I’m really enjoying the LW/LS content as it is being delivered. It’s rewarding loyal players who log in daily/weekly. Maybe the content could linger/overlap longer. Maybe some more of it could be permament additions. But being able to say you were there for such and such happening gives your GW2 life a kind of heritage. You can’t make everyone happy all of the time, and I personally am grateful ANet chose to concentrate their efforts on their regular players. 2 weeks is plenty of time to do the LS/LW content for most gamers, in my estimation.

Scarlet is ok. I understand that the LS/LW is a new thing for GW2/ANet and using Scarlet safeguards existing story threads from any pitfalls ANet may fall into while honing their skill at LS/LW. Even the events not directly connected to Scarlet are really fun and diverse, and while I think ANet still has alot of room to grow to bring the LW to its potential I think they manage to, most times, make it fun. I don’t believe the LS/LW deserves anywhere near the criticism you find on the forum for it and the LW adds, for me, alot of value to the game in terms of entertainment but also in respecting their customer.

dace.8019:

I’m really enjoying the LW/LS content as it is being delivered. It’s rewarding loyal players who log in daily/weekly. Maybe the content could linger/overlap longer. Maybe some more of it could be permament additions. But being able to say you were there for such and such happening gives your GW2 life a kind of heritage. You can’t make everyone happy all of the time, and I personally am grateful ANet chose to concentrate their efforts on their regular players. 2 weeks is plenty of time to do the LS/LW content for most gamers, in my estimation.

Scarlet is ok. I understand that the LS/LW is a new thing for GW2/ANet and using Scarlet safeguards existing story threads from any pitfalls ANet may fall into while honing their skill at LS/LW. Even the events not directly connected to Scarlet are really fun and diverse, and while I think ANet still has alot of room to grow to bring the LW to its potential I think they manage to, most times, make it fun. I don’t believe the LS/LW deserves anywhere near the criticism you find on the forum for it and the LW adds, for me, alot of value to the game in terms of entertainment but also in respecting their customer.

I think the only value LS is adding to the game is for people who truly believe in LS and achievement grinding. For anyone else, its not living up. It adds nothing else to the game other than a less than mediocre story, achievement grinding, minis, and skins which, unless you have the luck to win the lotto, you need to buy off the gem store most of the time. It adds nothing to dungeons, nothing to the true lore of Guild Wars, nothing to class skills. Yes, we’ve had some QoL changes, a world boss revamp which no one does anymore, and some WvW changes. But a few changes scaterred over almost a year? The idea of LS adds nothing to the other cogs of the GW2 wheel. It only feeds itself.

I wish LS would add more for the dungeoneers, more for the explorers, more for the class build explorers, more for the jumping puzzle fanatics. A lot of what was added for these folks was taken away because it was temp stuff. We are then, again, left with achievement grinding for metas.

draxynnic.3719:

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.

Nice catch, I’ll rectify the content in my post accordingly.

Currently we have a new Living Story almost every few weeks, along with a giant list of achievements to grind through. Just looking through the long list of previous Living Story achievements, it is almost shocking how much of it I completed. And not all of it with joy, I just didn’t want to miss anything.

If I could choose between Living Story every few weeks, or ONE new explorable zone in 2 months…. I would choose the latter. Some of the Living Story has been entertaining, but the writing is just okay-ish, but far from brilliant (no offense to the hard working writing team, I know you have to work within tight dead lines and technical restrictions). I would rather see permanent additions to Tyria, rather than all this rushed, often not that well tested temporary content.

I think that also deserves to be mentioned. A lot of the Living Story that we’ve seen, contained a lot of bugs. Big bugs. That is why I don’t like this rushed approach. It leaves less time to properly test the content, before implementing it into the Live game.

Favorite LS Update

Flame and Frost hands down. This update came during my two weeks of finals, and I only had four days to play it, however, I wore the MF dungeon out. I loved it, the dungeon wasn’t overly time consuming and the mechanics where fun and unique. Additionally, I could bring my alts in to play and level up because the scaling didn’t punish them too badly.

Least Favorite LS Update

Blood and Madness, I haven’t even finished my meta achievement. It’s all open this # of trick or treat bags, or close this # of doors. I just went with friends who had finished to see the close of the event. Going out and doing the same thing a certain number of times just feels too grindy to me and I’m not going to do them any more since I don’t find them fun.

P.S. More titles please? The first thing I do when an update comes out is look to see if we might be able to get a title, I’m always disappointed when there isn’t one.

draxynnic.3719:

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)

Agreed, but I’d note that the temple capture events have outcomes that span across maps (i.e., when a temple is held by us the statues across all Orr zones are no longer active). So, I don’t think it’s the case that they can’t have information of what’s going on in one map bleed over to another. There are some technical issues with overflows that would need to be worked on though. Since overflows are not tied to a server, zones created as overflow always start in the default state (exception being those created during the LS Tequatl and Clockwork Chaos content, which still start in the default state; but they get information that the overflow was created within X minutes of Scarlet’s Invasion or Tequatl starting). As a result, let’s say an invading force could push to the next adjacent maps and we were not in overflow when we lost the current zone, but when we hopped to the next zone over to help there we were placed in overflow. Now, suddenly we cannot continue aiding the fight against the invasion because overflows are not server specific.

I’d be willing to live with this temporarily if it meant we actually get effects that can bleed over into adjacent zones, but it’d be nice if overflows were tied to servers at some point. I imagine this decision to not tie them to servers is to save as much processing/memory as possible. It’s costly to create a new copy of a zone for players. It’s much less so to funnel players that need an overflow into the same one, rather than creating a copy for each server that needs one and funneling players based on their server of origin.

draxynnic.3719:

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.

I like this idea. I think what would also help this along, and feel like we’ve made a long lasting change is if we could “train” our NPC allies to be more capable. This could be through practicing with them (increases their level), crafting them armor/weapons (increases their defenses/attack power), and furthering your supply idea, building defenses. This can be a little different for different scenarios. For example, a magic defensive ritual could require gathering specific artifacts in the wilds, or fighting the dredge might entail building resistant floor plating as opposed to more durable walls (imagine if that caused the dredge to change their tactics to a frontal assault instead of an underground one).

I’m tired of weekly updates, if you made it monthly it would be less of a job.

ophidic.1279:

I’m tired of weekly updates, if you made it monthly it would be less of a job.

Or at least don’t take things away.

ophidic.1279:

I’m tired of weekly updates, if you made it monthly it would be less of a job.

You are right, it DOES feel like a job. Almost every week I see another long list of 50 rats I need to kill for an achievement. And it feels like I’m in a hurry to complete them all. I wish I could relax for a change, and then find the same content still waiting for me a few weeks later.

