cesmode.4257:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

So with all of this in mind it would be cool to carry on discussing around this area in much the same form as Nike has. Specifically brainstorming on top of the foundation of known systems and functionality. I do also want to point out that someone mentioned (sorry i forget who) the ability to potentially build forts etc and then gain new events, goals and rewards from them by protecting and nurturing your land. Wouldn’t that be awesome!?

Chris

I had posted the opposite where, for example, if centaurs took over a camp, they gain a foothold and their overall presence in the area/zone is increased. After a shortwhile they attack a new town from these footholds, and so on and so forth.

This wouldn’t necessarily be a zone-wide event, but simply the ebb and flow of one small dynamic event that could have the potential to be disastrous for friendly NPCs. It is up to the players to push back the bubble of enemy NPCs and gain back some towns.

Rift sort of did this, and quite well. The only difference was that these were timed events that would happen zone wide. Mobs would spawn and run rampid through the zone, not simply stand there, attacking and taking over towns. You WILL lose your quest givers and NPCs if you do not defend and/or defeat the footholds.

I would take a slightly different approach in GW2 and make this part of a simple small dynamic event of centaurs, or renegades attacking a town. If they succeed, their presence grows and they continue gaining control in the zone. But all of this derives from a small dynamic event tucked away in the system, not some big zone alert saying ‘Attention! Invasion!!’

When you first spoke of living world, this is the first thing that popped into my head. Thats truely a living world because it really does depend on us being active in zones, interacting with the system, protecting, defending, attacking. If you wish, tie in some rewards for holding the entire zone from enemy onslaught some how.

That sounds really interesting.
How would you propose it working during off hours when theres little player activity?
Ive sometimes ran across entire areas without even seeing another player.
Would it be scaling like todays events that can be done by one single player or would one have to wait till more people arrive?

cesmode.4257:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Lunaire.5827:

Finnway.2183:

Faowri.4159:

I feel pressured to complete the achievements ASAP so I can get on with the content I would rather be playing,

This summarizes how I feel about achievements in the living story.

I think there should be less achievements (like 5-6) for the meta, and have a separate achievement category for doing LS dailies to earn a bi-weekly chest (just of like dailies and monthlies). This way, players who like to grind will still be rewarded, and players who only have 5 hours to spend can still complete the meta.

I totally agree with this. This way achievement grinders can still have lots of achievements to earn, and people with less time to play can still get involved and earn the limited-time rewards without feeling rushed and pressured.

I agree with this also. We are certainly trying to improve with our achievements in terms of activities, time requirements and rewards. I feel that we have been making good progress but we aren’t quite there yet. Soon though.

Chris

I wonder why acheivements come with every living story patch to begin with. What are your thoughts regarding intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards in a game?

Thinking back to a day where we played Super Mario just to beat the game, over..and over and over and over. How many hours did we put into games like Mega man. Not because we were being rewarded, but because the gameplay was fun! I believe you can shed a lot of the rewards in the game, even a lot of the achievements themselves, and still produce quality fun. People look at LS as another checklist of achievements so they acquire more AP and inch closer to the next threshhold of AP reward, and for titles/minis. I would rather just enjoy content. However, as human nature is, if you put shinies in front of me I must go after them. But I hate it!

This is definitely an important topic for discussion. Rewards, whether they be via Achievement Points, Achievements or direct items, are a very tricky thing. There is little question in my mind right now that there is far too much focus in the LS on achievements, and I strongly feel that this is really what leads to much of the issue with the two week cycle. If you’re purely looking at the storyline content, most of the time said content really isn’t all that rewarding on it’s own and, even when it is, it can be completed in an average hour or two of play. Most players can accomplish that and still have time to experience the rest of the game. It’s when you start focusing on the Achievement grind that you run into problems, particularly when you’ve got maybe time gated achievements to do something hundreds of times and you’ve only got two weeks in which to do it.

Seeing and participating in the storyline itself should feel rewarding and be something players want to do (or, perhaps if the story is telling a large enough tale, can’t even avoid). Content should be generated based on the storyline, and not shoehorned in the other way around, with achievements actually fitting that content and storyline. If this means there aren’t any achievements or rewards for doing more than the basic content, I see no issue. I understand that some people want achievements to “mean something,” and that’s cool, so reserve a small pool of AP and special titles for doing special things like beating bosses without taking damage or what have you. Keep this pool separate from whatever Meta exists for the release. Take out achievements that are simply grind based time wasters. There’s no skill involved in, say, smashing hundreds of pinatas or collecting hundreds of widgets when 10 suffice for the storyline. Those sorts of achievements are just time wasting crutches that lead to real world stress for completion oriented players.

Maybe this will expose a flaw in the LS where in “everyone” is done everything and bored in a couple of days. Honestly, that would be fine for me because it would make it clear where the LS needs assistance. AP grind just hides the holes by making players “feel busy.”

Tom Wolf.1340:

cesmode.4257:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

So with all of this in mind it would be cool to carry on discussing around this area in much the same form as Nike has. Specifically brainstorming on top of the foundation of known systems and functionality. I do also want to point out that someone mentioned (sorry i forget who) the ability to potentially build forts etc and then gain new events, goals and rewards from them by protecting and nurturing your land. Wouldn’t that be awesome!?

Chris

I had posted the opposite where, for example, if centaurs took over a camp, they gain a foothold and their overall presence in the area/zone is increased. After a shortwhile they attack a new town from these footholds, and so on and so forth.

This wouldn’t necessarily be a zone-wide event, but simply the ebb and flow of one small dynamic event that could have the potential to be disastrous for friendly NPCs. It is up to the players to push back the bubble of enemy NPCs and gain back some towns.

Rift sort of did this, and quite well. The only difference was that these were timed events that would happen zone wide. Mobs would spawn and run rampid through the zone, not simply stand there, attacking and taking over towns. You WILL lose your quest givers and NPCs if you do not defend and/or defeat the footholds.

I would take a slightly different approach in GW2 and make this part of a simple small dynamic event of centaurs, or renegades attacking a town. If they succeed, their presence grows and they continue gaining control in the zone. But all of this derives from a small dynamic event tucked away in the system, not some big zone alert saying ‘Attention! Invasion!!’

When you first spoke of living world, this is the first thing that popped into my head. Thats truely a living world because it really does depend on us being active in zones, interacting with the system, protecting, defending, attacking. If you wish, tie in some rewards for holding the entire zone from enemy onslaught some how.

That sounds really interesting.
How would you propose it working during off hours when theres little player activity?
Ive sometimes ran across entire areas without even seeing another player.
Would it be scaling like todays events that can be done by one single player or would one have to wait till more people arrive?

Well, there are euro players on NA servers and vice versa. Or, simply put, if arenanet feels that between the hours of 12am and 5am EST for an NA server that the population is a lot thinner, they could code the attacks to kick off less frequently.

However, in games such as rift or Firefall, if you log in during off hours and an invasion is or has occurred already, the map will simply be in red. Happy hunting, more for you to kill.

And completing dynamic events solo is not bad or impossible. They are dynamic after all and scale with the player. So one player CAN push back an attack.

StriderShinryu.6923:

cesmode.4257:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Lunaire.5827:

Finnway.2183:

Faowri.4159:

I feel pressured to complete the achievements ASAP so I can get on with the content I would rather be playing,

This summarizes how I feel about achievements in the living story.

I think there should be less achievements (like 5-6) for the meta, and have a separate achievement category for doing LS dailies to earn a bi-weekly chest (just of like dailies and monthlies). This way, players who like to grind will still be rewarded, and players who only have 5 hours to spend can still complete the meta.

I totally agree with this. This way achievement grinders can still have lots of achievements to earn, and people with less time to play can still get involved and earn the limited-time rewards without feeling rushed and pressured.

I agree with this also. We are certainly trying to improve with our achievements in terms of activities, time requirements and rewards. I feel that we have been making good progress but we aren’t quite there yet. Soon though.

Chris

I wonder why acheivements come with every living story patch to begin with. What are your thoughts regarding intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards in a game?

Thinking back to a day where we played Super Mario just to beat the game, over..and over and over and over. How many hours did we put into games like Mega man. Not because we were being rewarded, but because the gameplay was fun! I believe you can shed a lot of the rewards in the game, even a lot of the achievements themselves, and still produce quality fun. People look at LS as another checklist of achievements so they acquire more AP and inch closer to the next threshhold of AP reward, and for titles/minis. I would rather just enjoy content. However, as human nature is, if you put shinies in front of me I must go after them. But I hate it!

This is definitely an important topic for discussion. Rewards, whether they be via Achievement Points, Achievements or direct items, are a very tricky thing. There is little question in my mind right now that there is far too much focus in the LS on achievements, and I strongly feel that this is really what leads to much of the issue with the two week cycle. If you’re purely looking at the storyline content, most of the time said content really isn’t all that rewarding on it’s own and, even when it is, it can be completed in an average hour or two of play. Most players can accomplish that and still have time to experience the rest of the game. It’s when you start focusing on the Achievement grind that you run into problems, particularly when you’ve got maybe time gated achievements to do something hundreds of times and you’ve only got two weeks in which to do it.

Seeing and participating in the storyline itself should feel rewarding and be something players want to do (or, perhaps if the story is telling a large enough tale, can’t even avoid). Content should be generated based on the storyline, and not shoehorned in the other way around, with achievements actually fitting that content and storyline. If this means there aren’t any achievements or rewards for doing more than the basic content, I see no issue. I understand that some people want achievements to “mean something,” and that’s cool, so reserve a small pool of AP and special titles for doing special things like beating bosses without taking damage or what have you. Keep this pool separate from whatever Meta exists for the release. Take out achievements that are simply grind based time wasters. There’s no skill involved in, say, smashing hundreds of pinatas or collecting hundreds of widgets when 10 suffice for the storyline. Those sorts of achievements are just time wasting crutches that lead to real world stress for completion oriented players.

Maybe this will expose a flaw in the LS where in “everyone” is done everything and bored in a couple of days. Honestly, that would be fine for me because it would make it clear where the LS needs assistance. AP grind just hides the holes by making players “feel busy.”

I agree, for the most part. And I would be fine with having a Meta, or a small pool of achievements, be earned for the people that like AP. But in the form of ‘Kill the boss in 30 seconds’, or ‘Dont get hit by the slime’, or ‘Dont take any damage’ as you put it. These achievements were in the Queens Jub, and I thought they were awsome. I actually liked going after those. Those are the types of acheivements Id like to see, not check lists of grind after grind.

