Guild Wars 2

Again, overall, I think phasing technology should be utilized to combat a lot of the problems we are discussing in this thread.

If today, a player decides to kick off the Living Story chain, you could install some mechanic to do so. Once that happens, the player progresses through the zone(s) during each LS until he/she arrives at the final LS.

I can see some potential problems. This person will miss out on some achievements such as closing the invasion portals during Clock Work invasion, or some of the dungeon content. But on the whole, the zone changes like Kessex, or Divinities Reach changes with the Queens Jubilee, or Frost and Flame…all of these could be handled with phasing.

This is a repost due to the original being deleted by a moderator for having formatting in it. (Apparently using the tools the forum gives you to neaten up your post so it’s easy to read and follow is against the rules.)

Looking back at scarlet I’d like to give my ideas on how you could have presented Scarlet well. I’m not the best of writers but I think this is a good outline for how you could have completely retained everything you have presently and yet still presented her in a way that would interest and appeal to players.
Prologue: Foreshadowing.

Scarlet’s npc appears 3 patches before the flame and frost in one of the Asura colleges. Every patch that follows, she appears in a different college. While she has lines and speaks to the professors, she is an NPC with no name.

Chapter 1: The flame and frost!

The final achievement for the flame and frost is to team up with the pact in a slim hope of discovering the mastermind behind this unholy alliance. Working with a priory Asura and his snazzy new invention: The snoop-a-tron 2000 (name pending) he is able to project your vision into the mists into a piece of the past and into the vision of the person setting up the pact.

You now play as scarlet as you beat down the Charr and Dredge, earning their alliance and forging the pact. But the person you play as is presented as nothing more than a placeholder shadow, there is no clear model and there is no voice. The only thing you can discern from this is that they are a engineer wielding Asuran weaponry.

Chapter 2: Aetherblade Pirates

Once Mai is captured our Asuran scholar has the idea of using his snoop-a-tron on Mai to see how the Aetherblade were formed. Once again we take the position of Scarlet as the Aetherblade are launched from their Skydocks. Hinting more about the character and their intentions based on what the npcs around you say to Scarlet. But still leaving the model a vague shadow and voice silent.

At this point we’ve not only witnessed the forming of these armies and hints that they are connected but not only that we’ve been allowed to be the very one who did it. We’re suddenly a lot more invested in seeing how this ends.
Always remember, show don’t tell.

Chapter 3: The Queen’s Jubilee

At the final event, your Asuran scholar friend drags you aside… The machine is picking up readings on it’s own. Whoever it has become attuned to is somehow nearby. Despite the danger, this opportunity is not to be wasted and you don the device again.

This time though you take the place of Scarlet as she begins faithful voyage into the madness. As you slowly get closer to the vision she sees in the eternal alchemy, the shadowy model presenting her fades away to reveal the Sylvari Scarlet. The machine overloads and you toss it aside as the game cuts to Scarlet’s dramatic stage entrance at the jubilee.

The Asura we’ve known for the last 3 chapters, gives us the low down on who she is. He is now a trustworthy source and yet not an already established hero, allowing for him to gush without going too over the top. He explains why the machine was drawn to attuning to her, she helped make it. And this ties her, full circle back to the colleges in Rata Sum.

cesmode.4257:

Are there technical difficulties to this to wihch GW2 and Phasing don’t mix? This would seem to solve your problem of content that should be temporary and content that could stay. It would also fix the problems that are in the game, such as undead in Orr still chanting Zhaitans name when he has been defeated by many.

Thoughts?

I think phasing would be the best idea. Then people could go back and experience the story themselves, it is after all our character’s story. It’s kinda strange if you just come in in the middle of it all or at the end of an arc and are praised a hero for all your deeds when you didn’t do them.

Chidori.9483:

cesmode.4257:

Are there technical difficulties to this to wihch GW2 and Phasing don’t mix? This would seem to solve your problem of content that should be temporary and content that could stay. It would also fix the problems that are in the game, such as undead in Orr still chanting Zhaitans name when he has been defeated by many.

Thoughts?

I think phasing would be the best idea. Then people could go back and experience the story themselves, it is after all our character’s story. It’s kinda strange if you just come in in the middle of it all or at the end of an arc and are praised a hero for all your deeds when you didn’t do them.