Someone probably mentioned already, but I really think that the Living Story should happen after the Personal Story. Most parts of the Personal Story are instanced anyway, and I think that a message at the beginning of every PS instance saying something like “this happened in the past” would be enough to just move on.
I am bothered by the fact that a player that is far enough in the Personal Story is Trahearne’s Commander and personal friend, but the Marshal didn’t say a thing to the Commander about everything that has been happening. Even when the Aetherblades stole the Pact’s ships, we didn’t heard a word of him.

Also, the fact that you guys are trying not to cause inconsistencies with the Personal Story will end up causing inconsistencies anyway. Orr can’t be healed because it would confuse new players? But if Orr is never cleansed and healed it means that everything that we did in the Personal Story, including Trahearne’s wyld hunt, was good for nothing.

Unlike others, I don’t mind Scarlet, I don’t mind the pace, I don’t mind the fact that most of has been temporary, I don’t even care if my favourite character to date (Canach) never shows his face again (but it would be nice if he did), I just desperately want the story to make sense and the world to evolve, and I hate the fact that big changes can not be done as long as you insist that “the LS shouldn’t contradicts the PS, it doesn’t matter on which part of the PS you are”. It already did! The Pact is formed! One should have at least have gotten to Claw Island for that to make sense, right? So if the Living Story could just move on, that would be great.

I want to get rid of the Foefire. I want the peace treaty between charr and human to be signed. I want to build a new Ascalon by expanding Ebonhawke. I want to rebuild Owl’s Lodge, for her teaching will live on. And, most of all, I really, really want to help cleansing and rebuilding Orr. Except for the Owl’s Lodge, everything else would contradict some part of the Personal Story, and it saddens me to think that this kind of change probably won’t happen because of that.

TIDES OF DECAY: Addressing Concerns

takatsu.9416:

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.

It’s not an endless well of entertainment, but I think it could keep people engaged at least as long as we see in a typical LS release, and unlike what we’ve seen in those, all of it’s components are enduring. You aren’t rushed to complete it. Some of the achievements are deliberately long tern – it’s unlikely the initial novelty-zerg would last long enough to rack up 250 non-major events- that’s a goal specifically introduce to allow casual visits to the zone weeks or months later to still feel like progression to less driven users.

Phenn.5167:

This. Just…this.

Thanks . Remember to upvote the original post- if nothing else it makes it easier for me to find it later on through my profile by searching for popular posts!

Starscream.6498:

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.

While I don’t disagree, I see TIDES as a testbed – it involved a new technology (zone geography flipping) and it involves a boss we know we have narrative access to both before and after completion of the Personal story. If TIDES works, the lesson would absolutely be portable to other zones.

While “Senior” players who have completed the Personal Story cannot cause (or expect) a permanent cleansing of the larger Orr without wrecking things for players who come after, I think there is tremendous room for them to set the stage for a more successful (dare I say… Vibrant?…) Pact Campaign in Orr to assist other players on their trek across those zones.

draxynnic.3719:

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.

Sure. The most important thing is that BOTH states be appealing to play with specialized rewards rather than causing player’s to arrive, look at the state, and leave because its currently in a mode they don’t want to hassle with.

My expectation is that the core Tequatl event remains tough, even with the scaling changes to make it more accessible. REALLY TOUGH. ‘Accessible’ means there can be more valid attempts – completion rates of valid attempts don’t have to go up very much at all from what we see now. The ‘default’ state of the zone would be Decay – setting up the grander, but also more personal struggle to flip it for the shiny rewards state. On the whole, I think the feelings the two modes are trying to evoke – the opportunity to relax and enjoy the bounty (Vibrance), or the opportunity to dig in and battle to make a difference (Decay) are better represented by loot buffs vs. progression buffs, but there’s room to bat it around . If TIDES were deemed a successful test, other zone absolutely should use other combinations of buffs to incentivize their states.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

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.

If they make Living story branching based on results I really doubt it will ever be per server. I love the idea and it would be cool dont get me wrong but can you imagine the work they’d have to do every release if they’d need to create different story / content for every server based on what happened previously. It will keep getting exponentially larger.

I like your idea though and perhaps what would be feasible is have the story direction be dictated by the result of all the servers. So if more then half the servers succeed then the story continues based on the event succeeding even for the servers who failed. if over all its a failure then sorry those who succeeded the story will evolve as if the event failed. On the other hand to give a stake to each individual server on the overall result ,the servers who failed could perhaps get a penalty tied to the particular LS. Say for the clockwork invasion that could mean double way point costs while those who win get a bonus like say 1/2 way point costs.

What do you think of that?

Galen Grey.4709:

If they make Living story branching based on results I really doubt it will ever be per server. I love the idea and it would be cool dont get me wrong but can you imagine the work they’d have to do every release if they’d need to create different story / content for every server based on what happened previously. It will keep getting exponentially larger.

I think the solution to that, would be to not tie each Living Story directly to the outcome of the previous one. Possible consequences could be the permanent destruction of a village, which would then no longer play a role in further content anyway.

For the conclusion of any Living Story arch, they could take some outcomes into consideration. For example, for a final battle each possible outcome could provide a server with more allies to assist them during that battle. This makes the various outcomes more manageable, and prevents the writers from having to take into account combinations of all outcomes.

Galen Grey.4709:

I like your idea though and perhaps what would be feasible is have the story direction be dictated by the result of all the servers. So if more then half the servers succeed then the story continues based on the event succeeding even for the servers who failed.

That is also a way to go. Although I think that would feel less rewarding. If it’s server specific, then much like with Tequatl, the guilds on that server can make a cooperative effort to beat the Living Story for their server.

Galen Grey.4709:

On the other hand to give a stake to each individual server on the overall result ,the servers who failed could perhaps get a penalty tied to the particular LS. Say for the clockwork invasion that could mean double way point costs while those who win get a bonus like say 1/2 way point costs.

I was thinking more along the lines of continued invasions, or higher monster populations of a certain kind in some areas. To take the Tower of Nightmares as an example. If a server succeeds at stopping the corruption, part of Viathan Lake is restored to normal, and the tower falls into ruin. The Krait and their alliance will be driven out of Kessex Hills, and peace returns to this zone. But if they fail, the corruption spreads, and Krait become a dominant group of monsters on the entire map. It would be interesting to have one server where peace was restored, and one server where the Krait have overrun the zone.

Following Living Story could then move on to something new, regardless of the previous outcome.

TIDES OF DECAY: Discussion

cesmode.4257:

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.

While I personally enjoy the occasional zerg – the chance to see my server really mass up and smite something actually appeals to me – I don’t likes zergs that are rushed and frenzied. Doing more invasions or the Queens pavilion because you know this opportunity will go away soon is a little too mouse in a maze for me.