And we need to keep the achievement list small.

cesmode.4257:

For example:
-If the players control 25% of the world, they receive 2 gold at the turn of the hour
-If the players control 50% of the world, they receive 5 gold at the turn of the hour
-If the players control 75% of the world, they recieve 10 gold at the turn of the hour
-If the players control 100% of the world, they recieve 20 gold at the turn of the hour + some small additional reward.

I don’t like ideas where players get benefits out of content they didn’t do. I’m also worried this will add to inflation as everyone would be getting the reward. 2g per hour doesn’t sound like much, but how many people are online per server? Hundreds? Thousands? The gold generated could easily spiral out of control.

Fenrina.2954:

I don’t like ideas where players get benefits out of content they didn’t do. I’m also worried this will add to inflation as everyone would be getting the reward. 2g per hour doesn’t sound like much, but how many people are online per server? Hundreds? Thousands? The gold generated could easily spiral out of control.

I agree with you, but I took the suggestion a bit more charitably and filled in some gaps left unspoken (such that it wouldn’t reward players who weren’t doing events and base their reward on contribution). I also agree that we must be wary of impacts on the economy. That said I think the idea has some merits in principle. As I said in a post further up we as heroes (or Pact Commander should we have progressed that far in the PS) have very little responsibility to the world we inhabit. In some zone events remain constantly in a state of starting and then failing.. Since failure of events has little impact on the world this doesn’t matter, but if failure started to change the world to the point where even traversing some zones became difficult alone it’d be nice to incentivize helping those zones out.

Without some global system in place that measures success across the board there will be problems with moving many if not most players out of tried and true farming practices. Look at champion farm rotations. There are hundreds of champions across the world, but only a dozen are targeted for elimination by the player base. If events started to have consequences and just became more rewarding. Many players would fall into patterns of just doing certain events. that were part of the most efficient loot gathering chain.

It doesn’t have to be a reward either, it can be a punishment felt through the consequences on cities because the lands outside their borders are invaded. I made a suggestion earlier to this effect. I would prefer it be this way as it feels more organic to have some rippling effect on the world if some zone is claimed by an enemy. There are also means of creating organic rewards in such a conquest game mode. For example, each zone could have its own unique resources that can only be mined/chopped there. If the enemy controls the territory, they are no longer available. The reward in such a scenario continued access to the special resource.

A lot of people have suggested building something like a fort/outpost as a start to opening up a new area and pushing forward, there’s also been mention of having players harvest the resources.
Well why not count each time a player harvests a tree/node in the area and add +1 to the servers count towards those resources.
So the player is contributing but of course not actually losing anything. You could post a target that has to be reached across all servers along with which server has given x amount. That would make it appealing as a “hah, our server rocks” and also as a “woohoo, new area!”.
The DE chains do need branching, but the failures don’t need to be huge. One of my favourites – the dwarven artifacts/fire imp – keep the initial task as is – but at the point the pirates attack, failure means oh-oh, he’s been kidnapped. Now you have to go rescue him from a smaller camp (say at a poi), when rescued he shows up at the “i need artifacts” stage.
Newcomers will probably rescue him by accident while clearing a camp (like the prisoners in cages, break the cage) and then they get to stumble over the DE right from the start. Its a minor change to the area but has/shows a consequence.
Its not that we need huge sweeping landscape changes (except orr but thats not really DE), we just need to be shown a difference. Like if the centaurs control an area the villages are hailing you that they’re starving, can you please free up the camp so they can caravan in food? theres a lot of npcs that have no lines/prescence but show an area as settled. Have those npcs vanish one by one the longer the centaurs hold the area, with the merchants leaving last and the area effectively becoming a ghost town. The landscape has changed, but in a controllable way. Same scenery, totally different feeling.

Shakkara.2641:

2) I’d like to further develop my character/account from each living story arc I participate in, in a way that goes far beyond wearables. Something over-arching. For example, I’d like to acquire reputation with factions of choice for each succesful event participation and after a few months I’d like to get awarded with a minor noble title with the faction I contributed most to, and get a side-questline for the personal story from that. Or get granted some land to have a new house. Or get henchmen, which I can customize and who will join me in future singleplayer parts of later story arcs.

I really like this idea. Someone also suggested (I forget who) unlocking more armor/weapon skins from our specific order, and watered down versions of the other order’s skins. I like this way of unlocking skins much better then what we have now. Plus, your decision of what order you joined has impact.

TIDES OF DECAY

Tequatl hasn’t just evolved… It’s on the march.
Return to Sparkfly Den and Guildwars 2’s most challenging encounter in this permanent Living World release. The threat posed by “The Sunless One” has spread like a black tide… See the next evolution of GuildWars 2’s Dynamic Event system with new tougher challenges and “Second Chance” events that give you surprising ways to hold your ground when all seems lost.

VIBRANCE / DECAY
Battle for dominance across the zone as Tequatl presses toward Lion’s Arch. You control the very landscape in the battle between Vibrance and Decay as Tequatl seeks to leech the lifeforce of the land to power its continuing evolution.

When Vibrance reigns, this zone is more rewarding than ever before. Gold find and magic find are each increased by 20%. All champions have a chance of dropping sun-bead themed weapon skins. All events across the entire the zone offer 1-5 sun-beads in addition to their current rewards. New vendors will trade sun-beads for hylek, risen, and tequatl themed rewards. Mini-pets new and old, tonics, consumables to summon hylek warriors of all types and colors to your side, and even a special Hylek decorative item to add to your personal home area can be acquired to commemorate the service of those who fought long and hard for the Children of the Sun.

When Decay reigns the land is transformed. Face a new, darker Sparkfly Den where hope is on the verge of being crushed and heroes must rise or all is lost. Experience points and harvesting critical chance are each increased by 20% as you dare to confront evil made manifest. Rich harvest nodes become more common as Tequatl’s power strips the land back to its bare bones, but they are often guarded by savage creatures guided by the Dragon Lieutenant’s growing awareness. A new zone-wide meta-event tracks your every effort to push back this terror. But beware, if allowed to fester for a full day, Tequatl’s influence WILL BE FELT even closer to the gates of Lion’s Arch…

MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
The Tequatl encounter becomes more important than ever! Reworked to scale faithfully for groups of 15 to 100, more players mean more complex challenges as the fight progresses and better chances for the rarest rewards. A new pre-event allows you to gather your forces before the timed event begins. Even small groups now have a slim chance to acquire some of Tequatl’s greatest treasures while driving off the beast. Bring your friends, your allies, your entire Guild to increase your odds! But know that the price of failure has never been higher…

Failing the Tequatl event unleashes the Tides of Decay! This mega-event requires players to complete a total of 75 Risen-based events to repel Tequatl’s minions and free the land, restoring the zone to Vibrance. Five new major [group] events can be found as Tequatl enacts powerful rituals to seize the land’s essence for its own. These special events are extremely challenging, often involving the direct intervention of Zaitan’s Champion or a powerful Risen Servant, but completing one counts as 15 normal events towards pushing back the Tides of Decay. Show your mastery with a special permanent achievement by completing all five of these new challenges, unlocking the “Tequatl’s Bane” title. Or amass 250 smaller victories while Decay holds sway to gain the “Stalwart of the Hylek” title. Show your determination as a solo hero, taking the fight to Tequatl one challenge at a time, or team up to tackle the lynchpins in Evil’s plan to plunge Sparkfly Den into darkness!

((Coming Soon to a game I really want to play!))

I didn’t read all 24 pages. And I know I’m going to repeat things that have already been said.

The world of GW2 has enough problem as it is. There was no need to bring Scarlet in if you wanted to make the world evolve.
Most zones have meta events that, at the end of the day, aren’t going anywhere : the centaur chieftains come back again, the separatists keep making things harder at Fields of Ruins, the sons of Svanir keep retaking the settlement.
I understand that mechanic wise, you can’t have an event that concludes forever once it’s completed. And that’s where the LS should come in. It should be a way of saying “well you guys have seen the situation in that zone and now we are going to move forward and maybe reach a conclusion”. Instead we have “well you guys have never seen that situation and there won’t be a real conclusion because the bad guy keeps getting away”.

And this also brings another problem that should be address to, at least for those who care even a little about the lore (the ones the LS should be aimed at) : create a blog post somewhere where you write the timeline. There needs to be one, because everything gets confusing. And if you messed up, well do it like you know how to : ret cons. But at least, once and for all, we’ll have a real timeline to work with instead of wondering if Zhaitan has already been defeated or not.

As for rewards : do not put any more rewards, except weapon and armor skins, until you figured out a place to store them.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

So with all of this in mind it would be cool to carry on discussing around this area in much the same form as Nike has. Specifically brainstorming on top of the foundation of known systems and functionality. I do also want to point out that someone mentioned (sorry i forget who) the ability to potentially build forts etc and then gain new events, goals and rewards from them by protecting and nurturing your land. Wouldn’t that be awesome!?

Chris

In the notion of events and failure. I tend to find that events have a way to high need to really get completed to get rewarded or for them to even count in your achievements. You need this many completed events for this, and that many completed events for that. I think this is the biggest problem in GW2 right now, why not make fun, rewarding and cool content that doesn’t reward beating something but rather rewards how much you participated? Failing also doesn’t mean huge repair bills, but it can be an npc that dies or an objective that is lost. Now however, all you care about is the completion of an event. You don’t care about the story around it, you care about the reward.

For example, if you would make an event, where you have to escort a crazy azura into an enemy base to steal their plans (all the other asura’s say she’s stupid but she’s a know it all), but you got to keep her above 25% health or she gets scared and runs. If this event rewarded you for participation (aka gold silver and bronze + chests and loot) the same as it did for suceeding, rewarding you for the number of attacks the asura survives, and making PARTICIPATING and not completing count for a meta achievement (against the …) for a living story part. Then you have the possibility to make an event as hard as you can make it, or even make it impossible to complete (aka eventually she gets jumped by to many mobs) and you can even implement this into a chain where she goes back to the other asura and they trigger an event where she has learned her lesson and they come up with a better plan. The idea here is not to succeed the event but to try and get as far as possible for example (of course you’d need to make it worth defending the asura) You can even put a flee the base event in there wich is different on how far you got with the first one. Or put in events where you have a completion state, but reward for participating, and make is so hard you expect them to fail, and then let players and coördinated groups just supprise the hell out of you.

This all is impossible due to the compulsive need to be succesfull in everything that is done, and this is so far from reality it gets boring and the story gets lackluster.
The best video game story’s i’ve seen have not only shown failure, but have at some point even made the player feel he’s responsible for the failure, and want to bounce back. I know it’s a hard balance, but rewarding failure states are the biggest thing missing atm imo.