I agree, obviously Really would like to hear someone from arenanet comment on it. Blizzard really started to use it well in WOTLK, which was 5 or 6 years ago. Surely, arenanet has the know-how to do this. Whether or not it is possible given the content structure of the game(dynamic events and many public-centered content), is another story.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I think this raises an interesting question, what do you consider to be “temporary” content, and what qualifies (in your mind) as content that occurs and drives the living story forward it makes sense to have go away, vs. that which remains?

You almost said it yourself. A TV show has reruns, VCRs existed for decades, and TeVos continue that tradition. Even Youtube itself can be considered an extension of this.

Personally, I would say that instances should be perm, but not necessarily easily accessible. In addition, open world content could have a “what happened” meta-instance that people could randomly join, meet people in, and partake in some of what happened. Likely not as extensive as the original temp content, but enough to get the idea and get items from it that otherwise would be lost. Think of it like a snapshot of the past.

I say “not necessarily easily accessible.” What I mean is, unlocking the ability to do that can be earned. Like the character buys a history book of the event from an npc, but it’s incomplete. The character then goes to the places it mentions and finds relics that let them “view the past.” (Some books might be seasonal. Mad King for example.) The book analogy also fits since players can keep track of what chapters are being added. If something is Scarlet related, it could be in the “Book of Scarlet.” Stuff like the Mad King lore and achievement rewards could also be placed here.

For those advocating Phasing:

The main weakness of phased content is the further division of the playerbase. There are a lot of zones in GW2 that are barren on any but the most populated servers. If you add phases into that then you are looking at spreading population even further. Past a certain point, one questions whether there’s a point in having persistent zones at all rather than the instanced zones of GW1.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I think this raises an interesting question, what do you consider to be “temporary” content, and what qualifies (in your mind) as content that occurs and drives the living story forward it makes sense to have go away, vs. that which remains?

Could you not simply create a fractal within the fractals of the mists that relives past chapters of the plot? All the plot mechanics are already in place to allow you to relive the past. And you have the added bonus that you create more content for the players out of the history of the living story.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Or would simply having (using the TV analogy) something like TiVo that allows you to see the story you missed balance out this issue?

Transchrono Asura Gate FTW!

Edit: Bonus points if going back in time to relive content becomes a plot point and we accidentally pollute the timeline!

cesmode.4257:

Whether or not it is possible given the content structure of the game(dynamic events and many public-centered content), is another story.

Yes, the public events would be the main problem with implementing this. Due to the way they structured it not all the content may be repayable, they may have to do a “Previously on GW2” for things like the invasion where it shows a little cut scene that summarizes what happens. Then, after the invasion cut scene you could be taken to an instance (like the begin game instance, where others doing it are there) where you can fight Scarlet and she can escape before moving forward with the story.

I think phasing is a bad idea. It splits the community in small fractions. You need a separate phase for each release of the living world.

In other games it causes strange feelings to me. It felt artificial. The world was dead. I could not play with my friends since they were in a different phase.

What I would prefer is the introduction of “flashbacks” where you can experience certain moments of past releases via VO or cinematics.

Yeah—I’m not sure phasing would be a smart move. Though I’m all for the idea behind it, I’m unsure as to its effectiveness at this point in the game.

I’m still in the camp that says DEs should drive the LS. But even DEs themselves suffer from the “not permanent” problem that the present LS has. For example, the Maw in Wayfarer’s is a little silly. Same event chain every hour with no variation or explanation. No impact on the map for winning or losing. It’s as if the event never happened once it’s over. It’s the LS problem in microcosm.

Ultimately, the best means by which to make the LS believable is to introduce it through a very long chain of DEs that are actually difficult. Failing pushes it back a notch, winning pushes it forward. The motivation for the playerbase, then, is to keep pushing it forward toward the eventual conclusion. The devs have some freedom and power here—if the playerbase finishes the DEs quickly, it’s fine. You simply make sure it ends on a logical holding point (i.e. building a fortress on the captured territory).

Good examples of this being implemented (however on a much smaller scale) are the DEs in Harathi Hinterlands, and the DEs in Orr regarding the Temples.

The [replay] aspect of this form of implementation is immensely difficult, however. But there needs to be a hard decision made as to the route the Living World is going to take.

Is it 1) going to be a true, living world? Or 2) is it going to be a semi-instanced story that people experience?

I’m all for number one.

Grimthagen.6019:

For those advocating Phasing:

The main weakness of phased content is the further division of the playerbase. There are a lot of zones in GW2 that are barren on any but the most populated servers. If you add phases into that then you are looking at spreading population even further. Past a certain point, one questions whether there’s a point in having persistent zones at all rather than the instanced zones of GW1.