The critical distinction in content like TIDES is there’s no threat of time limit. I think the initial wave will be smaller – people will want to come and check it out, but The Deal is clearly spelled out up front: “Please come check it out, but it’ll be here. Even if you’re stuck at work, in the middle of moving, on vacation with the family, TIDES will be here waiting for you.” And TIDES is design to scale down so if you come late you don’t NEED the entire server on hand to make it work. You can potentially flip the zone all by yourself if you want to commit some long hours to it (75 events at an average of 5 minutes each + travel time… 4-5 hours if you are Risen-mulching machine). You’ll need a party to see victory over the linchpin [group] events with bottom end difficulty akin to dungeon endbosses, but you can still come out and look them over all by yourself.

That change of pacing and acknowledgement of decline of player-mass over time, means TIDES should see a smaller zerg-upswell at the outset and burn cooler but much, much longer than most LS content has.

Fenrina.2954:

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.

Well, you must be throwing the most epic fits of rage since WvW already facilitates benefits in place for the whole server, even if a select few contribute.

I have completed every achievment tied to LS since realese… and what I happened to realize. I enjoyed the LS way more that had some difficult achievment tied to it. The latly Releases feel way to grindy for my taste (I know I don’t have to do em but since I have completed everything else so far… ).

So here’s a list of Achievment I liked:
-Southsun Cove: Collecting Samples took you around the whole new map and some were found at end of a difficult jp so it was fun
- Flame and Frost: New Mechanics of the Dungeon were great
Bringing back items to refugee’s had a nice Story aspect
- Basar of the four Winds: The New movment skill and the introduction of em through gathering crystals was good
- Support Ellen: I didn’t like the mini game of her so the Achievments there felt bit grindy and you realized as you played the minigame that ppl just grinded the achievments so it wasn’t a real game.
- Support Evon: Same the minigame part was bit grindy
- Emissary Vrop : The Idea of reproducing step by step was cool still the farming diffrent Invasions was a bit grindy
-Boss Week: The Idea of searching Special things might be fun if it is done in a madking way where you have a riddle for it… just making achievments on 3 maps collecting items in Areas was boring since you either did it with a Guide or you just run around and hoped to find some.
-Twilight Assault: Cool Dungeon but Way to easy… it’s not cool if you just run threw a new dungeon/Content without having to think or Focus to much .. mechanics were nice enemies to easy in my opignon
-SAB Tribunal: Fun Good Content I really enjoyed it especially firsttime exploring traps. ( Sad that you nerfed it after few days fountains ect.)
- SAB 1 & 2 : Cool Content and a bit of a Change.
-Shadow of the Madking : Clocktower was great. and the Implementation of searching places threw Riddles! ( some rather grindy achiev here as we’ll carfer ect:))
- Tixx: Bell<3 visiting all capital cities was fun as well.
- Dragonbash: agains some grindy Arena achievs ect.. but I loved it for the sake of gw1 ( missed the Mask )
- Skypirates : Personal space and some other achievments were actually kittenallenging this was great
Gauntlet: First really hard Content I’d say ( I did fracts 80 in 2012 so I know what I’m talking about;)) but sad that light up the dark didn’t give a title or a item…
It seems as you have a hard time giving out Special rewards to really hard Content:)
-Queen’s Jublee: Again running around circles killing things mostly not that much fun
-Mechanic Invasion: as well pretty grindy to farm the invasions
- New Haloween : The lunatic Inquisition achievment is grindy as hell:)
- Tower: mostly grind Events

To sum up: I personally see some nice Ideas already in the game or used in LS but sometimes the updates are just bit grindy and without a big lore ( at least from ingame prespective)

What I hope for / Suggestions: – Each LS update at least 1 really hard achievment. ( as Light it up)
- A LS update that brings gambits to dungeons
- A LS update that introduces a mystic Smith / woodmaker where you can forge a runic blade / staff for icy runestones and Wood/orichalcium and get a White staff./ sword that gets you on a journey to a legendary.
Example: Price set for White staff. Than you Need to complete Content to Charge the staff to blue → than do dungeon kills whatever shrines Vistas to Charge further to green than to yellow after to exotic and finally to legendary with a Bonus for example to Charge from exo to legendary beat liadri with 2 gambits while wielding the staff to get her dark power → Special staff ability is to turn you into liadri:)

Anyway gl creating new Content:)

Nike.2631:

TIDES OF DECAY: Discussion

cesmode.4257:

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.

While I personally enjoy the occasional zerg – the chance to see my server really mass up and smite something actually appeals to me – I don’t likes zergs that are rushed and frenzied. Doing more invasions or the Queens pavilion because you know this opportunity will go away soon is a little too mouse in a maze for me.

The critical distinction in content like TIDES is there’s no threat of time limit. I think the initial wave will be smaller – people will want to come and check it out, but The Deal is clearly spelled out up front: “Please come check it out, but it’ll be here. Even if you’re stuck at work, in the middle of moving, on vacation with the family, TIDES will be here waiting for you.” And TIDES is design to scale down so if you come late you don’t NEED the entire server on hand to make it work. You can potentially flip the zone all by yourself if you want to commit some long hours to it (75 events at an average of 5 minutes each + travel time… 4-5 hours if you are Risen-mulching machine). You’ll need a party to see victory over the linchpin [group] events with bottom end difficulty akin to dungeon endbosses, but you can still come out and look them over all by yourself.

That change of pacing and acknowledgement of decline of player-mass over time, means TIDES should see a smaller zerg-upswell at the outset and burn cooler but much, much longer than most LS content has.

I was touching more on the point that this idea would funnel people into one zone only and that at its core it is still similar to the current iteration of Living World/Living Story. They give us a story arc, a purpose, and a target location, and we all go there. his would render, as it is today, 9 out of every 10 zones empty still. If the ultimate goal is to make the world feel alive, then we need to devise a way to get people into all zones, simultaneously. Nothing is more discouraging than waltzing through a zone and not seeing one living soul.

BobbyStein

We’re also looking into ways that we can better communicate backstory and lore inside the game.

I like that. Next month I go on world travel for three month and will be offline for that time. It would be very nice, if after that there would be a nice way ingame to get informed what happened in the meantime.

Maybe books, newspapers, illustrations or more funny bards.

Or why not a puppetry, doing a puppet show or a stage-play for children with the minis of the LS-heroes, that already exist in the game.

It would be nice, if you could ask the puppetry or the bard to play a specific chapter of the living story for you.

@BobbyStein

A story needs to have compelling characters both good and evil. A compelling plot line that gets people interested. And finally a good pace. I’m sure you know that

The LV has non of that where I’m concerned. The characters are flat and boring or massively illogical when compared to the game world, aka scarlet. The plot is very shallow. It has zero follow through and its outward appearance seems like a patchwork blanket with the hope that in the end it will look decent enough. We go from one alliance to the next to the next with a whole lot of festivals in between. All the while the dragons are apparently playing poker and relaxing.
The pacing while constant is constantly interrupted by non story items. On top of that at times it is to slow at other times to fast. This all comes down to the rigid 2 week schedule.