Btw that tides of decay thing, try it with smth else then TEQ and i’m all for it, but don’t destroy the best encounter ingame atm :p do it with the shatterer, he’s been a kitten for far to long

TIDES OF DECAY sounds epic. That’s something I’ve always been wanting and suggested over the year in different places. Something like that where it’s dynamic and player-based on a large scale where players feel like they’re really influencing the land and the world, making history and controlling their fates.

Also the factions/titles and whatnot are cool. I’ve always felt that for one, when we complete the personal story we should get a Vigil Warmaster or whatever Order we’ve joined at the very least xD

How about this: if we want to make capturing and holding territory a part of the open world, what about letting Commanders move NPCs between different points, determine which strategies (read: event chains) to use, etc. to help direct activity? That’d make PvE Commanders more useful, help servers to organize a bit, and give an interesting way to direct the progress of branching events.

There’d probably need to be a new UI to accomplish this, or you could use a pop up selection option (like the one where you pick dungeon paths) where any Commander can vote on the strategy.

One useful thing on a slight side note, but also related to Living Story, is to give clearer indication of when content/achievement metas end. There was a great deal of discussion about the TA meta leaving early and many were left confused by its early removal, but B&M patch notes then had really clear, informative dates for start and end for everything. It looked like the feedback had been taken on board (even though there was no reply to the TA queries) and in the right way. With Tower, we’ve gone back to not knowing when it will end, but we are clear on when WVW meta will end.
It’s just a bit confusing for us atm.

If the 2 week schedule is set in place, it would be helpful for us to know how long we have to complete said achievements so we adjust play time accordingly if need be. The patch notes would seem the ideal place to put this info if it can be arranged

Nike.2631:

TIDES OF DECAY

Tequatl hasn’t just evolved… It’s on the march.
Return to Sparkfly Den and Guildwars 2’s most challenging encounter in this permanent Living World release. The threat posed by “The Sunless One” has spread like a black tide… See the next evolution of GuildWars 2’s Dynamic Event system with new tougher challenges and “Second Chance” events that give you surprising ways to hold your ground when all seems lost.

VIBRANCE / DECAY
Battle for dominance across the zone as Tequatl presses toward Lion’s Arch. You control the very landscape in the battle between Vibrance and Decay as Tequatl seeks to leech the lifeforce of the land to power its continuing evolution.

When Vibrance reigns, this zone is more rewarding than ever before. Gold find and magic find are each increased by 20%. All champions have a chance of dropping sun-bead themed weapon skins. All events across the entire the zone offer 1-5 sun-beads in addition to their current rewards. New vendors will trade sun-beads for hylek, risen, and tequatl themed rewards. Mini-pets new and old, tonics, consumables to summon hylek warriors of all types and colors to your side, and even a special Hylek decorative item to add to your personal home area can be acquired to commemorate the service of those who fought long and hard for the Children of the Sun.

When Decay reigns the land is transformed. Face a new, darker Sparkfly Den where hope is on the verge of being crushed and heroes must rise or all is lost. Experience points and harvesting critical chance are each increased by 20% as you dare to confront evil made manifest. Rich harvest nodes become more common as Tequatl’s power strips the land back to its bare bones, but they are often guarded by savage creatures guided by the Dragon Lieutenant’s growing awareness. A new zone-wide meta-event tracks your every effort to push back this terror. But beware, if allowed to fester for a full day, Tequatl’s influence WILL BE FELT even closer to the gates of Lion’s Arch…

MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
The Tequatl encounter becomes more important than ever! Reworked to scale faithfully for groups of 15 to 100, more players mean more complex challenges as the fight progresses and better chances for the rarest rewards. A new pre-event allows you to gather your forces before the timed event begins. Even small groups now have a slim chance to acquire some Tequatl’s greatest treasures while driving off the beast. Bring your friends, your allies, your entire Guild to increase your odds! But know that the price of failure has never been higher…

Failing the Tequatl event unleashes the Tides of Decay! This mega-event requires players to complete a total of 75 Risen-based events to repel Tequatl’s minions and free the land, restoring the zone to Vibrance. Five new major [group] events can be found as Tequatl enacts powerful rituals to seize the land’s essence for its own. These special events are extremely challenging, often involving the direct intervention of Zaitan’s Champion or a powerful Risen Servant, but completing one counts as 15 normal events towards pushing back the Tides of Decay. Show your mastery with a special permanent achievement by completing all five of these new challenges, unlocking the “Tequatl’s Bane” title. Or amass 250 smaller victories while Decay holds sway to gain the “Stalwart of the Hylek” title. Show your determination as a solo hero, taking the fight to Tequatl one challenge at a time, or team up to tackle the lynchpins in Evil’s plan to plunge Sparkfly Den into darkness!

((Coming Soon to a game I really want to play!))

This. Just…this.

There’s been a lot on the NC lately, but I have an idea. It’s said that once a Sylvari turns to the NC they can not return to the dream. Some one wonders into back into the pale tree and act like they’ve woken up from a nightmare, they have returned to the dream. He talks vaguely about someone he met. This person has ability to reverse the nightmare. Caithe searches for this person finds clues about him, but fails to find him. She believes he could be used to end the nightmare. She summons the rest of DE to help and the Order of Whispers. Before they arrive she receives a message to meet him . Caithe does not want this power to fall to the NC, so she agrees to meet.
Caithe has not returned, and the mother tree feels a great loss, but does not know what happend. The Order of Whispers and DE are tasked tracking her and the person she met. Reports begin to come in of increased NC attacks and the Vigil is called in to defend towns from NC. As the Vigil pushes back the NC Caithe and her lover Faolain confront the mother tree. The Order of Whispers receives a report Caithe is attacking the pale tree. DE confront Caithe and find the mother tree almost dead. They attack Caithe and Faolain while the mother tree retreats to a safer place. At the end of the fight Faolain is dead and Caithe retreats swearing revenge for the death of her lover. DE agree to commit to return Caithe to DE and to the dream.

A fractal could be made of how Cathie was made to join the Nightmare Court. Items from the fractal are reminders of Cathie’s former self.

This could be the start of a dragons champ seeking to destroy DE and the leaders of the orders before the next dragon attack or the work of something else, Mursaat perhaps? Sylvari haven’t dealt with Mursaat I bet they could do a lot of damage.

Even if these ideas don’t work I want to put it out there it may spark other ideas

Chris Whiteside.6102:

cesmode.4257:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

—snipped for brevity—

Post like this Cesmode really don’t need to occur. Many of your questions can be answered by keeping up to date with the thread and understanding what the stated goals are of the initiative. I appreciate your feedback and some of your commentary but please understand that this slows the process down and can also derail extremely valuable discussion.

I hope you understand,

chris

Chris,
I do not feel that I am combative in my responses. I have encouraged other folks to be patient with arenanet’s involvement in this thread early on. However, now that it has been 5 days, some of us are wondering when arenanet will become a bit more involved in this collaborative discussion. We just dont want this to become a one way street and turn into every other thread on these forums.

With that said, apologies if it at all detracted from the purpose of the thread. My intent was to try to get your attention so we can have more collaboration in this thread, rather than the players speaking their minds, to which we do every day. If there isnt going to be a lot of discussion between developer and player, then the initiative itself fails and this just becomes another thread. Which, in case, we can refer to the countless threads on the Living Story debate to get the players’ pulse on the subject.

I did see your responses to the numbered items in my post that you previously touched on in the thread, I was simply hoping for a little more back and forth to the main issues

Edit: It looks like theres been some real discussion today(I have been out all day). Good stuff.

Hi Cesmode,

I just got back and caught the end of the Seahawks game!!!

I really appreciate your response Cesmode. Perhaps combative wasn’t the right word and it is great to see such a mature reply. I am reading through yours and the other posts from this morning and am going to spend some time mulling the discussion over. It is very intricate and insightful currently.

I have freed up my early afternoon tomorrow and am looking forward to getting back into the discussion and now i am likely going to jump in game and do a dungeon or two!

Chris

P.S: Go Hawks! Note: I apologize up front for any derailing of the discussion this may cause (-:

Oh yes I forgot Anet is based there, I was hoping the Hawks would loose. It was 21-0 at one point against a 0-7 (now 0-8) team :P Go 9ers!!! I hope you keep struggling against losing teams and we’ll see u in December

I’m happy to see a thread like this, and I certainyl hope it breeds some sort of contentment to both sides.

Among other things, I’d like you guys to make living world a bit more “living”, let me explain:
Let’s take a look at Living World as it is now:

- You present us bi-weekly updates w prior information about them villains/main events/happenings.
- You highlight new skins, achievements, zones that are affected, characters involved.
- Post an artwork about the next update
- We now know not to expect anything in 2 weeks, so living world just… stops living.

What Living World needs:

- Silent updates, that encourage you to explore the world, look for clues about work in progress content. Make us speculate about upcoming events.

- Timer-Activated content. This is arguably my biggest request regarding Living World. It would really make Tyria unique and alive. Patch in an event that triggers 3 days after the initial patch-day, let us feel like we can find something new any day, hell, even overnight! Randomize the content. There is no need for huge changes, make a team that works on events/content that links the bi-weekly patches together in a seamless way, so the world evolves as the days pass!

- Run 2 or more arcs at once with each update! obviously focus on only one of them, but keep us posted about different happenings and events. There is no need for major stuff, like dungeons or complex scripted events, only a subtle change like a dialogue between affected NPCs is enough. As days / weeks / months / pass and we get closer to the actual release of the aforementioned content, slowly introduce events that lead up to it! Like there is Scarlet now but the priory in Lornar’s Pass isn’t wiser by one word since release and it breaks immersion.

Thanks for reading, I hope I’m not alone w these thoughts.

TIDES OF DECAY: Challenges to Implementation

Most of this Living World Release requires no new assets. The majority of the rewards already exist (thought iterating the Hylek-summoning consumables out to include more color variations may take a moment). The skins dropped by champions in Vibrance state are a set already in the game (crafted with sun-beads). The Household item could be built from existing Hylek features and does not require special mechanical benefits – its a genuine trophy for you housing area costing perhaps 5,000 sun-beads (not a lot really, if you’re buying them with karma to supplement those dropped by events in Vibrance mode). The principle investment of art department time would be doing a beauty pass on the zone as it exists now to hype-up its radiant natural glory and then producing the Decay map. The map would share mostly the same geometry (want to avoid players becoming trapped or dropping through the map when the zone toggles Vibrance/Decay states), but could have greatly repainted surface maps and natural clutter. If technology allows, the two maps would definitely benefit from separate creature spawn configurations. The promise of “more frequent Rich Harvest Nodes” would also demand new technology as I understand it.

