Guild Wars 2

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

I did WIK on 14 characters. Because, I could. No time gating. It was fun. It was lore, connected to the Prophecies storyline, and beyond that, setting lore for a lot of this game. It was long, involved, had goals that had to be met before even attempting it. I consider it a “living story” because it did, indeed, permanently change the game for those who had completed it. It was compelling enough to do 14 times.

I haven’t found a living story yet, here, that is worth repeating, or even able to be repeated, given the time constraints and the “per account” completions. A lot of them I look at and dismiss outright. Others, I may do an element I stumble across but I do not pursue them. The update notes are enough, for me, to say “no, thank you” because the results are meaningless.
—snip—
Thanks for the opportunity to comment, tilting at windmills or not.

I was going to comment in the context of the GW:Beyond War in Kryta and WoC releases, but it seems that I’ve been beaten to the punch. The team responsible for those releases crushed it. The story made sense, missions were challenging , mission loot rewards were pretty good, zones changed. PLUS you could catch up at any time or replay it with an alt. If you wanted the WiK Oppressor skins you could collect the tokens at your own pace, no need to grind them all out in a 2 week blast. I assume that WiK was the trial run for the LS in GW2,I don’t know how it went so off the rails.

If the 2 week schedule is non-negotiable because of the publisher demands, then you really need think about how to address the permanence question and at least give people a chance to catch up.

Favorite: I don’t have favorite things generally but I’ve liked most of the content honestly.
Least Favorite: Teq Rising. Removing functional events and replacing them with something only a very tiny portion of the population does is a very bad idea. If you want to make new instanced content like that it’s fine, but the way you did Teq wasn’t a good idea. I also didn’t like the Labyrinth too much this year and feel it was a wasted opportunity for a giant boss battle. Also anything dungeon focused because I don’t like the dungeons in GW2, but I’m not going to tell you to stop doing them because a lot of people obviously like them. Can you possibly fix the mob area rubberbanding though? I could have soloed MF if not for that…

Regarding the cadence of releases: You really need to get some more QA people if you want to keep doing 2 week releases. I’m an IT guy, so I understand complex software gets buggy, but there are some majorly obvious things that your QA team doesn’t catch and it seems to be a regular thing. I do like new content every 2 weeks, I just wish it wasn’t regularly followed by an entire night of updates screwing up the meta event times.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

(…)due to constraints surrounding our economy(…)

This is one point that to me is too visible at the moment.

I also really like the idea of Arc based Meta Achievements

Just make sure that people who go on a two week holiday are not loosing out on this on a longer arc (if I understand this correct).

Personally I feel we have improved Story and Gameplay synergy(…)

Could you give an example of improvement so I better understand what you mean by that?

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 had a feeling this resulted more into the actual objective failing (meaning the event not completed and Scarlet not defeated) in most cases because the Zerg followed the most lucrative path and not the story path. Perhaps this is a result of the actual economy in place.

Regarding most favourite and least favourite episode … the bazar would be my most favourite. Unique features like the movements and the mini-game, while still somewhat PvP oriented, had room for self improvement – finding a shorter route, get faster.
Least favourite – don’t know if that counts as a story event, there was one with only a dungeon update. I’m sure the dungeon was/is nice but it had no other content whatsoever. This does not compare to the MF dungeon – I went there because to me that was part of the story. TA did not peak my interest at all.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Part 3

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.

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.

I pared down the quote to the points I wanted to offer some thoughts on.

The Nightmare Tower is, in my opinion, the best update you’ve had so far (Bazarr of the Four Winds is a close second).

Part of the reason why I like this update so much is that you seemed to have accomplished something important with it.

We know that many players will do that which gives them the most rewards for the least amount of effort. Hence, champ trains and zerging. This also causes deliberate failures in Scarlet invasions: no one believes they can win the invasion anyway so we may as well farm champs. Some players don’t even care about winning because they’ll get lots of loot from champs.

I’m paraphrasing, here, but I recall someone (it may have been Isiah Cartwright in an interview) saying that what ArenaNet wants is for the most rewarding thing to be playing the game the way it was intended by ArenaNet.

The Nightmare Tower update, so far, seems to exemplify this: Other than play the content as it’s intended, there’s nothing else to do. By that I mean there are no shortcuts or exploits or profitable ways of ignoring content and mechanics. Well done!

The other reasons why this is my favorite update so far:

• You’re tapping into the lore in a way the lore-heads appreciate by diving into the mysterious krait. We want mysteries to be unraveled and explored.
• You’re affecting the world and changing it, hopefully permanently.
• The storytelling aspect of this update is the best yet: the introductory instance and the cinematic was very well done.
• Using the existing lore provides motivation for the krait and nightmare court and makes more sense than having a sudden villain pop out of nowhere who is smarter and better than everybody at everything. It’s more believable.

An important reason why the Bazaar of the Four Winds is also one of my favorite updates is because we got to travel to a new area of the map and explore it. I very eagerly await more updates where we get to explore new zones. I would prefer the new zones be permanent or at least recurring (assuming the Four Winds is returning in some form).

Mungrul.9358:

I’ve come to realise that rewards and achievements are a bad thing for games in general.
It’s lowest common denominator stuff and makes people forget why they started playing in the first place. It all becomes about how much gold or achievement points players receive for repeating activities instead of actually enjoying the content itself.

…..

If you play Guild Wars 2 at the moment, you’re unconsciously deciding to join the race to get the shiniest stuff or the most achievement points. This causes stress with the 2 week release cycle, and it makes people anxious when they miss out on something because they didn’t have time to dedicate to playing.

I must say, I think this is a very interesting post.

It makes me wonder:

• Would we participate in the living story, if there were no special achievements attached to it?
• Would we participate if the special back item skins, and other rewards from the living story, could be obtained by playing the game in other ways?
• Would we want to do the living story content still, because the content is rewarding and fun in itself?
• Does it not become harder for the living story developers, to measure how much people like the content vs. how much they want the rewards?

Edit: Just noticed Vayne made a topic regarding this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Will-People-Play-Content-They-Don-t-Enjoy/first#post3130822

Chris,

In the spirit of honest feedback on releases and pacing, I really enjoyed the game for the first year, but honestly the pace of releases and the type of content starting roughly around Zephyr Sanctum burned me out completely.

Most of the Living World content I’ve seen produced between then and now is very strongly focused on farming / grinding / achieving. There is precious little new content to interest explorers, socializers and even PKers (to use the Bartle types).

Moreover, there is nothing there that really draws players into the story IMO. Each release is different in theme, but the storyline really doesn’t seem to me to be much more than window-dressing over the same basic endpoints:

“The queen is having a celebration” = better farm the champions for their loot.
“Scarlett is attacking the queen” = better farm the Aetherblades for their loot.
“The Mad King is rising again” = better farm the labyrinth for….
“The krait are doing something” = better farm…

I realize this is not unique to GW2 but boy I was hoping that the dynamic event system would amount to more than yet another loot slot machine.

What I was hoping for was a truly dynamic series of zones throughout the game. One which has an ebb and a flow to it rather than just a recycling pattern. I was hoping that this would play into an overarching meta-event driven by the players that pushed the plot forward somewhat organically.

Dream with me for a moment:

Instead of the static zones and scheduled encounters in the zones between Lion’s Arch and Orr, what if each zone had an interlinked series of dynamic events who’s success or failure status drove the status of the events surrounding it in a spiderweb of consequence.

Players need to push towards outposts and defences (kind of like how WvW is but with PvE mobs dynamically spawning as appropriate), they need to fortify them (running supply or escorts), they need to weather counterattacks and send out deep strike forces into very hostile areas (even other zones) to knock out places of power to stem the tide.

Dragon champions periodically swoop from the sky and must be driven off with player-built siege engines (made from limited resources to prevent simply blanketing the place with them). Hard pushes of enemies arrive trying to throw back the players as they proceed. Then as the whole zone is taken by the players, a big fight needing lots of coordination (similar to Tequatl the new) occurs to lock the zone down and open the next.

And importantly – it would be in a cycle. The road to Orr happens over a course of several months, but then when it succeeds (with an epic full zone sized fight against Zhaitan) everything quiets down for a few months to allow players some R and R before the next one begins.

Perhaps I’m rambling…

TL / DR
As much promise as the game held initially for “changing the MMO landscape”, I feel it’s fallen into the same ruts as every other MMO before it. I feel most story releases are simply wallpaper providing flimsy context for the same “grind to make your character better” mechanics used for a decade or more now.

I would love it if I could log into the game and have something put in front of me that I know really does matter to the evolution of the world. Something that I feel I can get behind and pull as part of a team to accomplish. WvW actually does provide some of that feeling (and I enjoyed it thoroughly for a year) but that game type is currently an underdeveloped sideshow that obviously doesn’t get the same resources as the PvE game.