We’ve been talking a lot about trying to build events with success/failure conditions and the typical suggestion is pushing territory a la the centaur events in much of Kryta. But, to be perfectly honest, I don’t spend a lot of time doing those events. If I’m running by one, I might complete it, but there isn’t much reason to complete it other than event credit.

I wanted to come up with another option, another event which has success/failure conditions which might be able to run repeatedly and make sense. So here’s an idea…

Thaumacore Experimental Golem

Inquest in Brisban Wildlands are building an experimental magic-consuming Golem in the Thaumacore Inquiry Center. The Golem will travel across the world and absorb magic, growing stronger the longer it is left alone. When it reaches its destination, it will change the behavior of the events in that area.

There will be three Golems that are under construction in the area (though not all at the same time), the XR-1000 XR-2000 XR-3000. Each Golem will have a pre-event where the Inquest will attempt to build it. (The build time should be relatively long, I’d say 10, 15, and 20 minutes for the 1k 2k and 3k golems.) If you stop them, you get an event where swarms of Inquest attack for a period of time – yay champ farming! If they succeed (i.e. you fail the event), the golem will travel across the map to one of three locations:

XR-1000: If this Golem is completed, it will travel to the Thaumanova Reactor. If destroyed along the way, you will receive event rewards plus a champ bag. (Less rewards than destroying it before it is built, meaning it’s better to stop it during the build.) If it arrives, the Fire Elemental event chain will not start until the golem is cleared.

XR-2000: Same idea as above, but the Golem stops the Jungle Wurm from spawning.

XR-3000: Same idea as above, but the Golem stops Tower of Nightmares events from spawning.

What makes this fun to me is that the effects in one zone carry over to the adjacent zones. If these are chained together such that killing the XR-1000 starts the XR-2000 build event, you can be in Metrica, see the Golem, kill it, and then know that you should head to Brisban to stop the next build (and get a farming event once you do, yay!)

Global Dominance

I had posted my idea/suggestion in a paragraph form and in a less structured manner, for a Global Dominance system. For organizational purposes I will re-post my idea with a bit more structure.

Goal: To get players in all corners of the open world at any given time. Currently, any living story arc, patch, or event funnels most players into one or two zones to tackle new content. This creates zergs, for better or worse, but it does not solve the issue of a Living World. If you walk through a zone less traveled, Timberline Falls I repeatedly use as an example, it is empty and devoid of players. If you happen to find yourself in this corner of the world, you definitely do not feel the world is a living one. The Living Story event is taking place 5 zones away from you. How can it feel living?

How to accomplish this: Implement a system where the players are given true freedom to play in whatever zone they wish, but they are also rewarded for it. If you really like those less-traveled zones, you can zone into them and contribute to the Global Dominance system (which will be explained later). Depending on how much territory the players control on a global scale will determine the reward value, much like the current WvW system.

What is Global Dominance?: Global Dominance (GD) is a system, like WvW where the players must control zones against enemy NPCs. The more of the world map that the players, overall on the server, control the better the reward is for everyone on the server regardless of what you are doing. There will be a natural ebb and flow with how much territory players control depending on what time of day it is, and this is to be expected. Since this will play off of the Dynamic event system, and scaling, the GD system can scale with what could be considered ‘off-peak hours’ so that enemy npcs attack a little less frequently giving players in the off peak hours a chance.

How can we increase our territory, or lose it?: I’ll answer this with an example widely used on these forums… Enemy centaurs attack the water towers in Queensdale. They succeed. They then gain, what is formally called, a foothold. They have a small centaur-themed camp at the water towers with centaurs roaming the nearby area. If after a short while these centaurs are not challenged (players do not take back the water towers with a dynamic event), these centaurs set off to attack the next nearby friendly NPC camp. If they succeed there, they set up another foothold, and more centaurs appear. Overall, their presence in Queensdale is increased because they now control two camps/towns. Via Dynamic Events (DEs) it is now up to the players to defeat these footholds and take back the towns one by one.

So now that we control all of queensdale, is our job done?: No. The server-wide reward is dependant on the overall global control. So if you only control Queensdale, your server’s reward is minimal. This is to prevent funneling players into one or two zones. This spreads the players out so they can play in whatever zone they want to. If myself and a few dozen others control Queensdale, hopefully there are other people who want to play in their own favorite zones, Timberline falls for example, and are attempting to gain control there. Each zone controlled adds to the overall score. Also, this system applies to all zones all of the time. There will not be a select number of zones to control. This enables the individual player to choose where he/she wants to play without the system dictating it.

Well, now that we are controlling a good portion of the world map, what kind of rewards are there?: Well, thats up for Arenanet to decide However, I would advise having Karma as the primary source of reward. I would push for a gold reward, or something that is actually valuable.

What is the end result?: A world that changes depending on our activity. A world where the individual can choose his/her adventure. He/she has the ability to choose which zone he/she wants to play in and help contribute to the world. This would be an ongoing 24/7 system, much like WvW, so you can log in at any time to play in any zone to contribute and have fun. You may log in one night and find that your entire zone is in the red and is almost completely taken over by the zone-specific enemy. This gives everyone true freedom to do what they want.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Yep the story needs to more ‘Epic’, meaningful and better at evoking emotion.

Chris

I think this exact quote is what’s really hamstringing your writing team and the direction of the Living Story in general.

You don’t need to chase after Epic – epic is a natural outgrowth of scale.

What you need to focus on is ‘Compelling’.

In Kessex Hills there is a little stand-alone escort event in the Destroyer caves. A child from the nearby town has fallen into the caves and can’t get out. Lead her to safety.

Ok, first off, it’s a little girl and she’s surrounded by monsters that want to eat her. If you’re not a complete sociopath, you’re already committed to the endeavor just to put an end to this outrage. Second, I empathize with her: I fell down that same kitten crack while looking around – that’s how I found her in the first place. The monsters aren’t just after her, we’re totally in this together (yes, I realize I could just waypoint away, but that’s for chumps). Is time to hero up.

The fact that I’m on my rifle-toting engineer and I’m practically screaming lines from Aliens at the screen as we shoot our way out of there ("You want some of this? And you? How about that, come on! blam-blam-blam-blam!) is just a nice bonus.

And did you notice how I said ‘we’ there? She doesn’t do a thing except cower or follow along doggedly, but we are a party now, making our way out of the cave. Because I care.

There is NOTHING in the Scarlett Invasions that comes close to that. Nothing is under threat. Nothing says ‘step up, hero’. It may look EPIC-EPIc-EPic-Epic-epic-epic ((echo effects)), because it’s Big… but it has no heart. It’s a safari for big-game hunters, not a chance for heroism.