The state-based buffs are chosen to reinforce use of the zone in either state: gold/Magic find for cashing out on a successful flip to Vibrance. Exp and Harvest crit to encourage traveling the full extant of the zone harvesting and engaging in combat despite the doom and gloom.

The five Lynchpin events require new scripts of course, but could each use an existing model as a headliner:
1. Risen Archmage
2. Undead Servant (Translucent Drake-type seen in the personal story, known to be a herald of Risen expansion efforts)
3. Mouth of Tequatl (renamed Mouth of Zaitan)
4. Eye of Tequatl (renamed Mouth of Zaitan)
5. Spawn of Tequatl (Tequatl skin over Drake Broodmother-sized skeleton)

The five events present almost a Who’s Who of the Risen’s uppermost tier. Repurposing the Mouth and Eye will show Tequatl consolidating power in the post-Personal Story environment. Players who have completed the Personal Story will instinctively recognize that the mere existence of a “Mouth of Tequatl” means kitten just got real.
Adding a Spawn of Tequatl hints that the purpose of Tequatl’s rituals to scavenge lifeforce is to prove that it can continue to produce new Draconic Lieutenants even after the fall of its master – guaranteeing it a leading position amongst all the forces of the Risen that remain.

It would also be interesting to link each of the 5 Lynchpin events to one of the 5 statue types seen in Orr, providing distinctive debuffs to the fight mechanics, adding plot complexity that Tequatl is now seemingly tapping the temples’ power for its own use, and further incentivizing flipping those temples to ease the pressure for the Sparkfly Fen events (we’ve already seen each temple’s Pact/Zaitan state can be checked from outside the zone the temple is found in).

Winch.2657:

What Living World needs:

- Silent updates, that encourage you to explore the world, look for clues about work in progress content. Make us speculate about upcoming events.

- Timer-Activated content. This is arguably my biggest request regarding Living World. It would really make Tyria unique and alive. Patch in an event that triggers 3 days after the initial patch-day, let us feel like we can find something new any day, hell, even overnight! Randomize the content. There is no need for huge changes, make a team that works on events/content that links the bi-weekly patches together in a seamless way, so the world evolves as the days pass!

I generally agree with this and mentioned something similar in one of my previous posts in this thread. I have no personal issue with the two week update cycle, but it does feel a little too much like clockwork. We know exactly when a patch is going live and, in many cases, what it will contain. For pure content updates, this isn’t a problem. In fact, having solid and thorough patch notes for things like bug fixes and class updates is hugely important. For storyline content, however, this is a definite issue. There is no mystery or surprise when we know what’s going to happen before it happens and when we even know when it’s going to happen.

The two week cycle of patching in the updates doesn’t have to go anywhere if it’s really that big of a requirement, but the actual release of story content should be obfuscated by time or event completion locks or simultaneous events as the story dictates. Maybe even have the time the actual events go live be totally random based on server.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

So with all of this in mind it would be cool to carry on discussing around this area in much the same form as Nike has. Specifically brainstorming on top of the foundation of known systems and functionality. I do also want to point out that someone mentioned (sorry i forget who) the ability to potentially build forts etc and then gain new events, goals and rewards from them by protecting and nurturing your land. Wouldn’t that be awesome!?

Chris

This. Would. Be. Amazing. This was something I was just thinking about while out in Kessex and Queensdale. We spend all of this time fighting centaurs, playing back and forth with specific spots, it’s very drawn out and boring at this point. I feel like the world has changed very little on my 5th character. I love fighting for, and effectively eradicating the Centaur or Bandits from a specific spot…But only so many times. If we could as you say, nurture the land by building up the fortresses & settlements and see a real substantial growth take place then it would feel very worth spending a lot more time out there tackling the conflict head on.

In Ascalon, and outside in the Fields of Ruin…We see humans finally expanding back out into these regions with tiny settlements, Seraph with small fortifications….A year and some later they haven’t changed and this is prime real estate for expansion, growth and development. That’s what a living world is, and if you/we could do this then I could not honestly think of any game presently, or even in the near future that will likely touch this level of innovation.

South Sun, we left the settlers there at the mercy of the Karka Queen and her minions when we saw the fireworks of Dragon Bash go off and haven’t really spent much time there since. What ever happened to them? I would love to go back there and help them build up the Isles & make real, genuine settlements there. Even if specific parts can be built up extensively and then decay over time without upkeep, or eventually get destroyed without the proper defenses in a major event that could take place after X amount of time (I would make it a long term timer, not short term because who likes seeing all their hard work demolished in a day or two?)

I know this is all extremely broad and probably unrealistic, but one can hope. Tyria is a very deep and complex world, and even if we could get some of this type of content then the game would be much better off for it.

The problem with making an area that can be “lost” to enemy forces is: Why would we bother with it?

In City of Heroes, we had “Hazard Zones”, zones that were made to be tougher, and group content just to fight the stuff out on the streets. Basically, areas lost to the bad guys. The intent was that teams would be able to “street sweep” for combat and EXP. As the game matured, however, better sources of EXP and money left the hazard zones pretty much empty. While a couple were revamped into non-hazard zones, most were abandoned save for the occasional hunt or mission that took you there.

If the mechanic of taking back the areas is what is supposed to draw people there, then it’s going to have to be more fun than what normal combat can provide, or give some kind of hard to obtain reward. Otherwise, people will skip it for easier/faster gains elsewhere, just as they did in CoH.

So… what do we have to offer to make it something (enough) people will find worth doing? And remember, if it takes groups to do the content, then we need it to appeal to enough people that at any time we’ll have enough people doing it to have a chance to win.

It’s late, and the only thing I can think of is “Unusual Karma Merchants” and “Put your guild flag on a fort”. I’m sure we can do better than that, though.

Hello everyone, unfortunately I don’t have any great ideas to share like some of you others have (Which are truly genius) I just wanted to give my piece of what I enjoy and don’t enjoy about the Living Story. I like that the content is flowing every two weeks. It’s cool and it keeps me busy since I do many other things in my play time. What I don’t like is how it doesn’t give me that Guild Wars feel. When tower of nightmares came I thought we would see much more than a 6 minute instance and achievement point grind. I’m simply not having fun anymore because there’s nothing else to entertain my mind. I’m one of the players who believe story plays a real important part in a game such as this. Others would disagree as long as they can play the game but where’s the mystery at? Now I can just guess that Scarlet went back and time and made it possible for Kormir to ascend. (For the love of Dinky please do not make that so or I will quit so fast)

My point in all this is Living Story has potential. I think it just needs a better writer and definitely better execution. Guild Wars 2 has now officially turned into plants vs zombies.

I know this is stupid idea, but I will say it anyways.

Situation now:
What I think the Living World is whole Tyria area, all the maps, and all the events in those maps. And what I have seen, there are most of the players, well in my server, in Queensdale area or in Frostgorge Sound area doing Champion Trains. They are doing it because they want good loot. The rest of the maps are mostly empty, there are no players around. Events are staying undone all other areas, just in case that there would be some player come in that area to beat it up.

My idea is this:
Normal events loot would be bit better. Lets make a little RNG in there too, every time you have beating up event, normal event or group event but not champion event, you will get a little chest what gives for example a weapon for a reward. And there would be a small possibility to get Ascended weapon or even Precursor from normal events, no matter what area you are, or what level you are. So player could get a precursor even a level 2 if he/she is lucky. But these little chests would never came those events what are giving loot bag, like champions. And this is the point, that little chest would come once a day / event. So if you want to get a precursor or acended weapon, you have to do all events in all maps to get greater possibility to get those weapons. In that way playerbase should be spread in whole world. I hope so.

I know this was a stupid idea.

Inc.4753:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

-snip my failure example-

One minor addition here: instead of counting completed bars, count efforts (like events) directly. There are two reasons for this:

• Overflows. -snipped rest-
• With the concept of counting full bars per server, server that actually do a lot of participating will have filled the bar relatively early, making all further efforts useless. And in the end, the total event might up failing, having that server crushing the opponents while in the end we still have sad faces because failure. The other way around: a server that ignores the event will see cheering folks claiming they have crushed the enemy while not having done anything at all. No individual (and visual) progress bar to be filled will mean anyone can continue to help the event forward, while not creating any expectations by showing a filled or empty bar.

As for not telling us that there will be dire consequences, I don’t think this will work. We’re not used to content being able to fail, but we are used to doing the content till the meta achievement is complete and then leaving it at that. Not telling us there are consequences will have people leaving too soon, because they will still think it doesn’t matter if they’re there or not.

I’ll be honest, I forgot about overflows. But the reason why I said per server is because I don’t think ArenaNet has the ability to have cross-server worldstate-checking (for lack of a better word); I may be entirely wrong about this though, however given that they’ve said they don’t have cross-zone of the same, I’d figure no cross-server either.

Inc.4753:

One thing I like to be discussed here is the actual implementation of consequences. Epic battles ask for epic consequences, and those take time to be developed. While 4 months is probably very fast from a developers point of view, for a player waiting 4 months to see results is way to long. Now, I can live with having to wait 2-4 weeks to see actual results (‘We are still catching our breath after that battle, but the next campaign will commence shortly!’). So, I wanted to know if you folks here have any ideas how to implement consequences to player choice/action that can actually be implemented within 4 weeks (so not even close to an entire development cycle). I’ll see if I can come up with something myself, but so far no luck.

The consequences would probably be made either at the same time – winning consequences and losing ones – to avoid the 4 month process. This would likely result in less effects but it gets the effects out there sooner.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

So with all of this in mind it would be cool to carry on discussing around this area in much the same form as Nike has. Specifically brainstorming on top of the foundation of known systems and functionality. I do also want to point out that someone mentioned (sorry i forget who) the ability to potentially build forts etc and then gain new events, goals and rewards from them by protecting and nurturing your land. Wouldn’t that be awesome!?

Chris

I would suggest starting a thread somewhere specifically for players to brainstorm about various things, to give a centralized area to output their ideas. A thread for “event failure progression,” a thread for new events in old zones untied to LS main plots, and a thread for loose lore plots the LS can delve into. Just as thoughts.

I think the amount of people who have been responding to the concepts and giving brainstorming examples in this thread alone shows those threads would be popular, if only for a time.