True, and I don’t know of a way to solve this one. And this is true for WoW as well. They have not fixed this issue yet either. But if your goal is to allow everyone the freedom to experience all content at their leisure, then its an option. It is something that can be weighed…

I took a few months off; when i come back there are so many new toys n gadgets (all fluff) that i could care less about, along with so many world events i cant keep up with or have no idea whats going on. i dont want minis, i dont want boxes o fun, dont want all this garbage that has overflowed my bank yet i dont want to get rid of in case someone there has a brainfart n decides to use it to make something….

first – stop w the wizbang toy ooooo’s and aaaaah’s, and the limited use dusts to make stuff. i dunno who came up w that idea but wow that was not a good one.

pve – add a few more hearts on every map. there are so few of them that many times when youre leveling, the next nearest heart to you on your current map is one or two levels above you, which would be ok except for the fact that you need more gear. i even found at least 2 maps that skip a level heart entirely, forcing you to go to a dif map anyway.

and most events are designed for groups of people, but many times its impossible to find a group to help you do that event so you can get to that next level or two heart for gear, forcing you to change maps and breaking the storyline. outside of the PS theres not much of one anyway, which stinks. i mean, even if you have to scale back the amount of exp we get with each heart/event that would be ok, just add more depth to the pve world.

example: when i leveled my charr guardian i tried to do all of the charr homeland before i moved on, to keep up with what was going on in the area. since im, you know, charr. but i couldnt, not enough hearts, and dont think i found one group to do any events there. so i was forced to move on from the charr homeland to the norn snow, then went bouncing around between several different maps looking for hearts i could do. and thats where the game became just another grind to get to 80. so freaking boring and not what i wanted to do.

events – scale the events to the number of people involved. regardless of your grand vision of this being an interactive social game, every map doesnt have blobs of people running around ready to take on everything at every hour. and even when there are lots of people on a map they dont necessarily want to help you.

key to these are to add more hearts first; when you do that, you give players incentive to make another toon and come back to that same map and level with it. doesnt need to be a lot on each map, maybe 2 or 3. but as is, there are some maps (like diessa plateau) i dont like, tho i want to like it because its a charr area, because i can rarely find many doable events for lack of group, and with no doable events you cant level to do the next heart for the gear you need. see the process here? theres a lack of something. which ive already mentioned.

i personally dont care about the world events. i have only done a few, and didnt really want to do them then but thought i would for crits n giggles. and many of the holiday events i simply wont do, because in the first year most of them were so buggy or time limited that they either just werent fun or i couldnt do them. and theres nothing more than toys or other garbage i cant or wont use as rewards, so it doesnt even make them worth the time.

just looks to me like this game, on release, was fine for the moment, but there was no long term planning done. everything since last winter has been done on the fly, within a few months of releasing it into the game. and just dumping tons of toys and garbage into it isnt going to distract people from the lack of actual game content.

including the ‘new map’ coming up for wvw, which will be nothing more than an attempt to distract people from the fact that its taking them 90mins-3hrs or more in queue to get into a bg they want to go to. and, from what i understand, wont even count towards your world’s score. lame. then after the 3hr queue all you have done is entered a really bad lagfest.

you seriously need to upgrade your current servers or buy new ones to stop this , these queue times and the lag are driving people with maxxed characters away.

ColinJohanson.2394:

techjunkey.8253:

Wow, a lot of content in this thread already…

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

I think this raises an interesting question, what do you consider to be “temporary” content, and what qualifies (in your mind) as content that occurs and drives the living story forward it makes sense to have go away, vs. that which remains?

There is a thin-line between content that drives the story forward, which if it lasts forever feels like the story never really progresses, vs. content that all goes away and ends up feeling like the world never actually progresses. Which releases, and more specifically what aspects of specific releases do you feel were successful balancing content that didn’t remain forever that progressed the story, while simultaneously leaving enough of a mark on the world to feel like the world is changing an evolving?

For me the original invasion of Southsun Cove was the best example of this, it had a lot of “story” style content that made sense to happen and then go away, and also left a lot of permanent experiences as a result of that storyline.

I also felt like the story content that came along with the Queens Jubilee and Clockwork Chaos did a good job of accomplishing this as well, though the outcome of the invasions don’t have enough impact on the world.