Give me a reason to care. I’ll suspend disbelief (no way pointing out just because), I’ll buy in if you let me. But don’t confuse scale with relevance.

Some of the finest victories are small.

Like seeing a little girl make her way home.

Global Dominance Part 2

A few notes:
-This will only work without the current iteration of Living Story. Funneling people into specific zones will take players out of their current zone to participate in the current LS. Letting the players loose to forge their own adventure is key, do not push them into other zones.

-To continue the stories, put the story driven content into the personal stories. A lot of folks have been asking for more personal stories with voice narrated content, cinametics, cut scenes, etc. Really develop some quality story arcs similar to the 1-80 personal story and free up the Living World for the global dominace system, which will change with the ebb and flow of player activity all on its own, without the need for you, the developer, to direct it.

-If the GD system is not possible and/or you are unwilling to give up on the current iteration of Living Story, then a modified version of this idea is still possible. The same core idea of spreading players to different zones, any zone they want, and participate in Dynamic Events that are already there. Server wide, if certain thresholds are met, the server is rewarded. If the server congregates in one or two zones, then they are minimally rewarded. If people spread out and experience content that is already in the game, then the rewards can be more lucrative.

OfTheDunes.2307:

It would be very nice, if after that there would be a nice way ingame to get informed what happened in the meantime.

Maybe books, newspapers, illustrations or more funny bards.

Or why not a puppetry, doing a puppet show or a stage-play for children with the minis of the LS-heroes, that already exist in the game.

It would be nice, if you could ask the puppetry or the bard to play a specific chapter of the living story for you.

Love this x 150.

One way to do this while cutting down production expense is to have a figure beside the stage periodically hold up a sign that prompts a text message that goes along with the minis bumbling around on stage. No voice-overs required.

(sorry, the puppet-show stage in the orphanage with the Asura sock-puppet leaning up against it may be my single most favorite scenery asset in the game…)

So, here’s my two cents when it comes to what you guy’s have done with the Living Story Update experiment, and yes, I’m going to refer to it as an experiment hence forth, simply because that is what this is, an experiment.

First: The good.

To begin with, I do have to commend you for being able to roll out updates at an accelerated pace like this. It is something that’s been interesting to see if nothing else, but I wont lie, the quality of the updates have suffered.

Mind you, when I say quality, I’m referring to the actual content in the updates. From the technical stand point of things, Anet has come a long, LONG way from Lost Shores. I’ve actually rarely seen any bugs now in the updates, and that makes me very happy to see that you are more fiercely QA testing your updates. Gone are the days when we have broken achievements, broken events, and pretty much broken everything. And for that, I have to take my hat off and say “Well done!”.

The Living Story Updates have also been a great way, if nothing else, to roll out system updates and gameplay updates to the engine. And really, I think that’s where the Living Story updates should remain. Getting new quality of life updates, or tweaks to things like SPvP, WvW, or even things like tab targeting on a bi-weekly basis is great, and if anything needs to stay the same, it’s that.

However, with all the said, that’s pretty much all the good I can really say to the Living Story Updates. For now, we come to the bad, and yes, there is a good deal of it.

To begin with: Bi-weekly updates are having a very obvious affect on the quality of the content you’re releasing. While I will say that Secret of Southsun was a mess of an update, it did open up a very beautiful new zone, albeit it a rather dead one. The first Halloween update was leaps and bounds better than this years, which was missing several key features from last, including Reapers Rumble, which everyone was both upset and confused about it’s lack of re-appearance. I’m also pretty sure people would have loved to slap around Thorn again. Holiday Bosses are fun, we like them! To be honest, this makes me concerned for Winter’s Day as well.

But there was something else that bothered me, and I’m sure a lot of others, in regards to this update, as well as the past few updates, and even Tower of Nightmares:

The game is becoming less about the content, and more about an artificial carrot on a stick through the achievement system. Let’s look at the Flame and Frost storyline first, and than we’ll compare our later story bits. Flame and Frost went over the course of three months, with little emphasis on achievements, and instead added things like new Story Missions, new Dyanmic Events, and of course, the end-dungeon as well, which everyone seemed to love, and for good reason, it was fun! It was a great way to end the storyline! We also had Super Adventure Box during that time, which was also less about silly achievement points, and more about the actual game it’s self.

And that’s when things started to go south, no pun intended. Secret of Southsun came, and the content we received was…minimal to be said in the least. A scavanger hunt, a few achievements, and that was it. Than we got the second half, which had a temporary dungeon which contained a single room and a single boss on both difficulties… Okay, well it’s Southsun, we can kind of forgive that.

Continued from last post

Except than came Dragon Bash, and this is where it became clear of the direction your living story update would take in the future, though we didn’t know it at the time. Ask anyone about Dragon Bash, and the first words out of their mouth will be “Grind for Achievements!”. The story content was minimal, and the emphasis was on clicking 100 of these, 250 of those, 50 of that, and also 100 of those as well. That was literally the content. Dragon Ball was an alright diversion, but beyond Dragon Ball and the 10 minute long story instance, there was nothing else.

Sky Pirates of Tyria at-least began to remedy things, even if the dungeon was no where as well polished or balanced as the Molten Facility. But it was atleat content with some meat on it’s bones in comparison to Dragon Bash.

Than we had Zepyhr Sanctum and Queen’s Jubilee, both of which were amazing updates, rekindled my interest in the game, and made me think “You know what, Anet’s learned from their mistakes, it’s nothing but gravy going forward!”.

I was wrong.

After Clockwork Chaos and SAB 2, which I personally believe was the last of your pre-made content that you had on hand before starting full throttle with the idea of bi-weekly updates, your content patches quality has gone down, horribly.

Let’s take a gander at each living story update after that, shall we? I warn, it will not look pretty.

Tequatl Rising involved a revamp of a world boss that was clearly neither balanced, nor was the concept well understood by your team, as we now have a world boss no one runs anymore on most servers, essentially killing one chunk of content. Outside of that, we had a scavanger hunt and an achievement grind. Following that was Twilight Assault, a fun enough dungeon, but with no real reason to run multiple times, and also had, once again, an achievement grind as the focal point.

Blood and Madness was even worst, with two story instances that each were 5 minutes long, a gutted version of the previous year’s event, and once more, an emphasis on grinding achievements for a meta.

Tower of Nightmares is, without a doubt, the worst of these thus far. You redid an entire zone, yet the actual meat of the content update is, well, bad. You have three events, the majority of which are more or less the same (Kill adds while defending NPCs who will blow up the offshoot), copy-pasted into a few other maps with no uniqueness between them, a story instance that lasted 10 minutes, yet ANOTHER scavenger hunt with no challenge to it what so ever, or even any real depth to it other than a pointless collect ’em all-a-thon, and an emphasis on Achievement Grinding once again.