Shanna.4762:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

So with all of this in mind it would be cool to carry on discussing around this area in much the same form as Nike has. Specifically brainstorming on top of the foundation of known systems and functionality. I do also want to point out that someone mentioned (sorry i forget who) the ability to potentially build forts etc and then gain new events, goals and rewards from them by protecting and nurturing your land. Wouldn’t that be awesome!?

Chris

This. Would. Be. Amazing. This was something I was just thinking about while out in Kessex and Queensdale. We spend all of this time fighting centaurs, playing back and forth with specific spots, it’s very drawn out and boring at this point. I feel like the world has changed very little on my 5th character. I love fighting for, and effectively eradicating the Centaur or Bandits from a specific spot…But only so many times. If we could as you say, nurture the land by building up the fortresses & settlements and see a real substantial growth take place then it would feel very worth spending a lot more time out there tackling the conflict head on.

In Ascalon, and outside in the Fields of Ruin…We see humans finally expanding back out into these regions with tiny settlements, Seraph with small fortifications….A year and some later they haven’t changed and this is prime real estate for expansion, growth and development. That’s what a living world is, and if you/we could do this then I could not honestly think of any game presently, or even in the near future that will likely touch this level of innovation.

South Sun, we left the settlers there at the mercy of the Karka Queen and her minions when we saw the fireworks of Dragon Bash go off and haven’t really spent much time there since. What ever happened to them? I would love to go back there and help them build up the Isles & make real, genuine settlements there. Even if specific parts can be built up extensively and then decay over time without upkeep, or eventually get destroyed without the proper defenses in a major event that could take place after X amount of time (I would make it a long term timer, not short term because who likes seeing all their hard work demolished in a day or two?)

I know this is all extremely broad and probably unrealistic, but one can hope. Tyria is a very deep and complex world, and even if we could get some of this type of content then the game would be much better off for it.

I guess there would have to be specific places we could help build. I like the Idea of when a new map is opened forts need to be built. With dynamic events that involve defending the workers, gathering supplies, escorting supplies to the fort, and exploring the landscape with scouts that could fit in with another story arc.

In the next update maybe the fort is built more of the map becomes playable as scouting parties return to the fort with news of landscape, wildlife, and any new enemies or friendly races and it keeps expanding until all of the map is playable.

These updates should have a main story arc along with minor events (not part of the main story arc) elsewhere that could lead to something bigger over time. Maybe this new zone will be the spot of a major battle a few updates down the road after it’s opened all the way cuz we build that fort there and the inhabitants didn’t like it . It could work with the 2 week updates. We helped with little events that lead to big stories. For example now we have a new enemy that started neutral to us when we met them, cuz maybe someone abused them and exploited their resources so we could build our fort. Their people began to suffer as resources dwindled and they blamed us, now they attack our fort and want us out of their land.

A story arc could be to find a way to maintain our supply but ensure their people have enough as well. Maybe by setting up trading partnerships from other zones and people, while villains attempt to stop these trading partnerships from succeeding. If the said people don’t get what they need they will continue attacking us and we may be forced out of that zone. So it would be important that the trading deals succeed and escorts from other zones make it. (Escorts would not be longer than the ones we have now) They would just reach a safe place a zone and maybe the same escort might need to be escorted 2 or 3 times in different zones before they reach that zone, but each time they come to where they need an escort they would stand and wait for someone to start it. If it failed an event would start to get the supply back and it would restart where escort started if it failed on the last part of the escort that’s where it would start again right after the supplies are recovered. If escorts don’t reach their settlements/ towns and their supply stays low for too long they attack our fort.

There’s a few ideas.

Sinope.5630:

I know this is stupid idea, but I will say it anyways.

Situation now:
What I think the Living World is whole Tyria area, all the maps, and all the events in those maps. And what I have seen, there are most of the players, well in my server, in Queensdale area or in Frostgorge Sound area doing Champion Trains. They are doing it because they want good loot. The rest of the maps are mostly empty, there are no players around. Events are staying undone all other areas, just in case that there would be some player come in that area to beat it up.

My idea is this:
Normal events loot would be bit better. Lets make a little RNG in there too, every time you have beating up event, normal event or group event but not champion event, you will get a little chest what gives for example a weapon for a reward. And there would be a small possibility to get Ascended weapon or even Precursor from normal events, no matter what area you are, or what level you are. So player could get a precursor even a level 2 if he/she is lucky. But these little chests would never came those events what are giving loot bag, like champions. And this is the point, that little chest would come once a day / event. So if you want to get a precursor or acended weapon, you have to do all events in all maps to get greater possibility to get those weapons. In that way playerbase should be spread in whole world. I hope so.

I know this was a stupid idea.

It doesn’t matter if it would work or not if you have an idea just say it. The devs want ideas and brainstorming is not about only talking about ideas that are sure to be the next cool thing in GW2. We only can get there by hearing what everyone has to say rather the idea works or not. It may be the idea that can’t work in it’s current form that sparks the idea for the next cool thing in GW2

Finnway.2183:

Shakkara.2641:

2) I’d like to further develop my character/account from each living story arc I participate in, in a way that goes far beyond wearables. Something over-arching. For example, I’d like to acquire reputation with factions of choice for each succesful event participation and after a few months I’d like to get awarded with a minor noble title with the faction I contributed most to, and get a side-questline for the personal story from that. Or get granted some land to have a new house. Or get henchmen, which I can customize and who will join me in future singleplayer parts of later story arcs.

I really like this idea. Someone also suggested (I forget who) unlocking more armor/weapon skins from our specific order, and watered down versions of the other order’s skins. I like this way of unlocking skins much better then what we have now. Plus, your decision of what order you joined has impact.

I suggested a few months back that we should be able to build rep with the orders we joined in the LS and that they should increase the armor, weapons and toys we can get from them. It was on a thread about the orders doing more in the world or something like that I can’t remember the title. I pick the order I join for the way the armor looks that I can get, it would be nice to have more of a choice in that, but also to make the choice have more of a meaning in the I want it to feel like I’m helping Tyria, but also serving my chosen order in the living world, and by doing that I get titles and perks for being in that order.

pt.1

I’ve not read this entire thread, I’ve only looked at the Anet responses and the posts that they were responding too, but they seem to sum up the majority of my gripes, so I’ll not waste any time by repeating them. That said, here are some of my insights/opinions on a few key issues I perceive to be in the living world as it is right now that I doubt have been brought up too much…

Scale, Morality and World Building

It seems as if every living world release has to be as big and as bombastic as the last, if not more so. Every release places the fate of the world in the balance, and if we don’t do something now everything’s going to explode, or some huge cruel multinational conglomerate’s going to stomp the common man beneath its iron-toed heel.
While this is great and all, it quickly becomes tiresome. It’s everything constantly cranked up to ten, it’s everything (at face value) black and white, and it’s just kind of boring.

Scale

This is a rather simple one. Every update’s big. Not only that, but it largely focuses on one thing, and on thing only- so that thing has to be pretty darn important if it’s to be worth the time of us (the players). This big thing also has to present itself as something of interest to all characters of all races. But does it?

This issue isn’t something that’s easy to solve, but I think one of the first steps towards solving it is moving away from this mentality of “one issue at a time”.

I can understand that you seem want to build an epic experience, but that’s doable without making every release an explosion. You released a strong base product in Guild Wars 2, but there’s so much that needs to be done still. Instead of focusing on things so singularly, why don’t you theme releases around features, rather than plot-points, and release the overarching story to the side. You could theme a release around making racial cities better- so that they can become the hubs they have the potential to be, for example.

Morality

This doesn’t apply to every release- the Southsun releases were somewhat good at providing some sense of moral ambiguity to the situation, though in the end I felt like I was explicitly told who was right in this situation, and it was the Lionguard. But ever since Scarlet, there’s been little depth in this respect.

I’d also like to see the world move to being a little more gray, like it was in Guild Wars 1. Character motives and methods were often very ambiguous or questionable during quests in GW1- I love that I slaughtered an entire crew of corsairs in NF for a mother, who believed that her son had been kidnapped by corsairs, only to have him turn around and thank me- because he could now steal their ship and run his own crew. The mother then shrugged off the deaths and gave me the quest reward, simply stating that her son would be home for dinner. It was dark, it was tongue in cheek, and the game never told me who was right, or wrong in the situation. In the end, I concluded that it was I, and the mother who were the real monsters.

Even the big bad Abbadon’s motives could hardly be declared absolutely evil. He was Prometheus. He gifted the mortals with magic, and he waged a war with the rest of the gods in an attempt to keep them from limiting that gift. But in the end, he lost and was sent to experience centuries of torture in the realm of torment along side his faithful followers, until he finally set forth to take revenge upon the the gods, and the humans who had betrayed him. To be honest- I somewhat agreed with Abbadon’s motives, if not his methods.

pt.2

World Building

This is a big one, for me- and one of the easiest to summarize. Releases are so focused, that the rest of the world barely changes outside of them. The world feels static, and dead. I want to see events change to it over time. I want that one guy to stop being captured by spiders all the time, and learn from his mistakes- possibly replacing his kidnapping with a pre-emptive strike on the spider’s den every time they get uppity.

Or, maybe just add one or two short events to a few areas every release. It would go a long way towards making the world feel alive. I know that you’re loath to progress the world too much, because you don’t wish to damage the personal story, but that’s a sacred cow which you might just have to sacrifice- you may just have to go in and modify it to be a little more time-agnostic, or spatially independent from the rest of the world. You’re missing so many wonderful opportunities to tell the story of Tyria- how it reacts to the fallout of the PS, how it’s effected by the LS. You could even expand the LS by showing the slow growth of political movements in the background of the current LS in this way- have a main thread going on now, while adding something else in the background.

Imagine, for instance- how it would have been if GW2 was set in GW1 Cantha, and as you progressed through the story of Factions (which could be expressed like the LS), you saw in the background the slow growth of the Ministry of Purity, and its xenophobic policies. It would be exciting, you could feel the world moving around you, like F&F, but even more engaging!

/endrant.