Another food for thought: Back when we invaded Southsun, we did a lot of “one time” events with the story content. Folks complained that one time wasn’t fair because they would miss it, so we extended the “story” style content so you now have 2-4 weeks to experience it. Does having it around this long take away from the sense of story progression, and make it feel like it should be permanent when it’s taken away? Or would simply having (using the TV analogy) something like TiVo that allows you to see the story you missed balance out this issue?

To me none of the LV felt like it truly impacted the WORLD. Sure zones got changed, but the world stayed the same. Just look at the current LV there is a huge tower in the middle of a lake, but the humans and centaurs still have their petty land disputes.
Scarlet’s invasions, enemies port in and stand there, no one cares that they are there or not.

You keep bringing up TV series as an example. Well currently I would compare GW2 to Dollhouse. A Joss Whedon show that failed to deliver a compelling story in its second season which let to its cancellation. It’s an apt comparison as the story flow was wrong and even though the viewers already knew some of the outcome, which was undoubtedly very interesting, they didn’t stick with it.
I feel like you seem to think you are onto the next Buffy, Stargate or Star Trek with the current format.

I think people are talking about two different things.

1. How can players go back to experience LS content they have missed
2. Having DEs drive the LS.

Well, if arenanet plans on making the LS story-driven, it does make sense that things be taken away, and areas changed and re-changed again, etc. Stories change, TV shows change. The characters change. So if this is where they want to be, then I don’t see how DEs will solve any of this.

If arenanet decided to wrap up the Scarlet story arc, and take our suggestions to make the LS more DE driven, which I am in favor of, then there will probably need to be a lot less open-world story telling. You’ll simply have new dynamic events, the narrative between NPCs will tell the story to an extent. You complete the event, and its over. Until it starts up again.

What arenanet CAN do is take the story portion of LS, and place it inside of the realm of personal story, with all the trimmings of the personal story. This may take longer to develop, but it is a necessity. Give the players the freedom to experience the STORY when they want to, and have it well told to them. Simultaneously, put in content..just content. But re-structure the way DEs work so that theres a real sense of success and failure, a real sense of player impact. If they try to link these DEs to the LS, we will wind up in the same spot that we are in now.

Stramatus.5219:

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts. I love GW2 to death, but it can’t hold a candle to GW1’s story, atmosphere, lore.

^^This is exactly how I feel.

I hope GW2 adopts that atmosphere while maintaining player cooperation (it is possible). Music that perfectly fit each zone, the epic struggle for survival against unforgiving and brutal enemies, the depth of heroes and villains (each had their own strong motivations for doing what they were doing), the humanity of Gwen as a child seemingly dying but then fighting and hating the Charr, etc.

cesmode.4257:

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.

…
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.

…
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.

I had posted something like that on the suggestions forum. My plan for the reward aspect of what I called “WvE” was letting players “Invest” with special NPCs in various areas throughout the world.

Once you invest in an area, keeping the local economy there running (by keeping it under friendly control, but also by helping supply caravans and so on) would cause a bar for that area to fill up over time. When the bar gets full, it would reset and a special NPC in the player’s personal instance would receive a reward appropriate to the area (that is, mats from mining/logging/farming areas, karma or items from other places) that the player could pick up on return. Basically, it would be a very cooperative way of getting resources, with many economic levers to adjust, and one which encourages broader travels. Gating it with the investment mechanic would prevent access to level-inappropriate rewards, and could potentially act as a small gold sink.

I don’t think it would be appropriate for Orr, barring a cleansing, but making the temple effects global could help in that regard.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I think this raises an interesting question, what do you consider to be “temporary” content, and what qualifies (in your mind) as content that occurs and drives the living story forward it makes sense to have go away, vs. that which remains?

I think there needs to be consequences for the events of the living story in order for the world to feel tangible. If someone logs into the game after not playing for a year and nothing has changed except that there is a new temporary update occurring then I think you have failed at creating a living world.

e.i. When the Tower of Nightmares update has ended there should be a ruined tower in the center of the lake. A fanatical sect of the Toxic Alliance should remain in the region and there should be an event to stop them trying to replant a new toxic seed (basically a rehashed version of the events we’re currently doing). There should also be a new heart-quest in the region replacing one of the existing ones.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I also felt like the story content that came along with the Queens Jubilee and Clockwork Chaos did a good job of accomplishing this as well, though the outcome of the invasions don’t have enough impact on the world.

I agree with this. Scarlett’s invasions don’t feel like permanent content (even though they are) because they don’t have a lasting impact on the world. In a way I think Scarlett’s invasions would have felt “more real” if they had been temporary. It seems unrealistic to have her invade a zone every four hours perpetually.