The other problem is the achievements aren’t even comeplling anymore. Almost everyone in Tower of Nightmares is “Kill X of these, destroy Y of these, and collect Z of those”.

Tell me, how is this compelling content? The answer is it’s not. You’ve begun to use Achievements as a way to skip making deep content, and I know it’s not because you don’t want to, but because of the two week release schedule.

If you remained on a monthly release schedule, we’d be getting MUCH better content, of this I am positive, and less filler content that involves grinding achievements, none of which are even remotely compelling anymore.

The Living Story idea was a nice experiment, as was the two-week release structure. But it’s become very obvious that your team simply cannot keep up with it. You’re trying to get so much out at any given time, that the content’s no longer compelling, fun, or even worth doing to me and a lot of others that are echoing this same statement on the forums.

Appologize for not wanting to read 25 pages on the topic, so just gonna go from the OP.

Now for a large part I like Living Story and enjoyed my share of it, while some of it I skipped, since it was not that intresting.

I hear lots about Living Story means no expansions and a lot of people want expansions and no living story… well… I really want both.

Living Story while having some greatness to it, is not able to do what an expansion would. What I would sort of. Expect or hope for, would be:

Expansion: Take on the other dragons, open up more vast new places, continents, continue on the personal story (I see personal story and living story as very seperate beings), maybe add new race/s and profession/s (note just maybe). All in all much like the Campaigns and the EOTN expansion was done in the original Guild Wars.

Living Story: Much like now, seperate events from personal story, taking place between maingame and possible expansion/s, adding to the game world in smaller aspects, as is already done.

I would be very disapointed if all we get is just more and more living story and what seems like smaller bites of content. If the next Elder Dragon is only part of a living story event. I would be extremely disapointed if we never get any expansions.

Living Story cannot replace what an Expansion can do. Sorry.

Living World
Just my thoughts

I mostly play in WvW, but I really like the stories in Living World.

I really liked Super Adventure Box and the Bazaar of the Four Winds. The music and the scenery there was amazing, and I hope they will come back soon. It’s also really nice with the soundcloud page you made. Thanks a lot.

I also like Scarlet’s invasions, and it’s nice that they still appear once in a while. (I don’t attend though, since I play WvW.)

The last story, Blood and Madness, was a very nice little good story too.

In Bazaar of the Four Winds the number of tasks were quite a bit too large and difficult for me, since I also wanted to play in WvW, but also wanted to be able to try out the celestial gear, and get the crystal node for the crystals to make the gear, and also just walk around in the flying city doing my own things. For me there were too many difficult achievements in a much too short time frame in Bazaar of the Four Winds, and it was a shame since that city and the music was so beautiful. I’m glad that it got much more casual friendly in e.g. Blood and Madness. I didn’t like too much that the opportunity to acquire the recipes for the celestial gear were time gated either.

For me, the number of tasks, one had to complete to get access to the last part of the story in Blood and Madness, and the candy node, were a bit too many too, but I was happy that it wasn’t nearly as many as in Bazaar of the Four Winds, and I really enjoyed the story, and I got happy when I found out about that I could complete the tasks in the dailies, and that they luckily weren’t that grindy.

I really like to take my time and listen to the npc’s conversations and look around and enjoy the music and the scenery, when I’m not PvP’ing.

And for me, it’s nice if there is time to relax and enjoy the beautiful game world, and the stories, and not too many achievements in a short time frame.

I don’t mind either that there are Living World things in WvW. It’s nice with some small surprises. The last update did have a bit too large impact though, imho. It could have been done a bit more subtle.

But thanks, and I generally like the Living Story a lot. But the more casual friendly it is, the better for players like me, who just like a good story and to relax with a bit of computer gaming and enjoy the good music and scenery and WvW.

Blade Syphon.4325:

Continued from last post

Except than came Dragon Bash, and this is where it became clear of the direction your living story update would take in the future, though we didn’t know it at the time. Ask anyone about Dragon Bash, and the first words out of their mouth will be “Grind for Achievements!”. The story content was minimal, and the emphasis was on clicking 100 of these, 250 of those, 50 of that, and also 100 of those as well. That was literally the content. Dragon Ball was an alright diversion, but beyond Dragon Ball and the 10 minute long story instance, there was nothing else.

Sky Pirates of Tyria at-least began to remedy things, even if the dungeon was no where as well polished or balanced as the Molten Facility. But it was atleat content with some meat on it’s bones in comparison to Dragon Bash.

Than we had Zepyhr Sanctum and Queen’s Jubilee, both of which were amazing updates, rekindled my interest in the game, and made me think “You know what, Anet’s learned from their mistakes, it’s nothing but gravy going forward!”.

I was wrong.

After Clockwork Chaos and SAB 2, which I personally believe was the last of your pre-made content that you had on hand before starting full throttle with the idea of bi-weekly updates, your content patches quality has gone down, horribly.

Let’s take a gander at each living story update after that, shall we? I warn, it will not look pretty.

Tequatl Rising involved a revamp of a world boss that was clearly neither balanced, nor was the concept well understood by your team, as we now have a world boss no one runs anymore on most servers, essentially killing one chunk of content. Outside of that, we had a scavanger hunt and an achievement grind. Following that was Twilight Assault, a fun enough dungeon, but with no real reason to run multiple times, and also had, once again, an achievement grind as the focal point.

Blood and Madness was even worst, with two story instances that each were 5 minutes long, a gutted version of the previous year’s event, and once more, an emphasis on grinding achievements for a meta.

Tower of Nightmares is, without a doubt, the worst of these thus far. You redid an entire zone, yet the actual meat of the content update is, well, bad. You have three events, the majority of which are more or less the same (Kill adds while defending NPCs who will blow up the offshoot), copy-pasted into a few other maps with no uniqueness between them, a story instance that lasted 10 minutes, yet ANOTHER scavenger hunt with no challenge to it what so ever, or even any real depth to it other than a pointless collect ’em all-a-thon, and an emphasis on Achievement Grinding once again.

The other problem is the achievements aren’t even comeplling anymore. Almost everyone in Tower of Nightmares is “Kill X of these, destroy Y of these, and collect Z of those”.

Tell me, how is this compelling content? The answer is it’s not. You’ve begun to use Achievements as a way to skip making deep content, and I know it’s not because you don’t want to, but because of the two week release schedule.

If you remained on a monthly release schedule, we’d be getting MUCH better content, of this I am positive, and less filler content that involves grinding achievements, none of which are even remotely compelling anymore.