As it stands, at this point there is no motivation for me to come back because I simply am not interested in mindless repetition of the same actions in order to make pretend money or to change the colour of writing on some piece of gear. There is nothing heroic to achieve, thus there is no need for heroes, just farmers.

I really love all the new content that has been pushed out. Some are great and with some I feel it has been a rushed thing. Non the less, it is amazing that Anet gives us all of the content for free. So a big thank you.

For me the definition of a Living world is a world where a lot of things change. Right now all the changes are mostly created extra inside a map/instance.To me that still creates a gap between it being part of “my” living world and the living world that is released. It takes away the dynamics that we all love to see so much and was sort of promised.

The current update in Kessex Hills is exactly what I consider a living world impact although the build up could/should have been longer.It went a little to quickly from chopped trees to a whole map being changed dramatically overnight. The tower itself and the new map could have been more of a climax if it was slowly introduced with more lore. I discovered it through an outside source (reddit) instead of it really being part of “my” world when I log in. Non the less, I feel that this is the direction you guys need to go.

A lot of people of asked for new maps but I would really love to see more things added/taken away on existing maps. There is still so much to tell environment wise/story wise/Lore wise. (Buildings/Construction should have been rebuild by now, for example the Dam in Queensdale) Remember when the Lion statue in LA was destroyed and it was rebuild again for a few weeks. It is these things that make you feel like you are part of a living breathing world to. It doesn’t always have to be new content that turns out to be an achi/zeg hunt (Which I love) but focus on the existing things that we sort of take for granted.

Now that the “old” Kessex Hills is gone people are starting to miss it. How great would it be to have everybody get together and rebuild it after we kicked scarlet ouf of her fake pale tree. You miss that part of the world so much? Do your best to get it back.
—
Another thing I would like to point out is Zhaitan. From the moment you logged in a year ago we have been super busy doing our story line and we learn all about how Zhaitan works and what he does.(And how to stop him) The big Climax is that we have killed him, Yet there is nothing noticeable in “our” world about that. If millions of players have all lived/worked towards the same ending, where is really the reward since it had no impact on the land we walk on months after his defeat? Our world should be free of his minions, People would have been rebuilding it or settlers should have start moving there. If not? Than together with the pact we should have destoyed them all by now. Anyway here is some feedback from me and I hope it adds a little bit to this discussion.

My favorite things so far have been:

1: Bazaar of the Four Winds: I loved the whole enviroment, the lore (Glint) and really liked the jumping puzzle/gathering. Despite being a new map, it felt welcome since it is/was exclusive.
2: Halloween 2012: I loved the hunt and how through that we discovered more lore, Revisted places and overal taught me a lot about the mad king and GW1 lore (which i never played)..and clocktower <3
3: Kessex Hills: It is not over yet, so hard to rate it. But yes changing Kessex Hills completely is actually an impact on “my” Living world. Bravo.
4: F&F/Queen’s Jubilee/Clockwork Chaos: Yes it started of weird/slow, What I like the most about everything so far was the tension building up. Yes I loved the pavilion and love Scarlet.
5: Winters day: Wintersday felt less about achiviements but more about really enjoying the enviroment.
6: Dev live stream: Yes I think some livestreams are super great. I would love to see more from Kristen Perry & design/modeling. Art or lore.
7: Cutthroats Politics: Just awesome!

Least favorite things:

1: Dragon Bash: The festival felt out of place and sort of a rip off/combination of previous events. Still not sure what the point was.
2: Halloween 2013: Halloween this year feels like it is more in the way of scarlet’s story and a quick release. Where is mad kings dungeon or hunt?
I feel like the Tower of madness took away the focus from Halloween.
3: Southsun Cove: I loved the introduction event & revisiting but non the less it is still a place where we can live without since there is really nothing there and feels disconnected.
4: Teq: I understand the revamp but nobody does it anymore since the novility wore off. Have 1 champion spawn anywhere in the world and failing to defeat him has results on “our” world.
5: SAB second release: I really loved the first SAB release. The 2nd was okay but didn’t make an impact like world 1 did. Making things harder is not always better.
6: Lore: I have never played gw1 so most of the lore that I know (gw1&2) comes from outside resources instead of inside the game. Should that not be the other way around?

Since English is not my first language, forgive me for any mistakes.

I have seen a lot of people talking about the release cadence of living story and I am a fan of the two week pace. After two weeks I’ve usually done everything with the current so I’m ready for the next installment. Also, I have really enjoyed the story arc, and I like how different npcs are calling for our help each section (like Lady Kasmeer, Rox, Brahm). I love the idea of being able to see a short cutscene that summarizes each previous living story section so I can go back and look on those events with new light.

I don’t feel like I’m rushed in the living story at all. I’m not a crazy hardcore player either, I don’t play every night, sometimes I only play for a couple hours a night, and I do things other than LS (like WvW). I’ve never felt the need to do all of the living story and I’ve always been able to experience it all if I wanted to. Having said that, I would love to see more permanent consequences for failure in certain events in the living story as well as the living world. Also, I’m not a fan of the more grindy achievements like “Close 50 doors” but I just don’t do the ones I find boring and that doesn’t bother me too much either. I think the UI could be improved a bit since the Mad King LS quest section (the one that’s on the right side of my screen under achieves) still tells me I should check out Nolani Academy but I have already recaptured the bloody prince.

Yonarq.1072:

BobbyStein.2315:

Regarding GW1 lore in Living World and beyond, let’s just say we’re looking at all GW lore right now and picking out threads that we’d like to tie up. Ideas are welcome, as always.

I’ll post more tomorrow. Time to go home.

Remember… the truest victory, is stirring the hearts of your people.

Whatever you decide about what bring us back from GW1 lore, keep in mind that we (GW1 lore fans) have high expectations since it looks like we were a bit forgotten in GW2 as a sequel because you decided to start completly new stories instad expanding the existing ones. If you want to bring us back some lore and prove us that we are not forgotten, choose wisely what it will be and make it with special love.

If you ask to me, what i REALLY miss is a more deep presence of the Six Gods in GW2 (and when i say presence its not necesary physical but lore involve). GW2 should be a perfect excuse to let us know more about their realms. Underworld and Fisure of Fow are just some examples. And remember, they are IMPORTANT characters from GW’s lore as a whole and not only for humans…so dont be afraid about “we dont want an human centric story”.

Bye

PD: Sorry about my english but its not my mother language.

I agree 100% with Yonarq on both points.

Do give the GW1 lore lots and lots of love, anything rushed or poorly written, such as mixing Scarlet in with Palawa Joko, will make your most loving fans quit at once. On the other hand, if you do it well, you have a guaranteed, loyal fanbase!

The one GW1 topic I’d love to be used in an epic, multi-release LS is the human gods. As Yonarq pointed out, it won’t be human-centric if you do it right, after all, those gods are (were) very much real and had tangible effects on everything and anyone in Tyria.

Edit: Forgot to list my LS!

Favorite: Bazaar of the Four Winds.
-Tied in with GW1 lore!
-Gorgeous map, it seemed to be made with love!
-New map
-Scavenger hunt
-Really fun “Sanctum Sprint”
-Liked the four avatar powers

I also LOVED the riddle-scavenger hunt in the 2012 Halloween event. More please!

Worst: It’s a kittene, because many of the LS share the same joykillers, but I think I have to go with Clockwork Chaos.
-The few pluses: Cool animations on the creatures. The art team is amazing. The solo tournament style Queen’s Gauntlet was fun too. The idea of invasions is great.
Now for the bad parts:
-Scarlet. She has been elaborated enough.
-The resulting gameplay of the invasions: Champion farming in zergs (yes, they’re still there, just split up). I had a TERRIBLE time trying to get any drops from non-champions and just had to keep running all the time to keep up with the zerg, because I was useless alone.
-No penalty for failing the invasion. The invaders just seem to go “oh, time to work! ok, done now, bye everyone!”
-Why are the invasions still going on? It doesn’t make sense. I have completely lost track of everything because of the unnatural pacing.

A major minus of almost all updates: We get cool new armor skins, but… Always only in the gem store. Why not make recipies available, for example through scavenger hunts? (Not grind! Not by collecting 10k of something! That would be the same as racking up the gold for the gems.)

First off all im kinda irritated by some people using an arugment like 9/10 people here are saying this so you have to do so. This has been mentioned several times in different parts of the discussion. I want to ask everyone to stop that and speak for yourself. Try to argument for yourself why You think it is important, or you agree/disagree. Hiding behind opinion off others with half guessed numbers is imo less valiant. Also keep in mind that there are many players not reacting here. A known effect of forums like these is that mostly the negative opinions get in the spotlight. So using those kind of numbers is fraud to begin with.

As being asked what I liked most on the living story and what I liked least:

The most I liked Flame and frost and the least I liked tequatl rising/SAB.But I will go through all.