I think the balance you guys need to find is (A) What kind of content should be permanent vs. what should be temporary? (B) How frequently should permanent updates occur? i.e. one out of every 4 updates? one out of every 6? By permanent I mean things like map additions and zone revamps. Tequatl would also count, but there was not enough story in that update for it to feel like something changed in the world.

Example of LS-through-DEs

I wanted to throw out an example of what I mean from my post above.

Let’s use the present LS event in Kessex.

It starts with a invasion into all the other maps bordering Kessex. Kessex is presently inaccessible. There’s a meter of “waves” of invasions coming out of Kessex toward which every single minor-DE “wave” contributes. It’s a substantial number. One thousand waves or something of the sort. However, no one map can complete the needed number of waves. Once 200-ish are defeated in Queensdale, for example, the Toxic Alliance (or, as my buddy likes to call it, the Seafood Salad Alliance), they stop coming into Queensdale. That kind of thing.

Once the “wave” bar is filled, players gain access to Kessex. Once in Kessex, there are four outposts that need to be defended and constructed. Depending on whether or not they get overrun, the playerbase may have to re-take the territory to resume the building. In-game resources could be used to construct the bases. Certain amounts of ores and logs, etc.

Once all four bases are set up, the push toward the tower can begin. Here you could introduce the Spore Towers. They need to be cleared out of each quadrant in order to hold that quadrant. Once the four are held, assaults on the tower can begin. The tower itself could be a dungeon instance, but needs to be “defeated” a number of times to trigger the final step in the DE.

The final step could be some sort of epic-level encounter along the lines of a dragon battle, etc., depending on the storyline that’s being developed.

Now, I know the above is riddled with holes, but it’s me shooting from the hip. But that’s more or less what I have in mind when I say the LS should be driven by long-chain DEs.

videoboy.4162:

I think the Living Story has had a good base implemented in the game, for which to build upon. I know it isn’t perfect, but it is still a great start.

Some things that I think might help improve the LS are:

Map Changes – the way you started altering Kessex Hills by taking out the forest and town and adding piles of wood underwater was a great idea. If the world is allegedly changing, then we should see more of things like that. Orr, especially, needs to start improving in appearance. Perhaps starting with the parts closer to the “safe” zones?

Achievements – perhaps we could switch from the short span of Achievements, to the Meta Achievement system you’re using for WvW? I think that would give people a greater period of time to earn them, without making people feel like they had to focus on Cheevos, rather than other content.

Rewards – things like permanent harvesting nodes are great. Let’s add more worthwhile rewards. Maybe an Armor piece for the bigger Achievements, that could be saved to create a COMEPLETE (all 6 pieces, not just a stand alone piece) set over a few arcs?

Skin Wardrobe System – A lot of the rewards we’ve been able to earn so far have been skins. Unfortunately, we don’t really have a way to use them again at a later time, after earning a new skin. Is there some way to combine the PvP Locker with the Achievement System for the Achievement weapons and armor, to create a PvE locker?

Scarlet – I actually like her. However, maybe we could get a bit more info released about her to flesh her out? I mean, I’m almost positive that she’s a Dragon’s Champion (Mordremoth?) and that that is why she seems to surpass so many other NPCs in terms of ability. I’d like to know more.

All of this! I did +1, but I don’t know how seriously those are taken.

perilisk.1874:

cesmode.4257:

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.

…
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.

…
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.

I had posted something like that on the suggestions forum. My plan for the reward aspect of what I called “WvE” was letting players “Invest” with special NPCs in various areas throughout the world.

Once you invest in an area, keeping the local economy there running (by keeping it under friendly control, but also by helping supply caravans and so on) would cause a bar for that area to fill up over time. When the bar gets full, it would reset and a special NPC in the player’s personal instance would receive a reward appropriate to the area (that is, mats from mining/logging/farming areas, karma or items from other places) that the player could pick up on return. Basically, it would be a very cooperative way of getting resources, with many economic levers to adjust, and one which encourages broader travels. Gating it with the investment mechanic would prevent access to level-inappropriate rewards, and could potentially act as a small gold sink.

I don’t think it would be appropriate for Orr, barring a cleansing, but making the temple effects global could help in that regard.

Actually, thats a cool idea. I hadn’t thought about a contribitution system like that, in addition to the structure I laid out. The only problem I would see is that if Im running around a low level zone like Queensdale or Kessex, Im not sure if I would want to be rewarded with low level mats. Id press onto a higher level zone.