Here’s an example of a release I’d like to see:

Monthly Theme: Better Cities

• The asura have completed renovations on the Polymock Arena! All players can now play polymock in Rata Sum.
• The carnival’s up and running in Divinity’s Reach! All players can now participate in shooting galleries, and other assorted games.
• The Bane in the Black Citadel is now open to all races, and holds tournaments regularly.
• The Grove’s been made navigable! All players can now easily explore the grove without getting too confused.
• Hoelbreak’s bar fights are getting rowdier. All players can now fend off waves of belligerent drunks armed with naught but a three legged bar-stool, a bottle of whiskey, and their wits. The more drunk you are, the more powerful your attacks, but the slower your movement.
• Denizens throughout all the major cities will provide you with short fetch-quests and stories, to keep the lore minded amongst you entertained, and lend the cities feeling of life.
• Various dynamic events have been added, or upgraded throughout the world, go out and explore! Kryta’s experiencing a drought, and Krytans are becoming sick of the Ministry. Ascalon’s finding new life, as the ghosts are being pushed back ever further and settlers are finally beginning to take root in the reclaimed lands.
• In addition, a plot-point is brewing in the living story- better keep an eye on that one, maybe experience the new mission. But don’t sweat it, if you miss this release, the story mission will remain available to all players through a world journal. If you missed a major world event, a brief cinematic will show you what happened, so that you can get on with whatever missions you’ve missed.

Nike.2631:

TIDES OF DECAY

Tequatl hasn’t just evolved… It’s on the march.
Return to Sparkfly Den and Guildwars 2’s most challenging encounter in this permanent Living World release. The threat posed by “The Sunless One” has spread like a black tide… See the next evolution of GuildWars 2’s Dynamic Event system with new tougher challenges and “Second Chance” events that give you surprising ways to hold your ground when all seems lost.

VIBRANCE / DECAY
Battle for dominance across the zone as Tequatl presses toward Lion’s Arch. You control the very landscape in the battle between Vibrance and Decay as Tequatl seeks to leech the lifeforce of the land to power its continuing evolution.

When Vibrance reigns, this zone is more rewarding than ever before. Gold find and magic find are each increased by 20%. All champions have a chance of dropping sun-bead themed weapon skins. All events across the entire the zone offer 1-5 sun-beads in addition to their current rewards. New vendors will trade sun-beads for hylek, risen, and tequatl themed rewards. Mini-pets new and old, tonics, consumables to summon hylek warriors of all types and colors to your side, and even a special Hylek decorative item to add to your personal home area can be acquired to commemorate the service of those who fought long and hard for the Children of the Sun.

When Decay reigns the land is transformed. Face a new, darker Sparkfly Den where hope is on the verge of being crushed and heroes must rise or all is lost. Experience points and harvesting critical chance are each increased by 20% as you dare to confront evil made manifest. Rich harvest nodes become more common as Tequatl’s power strips the land back to its bare bones, but they are often guarded by savage creatures guided by the Dragon Lieutenant’s growing awareness. A new zone-wide meta-event tracks your every effort to push back this terror. But beware, if allowed to fester for a full day, Tequatl’s influence WILL BE FELT even closer to the gates of Lion’s Arch…

MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
The Tequatl encounter becomes more important than ever! Reworked to scale faithfully for groups of 15 to 100, more players mean more complex challenges as the fight progresses and better chances for the rarest rewards. A new pre-event allows you to gather your forces before the timed event begins. Even small groups now have a slim chance to acquire some of Tequatl’s greatest treasures while driving off the beast. Bring your friends, your allies, your entire Guild to increase your odds! But know that the price of failure has never been higher…

Failing the Tequatl event unleashes the Tides of Decay! This mega-event requires players to complete a total of 75 Risen-based events to repel Tequatl’s minions and free the land, restoring the zone to Vibrance. Five new major [group] events can be found as Tequatl enacts powerful rituals to seize the land’s essence for its own. These special events are extremely challenging, often involving the direct intervention of Zaitan’s Champion or a powerful Risen Servant, but completing one counts as 15 normal events towards pushing back the Tides of Decay. Show your mastery with a special permanent achievement by completing all five of these new challenges, unlocking the “Tequatl’s Bane” title. Or amass 250 smaller victories while Decay holds sway to gain the “Stalwart of the Hylek” title. Show your determination as a solo hero, taking the fight to Tequatl one challenge at a time, or team up to tackle the lynchpins in Evil’s plan to plunge Sparkfly Den into darkness!

((Coming Soon to a game I really want to play!))

This is incredibly awesome, but, imo, this is what Orr should be. With Zhaitan instead of Tequatl. I think it always should have been on this grand scale, having impactful effects (both positive and negative) based on what failed and what succeeded. These effects are in Orr to some degree, but in very weak forms. If I walk over a patch of land that has a firestorm or brambles applying bleed and cripple, I’ll find it a minor annoyance, not a sign of Zhaitan’s power that was multiplied by seizing some of the temples.

We want to see more Dragons Lore. Isn’t this what players wanted to see in GW2 when it was launched last year?

The idea of building your own fort/settlement/etc and trying to hold that ground is something I’d thought would be really cool for a long time – but in practice it’s not going to be as great as it seems in concept. That said, there are probably ways to mitigate it and make it interesting enough to try – I have no guarantee it’ll work though.

Some major problems:
1) This game isn’t designed for player-built content
2) People cannot be on all the time to defend their stuff
3) People probably really hate losing that fort – they usually want to build it and have it stay there as long as they want. But…
4) There is only so much space in the world to put these things down.
5) If you don’t get to keep it, what’s the point of building it?

Potential solutions to some of these…
How do you handle building things in an MMO?
Short of going the EQNext route, anyway – which is cool, don’t get me wrong, but not plausible in GW2. Well, there are some things you probably can do that will be “good enough”.

• Make the construction out of “building blocks” which are pre-fabricated by ArenaNet. Obviously the quantity is going to be somewhat limited because of this.
• Limit construction of forts to certain terrain spots that support them reasonably well. It’s not necessarily going to be perfectly flat, so those “building blocks” will require some leeway.
• Because placing building blocks arbitrarily is probably going to lead to bad things, some degree of the game doing it for you will be required. If anyone’s played the Skyrim DLC “Hearthstone”, this is basically that concept taken to its most restrictive. I’m not sure GW2 would need to go quite that far though.

That’s great, but don’t we now have a turf rush for a very limited number of sites?
Probably. It might not need to be extremely limited, but we may still be able to find a few hundred across all the maps out there. Considering how empty some are these days, and since it’s still a per-server thing, that may not be terrible. But if we had a fort to every player, it would be. So…

• It takes a certain amount of money to found a fort – but multiple players can pitch in. You can also do this after the fort is already started by “investing” in it, so to speak.
• By “investing” in an existing fort, you get to put resources towards building useful things for that fort – maybe you want crafting stations, or a merchant, or you want to hire NPC guards. You know, like WvW, except you’re not using them against other players.
• The guild who invested the most gets naming rights. Assuming that doesn’t make this too much of a rich folks’ club.

How do you handle defense in a sane manner?
Now presumably, if we’re building a fort, it’s going to be under attack from something. Whatever that is would probably depend on the location we built it in. (Or maybe it’s Scarlet’s minions, considering they attack EVERYWHERE.) But people have time limitations – and there are “off-peak” hours where not many people are on.

• Simply the fact that you don’t own the fort solely by yourself should help with defense a little.
• However, it doesn’t fix the off-peak issue. I’ve been told that EVE Online had an interesting approach to this though; capital ships couldn’t be destroyed in less than 24 hours or so due to a “shield”. Adapting this idea, perhaps the town can have its gates shut against marauding enemies, and takes at least a full day to completely fall.
• To avoid this being total ezmode, it can’t be quite that easy to drive them off once your people come back. While that could be achieved by making their numbers build up and throwing in dozens of champion mobs, alternatively the siege could just have dealt damage to the fort that takes either a lot of gold, or a lot of time for NPCs to repair it – and you have to guard them while they’re doing it.
• Dynamic events should probably be tied in as well. Maybe you have to help the farmers under your protection with bandits who are stealing their crops (and thus diminishing your +gold bonus) for instance. Attempted invasions might partly consist of repeatedly failing these events, which decreases the overall strength of the fort, and eventually makes it possible to destroy. Likewise, after breaking a siege, you might need to complete a number of dynamic events to build its strength back up again (or just invest more gold!).

So why would you bother making one of these in the first place?
I’m thinking there would need to be some kind of benefit. Maybe if you’ve invested in a fort, then you get certain gameplay bonuses, something like all those guild banner bonuses people put up in Lion’s Arch. It would need to be substantial enough to be worth the effort – and potentially cost.

(continued)

How do you stop this becoming a free bonus?
To be more specific, any system like this, you’re trying to walk a wire between either having things too easy – you never lose that fort, and the bonuses always apply, and so it’s basically free stuff – and frustrating players by making it too much work to maintain it. I’m not really sure I have a solution for this. I know we’ve got a similar system with towers, keeps and fortresses in WvW, but I suspect a lower turnover rate would be preferable in a PvE environment.
I think as long as you made sure it was fun to deal with having to defend a fort every so often, it might not be too bad, but I’m just not really sure. People tend to give up on things in GW2 after a while – not so many visitors to Orr anymore, and even the Mad Realm, which is only temporarily available, is nearly empty now. Would this be any different? Again, you’d have to make it worth their while to maintain.
And I guess if WvW is any indication, there’s at least a decent chance of it. The motivations for participating in WvW might be different, though, and if they weren’t, there’s a risk of cannibalizing it for an ongoing PvE element like this. On the other hand, WvW is against real players, and there’s a bit more satisfaction to be gained from beating them – so maybe it’ll be OK? I don’t really know!

As a lore aside, Abaddon wasn’t punished for granting magic to mortals. He was punished because he threw a massive temper tantrum and declared war on the other gods for placing limits on that gift without consulting him.

(Admittedly, not consulting him was a bit of a rude move, but we don’t know the circumstances of that – the others may have decided they simply didn’t have time.)

On the Tides of Decay rewards::

Personally, I’d probably be inclined to flip the rewards between Vibrance and Decay. In Decay mode, grant increased gold, magic find, and event rewards when participating in the events that will reverse the Decay state – this means that people have an incentive to participate in flipping the state, but it’s not a farm that can last indefinitely. However, the vendors offering items for Sun Beads should remain locked in the Vibrance state, of course. (You might even get away with not explicitly increasing rewards at all, if the Decay events are extrinsically and intrinsically rewarding enough on their own.)

On the flipside, make node harvesting more efficient when you’ve won – more chance of getting rare materials, more chance of getting more than one resource per harvesting tool usage, more chance of getting more than the default number of gatherings per node. The general idea is that you get an incentive to stick around and help out when things go bad, but you also have an incentive to stick around and enjoy the benefits when you make things better.