Also some people commented on my tips to use a more stretched out reward system (making rewards less depending on grind, but increasing rewards while you progress). Some said that a mini would be a bad reward and that something like marjory’s journal wast much better reward. The first reaction to that is that I agree, but seeing how many journals are now destroyed and the complaints in here and in LA when it was given shows that we are a minority. The second is that the mini is an example. The true message is that those who have limited time should get a limited reward instead of no reward and those with more time to grind get a more exclusive reward. This is regardless off what the reward actually is.

1: the lost shores: These where little baby steps and it failed big time. The only reason I dont name it as my least favourite is that you learned your lessons and mistakes here :P

2: Flame and Frost: Only one downpoint. It was way too much stretched out. I think this content should be released in a month (and the dungeon permanent). What I liked was the teasing with the refugees, the build up to the big reveal and the genuine surprise behind it when it was reveladed. The dungeon itself was pure fun and should have been permanent!

3: Secrets at southsun/laststand at southsun
The story was ok. The changes off Canach where a bit strange. Cause I was one off the people that had issues with lostshores due to the amount off lag and was really kitten ed off back then I had loads off trouble following this story. It is good that you learned from lost shores, but I do feel you should have used this to tell the story to those that missed it.

4: Dragon Bash/skypirates
All in all an ok update. I loved the dragon bash as the replacement for the dragonfestival in GW1. The arena was a lot off fun, the games where great. The song was awesome. So I hope Dragon bash will become an annual thing. The skypirates story that was woven into this was excellent done and the dungeon was fun. The only negative is that it was a temporary dungeon and that some elements where challenging but too annoying. This resulted in that I didn’t wanted to repeat it.

5: Bazaar/cuthroat: good story, nice new map (hoping to being able to revisit it), the politicians where a nice extra step.

6: SAB/Tequatl: First off all I love what you did with Teqautl. I hate SAB (though understand it should return cause it is loved by many). But communication should have been better. You should have made very clear that cause of a new crafting level, a dragon overhaul, and an overhaul off worldbosses you are unable to make a proper living story, but that it will continue in october. For me this was a lost month and the lack off communication made that very bitter!

7: TA/Halloween: I love halloween and I liked this one again like I always like the mad king story’s. But it also caused another break in the story. TA itself had limited story and it takes a long and challenging dungeon to reach the real story elements. although the dungeon itself is a lot off fun, for a living story this was very dissapointing.

8: Tower of nightmares: I just finished the meta and it is (hopefully) incomplete. So storywise I wont judge it yet. The tasks itself where a bit too grindy and some mechanics are poor (champs should have the polution effect from the start off the fight, the flames round it in kessex hills are terrible).

Here’s my thoughts for any that care.

I generally get to play for about an hour per session and maybe do 4 hours per week, I try and do the dailies and the living story, so that is where I am coming from.

Given my ability to play the 2 week cycle is too quick I can just about get it done but it has to be that and nothing else, which I don’t think is what the devs are aiming for in this content.

Now I will rant with no real directions and no real solutions:

Generally:

I have no doubt that if they reduced the amount of grind the content would be done in one session by people that play more and that they would be upset at that.

This is a difficult balancing act and the only suggestion I would make is that there be levels of reward with the effective reward (nodes) being easily available and the cosmetic rewards (skins) being more time consuming.

Also it wouldn’t hurt to have things run for longer and overlap.

Story/Plot:

The LW appears to be a bit disjointed and I as a casual player frankly have no idea if there is a continuing story as all I look at is the rewards and the stuff required to get it. Given my circumstances it is all about getting the most effective reward for time spent.

I am also not interested in the results because they (as others have said) make no difference in the long run. At the moment the LW runs like an episode of the Simpson (no consequences) rather than say the (new) Battlestar Galactica.

I do think that it is worth taking risks with the player. In fact tell the players that you know that you’re taking risks and accept that some of those risks may not work out and you’ll drop them or change them. I think we’ve generally created a society that is scared of accepting failure (you learn a lot from failure)

Let there be failure with real consequences for the world. If the player fail to defeat a world boss have it stay around and annoy the players.

Have players short term goals conflict with the long term goals. Sure faming champs is easy money, but not taking on the bigger challenge will have bad consequences long term.

Don’t be afraid to have multiple stories going on at the same time.

Don’t be afraid to make content or try things that you know some people may hate (admit that may be the case).

remember this is a game not a tv show. What I think GW2 is attempting is something that few have tried before and that means some things will work and some won’t.

2 week cycle

I frankly don’t know if it is too tight a cycle. I however believe that it is being handle wrongly.

Every 2 weeks there is announced an update, new content, new missions. That is not what I think the devs are aiming for, it is what has always happened in the industry.

This is supposed to be a living World, as far as I recall in real life I don’t receive a notification from god every morning informing me that he has added x, y and z content. I have to go out there and discover it or turn on the news.

The 2 week cycle feels rushed because it is governed by lists of things to do within a certain time frame.

feel free to produce new content every 2 weeks but there is no need to remove content at the same rate.

Perhaps LW content could be relived by allowing players to re-enter the content through talking to an NPC and entering the previous LW version of the map. This would allow access to previous content and allow progression, then kill off the NPC when numbers drop using that content.

Also

why can’t I waypoint to Lions arch or other home cities for free. Why I am made to load up PvP walk load up LA and then load up home city. surely resources and more importantly my time will be freed up if I could just go to the black citadel direct for free.

Please stop giving me lists of things to do as I then have to work out what is the most effective list to complete in the time available. That means I end up doing the same lists over and over again and never progress on to any other list.

Adngel.9786:

Vabbi is very far from the current Tyria so I ‘m not very sure if it’s good add stories about him now or if wait for the future when the map gets bigger and more closer to Vabbi. O.ò But whenever it comes, it will be welcome.

Herecy! Vabbi is right here. [#Troll]

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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.

I think it is important to write failure into the living story itself. It’s kind of there now but in a half kitten way. We didn’t get Scarlet but we didn’t really lose anything either. Let’s say she was successful in her assassination attempt of the queen. Immediately you have a power vacuum needing to be filed. We already have powerful human actors on the edges that would love to either cease control or toss it off. Second, the player would want revenge. Third how would the char react… some would definitely see it as an opportunity. Fourth, with the human nation distracted centaurs and bandits will have greater freedom to take land so they have to be fought back… and so on and so forth.

But I understand it is a balance: Take to much and we have nothing left to fight for… take to little and we have nothing to fight about.

As a complete aside, I would love to see some experiments in dynamic events where failure doesn’t stall the event but progresses it in a different direction.

Finally, I just want you guys to know that I think you all are rockstars and there is no way I would want my work to be open to so much “constructive criticism” 24 hours a day every day.

thehipone.6812:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

I did WIK on 14 characters. Because, I could. No time gating. It was fun. It was lore, connected to the Prophecies storyline, and beyond that, setting lore for a lot of this game. It was long, involved, had goals that had to be met before even attempting it. I consider it a “living story” because it did, indeed, permanently change the game for those who had completed it. It was compelling enough to do 14 times.

I haven’t found a living story yet, here, that is worth repeating, or even able to be repeated, given the time constraints and the “per account” completions. A lot of them I look at and dismiss outright. Others, I may do an element I stumble across but I do not pursue them. The update notes are enough, for me, to say “no, thank you” because the results are meaningless.
—snip—
Thanks for the opportunity to comment, tilting at windmills or not.

I was going to comment in the context of the GW:Beyond War in Kryta and WoC releases, but it seems that I’ve been beaten to the punch. The team responsible for those releases crushed it. The story made sense, missions were challenging , mission loot rewards were pretty good, zones changed. PLUS you could catch up at any time or replay it with an alt. If you wanted the WiK Oppressor skins you could collect the tokens at your own pace, no need to grind them all out in a 2 week blast. I assume that WiK was the trial run for the LS in GW2,I don’t know how it went so off the rails.

If the 2 week schedule is non-negotiable because of the publisher demands, then you really need think about how to address the permanence question and at least give people a chance to catch up.

One of the luxuries of having everyone in different instances is that you can show each of them their own version of reality. They lost that when they broke away from each party being in an instance.

WiK didn’t really change zones, just the inhabitants.

As for the rewards. It wasn’t just the oppressor skins. There was the other set too! They were also worth getting, some of them at least. Haven’t found much appeal in any of the LS skins except the wintersday skins(the ones that you can buy with hats/socks/sweaters).

My favorite LW event is definitely the Zephyr Sanctum because it wasn’t just another champ train. If I wanted to do that I could go to Queensdale.

Worst one is probably Scarlet Invasions. No penalty for failure and events running like clockwork makes this LW event feel like the definition of a stupid loot piñata. I’m sure there were a lot of people playing though since you conveniently made it incredibly rewarding.

I would also like to echo the sentiments shared about the WiK from GW1. Whatever happened to the guys who made that happen? That’s an excellent example of how the living world should be handled. Funnily enough WoC seems to be a great example of how living story is handled in GW2 (and how it shouldn’t be handled). Do the exact same thing in X zones while the story barely progresses.