The object here is to allow players to play in the zones that they want to without any encouragement to go elsehwere, other than to help out a struggling zone.

Maybe take away the personal reward portion, and just allow your contributions to the zone to positively impact the friendly NPCs in a way that they can better fend for themselves, or something like that.

I definately like the idea of a contribution system here, but not sure being rewarded for zone-appropriate materials would be a good thing. Without these rewards, Im not encouraged or baited, either directly or passively, to play in a specific zone. I play where I want.

cesmode.4257:

I think people are talking about two different things.

1. How can players go back to experience LS content they have missed
2. Having DEs drive the LS.

Well, if arenanet plans on making the LS story-driven, it does make sense that things be taken away, and areas changed and re-changed again, etc. Stories change, TV shows change. The characters change. So if this is where they want to be, then I don’t see how DEs will solve any of this.

If arenanet decided to wrap up the Scarlet story arc, and take our suggestions to make the LS more DE driven, which I am in favor of, then there will probably need to be a lot less open-world story telling. You’ll simply have new dynamic events, the narrative between NPCs will tell the story to an extent. You complete the event, and its over. Until it starts up again.

What arenanet CAN do is take the story portion of LS, and place it inside of the realm of personal story, with all the trimmings of the personal story. This may take longer to develop, but it is a necessity. Give the players the freedom to experience the STORY when they want to, and have it well told to them. Simultaneously, put in content..just content. But re-structure the way DEs work so that theres a real sense of success and failure, a real sense of player impact. If they try to link these DEs to the LS, we will wind up in the same spot that we are in now.

One way to split the difference would be to implement PvE “seasons”, meaning, let the world grow and change, with time and with player involvement, but let the story end at some point, and then reset the world to do it all over again (but potentially with a longer or broader or deeper or more polished story the next time around — or for that matter, take it in a totally different direction, like an alternate universe concept).

So, they could reset, and then do the entire LW arc to date over again, on an accelerated time frame, unlocking areas based on player involvement (but with some built in delays to keep things from going out of control). If Anet wants it to be like TV, well, re-runs are a part of that.

If they did take that approach, I think it would be great to rework the entire Pact storyline to be LW content — that is, let the personal storyline end with the personal/race/Order content, and let the Pact stuff play out over a series of weeks, with new instances being unlocked as the Pact takes a stronger foothold in Orr (with settlements and waypoints not actually even existing until constructed) . Eventually, the cleansing would occur before the final dungeon is accessible, and it would actually noticeably affect Orr until the end of the season.

ColinJohanson.2394:

For me the original invasion of Southsun Cove was the best example of this, it had a lot of “story” style content that made sense to happen and then go away, and also left a lot of permanent experiences as a result of that storyline.

Southsun itself is a good example of how we can have temporary content but permanent content stay behind.
At the moment players who missed out on Canach can’t play that story element, but they can enjoy the Karhka They can at least get a look at the conditions and think Wow I missed something here

I also felt like the story content that came along with the Queens Jubilee and Clockwork Chaos did a good job of accomplishing this as well, though the outcome of the invasions don’t have enough impact on the world.

And that’s where I’m going to disagree in part with your view.
Queens Jubilee and Clockwork gave us entertaining “one shot” type of moments, but the permanent additions were lacking.
With Southsun we have an island, resources, and all sorts of evil crabs that we can enjoy.
With Crown Pavilion we have a really nice building and a exclusive section that I don’t think the gem store even sells the passes to anymore.
The Pavilion is empty like a dead mall, nothing to do. So not only did the outcome of the invasions not impact the world enough, but the new zone is dead because of no content after those “episodes” were done.

Ironically enough, even though the invasions haven’t made much of an impact they do provide something. When a new person comes in and gets jumped by the invading forces they could have that feeling of What did I miss out?!

Another food for thought: Back when we invaded Southsun, we did a lot of “one time” events with the story content. Folks complained that one time wasn’t fair because they would miss it, so we extended the “story” style content so you now have 2-4 weeks to experience it. Does having it around this long take away from the sense of story progression, and make it feel like it should be permanent when it’s taken away? Or would simply having (using the TV analogy) something like TiVo that allows you to see the story you missed balance out this issue?

Having the ability to catch up didn’t hurt the experience for me.
So when you extended to 2-4 weeks it worked out well.
I think the problem with our TV analogy is this:
*ANet’s story is trying to be deep and extensive with the writing like Lost, B5, Walking Dead, etc. Characters that grow and die, a world ever changing.