Of course, the reward for simply defeating Tequatl and preventing a flip in the first place should be enough that people are happy with doing that rather than deliberately failing in order to instigate a flip.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

So with all of this in mind it would be cool to carry on discussing around this area in much the same form as Nike has. Specifically brainstorming on top of the foundation of known systems and functionality. I do also want to point out that someone mentioned (sorry i forget who) the ability to potentially build forts etc and then gain new events, goals and rewards from them by protecting and nurturing your land. Wouldn’t that be awesome!?

Chris

To be honest, something like this was what I envisaged back when GW2 was originally being discussed back in ‘07. The dynamic events span the whole map (or even between maps, although I understand the technology at present does not allow it) and depending on what you do or don’t do, the zone can end up entirely filled with a hostile force, entirely occupied by friendly forces (with a few threats around from ambient creatures that aren’t part of the enemy army) or, most likely, somewhere in between.

One thing that might help this feel more realistic, as well as prevent the map from resetting all the way to “enemy overruns everything” a few hours into off-peak time (something I’m particularly sensitive towards myself, being Australian and therefor often playing during off-peak times on an NA server) is to have the changes be something that occurs not over the space of a few minutes, but over hours or even days. Naturally, this will require them to be broken up into lots of little events, so players can be rewarded for whatever contribution they make. For example, consider a siege on a fortification – this might include events to sally forth to attack the enemy siege engines or enemy caravans bringing in ammunition, and events to bring supplies and/or reinforcements in to the besieged fortress. If, over time, the enemy siege weapons do more damage to the walls than the supply being brought in can repair, eventually the walls will be breached and the enemy will start launching assaults into the fortress until the walls can be repaired. Conversely, if the flow of reinforcements into the fortress outstrips the attrition rate, it might trigger an assault by friendly NPCs that pushes the enemy army back to their next fortress, switching the positions of besieger and besieged.

Now, I don’t think this would work with the existing maps – a new map (or few) would be needed in order to facilitate this. Examples could include Kryta pushing north to establish a defensive line against the centaurs, or the charr and Ebon Vanguard pushing the ogres east or pushing south against Kralkatorrik and/or Joko.

The aggregate performance of such maps could then be used to drive Living Story. For instance, if a map that showcased the charr and Ebon Vanguard fighting against the ogres came to end up spending most of its time at or near the “total victory for the PCs” state, this may lead to the ogres surrendering, converting it into a more conventional map of focused on integrating the ogres as peaceful neighbours and possibly having the ogres offer some of their unique pets to PC rangers as part of the terms of their surrender. If a map centered on Kryta fighting the centaurs came out as a centaur victory, the renewed centaur assault on Kryta proper could galvanise opinions that Jennah is failing to properly protect Kryta, sparking a political crisis and galvanising Caudecus and his allies to redouble their efforts to seize the throne. This would provide a vehicle for generating a clear connection between player (in)action) and plot developments.

First, forgive me but I don’t have time to read the whole thread and it’s possible I’ll touch points that have already been discussed, I did read the dev tracker tho

I agree with most of the issues I’ve seen exposed and will not write about it all, instead I’d like to focus on a few things:

-REWARDS (titles)
I haven’t seen it suggested but one thing I’d love to see expanded is titles. They work great as a reward IMHO, give you the chance to brag about your achievements and are not as costly to develop or show off as a cosmetic, I can change them whenever I want and show the world I have beaten TQ or completed the whole SAB. Some titles are rare, some are not, I’d love to see more. I was extremely disappointed tribulation mode didn’t have a title for example. I did it, felt good for accomplishing it and got only a skin, awesome as it is, I rarely use my scepter and have a better skin for my staff, but I’m free to let you know I’m a sunbringer anytime. See my point?

-LACK OF CHALLENGE
I understand this is not for everyone but the reason SAB and TQ were my favorite releases so far (from march) is because they had something for me to accomplish, beating TQ was hard at first, required time, cooperation, it was challenging (sometimes for the wrong reasons, but still..) and so was SAB (especially trib mode), I spent countless hours on the two contents and loved beating them for the first time, it felt oh so good..! Coming back was good as well of course. Beating the bloody prince in 5 minutes tho, smashing pinatas, the mini instances such as canath? They were just meh.

-ABOUT FAILURE
I’d love to see more of this, really. One of the reasons beating TQ felt so good the first time is I had spent the last two days failing at it. Even now I still do it and my favorite encounters are the ones we win by seconds, it’s so much more exciting.
Failure leading to a second route is a nice idea but I think failure needs to exist on his own as well. The chance of failing means succeeding feels a lot better.
For TQ specifically I’d hate to see a 2nd chance, easier event triggering. It would mean everyone showing up after the failure and not even bothering trying the original event. An event to trigger the whole fight again tho would be cool. More so because it would solve the issue with the painfully long spawning window.
Options are good but pay attention to make them equal ones when big fights and rewards are involved.

-ON TEQUATL
Ok, Idk if this fits here but teq is living world and I have a huge problem with him right now. The spawning window. You know we have to be ready before the fight start if we want to succeed, this usually means we get ready before the window opens and then risk to die out of boredom waiting while teq takes more than an hour to show up. Please give him a fixed timer or a SHORT window, please. The long window makes no sense at all for that fight right now.

I really like the Tequattle idea. It is a lot more fleshed out then my basic idea posted beforehead.

In my opinion GW2 needs two kind of events:

- Large scale zone transcending events, where one zone influences the other
and
- time dependend events. Events which have to be done to a certain point, or something happens.

Both offer a failure and a winning state.

Right now we have a lot of underplayed zones. Harathi Hinterlands (my favourite example) has some great events and lore oportunities, as well as the mainforces of the centaures.
However we never really fight against them in the PS, only a bit throughout the DE is in the area, but they never feel really threatening. Even though they are supposed to be invading human lands, their forces are only stationary.

To change that we would have to have the snowballing effect of events. if we fail/finish one, others (one or more) start in reaction to it.
This is a system we have in place allready, however the consequences so far are usually staying in the area.

Failing the centaure boss and his elemental just pushes some forces back a little bit and that`s it.
Better would be if they would run out and open up new events. Sieging the villages and strongholds in the area, till the whole area is overrun and dominated by their forces.

After the zone is completed to a certain percentage, their forces will spill over into the sourounding areas towards the human settlements. Harsher attacks on the ascalon settlement and all the human settlements to Kessex and Queensdale, even leashing out to Lions Arch.

In Queensdale we allready have little strongholds which can be taken over, however that is only a gimmicky endevour right now. If the forces reach that area, they could even block access to Caudecus Manor, till the sourounding area is taken back.

As for rewards:
- We allready got centaur weapons we can get in game from karma and drops.
- We allready have minis, but they could be expanded, to include the giant earth elemental for example, as well as a transformation potion into it (small version)
- Champions would spawn at “push back” events, with the highest amount at “out of the zone”-events, where we push them actually back where they belong, intensifying the need to change the tide, since these events are the lucrative ones.
- Legendary Bosses are at the end, offering some “rare” items (maybe even Ascended to a rare chance) giving more insentive to actually push them back to the end.

As for the events of the “Centaur Crusade” (title work in progress)

After we “failed” to frive back the Centaur Boss in Harathi, things start to change.

- More and more centaurs roam the harathi hinterlands and we get some “siege” events on lokal villages and stronholds:
- Fight back their forces and beasts they bring with them
- Help defend the Skritts and organize a counter offensive thanks to their tunnels and explosives.
- try to stop their movements by building roadblocks and defend makeshift strongholds on the mainstreets.
- Scout the area and find “hidden” pathways to invade their strongholds.
- use “new” means to change the tide of the battle (remember the chaars with their catapult? how a bout dropping into the centaur lines with their help)

If Harathi is overrun however, things go in every direction.
- higher density of Centaur and Beasts in the sourounding areas.
- The areas become even more fortified.
- Centaurs will fight the envirorment as well as the players, as Trolls and Risen will stand in their way.
- Some events could work in a way, where we lure Centaur forces into other enemies and we pick off the winner. Here we could dictate which sides wins, allowing to spawn an extra enemy/boss for example.

There is a lot of material on these kind of “war-stories” that can be utulized to give the events some flavour and context.

What would be the benfit of such a system:
- Different factions (Dredge, Son of Svanir, Risen, etc. ) who push forward from different sides guarantee a different experience not only for a certain time, but also per server.
- there will be szenarios “hey, Blacktide is overrun by Dredge and they want to take Hoelbark, let`s fight them back.” which might promote guesting.
- Factions might clash, having you to fight both as they fight each other.
- The world changes as players participate all around tyria, since all areas do influence certain factions.

Well, that is basicly how i imagined GW2 to be as it launched. Either we push back to a mega event over several maps, or we will be overrun, maybe even by developers influence, as they provide special events to give certain factions a boost.
For example the centaur never get out of harathi, since their area is so close to LA and Queensdale. Two highly populated zones.
After a few month suddenly a special eventchain pops up, in which their forces just break through the lines, which kickstarts the Kessex and Queensdale events up to Caudecus.

With an additional Developer-Driven event chain, each server could be live a different Tyria and still get access to these events once in a while.
High populated server who hold all faction back, will still be able to experience these “siege” events once in a while (it wouldn`t even be lorebreaking, since it would basicly like a LS event.)

Can we do something about monster variety in late game zones?
This strikes me as the perfect use of the “Living World”.
There’s just too many Risen in the game, and let’s be frank here, other games do zombies better, because that’s all Risen are: zombies.

Maybe look at bringing back some of the GW1 bestiary, such as Aloes, Scarabs, dinosaurs, Mursaat, etc.

My main issue with the Living Story model is the focus on temporary, limited time content and associated achievements and rewards. While missing out on these doesn’t affect your ability to participate in any content, they will add up to a very long list of ‘things you can’t have, and can never do’ for players potentially joining in future, or current players who have interrupted play periods due to real life commitments. Is it going to be worth their disappointment and potential resentment to create so many ‘was here’ exclusivity/status symbols? It also feels manipulative in forcing you to play during certain time blocks if you want a LS exclusive reward, compared to playing when you’d like and missing generic time-based rewards such as laurels.

There is also now pressure to just get the Living Story objectives done as a priority should you care for them or any rewards, which may mean time you’d like to spend in game doing other things is squeezed, such as leveling an alt. This may mean you don’t get to play the game as you’d like, especially if you have very limited play time.