As I’m sure many others have said already about their desires to have more GW1 lore addressed I also feel the need to explain my thoughts on this.

I never played GW1 and knew basically nothing about it before I started GW2 on release so I cannot speak from direct experience and I do not possess the wealth of knowledge of this lore as others could claim, however having played GW2 for this length of time I have picked up a lot of information through various sources; in-game or otherwise. To me, lore is important not just because it can be very interesting or thought provoking but because it is very intrinsic to my enjoyment of the game, even on a subconscious level. I may not even directly think about it or notice it, but when lore and stories are interesting they allow me to get more involved into the game world and increase my enjoyment.

Throughout my time playing I will occasionally come across something interesting and ill think “why is this the way it is?” or “what is this?” and ill go and look it up and discover a wealth of information, a lot of which comes from the first game as its the foundation for most of GW2. Watching videos like those done by woodenpotatoes about the fantastic and in depth lore that GW1 had does make it a shame to see very little to none of this having been tackled so far in the games updates since launch.

I’ve grown to love the GW1 lore even though I never even played the game and found these out first hand. Things like the scepter of Orr, Abbadon, the human Gods, the White Mantle and the Mursaat, Glint’s child/legacy and so many others. There is so much that you can build upon and create a massively compelling storyline and I am therefore happy to at least see that your thoughts have turned to this and look forward to what the future could hold. I can understand the desire to create something new and have the passion for making it but it seems obvious to me and many others that GW1 lore and links to GW2 were meant to be tackled at some point and after a year and a bit, it is a shame to see almost none of it developed.

As for my likes and dislikes, my favourite update has to have been the Bazaar of the Four Winds. It was artistic and colourful and created a sense of wonder and scale I just hadn’t seen since the game was released and actually got me giddy with excitement all the way through. It introduced arguably the funnest new mechanic with the movement crystal moves which I enjoyed immensely and helped build the sense of wonder and excitement. These weren’t to everyone’s liking I understand but these things happen.

The style was very reminiscent of Cantha and even though it wasn’t exactly tied to GW1 lore, though it did have some interesting links to Glint, it really felt like it linked back. It was different to what we had seen before but still felt like it had a place in the Guild Wars universe. I was honestly sad to see this update go and hope we’ll see it again sometime.

As for what my least favourite update was it has to be cutthroat politics, as it forced a divide among the community and caused the loss of probably one of the most interesting ideas I’ve seen as a potential GW2 update in the Abbadon fractal. The update introduced the potential for arguably the first link between the old lore and the new lore between games (even if it was technically new as GW1 hadn’t tackled it either). I was utterly defeated and depressed that the vote sided with Kiel, which while I suppose this was a testament to the impact of the choice in the first place I don’t want to feel like I lost something from a game I enjoy and want to play. Most people seemed to only vote for Kiel because they were annoyed at people siding with Gnashblade anyway or because waypoint cost reductions would make a large impact on people’s savings (???). I just don’t feel like the choice was warranted when it split the community between the old and the new, I wanted to be satisfied with either outcome but just couldn’t because so much was riding on it.

It’s really great to see the discussion here and see that the collaborative development seems to be working out rather well at least as a discussion, leaving me hopeful for the future.

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.

My favorite and least favorite releases are actually one and the same: Bazaar of the Four Winds. Contrary as that sounds:

The motion abilities were and are some of my favorite things that have been added to the game, and I’ve seen you guys use the same concepts in your content releases since then (like the jump pads in the new Teq fight), which is awesome, because it makes parts of the new content more intuitive. The PvP mini-game and Sanctum Sprint were both really well done. The non-combat content was amazing, and actually got some of my friends who hate jumping puzzles to have a blast jumping all the way up the Labyrinthine Cliffs. The rewards were good, as well, but balanced and not over the top.

However, Bazaar of the Four Winds also was the start of forced time gating on crafting materials and making high-end craftables and materials account bound. These two concepts are totally inexplicable to me. You’re forcing people to craft who don’t like to, and putting limiters on those of us who do like crafting. Not only that, but you’re also forcing a daily routine, which is becoming more tedious every time you add something that’s once-per-day.

BTW, there was a thread about this same topic a little while ago that would probably be worth your time, if you haven’t already read it:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Best-and-Worst-of-GW2-Releases-Year-1/first

SIDE NOTE: We now have 50% more daily achievements than we did at launch (IIRC we used to have eight, now we have 11-12), we have daily crafting materials, and we have meta achievements and monthlies that try to force daily participation. Please stop adding daily stuff. The more content you add that is limited to a daily timeframe, the less you’re going to see people out in the world, because they simply don’t have time play the actual game. The intent behind the dailies was to get people to explore…but that isn’t happening, unless you consider circling the starter zones “exploring”.

Please also consider limiting daily achievement points to the five that count toward the daily reward chest. Allow people to complete the rest of them for the exp if they want (I found that they are good bonus exp for leveling), but achievement scores are ridiculously inflated with daily achievement points. Honestly, I’m guilty of it, too. Why should anyone pursue the more difficult or time-consuming achievements when they get more points for farming daily achievements? These dailies aren’t “achievements” in any definition of the word.

My favourite Living Story release: Queen’s Jubilee
I liked the redesign of part of one of the cities, I liked the story instance where various story threads converged (Braham and Rox, Logan, Queen Jennah and Countess Anise, all in the same room). I liked the new champion loot bags.

I also liked the queen’s gauntlet for its variety in opponents, although in my opinion it did not cater to players who had invested into defensive builds. (1) Trait points could be redistributed, but it’s a lot more expensive to replace a complete set of (exotic) armor, (ascended) jewelry and/or (exotic) weapons, just to be more competitive in a gauntlet event. (2) The two-minute timer, the large number of opponents who had one-hit-kill attacks (e.g. Halmi Hammerfell, Deadeye Dunwell, Liadri), and the large number of opponents who had “kill me quickly or be overwhelmed” mechanics (e.g. Subject 7, Strugar & Chomper, Wincaller Kieldia) reduced the possibility of defeating any opponent by outlasting them (and the value of high Toughness, Vitality or Healing Power scores) to somewhere around zero.

So even though I liked the update in general, there was still ample room for improvement.

My least favourite Living Story release: Tequatl Rising
What used to be a regularly recurring event that was kind of mediocre, but sparked moderate player interest anyway has now been turned into a player-unfriendly minefield.

Where to begin?
- The threshold for successfully completing the Tequatl event is too high.
40+ coordinated players are required (with none of those afk or otherwise ineffective). If you don’t have that large a group of players, you have no business even being near the Splintered Coast.
Possible solution: tone down the event (e.g. Tequatl’kitten points, the threshold when Champions spawn with the waves of risen, etc.)
- Tequatl appears with no advance warning.
People who want to attempt the event have to be there well in advance to get organized. Players who are already in Sparkfly Swamp (doing other things) may be willing to participate in the event, but will not arrive until after the crucial first few minutes have passed, during which the event is most likely to become unwinnable.
Possible solution: Give advance warning of Tequatl’s arrival throughout Sparkfly Swamp.
- Tequatl’s arrival is not broadcast outside of the zone.
There may be many players hanging around in Lion’s Arch or other zones who are willing and eager to contribute to large world events, but unless these players are already sitting at the Splintered Coast doing nothing but wait for Tequatl, they will not know that the event is starting. And even if they did know, they would get there well after the point in time when they could make a difference in not-failing the event during the first few minutes.
Possible solution: Give advance warning of Tequatl’s arrival throughout Tyria, similar to Scarlet’s Invasions. Also, do this 5 minutes ahead of Tequatl’s actual moment of arrival, so people have time to get there and organize a little.

The result? Nobody even tries the event any more, except a few sufficiently large guilds with enough organized members to succeed, enough time on their hands to set up at least 30 minutes in advance, and actual interest to do the event instead of other activities with a better risk-reward ratio.

(Also, why was Rox even there? There was no instance in which she participated. Her presence did not contribute to the actual content in any way, except to point players in the direction of a scavenger hunt that awarded nothing but a few achievement points. And her merely standing there for two weeks did not particularly build her character.)

I’d be curious to know what you guys (anet) think have been the better LS releases so far. Or which bits have felt like have hit the nail when you have stepped back after release and looked at them. Might give us an insight on how you look at the LS/LW

nopoet.2960:

As a complete aside, I would love to see some experiments in dynamic events where failure doesn’t stall the event but progresses it in a different direction.

BobbyStein.2315:

Interesting idea. Can you provide an example of how you would imagine it working?

Its in the game NOW. And it represents some of the best the DE system has to offer.