*Right now GW2’s release schedule and current toolset is built more for shows back during the I Love Lucy days. Episodes need to be seen when they are broadcasted and there’s no syndication or reruns.

*Part of the solution would be a TiVO, DVR, VCR, Rerun style of tool. Maybe historians in the Priory or various other NPCs give you the ability to play back something missed, but the rewards aren’t exactly the same as those when it first “broadcast”.
This way folks that want to completely catch up can get some satisfaction knowing they played the big moments, while those that don’t need to can just not talk to those NPCs and continue playing how they like.

That was one of my problems with GW1’s version of storytelling. Story Missions littered the map and can be easily accessed whenever with no indicator that it was in the past. If I miss Rurik I can just go back and replay the missions he was in. Everything was time-locked.

Factions and Nightfall at least gave a disclaimer that “These things happened while you weren’t around” so I could put in my mind it was a reenactment of sorts with me in the middle.

GW2 needs to have some happy middle like that. I see we have a replay ability with Jory and the tower in this release. That’s good, and one day I hope to see something like that with a Herald or Skaald talking about Braham’s beginnings which allows me to replay his instanced mission from Flame and Frost.

I got a question to Chris (and Bobby):

It seems you like the invasions, but not how they have no real impact.

Well, that is my real greif here as well. Not only the fact that they don`t really change anything in the world, aside from beeing a nice grindfest and giving gold to the people, it has no story value.

These invasions are a prime example for me, if i think about game-mechanic before story telling.

This event, which is now part of the world and you hold in high regard (appearently), just doesn`t fit right.
More so, that it is continuing.

So since they emerged i ask myself: “why does Scarlet invade?”

Even if she is crazy, she was focused on kryta in that moment. At the humans, at her capital, she build a base in the stupid arena, calling it her “funhouse”.
At the same time she run around the “globe” (yes, i will hammer this in) and appeard with her mix and match army for what? do a little dance?
It devalued her force and charcter a lot, because it just didn`t fit with the theme you were building up. it was just: BAM, Invasion, What?

I ask this question, because i fear something like this happen again. That you have the idea of an interesting mechanic, but not the capabilities to include it meaningfull into the story.
The same goes with Canach. He used bombs and mines, while beeing build up as a character with biological knowledge.
Again a really great game mechanic, but got me to scratch my head if i think about the story sourounding these things.

So. I would really like to have an answer about Scarlet (ugh, again… i know.. i am so sorry) and about what your messures are to prevent such a disconect.
Like foreshadowing capabilities of characters or story elements, so they don?`t feel loosly conected and beeing an experiment.

(I know the whole thing here is an experiment. You brainstorm, test, brainstorm again, etc and if you feel you are more or less solid, you push it out. Sometimes it works, sometimes you deliberately push it out, becuase you want to test something. I am not as naive to think that you are not still testing the waters and use every possibility to get more information. You have the right to do so. I just want you to know, that you should be a bit more carefull.)

ColinJohanson.2394:

techjunkey.8253:

Wow, a lot of content in this thread already…

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

I think this raises an interesting question, what do you consider to be “temporary” content, and what qualifies (in your mind) as content that occurs and drives the living story forward it makes sense to have go away, vs. that which remains?

There is a thin-line between content that drives the story forward, which if it lasts forever feels like the story never really progresses, vs. content that all goes away and ends up feeling like the world never actually progresses. Which releases, and more specifically what aspects of specific releases do you feel were successful balancing content that didn’t remain forever that progressed the story, while simultaneously leaving enough of a mark on the world to feel like the world is changing an evolving?

For me the original invasion of Southsun Cove was the best example of this, it had a lot of “story” style content that made sense to happen and then go away, and also left a lot of permanent experiences as a result of that storyline.

I also felt like the story content that came along with the Queens Jubilee and Clockwork Chaos did a good job of accomplishing this as well, though the outcome of the invasions don’t have enough impact on the world.

Another food for thought: Back when we invaded Southsun, we did a lot of “one time” events with the story content. Folks complained that one time wasn’t fair because they would miss it, so we extended the “story” style content so you now have 2-4 weeks to experience it. Does having it around this long take away from the sense of story progression, and make it feel like it should be permanent when it’s taken away? Or would simply having (using the TV analogy) something like TiVo that allows you to see the story you missed balance out this issue?

The main issue is that when you remove almost as much content as you put in, over time, it will make the world feel increasingly stagnant regardless of how much the world changed during that period of time, because MMOs need the feeling of growth at least as much as they need the feeling of change. Guild Wars 2 in many respects feels like it’s a year behind in development because so little of what was done in the last year expanded the world in any meaningful way.