The Living Story idea was a nice experiment, as was the two-week release structure. But it’s become very obvious that your team simply cannot keep up with it. You’re trying to get so much out at any given time, that the content’s no longer compelling, fun, or even worth doing to me and a lot of others that are echoing this same statement on the forums.

A big problem for me is that I’ve always hated achievements. I’ve been gaming long before they arrived as the “hip” thing to do and I’ve hated them ever since they arrived. I am doing them, however, and hating it, but they’re time-limited, this bumps them to the head of my priorities, and makes me do them even if I’d rather be doing something else in game that I find more fun.

Had a thought re: this today. I remember when the game came out and everyone was praising the subtle improvements over other games with things like progress bars instead of ‘x/x collected’.

Why not tweak the achievement system and bump it towards heart-like events and dynamic events. Change the heart color so it doesn’t need to be a part of map completion. The achievements screen as it exists today could track how many of these you’ve finished and although it is a subtle change, I feel like it would make me much happier to be getting my missions in a traditional fashion rather than going into a sub-menu to click the eye button beside the daily kill _/_ goal for the latest living world release and desperately trying to finish it in my 30 min that I get to play each day.

I think that the main reason most people loved Flame and Frost was the dungeon experience. There was that sense that you changed events and made a difference in the game, not to mention the encounters were just well designed and fun.
We, as players need to be emotionally engaged in the content. I honestly don’t really care about any of the characters in the LS with the exception of F&F. I don’t care if Scarlet blows something up or kidnaps someone because I am not emotionally involved in her character.
Why is it that I was emotionally involved in the stories from GW1 and not in GW2?
Make the player more central to the story itself and not part of a zerg experience.

You guys are doing a great job with the cutscenes though! Keep that up and maybe get more in there

This last LS with the tower, I just haven’t bothered. Why do I care about the spore things? Who are these two characters in the initial cutscene? I am not emotionally involved or interested to do the achievements.

I sincerely hope that the LS does affect the world more and adds permanent content at the same time without having to zerg.

Epicness

Nike.2631:

You don’t need to chase after Epic – epic is a natural outgrowth of scale.

What you need to focus on is ‘Compelling’.

In Kessex Hills there is a little stand-alone escort event in the Destroyer caves. A child from the nearby town has fallen into the caves and can’t get out. Lead her to safety.

…

Give me a reason to care. I’ll suspend disbelief (no way pointing out just because), I’ll buy in if you let me. But don’t confuse scale with relevance.

Some of the finest victories are small.

Like seeing a little girl make her way home.

Honestly, if I was going for an epic story I would start with something simple, no party crashing. I would have a little girl ask me to find her mother, and in doing so stumble across something so horrible that I cannot ignore it.

Chidori.9483:

Epicness

Nike.2631:

You don’t need to chase after Epic – epic is a natural outgrowth of scale.

What you need to focus on is ‘Compelling’.

In Kessex Hills there is a little stand-alone escort event in the Destroyer caves. A child from the nearby town has fallen into the caves and can’t get out. Lead her to safety.

…

Give me a reason to care. I’ll suspend disbelief (no way pointing out just because), I’ll buy in if you let me. But don’t confuse scale with relevance.

Some of the finest victories are small.

Like seeing a little girl make her way home.

Honestly, if I was going for an epic story I would start with something simple, no party crashing. I would have a little girl ask me to find her mother, and in doing so stumble across something so horrible that I cannot ignore it.

I feel the story itself is pretty good, but the content is designed in such a way to take away from the story. It feels difficult to experience and enjoy.

I LOVED how the NPCs at the end of the story for tower of nightmares would heal me back up if I was downed. Nice touch.

Chidori.9483:

Honestly, if I was going for an epic story I would start with something simple, no party crashing. I would have a little girl ask me to find her mother, and in doing so stumble across something so horrible that I cannot ignore it.

I. AM. IN.

Lets start this party:

To use the tools we already have in game, I’d start this with a letter that in flowery language basically says “Return to your Home instance to see [someone] about a small problem they are having.” And nothing else. No trumpeting horns. Let players be intrigued. Ramp up from there as what looks like a little side bet escalates.

You could have a minutely different scene script for each race depending on which home you end up launching the sequence from, but they then quickly align into a single story path to move forward along. Maybe not a missing mother but a friend that has vanished (easily replicated and understood to be happening in all 5 starting cities). Half an hour later we’re onto a cross-species child-smuggling ring and myyyy goooodness, I’m ready to burn some villain bases down to the ground and save me some kids.

You don’t even need new assets. This is all a really sick plot by the Inquest to get lab samples, and they are using Aetherblade muscle to do the grunt work. Bam! Bases populated, enemy roster fully and deeply populated. Game on!

I want to piggyback on Blade’s comments above and add this:

There are 4 Living Story teams and we cannot expect that they will all produce equally compelling content. If we try to line up the 4 month schedule, we can try to see which teams produce which content:

Team A: Flame and Frost, Queen’s Jubilee / Clockwork Chaos
Team B: Secret of Southsun / Last Stand at Southsun, SAB2 / Tequatl Rising
Team C: Dragon Bash / Sky Pirates, Twilight Assault / Blood and Madness
Team Bazaar / Cutthroat Politics, Tower of Nightmare

If I’ve lined that up correctly (and it’s highly likely that I made a mistake), you can see that certain teams have strengths. Team C, for example, built two of the harder dungeons, Aetherblade Retreat and the Aetherpath. (And I think the Aetherpath is considerably better, showing improvement.) Team D seems to be the gigantic map-building team: both the Zephyr Sanctum and Tower of Nightmare are huge structures.

It’d be fun to get to know more about the teams building the content and we might be able to provide more constructive feedback if we had a better idea of each team’s composition. But even without that, we should all keep in mind that content is built by real human beings with their own ideas, strengths, and weaknesses, and while “consistency in releases” is almost certainly a top priority for ArenaNet, there will likely be some variation in releases because of the teams involved.

Chidori.9483:

Honestly, if I was going for an epic story I would start with something simple, no party crashing. I would have a little girl ask me to find her mother, and in doing so stumble across something so horrible that I cannot ignore it.

You mean like a bunch of Destroyers coming out of a rift in Kessex Hills?

timmyf.1490:

Chidori.9483:

Honestly, if I was going for an epic story I would start with something simple, no party crashing. I would have a little girl ask me to find her mother, and in doing so stumble across something so horrible that I cannot ignore it.

You mean like a bunch of Destroyers coming out of a rift in Kessex Hills?

The other way around – a summons by your Order, leading you to work with a new, very small Pact task force heading to Kessex hills to do a long-range study of Destroyers in expectation of battling Primordius some day in the far distant future… and when you get ther- HOLY CRAP THEY’RE EVERYWHERE! FIGHT FOR YOUR LIVES! WE HAVE BREACH, WE HAVE MAJOR BREACH!