The pump house/waterworks in Queensdale. Bandits assault it with bombs. If you fail, it launches a new DE where you make repairs. If you succeed, the pump house is safe, but is potentially subject to the to toxin line of DEs (and visa versa). The two lines never overlap (You don’t have to stop bombs while there are oozes running amok), but they create tangibly different outcomes for winning or failing.

The single best investment of energy you can do to make the world Living (as opposed to a Living Story) is to layer on more and more DEs with branching pass/fail interdependencies so that even 6 months later, I can wander through say Mount Maelstrom, and while the geography is familiar, there things going on I’ve never seen before. And if the DE pass/fail states actually radically alter the landscape, even better. And its work that endures – its there to entertain first time new players and to enchant and surprise veteran players out for a stroll.

As a latecomer that has not followed this thread, I hope that I am not repeating what has already been said.

I play 6-8 hours throughout the week, and maybe 8-12 on weekends. At a 2-week clip, I am not able to keep up with LS releases over a 2-week period, along with the other things I would like to do. That being said, even with more time and with people moving on, there are often not enough others around, when I finally do get to the “new” content – i.e. Tequatl

I am now going to be part of the problem, by listing only my criticism of the LS content, without providing much in way of a solution. I hope that my criticism can be fixed by some of the other suggestions already provided.

What I don’t like about the LS content, is that most of it is really just old style quests in new packaging. Instead of an NPC, in the map, with an exclamation mark over their head, we are given the quest in the form of “Achievements” on an interface. These quests/achievements seem to be mainly the type that GW2 said it wanted to do away with. Collect 25 of those, kill 50 of these. To me that is another departure from what the developer’s said GW2 would be, prior to release.

Achievement points seem to me to be just another experience bar. We already have an experience bar that keeps turning over, why add another to the game? Well, I know why, it is an effort to drive me to the content that Anet prefers I participate in.

The reward from these achievements? Skins that I can do without, a couple of gold, and an imperceptible improvement to gold find, magic find, and whatever else. I still get low value items from participation in these events, I don’t know that these stats are really making a difference.

The reward from the past couple of meta achievements, the nodes, seems to be more grind. It is easy enough to do, but why have all of the strings attached. To get one of the new toxic recipes requires a stack of spores (whatever they are). I will be able to mine something like 10 spores a day. Essentially I have to log onto a toon I don’t play much for 25 days to get what I need. I than have to pay gold, on top of that, to get the recipe. I then will have to mine for additional days to get the materials needed to make the item. This all assumes that the NPC vendor will be around at the time I need her to be around.

I continue to play the game, but the more it becomes like other games already on the market, the more I wonder if I shouldn’t just try those other games. I don’t find GW2 to be grindy, but it does seem to be very repetitive.

Nike.2631:

The single best investment of energy you can do to make the world Living (as opposed to a Living Story) is to layer on more and more DEs with branching pass/fail interdependencies so that even 6 months later, I can wander through say Mount Maelstrom, and while the geography is familiar, there things going on I’ve never seen before. And if the DE pass/fail states actually radically alter the landscape, even better. And its work that endures – its there to entertain first time new players and to enchant and surprise veteran players out for a stroll.

I agree with this wholeheartedly.

From what I understand, ArenaNet made one attempt to add a batch of new Dynamic Events to the world. When nobody seemed to notice or care, that approach was abandoned.

The problem? You added them at the same time that we got the Halloween content, so lots of folks didn’t notice until later! Also, the 50 or so (I think that was the count) new DEs were spread all over the place, and it was close to launch, and you never listed out what the new events were in patch notes or anything, so a lot of us probably thought they were just events from launch we hadn’t seen before.

I don’t know what amount of effort this requires, but I’m curious as to whether you would consider trying to add at least 5-10 new DEs in one or two zones per patch cycle? That’d help to keep all the content fresh over time. This, plus scaled rewards (higher DE rewards the longer an event has gone uncompleted) would really help to revitalize zones that lots of us never visit anymore.

BobbyStein.2315:

nopoet.2960:

As a complete aside, I would love to see some experiments in dynamic events where failure doesn’t stall the event but progresses it in a different direction.

Interesting idea. Can you provide an example of how you would imagine it working?

I have some ideas!

If an enemy dredge army is marching out of their main base, players will be asked to mobilize with their allies and help destroy the army. If the dredge army is defeated, other events will cascade out from there. Players will be able battle their way inside the dredge base, face off against their commander, rescue captured friendly troops being held in the dredge prisons, and even hold the captured base while fighting waves of dredge, who arrive from deep underground to try and take back their home.
If, on the other hand, players fail to destroy the army, it will establish a fort in friendly player territory. From there, the dredge will send shipments of troops and supplies to the fort from the main base while building up walls, turrets, and siege engines to help defend it. Enemy dredge forces will then begin to move out from their newly established fort to attack friendly player locations in the area, sending snipers out into the hills, sending assault team forces to capture friendly player villages, and trying to smash down friendly fortifications with massive dredge walkers. All of these events continue to cascade out into further chains of events where cause and effect is directly related to the player’s actions.
For example, if the players do not mobilize to stop the dredge snipers, they’ll begin to shoot down all the villagers and merchants in nearby friendly villages. If they fail to stop the dredge assault teams from capturing a village, players will need to lead a force to help liberate the town and free the villagers. All of this content is derived from a single initial event – the dredge army marching through the map.

Or this other one that involves the scenario of a dragon destroying an important town bridge, and it’s up to you to defeat the dragon and defend the town NPCs as they rebuild…

BobbyStein.2315:

nopoet.2960:

As a complete aside, I would love to see some experiments in dynamic events where failure doesn’t stall the event but progresses it in a different direction.

Interesting idea. Can you provide an example of how you would imagine it working?

Alright, let’s give it a try:

We escort a charr tank to a certain enemy gate to take it down and invade their base. Upon failure, we could get another event that requires us to get explosives to blow up the gate instead. This event will be harder as the players now have to get close to the gate to drop the explosives. Or, to add a little diversity, an Ash Legion soldier pops up, makes some sniffy remark on how the Iron Legion can’t even keep their own toys in one piece, and offers to take the group via a second, secret (perhaps even previously locked) path into the base. Depending on which way you enter the base, the boss has to be taken down with different tactics. With the tank you would have to keep protecting it, or go in for an all out attack when it eventually is destroyed. Sneaking into the base will require you to watch the patrols and carefully lure small groups, as you can’t steamroll them like the tank could have done.

The difficulty here is to make the initial event rewarding enough to have players actually try to complete it instead of failing on purpose. One way would be to increase rewards for completing the initial trail. Something like having a gold transport there that will leave in a certain time, which will have passed by the time the second route is completed. Also, it would even be possible to add a second initial event, that directly starts with the Ash legion’s involvement and will continue on to the Iron Legion branch if it fails, just to make sure both paths can be played and enjoyed without purposefully failing the event.

I would very much like to see a system that integrates the personal story and the living world, to where the latter becomes more of an expansion of the former, with new concepts/systems in place like a storybook UI, an NPC information UI (and a henchmen recruitment/management UI), etc. Find a way to fix the time-limbo that exists between the PS and LW and merge to two into a single concept.

I also don’t think the two week release schedule is inherently a problem. The bigger problem is that they try to do too much during that window that involves both adding random content and removing content that was only in the game for two weeks, and it all revolves around grindy gameplay. Quality needs to be improved, the content needs to involve less grind and repetition, and less stuff needs to be removed after a mere two weeks. It looks like they are addressing that.

BobbyStein.2315:

The first improvement to address this went live on 10/29. The special event UI now tells you where to go and in what order to experience the story bits.

Are you talking about the box on top right of the screen? If so, I can’t tell that it has changed at all. It’s not telling me anything except to fight the toxic alliance. It looks the same as before the 29th. We, as a community, still have to go to Dulfy to find out what is going on with this release and to find things like the Obelisk Shards.

As a matter of fact, I’ve already given up on Tower of Nightmares patch due to the cluelessness, confusion and the apparent grindy content. It’s rather sad as I’m only at 4/14 achievements.

You see, I don’t go to 3rd party websites to learn about things that happen in-game. I expect everything to be explained in-game, on the official website or in patch notes.

BobbyStein.2315:

The first improvement to address this went live on 10/29. The special event UI now tells you where to go and in what order to experience the story bits. We have designs for another system that will potentially sort out the timelines and provide other mechanisms to enhance LW releases, but until it’s confirmed for a specific build I can’t divulge more specifics.

Honestly I don’t care about timelines or anything else except: Can you make it so I can remove things I don’t want up there? Blood and Madness is still there saying the same thing after I’ve completed the meta as it did before and it’s really annoying.

Greyhart.3724:

Here’s my thoughts for any that care.

I generally get to play for about an hour per session and maybe do 4 hours per week, I try and do the dailies and the living story, so that is where I am coming from.

Given my ability to play the 2 week cycle is too quick I can just about get it done but it has to be that and nothing else, which I don’t think is what the devs are aiming for in this content.

