I really feel nothing should need more than 250 of anything.

I’m greatful for the chance to give my views on the LS.

I definitely most dislike Tequatl, because the event lasts too long and you didn’t get enough for the efford.

Imho the event doesn’t last too long, but the preparation absolutely is. You’ll have to be on the map long before the event starts, in order to participate on that map and not in an overflow map. This is horrible. A couple of times I spent about 20 minutes and longer waiting for the event to start… literally doing nothing. Anet created a bad queue here.

Also creating those huge zergfest-events (Scarlet Invasions, Tequatl) for the living story and making those permanent is quite a noble thought, but are they really permanent? Can you find enough people in a few months (or even now) to being able to complete these events? I just feel that content for smaller groups would be not only easier to balance/create but also more sucessful because players would feel more important, having more impact instead of being one in a million who spams the same key over and over.

Favorite: Flame and Frost Series
With Flame and Frost, it started slow, but actually allowed time to build up the characters. The enemies also seemed to grow as a threat as the plot went on. The dungeon is without question my favorite plot-related content. The nodes were a nice bonus, as they added to the environment. I was pleased with the mechanics as well. The sealed room with the thermal core was particularly well done. While evadable, the traps were not impossible even for a largely uncoordinated group. The final boss fight is also easily one of my favorites in the entire game. They have a unique mechanic while still allowing some room for error. Besides, I’ve always been a fan of a well done dual boss. (Hint: I wouldn’t mind seeing more. That said, bosses who function very well independently seem to be a nice twist, without relying too heavily on a particular mechanic.) They also seemed to have some personalities, so some background and development would have just added to the experience. Braham’s “Oh, we’re so dead.” line also seems to be a community favorite. It also had Frostbite’s introduction. Frostbite is awesome.

Least Favorite: SAB/SAB:BTS
First of all, I hate jumping puzzles with a fiery passion that burns with the intensity of a thousand exploding suns. That’s not to say I can’t jump. If guild puzzles are any indication, I’m at least above average. I just don’t like them, and as such generally prefer to minimize my involvement with them. I understand that some in the community seem to be obsessed with them, and that is fine. I would just prefer if jumping puzzle influenced content wasn’t so prominent/required with many of the updates. Personally, when I first entered SAB, I was expecting more of a Zelda influenced game. I do enjoy a good boss fight (see above). I’m sure you can imagine my disappointment when instead of an adventure befitting a certain Hylian, I was instead met with a glorified jumping puzzle.

In terms of actual story, Clockwork Chaos would have to take the crown for my least favorite. It just came off as two-weeks of overly steampunk-heavy, grind-based content and Scarlet being…well…Scarlet. I believe I’ve already mentioned her adequately previously in this thread, so I’ll leave it at that.

Best

Zephyr Sanctum
- Kite fortunes were a nice bonus to all of the game’s content (they could drop anywhere) and they had a selection of cool rewards tied to them.
- The achievements for jumping/finding all of the crystals were cool
- Belcher’s Bluff was cool
- Sanctum Sprint was awesome
- The map itself was great and drew a lot of social attention
- Achievements were easy to acquire within two weeks but not so easy that they only took two hours
- Interesting lore

Worst

Tequatl
- If we wanted to do the “new thing” those two weeks we had to wear our fingers numb and sit for hours just to get in the event
- Virtually no noticeable scaling making the event possible on non-max maps
- Literally close to no developer communication, our concerns about overflows, rewards and AFK turrets recieved no response until a patch after the event
- Effectively removed one boss from an already working world-event rotation we already had going
- No living story content aside from talking to Rox and finding dragon shards
- A GOOD thing though: I feel like the changes to the other world bosses are indeed an improvement. Inquest Golem Mark II is actually fun now for example.