And then sprinkle a few Dwarf themed rewards in .

No party crashing in part means even if Evil is on the march, the introduction to the story is WE have the initiative for a change. We’re trying to move forward when we interrupt Evil rather than Evil always interrupting us.

I’ll try to keep this short.

LS is way too grindy. Before ascended gear this wouldn’t have been as big a deal. Now we have nice long grinds for ascended gear on top of trying to grind out the LS and at least for me, therd isn’t really the time to do both. We need longer events without also greatly increasing the AP reauirements.

There really isn’t anything living about the LS. I just recently picked GW2 back up after a 6+ month break and it really doesn’t seem like much of anything has changed. I don’t know what happened while I was gone but apprently not that much. Mainly I missed out on some exclusive skins/minis and that’s it.

Which brings me to my next point. For a game like this that really lets you play with your looks its a nice disappoitment to find a skin that really fits our character but it was an event skin so have fun buying it. I don’t mind some exclusive items but its getting out of hand.

LS seems to do nothing more than dangle time limited items at the end of a grind fest. It’s like you want to lead us around dangling shinies above us so we don’t have time to really look around at the actual game.

EDIT: Oh and number of materials needed to get some of these LS skins/minis is way too much to be grinded during the event. This Halloween event in particular is ludicrous.

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.

Well, actually, this is a pretty good idea on how to make people do all the events in the world. All we know by now is that people are hunting rewards all the time, they like to zerg and they don’t mind repetitive activities So giving good rewards like you say once / day per event (and maybe per character or account) for each normal event similar to champion bags or world bosses chests is a really cool idea
If rewards from these would have the possibility of obtaining ascended and precursors
i think that would be enough reason for people running all events
I see this transforming into an event train but with different people all the time and none of them will bother if some one has started an event after them because they only need it once

What we see now in chat:
“Where is train at?” “Boar 40%, go to troll”

What we will see after this idea:
“What events are up?” “Spiders in the orchard” “Starting ale transport” “Who needs Barthol? I am about to start it” "I need it, please wait 1 min, finishing the skrits "

this could be a good opportunity for guilds to start event runs in every map

@Ronah: I had an idea for making events popular and posted it on Suggestions, but sadly, I didn’t get a single response: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Revitalize-Zones-with-Reward-Scaled-DEs/first#post2990358

Short version: event rewards scale higher based on how long the event idles before completion.

ColinJohanson.2394:

So a fun question to ask to help direct the conversation a bit: What aspects of your favorite television shows would you think would be cool to see reflected in a game medium?

Well, I have a two part answer. One mechanically and one story driven.

I would say that specifically it would be quite interesting to see the aspects of “Bleach” in which the characters have swords (mostly katanas) that all look unique and have unique transformations that affect the user. I think having weapons that could do unique things or to give classes all their unique versions of Death Shroud would be incredibly interesting, however costly. However, if incorporated into a parody story it would probably come out cheesy in a bad way.

So what would be an interesting story would be to take someone as prominent as the “Lich King” from WoW and do segments on what led him up to that point. Since he was already an incredibly interesting character with being a human that has immense power and a king slayer. The player would likely want to test their strength against such a foe to see how powerful they them self (the player) have become. Right now there is just no good villains unfortunately, and IMO it hurts the lore a lot. Perhaps if the dragons had a humanoid form of some sort, then they could be related to. Assuming they could talk.

timmyf.1490:

@Ronah: I had an idea for making events popular and posted it on Suggestions, but sadly, I didn’t get a single response: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Revitalize-Zones-with-Reward-Scaled-DEs/first#post2990358

Short version: event rewards scale higher based on how long the event idles before completion.

It was not my idea, It was Sinope’s. I just said it can be a good idea to make people run the events.

Ronah.2869:

timmyf.1490:

@Ronah: I had an idea for making events popular and posted it on Suggestions, but sadly, I didn’t get a single response: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Revitalize-Zones-with-Reward-Scaled-DEs/first#post2990358

Short version: event rewards scale higher based on how long the event idles before completion.

It was not my idea, It was Sinope’s. I just said it can be a good idea to make people run the events.

I agree with both of you. :-)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Also please also be aware that there is a lot of judgment around Scarlet when the arc has not completed yet. I agree with many of the points being made at a foundational level but please don’t assume that the direction of the arc is understood by all just yet.

Chris

I think the point is that her story so far is less an arc and more of a line.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just to be clear by epic i am referring to more mature (in some instances), more meaningful, more relevant. Please forgive me for the use of that word it seems to have derailed the conversation somewhat.

I know we’re not necessarily supposed to be posing direct questions to you guys, but I’m curious: when delivering story content, what do you think is the appropriate mix of directly-presented content (like cut scenes), indirectly-presented content (like NPCs you can speak to for additional information), and out-of-game content (like stories on the web page)?

It seems to me that the best story bits so far are coming from out-of-game content and there is a real lack of indirectly-presented content in-game. In the original Guild Wars, you could spend hours talking to NPCs and learning about the world. That’s somewhat missing here.

In addition, the directly-presented content is often weaker than the other types EVEN THOUGH IT SHOULD HAVE A HUGE IMPACT. I read the Mad King/Bloody Prince story on the website and just kept saying, “Oh God, this should be in game. This should be a cutscene. WHY IS THIS NOT IN-GAME?!”

Instead, we got a lot of Magister Tassi (who I like as a character, btw) in a very, very short instance.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi,

Just to be clear by epic i am referring to more mature (in some instances), more meaningful, more relevant. Please forgive me for the use of that word it seems to have derailed the conversation somewhat.

Chris

Well having the Krait, an established xenophobic zealot malevolent faction, rising up to attack us is a decent idea to moving in the more mature scale of game.

I won’t speak any more of the Scarlet interaction with them, I’ve done that quite a bit.
Maybe we, the players, need some no win scenarios in some releases.
For example:
Have the Inquest move into Hylek territory and start clearing the marsh. Show on a map how certain trees and water spots are just….gone. The Hylek themselves are willing to lay down spears temporarily to get some assistance while the Inquest are willing to pay (and not use us for experiments).

Depending on how a server’s players align with the groups we could see in future releases if there’s less marsh lands, or more Hylek in former Inquest territories, or just a spot on the map where both sides annihilated each other’s forces which allows others to take over.

That could use the map altering that we’ve seen in this recent update, the features of both SouthSun and Cutthroat Politics, and give way to other ideas for future releases.

rizzo.1079:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Also please also be aware that there is a lot of judgment around Scarlet when the arc has not completed yet. I agree with many of the points being made at a foundational level but please don’t assume that the direction of the arc is understood by all just yet.

Chris

I think the point is that her story so far is less an arc and more of a line.

They keep hinting at an awesome conclusion. I wish I could go back and read the story so I know what it is thats concluding.