When I was in university, the teachers for my classes all figured about an hour’s worth of homework per night and the occasional big project was quite reasonable. And indeed it kinda is.. but the problem was, of course, that we as students were attending 4-6 classes daily, with resultant 4-6 hours of homework per night and sometimes multiple big projects ongoing.

I understand that kind of stress is part of the education.. but occasionally, we’d face a situation where somebody’d have to raise their hands and say ‘Gosh, you know.. we’ve got a huge econ assignment due monday. Is there any way we can move this statistics assignment over to friday or something?’ – and the teacher’d hem and haw but eventually admit it was a lot of work and okay fine, make it friday.

We have a lot of homework in game, it feels like. Dailies are for gearing up, so that has to be done. The ascended weaponry has to be crafted. Achievements are being used partially to tell story lately, and I don’t consider story optional, so that comes in the list too.

I dunno, I feel like perhaps designers aren’t figuring the cumulative amount of homework assigned. And then there’s the ‘carve 250 pumpkins’.. yeah, no thanks!

BobbyStein.2315:

Interesting idea. Can you provide an example of how you would imagine it working?

Inc.4753:

Alright, let’s give it a try:

We escort a charr tank to a certain enemy gate to take it down and invade their base. Upon failure, we could get another event that requires us to get explosives to blow up the gate instead. This event will be harder as the players now have to get close to the gate to drop the explosives. Or, to add a little diversity, an Ash Legion soldier pops up, makes some sniffy remark on how the Iron Legion can’t even keep their own toys in one piece, and offers to take the group via a second, secret (perhaps even previously locked) path into the base.

I like that. Let me generalize the concept and take on the road:

What’s being suggested is adding “second chance” events. Plan A has failed. Rather than just fall back in disarray, we get to try plan B, which is specifically designed to play to a different set of player strengths/builds than plan A did. Frontal assault didn’t work. Here’s a mini-jump puzzle that opens up that gets you to the goal – giving the avid jumper with weaker gear who couldn’t down the doorguards by brute force a way to shine.

Now imagine redoing the entire southern march from Fort Trinity to the Rally Camp with Second Chance technology. Failed to secure the beach for the trebuchets by plowing in all iron-fisted? A pact submarine pops up off shore and you get a second chance to secure it by playing siege gunner from the deck. If either event succeeds, you are able to advance on to the assault on the first island across the bridge.

Later in the chain you have to hold that first island against a counter attack. If you fail, instead of immediately being booted back to the trebuchet beach, you get a second chance event – maybe some sort of footrace to reach a horn that lets you call in an NPC Airstrike so that you end up holding on to the island and can advance to the next stage of the march. Again, giving you a way to showcase an alternate skillset, and a way to not have your progress kicked back because the guy that helped you take the island in the first place wandered off before the counter attack event started.

Second Chances, especially creative ones, would open up a world of heroism and let you actually access the later portions of some of the really long chains, better leveraging the work you’ve already done.

As to implementing DE expansion. If I were king, I’d pick pairs of zones, of radically different level ranges, and focus all the additions in those two zones so that I could announce the introduction not a~

“We added 50 events… somewhere”

But as~

“Things are heating up in Gendarren Fields. Not only have the Centaur attacks taken on a sinister new dimension, but the Inquest has begin probing the Headquarters of the Vigil for weakness. Return to this war-torn frontier in this permanent Living World release and be among the first to raise your sword against the new and renewed enemies of Kryta and Lion’s Arch!”

Elbegast.6970:

BobbyStein.2315:

The first improvement to address this went live on 10/29. The special event UI now tells you where to go and in what order to experience the story bits.

Are you talking about the box on top right of the screen? If so, I can’t tell that it has changed at all. It’s not telling me anything except to fight the toxic alliance. It looks the same as before the 29th. We, as a community, still have to go to Dulfy to find out what is going on with this release and to find things like the Obelisk Shards.

As a matter of fact, I’ve already given up on Tower of Nightmares patch due to the cluelessness, confusion and the apparent grindy content. It’s rather sad as I’m only at 4/14 achievements.

You see, I don’t go to 3rd party websites to learn about things that happen in-game. I expect everything to be explained in-game, on the official website or in patch notes.

I get the idea behind the obelisk shards: “Hey, this will be a great way to get people into this handful of maps! They’ll have to run around and find the shards!” Except most of us won’t do that.

Some of us will, as this poster said, just go to Dulfy, find the list, and WP around to get them. This is the very definition of un-fun.

Some of us will, as I intend to do, skip it. Just like I skipped dragon teeth.

I imagine a few folks will use it as a reason to spread out into the zones and search, but without a built-in way to track which you’ve found and which you haven’t, I could imagine it ends in disaster for a lot of people…

BobbyStein.2315:

That’s among the many things we discussed doing, but we currently have technical limitations preventing us from making such a drastic change because it would break Personal Story dependencies. Until we have a system in place that separates the timelines of the Personal Story and Living World stories we are limited in the kinds of changes we can show in the open world.

Can you elaborate on the technical difficulties? I can’t see this being more difficult than what you did in GW when we got to experience missions our characters never could have done from a lore perspective. You put a message on the screen saying, “You are about to witness events that occurred before you arrived in Tyria/Cantha/Elona” (paraphrased). We aren’t incapable of understanding that worlds change and that a game’s lore progresses. For personal story you can say, “You are about to relive actions your character took in the past.”

I can understand why this would feel odd to some new players without proper context (perhaps the intro videos or introductory text will have to be amended to describe how their characters have fought and killed Zhaitan and that they are reliving a story that has happened). However, you will have this problem no matter how you choose to expand the content (and you currently do). The Aetherblades cannot have simultaneously have stole Pact airships when my character hasn’t formed the Pact yet (for example).

This is generally a problem with instanced content (like the personal story and dungeons) and why I don’t like instancing. Technically, instance effects are not part of the world, and thus you can’t happily or easily wed the two without providing some temporal context cues or blatant messages stating when the events in that instance took place. The other alternative is constantly updating them as the world changes, but that is an insurmountable task for even the dungeons alone.

Do you think it’d be good enough to just give temporal context cues or blatant messages during instances? What internal discussions have been had on this matter and what flaws am I missing in my proposal?

Favorite: Bazaar of the Four Winds
Reasons:
1) We were able to decide the fate of the something with our votes (Ellen Kiel or Gnashblade)

2) It helped (even in a small way) to tie in some of the lore by bringing in some speculation about Glint/Glint’s child.

3) It felt very well developed and it opened up a new area of the world which I personally would love to see. I miss a lot of the areas from GW1, I would love to see areas like the Crystal Desert return. I love when I walk around in GW2 and am reminded of some content in GW1 that I cherished. The memories just make me smile.

Least Favorite: SAB
Reasons:
1) This content was solely structured to be played by one type of player: those that enjoy jumping puzzles. I personally have a great deal of difficulty with Jumping puzzles, and I don’t enjoy them in the least. I already don’t like that there are so darn many of these things (over 48 by my last count) and some content like World Exploration is blocked behind JPs. I honestly think that dev enjoys creating JPs and it makes it fun for them, which I can understand. Unfortunately this negatively affects all of us who don’t enjoy JPs. I had to completely skip the achievements for this entire release (I did give it a fair shot of my time, but got so frustrated after a few days that I quit trying). I also wasn’t able to get a single reward from this release because I was incapable of doing the content.

I don’t mind that there is content for people who enjoy JPs, but I know I wasn’t the only one that was alienated by SAB. I’m very skilled at the combat aspect of the game (I’m notorious for being able to solo content in dungeons without getting downed), but the jumping aspect is just not to my taste. I have heard rumors that SAB is going to have more worlds added, which makes me very sad since this content is not friendly to all of us who abhor JPs. I would like to see anet find a way to give the JP lovers what they want while still incorporating a way for those who like other aspects of the game to participate.

TLDR; Don’t create LS content that only favors one type of player.

Sidenote:

I absolutely love WvW Season 1!!! Not sure if this counts a LS but I love it more than any other release. I actually have an app on my phone now where I can check the scores as they progress. Almost like a sports season where all of us can help our team win. (Plus I like that there is a hard title to get out of it that really takes some effort to earn).

BobbyStein.2315:

That’s among the many things we discussed doing, but we currently have technical limitations preventing us from making such a drastic change because it would break Personal Story dependencies. Until we have a system in place that separates the timelines of the Personal Story and Living World stories we are limited in the kinds of changes we can show in the open world.

So could ANet stop the Personal Story by level 20 or so?
Because the “Personal” part of the story is over by the time you pick an Order.
This could free you up in twisting the overarching story on its head somewhat.

I don’t make a suggestion like this lightly, in fact I don’t envy your job because its a tough one and I applaud any efforts you all are making in working with this.