If the main idea behind the removing so much of the content is to concentrate and corral players into new content areas instead of having them too spread out over the world, then I don’t believe this is a good way to go about it. Is it really a bad thing to leave a lot of ‘non-current’ content be and let players choose if they want to be playing it or not instead of forcibly removing any choice in the matter, or only letting it be played during certain periods which may not be convenient for the player even if they’d find the content really fun (eg. SAB)? How fresh or enjoyable any piece content is to me seems to be entirely individual and different for every player and not based on a fixed time schedule for temporary releases, and permanently expanding on content and leaving it to be explored at leisure at the player’s choice seems to ultimately be a far more productive than removing so much. Besides, players are naturally going to be drawn to the new and shiny anyway and I don’t think that it needs to be ‘forced’ to have enough people playing it to be viable.

In essence, I feel the whole temporary content idea is deeply flawed and goes against many of the principles which made this game awesome.

A couple of points I’d like to say:
1. All this talk about larger scale dynamic events is good and all, and is exactly the type of “end game” content that would be good instead of all this AP/gear grinding.
2. I really wish that the main story/lore aspect content be considered separate to this end game stuff (and instanced) since I consider DEs a really poor way of telling a story since the majority of time DEs are halfway in progress, or purposely made to be inconsequential/extremely localized. Personally, I do not mind that the personal story is in a inconsistent state with the “real” game, that’s why it’s always instanced off (the ability to revisit the instanced version of player’s state of the world would solve that issue). Also, the current releases aren’t meaty/long enough for decent story telling, in my opinion. Too much fluff and tease, not enough substance.

Anyway, regarding the dynamic events and failure events, I think another approach would be to apply the failure mechanics on the AI rather than on the players.
For example, if the players are holding too much ground or the AI recognizes it is losing in the current event, the AI commander should decide to crunch some numbers (based on it’s current state and what the zerg has done on the past hour or so) and executes its next move.
These moves could potentially be:
1. Dig multiple underground tunnels to infiltrate a player owned areas on the map (maybe throw in karka queens to pop out of the ground if it manages to successfully dig out).
2. The enemies hordes together to protect a makeshift fort/defense area.
3. The enemies hordes together a tower where a wizard has some magic amplifier allowing it to destroy/heavily damage buildings.
4. Summon dragons or airships.
5. Commander purposely withdraws, but is actually setting up a trap in the area it withdrew from.

It would be possible for the AI to launch multiple offensive “events” instead of just picking one.

I also think the enemy should have the ability to capture downed/dead players as prisoners of war (hello anti zerg mechanic!). Those players will then have to break out of prison and escape.
If they don’t manage to escape, then they die and multiple zombies spawn aiding their battle.
The only potential issue with this mechanic is players just zoning/logging out and back in, which I don’t have an idea on solving.

If you’re really desperate to adhere to the whole bi-weekly release thing, you should change these “end game” maps so that each release rotates between a random set of legendary monsters that the AI can summon (and maybe change their fighting mechanics every now and then).

You could also add in weather/season effects that could apply special buffs to allies/monsters that affect their fighting abilities (eg. winter = extra cold damage, more maps with snow, summer = extra fire damage, less snowy areas etc), or even a different density of monster types.

I should also say (probably against the wishes of the majority), I would prefer these event to be scalable down to 1 player (or at least spawn multiple allied AI as temporary substitutes to help aid the fights), especially due to the population dying on lower tiered servers. The idea of “guest or GTFO” just puts players off, in my opinion.

Nike.2631:

TIDES OF DECAY

Tequatl hasn’t just evolved… It’s on the march.
Return to Sparkfly Den and Guildwars 2’s most challenging encounter in this permanent Living World release. The threat posed by “The Sunless One” has spread like a black tide… See the next evolution of GuildWars 2’s Dynamic Event system with new tougher challenges and “Second Chance” events that give you surprising ways to hold your ground when all seems lost.

VIBRANCE / DECAY
Battle for dominance across the zone as Tequatl presses toward Lion’s Arch. You control the very landscape in the battle between Vibrance and Decay as Tequatl seeks to leech the lifeforce of the land to power its continuing evolution.

When Vibrance reigns, this zone is more rewarding than ever before. Gold find and magic find are each increased by 20%. All champions have a chance of dropping sun-bead themed weapon skins. All events across the entire the zone offer 1-5 sun-beads in addition to their current rewards. New vendors will trade sun-beads for hylek, risen, and tequatl themed rewards. Mini-pets new and old, tonics, consumables to summon hylek warriors of all types and colors to your side, and even a special Hylek decorative item to add to your personal home area can be acquired to commemorate the service of those who fought long and hard for the Children of the Sun.

See, the problem with this is that it doesn’t fix the current issue of zerging in one zone alone. While the idea is interesting, it still sounds like players will congregate in one zone and zerg zerg zerg. I think it would be better to spread the population out a bit more across many zones, not just one or two, but a half dozen or even all of them.

My idea was to create a sort of global dominance system, similar to WvW, where we need to capture,hold,defend,attack towns from enemy NPCs. The more we hold, the more benefit the server gets overall.

This spreads the community out into their favorite zones to play in. Rather than everyone being funneled into one zone, like we currently are.

This sounds like a good story arc for the current iteration of the living story. However, if arenanet has any aspirations to change up the structure of what they consider a ‘living world’, then continuing to funnel players into a single zone is not going to work. Doing so fosters zergs which encourages you to zerg or be less profitable, which takes you out of what you normally would have liked to have done in the game.

One quick thing here.. people are concentrating on really negative consequences for event failure. I’m sure there should be some.. but let’s think about the danger of creating a state where ‘zone = full of harder mobs’ becomes the desired state for 80s who want to farm, while kittening up leveling

But why reinvent the wheel? The game does this event failure/event success well already in Orr.. everybody wants the karma vendors up and the statues down in those zones; the karma vendor is great and the farming is easier. A karma vendor with awesome stuff when Teq is killed would be motivation enough.

There’s no motivation for the majority of players to care about successful or failed event areas. Failed events in Orr just mean it takes a little longer to get around the map. In order to care about event failure players need a carrot to chase after.

For example, the FoW/UW equivalent opening up based on freeing all the temples in Orr. E.g When all the temples are free, this elite area is accessible which is instanced, contains hard mobs and bosses and has materials which go towards crafting a pre-cursor.

Basically make it worth the players while, not just in drops but content to do the events. Otherwise they’ll just champ train farm.

Favorite LS Release: Clockwork chaos.
Reason being it was very story heavy in that it propelled the story forward by releaving the seemingly main antagonist and the funhouse was a good way to bring out Scarlet’s character.

Least Favorite: Tequalt rising, didnt seem to have any story elements at all. (though we do know there is a reason behind it which we dont know what it is yet)

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

There’s no motivation for the majority of players to care about successful or failed event areas. Failed events in Orr just mean it takes a little longer to get around the map. In order to care about event failure players need a carrot to chase after.

For example, the FoW/UW equivalent opening up based on freeing all the temples in Orr. E.g When all the temples are free, this elite area is accessible which is instanced, contains hard mobs and bosses and has materials which go towards crafting a pre-cursor.

Basically make it worth the players while, not just in drops but content to do the events. Otherwise they’ll just champ train farm.

I agree with you. In guild wars you wanted to gain favor of the gods so you could go to FoW/UW for mats for Obby armour or weapons you couldn’t get any where else in game. I loved doing FoW. The amount of gold you could get from there was nuts. Most of the time people would leave white drops every where. I’d normally make 2-2.5 platinum just from the drops that where going to the vendor. Not including and weapons I could sell to players or Obby shards once I had got my Obby armor. Something like his is what guild wars 2 is missing at the moment.

Regarding Failure which is a topic I have pretty close at heart since I feel it is the one thing thats missing from the LW as is.

Ideally I would like failure to affect the stories direction though I understand this is extremely difficult to pull off because of the current release schedule. Basically any failure that happens now cannot reflect in game before at least 4 months. I guess it is possible to do for subtle things. What I am thinking is say in the current event we get a meta achievement to stop toxic offshoot as quickly as possible. At the end of the event an average time across servers would be calculated for how long the offshoot events ran. This would be measured in select peak hours + a few hours at random during the week in the evening to avoid unfair calculations such as measuring activity at 3am in the morning during the week. If the average is less then intended IE most players didnt care about the offshots or simply took their time to act on them the event will fail. if the average time is less then expected then it succeeds. Nothing apparent will happen at first but in case of failure 4 months down the line things can happen such as enough spores were released that it effected people with village people turning on each other making players A) having to subdue the effected villagers / revive dead villagers before using services. having events to help out finding an antidote.

It might even be possible to take this further and make this a theme of a whole LW release. What I am thinking is the spores spread and for the next few releases we have minor things such as just the plants showing up in different zones. But then months later when there was enough time to develop it say we get a living story about say the inquest studying the plant and perfecting it into a mind controlling substance and use it to try and infiltrate the arcane council with players first being involved in investigating some wierd action by the council on behave of zojja and then uncovering the plot and trying to stop it. At some point some npc can “cheesily” drop some comment like “if only we had managed to stop the spores to spread this would never have happened” to sort of let it know this was a consequence of failure.

While such story focuses consequences of failure would be great I think its also possible to have small more immediate consequence as well. let me use the clockwork chaos release as an example. Lets say for the invasions we were told to stop as many of them as possible to make it clear to scarlet and her minions that it is more trouble then its worth to harass us. Success / failure is easy to calculate here. More successful conclusions then failures across all servers would be a success while more failures would be obviously a failure. Now in case of success we could have things turn out as they did. The invasions are now much less frequent as they dont have the numbers and the will to keep the pressure up. But in case of failure we’d have something else together with these invasions. What I am thinking is just small groups of invaders attacking villages and contesting way points in random maps every hour for the next release or two. No events associated with them or anything. they just dropping in outposts/waypoints and attacking npcs there. We can be told that failure to break their moral had them become more focused on their attacks and our punishment would be for the next 2 weeks to one month if we want to use towns / waypoints we’d need to clear them first.

I think Konig hit the nail on the head earlier, with his suggestion of allowing servers to come to different conclusions of the Living Story. I would like to see larger consequences to the Living Story as the direct result of our actions. And I would really like to see some servers fail, and some servers succeed. Because then you achieve a sense of urgency. Players feel more concerned about the fate of their server, and the consequences of the Living Story.

In the original Manifesto (we keep bringing that up don’t we?) some of the writers and game designers expressed their desire to have Dynamic Events have a lasting effect on the world. Now we all know that is not exactly how it turned out. But the Living Story is an opportunity to still make that happen. But then not every story should end the same way on every server. Allow us to both fail and succeed, depending on our actions.