At the moment it seems like GW2 is stuck between what it wants to do and where it was with GW1. You don’t want to keep old events around but still need them to build the narrative of the “present”. New players need to know about big Z and the Pact, but with that Personal Story your hands get tied when you want to do something extreme (like kill off Jenna or anyone high ranking).

The players get stuck, in theory, within two timelines: Pre and Post Pact. Would it be possible to borrow from GW1 and pull the Pre-Ascalon trick?
Have a self contained pocket where players Pre Pact (or even just Pre Personal lvl 20 story) play around in but can skip if they wish?

Eh…even that would cause a division in the player base and mechanically gums up more. I guess this is one of those moments where ANet needs to decide which is important: A fluid timeline or these crystalized moments?

Once again best of luck, if I can come up with anything that helps I’ll try.

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.

Obviously it would appear a great number of people on this forum are not happy with this stance. But, you have made it clear that you’re not going to change it so we’re just going to have to accept it, or quit the game. However, perhaps you can explain to us exactly why the team decided on a 2 week cadence and why you think it’s the best route to go. If we understood why you chose this route, perhaps we could better frame our suggestions as to how to make it better, because without that frame of understanding our only real solution is the one you do not want to discuss: slowing the cadence to 3 or 4 weeks. Again, why is the 2-week release non-negotiable?

BobbyStein.2315:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Why are you sticking to the bi-weekly release schedule? If you know it hinders you, why keep at it? That makes no sense to me. I know you’re not the guy to set it, but I’m sure you know why it’s set there and who sets it and can explain to us this befuddlement – if not get the players’ opinion on it to the person or people who set the schedule.

That’s not my decision to make. That stated, feedback regarding the cadence is useful and constructive to others so I think it’s good for people to tell us how they feel about the release schedule.

We’ve told you how we feel. 19 pages of it in this thread alone. Some of us like it. A lot of us don’t, we think it’s too fast, and we don’t understand why you stick to it. Enlighten us, please, as to why it’s non-negotiable.

edited to add quote from BobbyStein

Mungrul.9358:

One of the things that would bring me back to GW2 would be the removal of the achievement hamster wheel and untangling it from so many gameplay elements. At the moment it’s the driving mechanic behind all new content.
———-
If you play Guild Wars 2 at the moment, you’re unconsciously deciding to join the race to get the shiniest stuff or the most achievement points. This causes stress with the 2 week release cycle, and it makes people anxious when they miss out on something because they didn’t have time to dedicate to playing.

Couldn’t agree more. I’ve been playing since pre-release and still haven’t finished the main game, because I don’t have time. If I try to run those missions, that’s time I’m NOT grinding out Living Story achievements, which means I might miss a limited-time reward item. I can only imagine the lament of people who want Celestial gear but don’t have a quartz node to farm because they weren’t around for the Bazaar release.

I didn’t care about the achievements when the game first launched. There was no reason to care other than simply having the points. Once APs were revamped and started giving rewards, I suddenly started caring about them. If I needed to slay 10 more drakes for the drake killer achievement, I’d stop what I was doing and go somewhere just to kill those 10, because it was 1 more point toward an AP chest, and its associated boost, gold reward, etc… APs were meaningless to me before they were attached to reward chests and I rather preferred it that way, because I was free to play the game instead of feeling like I had to go grind an achievement or I was wasting my time.

These days I don’t play the game for the story. I can’t play my alts because I’m always running LS with my main. I work full time, like many others, and I don’t get to play every night. Even when I can play, though I can spend 4-5 hours in one spurt, I still don’t feel like I have a lot of time to get things done. I used to see chat of people talking about running dungeons, or fractals. I don’t see that anymore: all I see is chat about living story. Maybe the dungeon chat went away with the LFG too, I don’t know, but I know I don’t see people talking about it anymore. On the forums here I don’t see people talking about dungeon bugs or difficulties like they used to, or event bugs, or much else: it’s all about Living World. Seems like I’m not the only one that is essentially ignoring the rest of the game and spending all my time on Living World grind.

As I pointed out in another thread, the story is not casual-friendly. Mechanically it is, sure: many have said it’s one of the easiest games for a casual to play. The story though is anything but. Miss one LS release and you have no idea what’s going on, with no way to go back and find out. The game may be rated T for teen, and geared toward that demographic, but the reality is a lot of the base is older, in the workforce and feels the only way to enjoy the game casually is to actively, consciously, intentionally IGNORE the Living World. Is that what you want? Do you want people ignoring the content you work tirelessly to build, just because they don’t feel they have the time to complete it?

We need a break, Anet. I think I could live with the 2-week cadence if it was 2 weeks of LS content, then 2 weeks of nothing so I could play my alts, run Personal Story, etc. Is this not preferable? Am I the only one that wants time to play the game I bought?

As far as favorite releases:
I don’t really have any. They all run together for me in the achievement grind’s mindless zerg, and the story is forgettable because of how disjointed it is. I guess Bazaar is probably my favorite because it introduced Sanctum Sprint, which is my favorite activity and something I actually enjoy doing.

Least Favorite release:
Tequatl Rising. Never made an effort to kill Taco before the update. I figured I’d get around to it one day but there were plenty of other things to do instead. What does Anet do? Make him several orders of magnitude more difficult, guaranteeing that I will NEVER do it. I did try it a few times during the release, but never could get the guy below 60% and promptly gave up after getting my wings. I should probably go run Claw and Shatterer before they too get revamped into something I make a conscious effort to avoid.

Maybe MMOs aren’t for me, or I don’t understand their intent. For most of the game the requirements for success are low and the chance for success high, so people play. Personal story & Champ trains, for example. For events where the req. for success is high and the chance low it’s much, much harder to get people together. I play on SoR, one of the highest-populated NA servers, and I don’t see many people doing Teq anymore because it’s so hard to get enough people there to do it, and even then the success rate isn’t great. And this isn’t even taking rewards into account which further skews players toward things like champ trains instead of world bosses.

To Collin, comparing the game to a TV show is a bad idea in the context of player interaction. In a TV show you’re a spectator; you just watch what is happening and consume. In a game you’re supposed to be a participant actively moving the plot along, creating rather than consuming. I’m supposed to be the hero of the story, not a spectator or a sidekick.

There’s another thread going on about how to merge the Personal and Living Stories into one cohesive plot, enticing the players to actually care about the story again. It’s got some flaws (what doesn’t?), but it’s worthy of attention. I’d love to see the devs comment on it.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/To-Merge-the-Personal-and-Living-Stories/

Atlas.9704:

So could ANet stop the Personal Story by level 20 or so?
Because the “Personal” part of the story is over by the time you pick an Order.
This could free you up in twisting the overarching story on its head somewhat.

I don’t make a suggestion like this lightly, in fact I don’t envy your job because its a tough one and I applaud any efforts you all are making in working with this.

At the moment it seems like GW2 is stuck between what it wants to do and where it was with GW1. You don’t want to keep old events around but still need them to build the narrative of the “present”. New players need to know about big Z and the Pact, but with that Personal Story your hands get tied when you want to do something extreme (like kill off Jenna or anyone high ranking).

Honestly, I know ArenaNet is on the fence with the idea of an expansion. I was initially against it, but now, I think this may be the best of all possible worlds:

1) Create an expansion that opens up new territory.
2) All characters start within the existing structure.
3) Once you join an Order, you can access the “expansion” content.
4) Expansion areas have no Hearts (like Orr) and become the most frequently-changing areas in the game. Build the zones with long-term change in mind.

This gives all new players enough time to learn the game mechanics before heading to a more complicated zone AND your Order can be the primary reason you head into the new areas.

For example: you must venture deep into the Maguuma jungle to study the Bloodstone (Priory), infiltrate the White Mantle (Whispers), or begin an offensive against Mordremoth (Vigil.) There could be almost a second chapter of Personal Story along with this, so if you buy the game and expansion and start fresh, you can choose whether to fight Zhaitan or Mordremoth once you join an Order. That kind of thing.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Well this answer seems very ironclad with little room to waver. This was the whole reason why i followed the threads that lead up this answer, and it bothers me for the future of the game. I am one of the many players that sees this as too fast too little and sometimes too buggy. I can’t understand how you can produce quality material under these circumstances but I don’t work in the business either. I only have to go on past experience, and i’m not just referring to GW2. I would rather wait a little longer for a nice steak dinner than to have “steak” tacos from Taco Bell.

When this bi weekly thing first started, i didn’t like the idea on the principals of quantity over quality. However since it was here I thought I’d give it a try. All I have seen is a to-do check list for Achievement points, with very little substance to it, and very little permanent content. So I gave it a fair chance as the months have gone by and I just can’t see it moving beyond this. It also seems to me that this set up favors bi weekly updates over fixing the basic game. The number of quality of game updates compared to how much new content we get seems to be some solid evidence to me.

It makes me feel that the priories are backwards, well they would be my priorities, make a solid foundation then decorate afterwards.

It just seems to me that temporary content will make temporary players that will have their fill and move on, your dedicated player base will eventually move on as well because for all it’s worth the bi weekly updates are just that. To-do lists with a little story wrapped around them, that coincides with new releases in the gem shop. This is great for the short term, but an easy formula to copy for competitors.

I want more from GW2, i want more from the development teams but I’m willing to wait for something truly amazing and cool like an expansion or an update that really sucks you in and makes you care about what’s happening makes you feel like there’s purpose to what you’re doing, player agency. Something not easily copied by competitors and sets GW2 apart from the rest.

Unfortunately I can’t see amazing and cool happening every two weeks. All i can see is a chore list of ho-hum activities, that cannot be disguised.

As much as I loathe the idea of purchasing a new expansion timmyf, the idea of a zone with no hearts wouldn’t be bad. If lessons were learned from SouthSun. (the word filter is on high today it seems)

The only other way I can see it is force the Personal Story so everyone is on equal footing when Anet makes something in the Living Story happen.

If they made the territory non hearts, they should at least indicate where big events are happening on map. Call them scout reports or something. Get a big red circle and the hover over text says something like “White Mantle historians are excavating a lost magical McGuffin, stop them” sort of like the Scarlet invasions. If stopped then certain other DEs are disabled. It would give ANet more fluidity with events, but we’re still stuck with the dilemma of Personal versus Living story.

Now if they scrap Personal altogether that would solve one problem, but bring about more.

Atlas.9704:

If stopped then certain other DEs are disabled. It would give ANet more fluidity with events, but we’re still stuck with the dilemma of Personal versus Living story.

Now if they scrap Personal altogether that would solve one problem, but bring about more.

That’s kind of why I think we need to have new areas that are free from Personal Story conflicts. Don’t get rid of what’s there, but build new content now that we’ve all learned the lessons of the PS.

Then what about elements of after effects? Will they have a pay expansion for a “clean” Orr?

Edit: I dunno why I’m putting down the word “Pay” maybe its because when I hear the term expansion that always comes to mind.

Atlas.9704:

Then what about elements of after effects? Will they have a pay expansion for a “clean” Orr?

Edit: I dunno why I’m putting down the word “Pay” maybe its because when I hear the term expansion that always comes to mind.

I doubt we’ll ever get a “clean” Orr… at least not Straits/Malchor’s/Cursed Shore.

I could see a Living Story update where we push into Arah (on the ground) and it’s clean.

This is exactly why we need new areas without the Personal Story: we could conceivably defeat a dragon and see its minions disappear.

The only problem with that, timmyf, is that if you kill a dragon and his minions disappear how is someone who comes along 2 years from now going to experience killing that dragon? What you are suggesting is that the devs make content aimed at current players with no thought of future players or how to catch them up.

That’s currently one of the biggest problems with the Living World; the inability of brand new players to experience the stories. They play through the personal story, kill Zhaitan, and then are thrust into Nightmare Tower with no way of knowing who Scarlett is, where she came from, why she’s the villian, what she has done previously to make her a threat, etc… it’s like coming in to a TV show half-way through the season. Do you watch the remainder, or wait for it to hit Netflix so you can start from the beginning? Problem is, there is no Netflix for old content, so new players are simply out of luck.

My Main Problem with the LivingStory is pretty simple:

Most LS-Updates are not improving and expanding the Heart of the original Game (Maps & Dungeons, Renown Hearts, Events, Exploration).
They are all Archievement-Driven and strongly focused on farming/grinding.

There is no sense of Exploration or Freedom anymore – just a ToDo-List asking you to do very specific things (“Close 5 Doors today…”)

Tobias Valin.5893:

That’s currently one of the biggest problems with the Living World; the inability of brand new players to experience the stories.

This guy right here, this post right here was what I wanted to say.
I kept rewriting my stuff about three times before giving up.

Short of Scarlet just finding a way to manipulate time via Myst and Eternal Alchemy voodoo, the Personal Story is going to hamstring the Living Story.
Shortening the PS just simply kills the whole urgency of “Kill Zhaitan” but keeping it means certain elements and plot points are no touchie.

Atlas.9704:

Tobias Valin.5893:

That’s currently one of the biggest problems with the Living World; the inability of brand new players to experience the stories.

This guy right here, this post right here was what I wanted to say.
I kept rewriting my stuff about three times before giving up.

Short of Scarlet just finding a way to manipulate time via Myst and Eternal Alchemy voodoo, the Personal Story is going to hamstring the Living Story.
Shortening the PS just simply kills the whole urgency of “Kill Zhaitan” but keeping it means certain elements and plot points are no touchie.

Ahh, but here we go then: maybe these zones are split based on whether you’ve killed the dragon or not! So new players get infested territory and have to clear it. I’m not sure if this is feasible without an “underflow” server or something, but it’s an option.

Also, my thought is that the process of killing a dragon be releases that stretch, say, 6 months. That’d mean 2.5 YEARS of content until we take them all down.

You do both bring up valid concerns, I’m just thinking there must be a way to make it work.

Hi Chris! I don’t post often, but I’ll just toss my thoughts in here…

Add content every 2 weeks, but (Aside from celebrations/holiday events) do not -remove- content every 2 weeks. This schedule as it is keeps me playing the game, and looking forward to the not so distant future. If I’m not that hyped for a release? That’s fine, 2 weeks isn’t a lot of time to wait for new stuff!

There feels like a massive difference between 2 weeks, and whatever the schedule was before, and how it is in most games. Even if there’s two or so weeks of releases I’m not particularly interested in, there’s usually at least one feature (or class balances) that keep me entertained for the next two weeks. It’s much easier for me to drop a game and move on to bigger and possibly not to much better things when there are moderate dry periods between releases, regardless of the content.

Of course I’m not saying the two week schedule is flawless, as a lot of people have stated, things do move fast. Now content updates coming fast are great, they’re wonderful! But if they poof just as fast along with connected rewards (achievements, items ect.) that negates the benefit those seemingly speedy releases bring. I know you guys have done a lot to address keeping more permanent content in the Living World, and it’s a massive improvement to what it was before, but that being said I think it needs to still take less away with each new release (again, excluding holiday/seasonal events.) If the bulk of new content from a previous release is left in as the new rolls out, people won’t feel like they’re constantly trading content, and instead adding on. You’re two week schedule will feel much more wholesome and grand, and less give and take, which is what I believe some people are having trouble with along with just personally missing out on things.

I can see how there’d be exceptions to some of this, but I trust a studio of many people to delve into and figure out what’s probably best much better than myself. Also before I end this I wanted to say how much I enjoy you guys changing the actual game world preemptively the way you’ve been doing, like Kessex Hills – That was cool. I spent a lot of time leveling several characters in Kessex, and for the first time since Flame and Frost, seeing all the trees cut down, and hearing the busily working Krait, it really gave a sense of foreboding, and feeling things actually were changing. I feel like it will end up being a larger and more in depth version of the Lion’s Arch statue, slowly going from complete destruction into something else for better or worse. I hope you guys continue to do stuff like that, and I seriously look forward it.

If you manage to read this through all the other replies, thanks, and have a good one!

-Nox

Nike.2631:

nopoet.2960:

As a complete aside, I would love to see some experiments in dynamic events where failure doesn’t stall the event but progresses it in a different direction.

BobbyStein.2315:

Interesting idea. Can you provide an example of how you would imagine it working?

Its in the game NOW. And it represents some of the best the DE system has to offer.

The pump house/waterworks in Queensdale. Bandits assault it with bombs. If you fail, it launches a new DE where you make repairs. If you succeed, the pump house is safe, but is potentially subject to the to toxin line of DEs (and visa versa). The two lines never overlap (You don’t have to stop bombs while there are oozes running amok), but they create tangibly different outcomes for winning or failing.

The single best investment of energy you can do to make the world Living (as opposed to a Living Story) is to layer on more and more DEs with branching pass/fail interdependencies so that even 6 months later, I can wander through say Mount Maelstrom, and while the geography is familiar, there things going on I’ve never seen before. And if the DE pass/fail states actually radically alter the landscape, even better. And its work that endures – its there to entertain first time new players and to enchant and surprise veteran players out for a stroll.

I second this. I see more of these types of success/failure scenarios in the early zones and less as you move through the rest of the world. I think you could do the game wonders if you would add more layers of success and failure.

Honestly, when I first looked at GW2 many moons ago, I thought that if we had failed an event, such as defend the water pumps from centaurs, they gain a foothold in the zone and their presence in the zone grows. After a short time they launch a new attack from these new footholds on other camps, such as farms and huts and whatnot. If we fail to defend those, they gain more footholds and their presence grows even more. It is up to the community to push back the centaur presence.

That, my friends, is what a living world really is. There is true fear of failure and success. If we continue to fail, heart NPCs and things are unavailable. No, I am not talking about Orr-difficulty unavailable. But you get the idea.