To address your question directly, however, in my opinion, there should be two types of Living World content:

First would be the large scale stories/events that unfold in a manner similar to the F&F story and are meant to drive the story forward in a permanent way. Content coming from this branch should be integrated with the Personal Story and include a combination of new storied instances/dungeons and new explorable zones and should be mostly permanent. This should also result in upgrades to the systems behind the PS that allow new features like the ability to replay stories, read NPC biographies, have ‘trophies’ in your home instance, etc, and perhaps a new henchmen feature where you can recruit people to take into personal instances with you. You can retroactively add back the LW events from last year that are appropriate as expansions to the PS and continue from there.

Second would be a combination of holidays/festivals and the occasional one-off done in a side-story format that can be used to enhance existing lore and can exist independently of the integrated PS/LS without causing any real issues. This would include content like the Dragon Bash and could be mostly temporary or recurring.

to me the Living Story should brigde the Gap of the Personal one,sure we could have Scarlet and festivals,but now and then some thread to relate to our Story or gw1 lore bits,Dragon related,Order or Pact related,more cutscenes and content that feels like we are on an adventure,progressing our hero and not gringind achievements and mats for fluff..just my 2 cents

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Part 1

Hi All,

~snip~

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset. However the points raised around achievements being too time consuming is something that I do acknowledge and something we have already taken steps to address both in terms of overall time to complete and the nature of the repetitive achievements. We will continue to make strides in this area and are aware that the current time requirement also cuts in to the player’s ability to achieve goals in other aspects of the game.

I quite enjoy two week releases. I hope this doesn’t change. I am happy to hear that you are looking into the achievements and how much time it can take to complete them, even allowing for dailies to be included.

Another thing I hope is addressed is the actual type of achievements that are involved. I liked how Emissary Vorpp’s achievements were designed in the Clockwork Chaos release. I felt that it led you through the story and you gained important information. I also thought it was a good strategy to have it open further content when it was completed.

I would love to see a living story menu separate from the character menu and achievements menu that is laid out similar to the personal story menu and has everything written up so you can catch up on the story. I don’t mind the open world progressing (content being removed), but it seems to be a huge waste when something like a dungeon (or story instance) disappears. Can’t we keep access to these areas and just give access through an NPC or entrance with a “FLASHBACK” tag?

I’d also like to see all of the living world achievements pulled out and put into this menu (if you don’t like my idea from my other post) so that it feels like a proper, major area of the game instead of a side show.

I wish I had more time, but this baby just won’t sleep for me

For starters no more Scarlet.

This is a universe full of depth and unsolved mysteries. Why not try giving these a shot for upcoming living story chapters? I understand the goal is to not be so human centric, but there’s so many ways to do this with existing lore, rather than creating new lore.

The existing lore = the reason the 5 year wait for this game was so painful

Content wise the Living Story keeps getting better and better, the actually lore is my biggest issue. There’s so much potential set for this game, take advantage of it.

Both temporary and permanent content is a good idea. However, the emphasis feels like temporary content is ANet’s plan. Temporary content does not evolve or progress the real world; surely Scarlet’s minions would make some permanent changes in the zones they’ve invaded, for example.

I feel that ANet is largely ignoring the Living World as they tell they’re Living Story. NPC’s should be talking about Scarlet all over Tyria. Jenna and Thackery should be talking about the Nightmare Tower. Right now, the Living World isn’t living.

Septemptus.7164:

Can you give us Scarlet’s head on the plate soon?
Please.

( Half of it is a joke, only half )

After throwing the idea of raiding Scarlet’s mysterious headquarters out there, it really crystalized for me that I don’t want to kill Scarlet.

I want to embarrass her.
I want to shame her.
I want to make a fool out of her.
I want to beat her decisively.
And I want her to have to live with it.

I’d still prefer she ‘lives with it’ entirely off stage, driven into exile or maybe imprisoned by her own master for her failures if she really is a dragon-servant. Anything so I don’t have to put up with her anymore… But her DEATH is no longer on my to-do list. It would be too kind of a fate.

The best revenge is living well. The worst punishment is living badly.

brittitude.1983:

Another thing I hope is addressed is the actual type of achievements that are involved. I liked how Emissary Vorpp’s achievements were designed in the Clockwork Chaos release. I felt that it led you through the story and you gained important information. I also thought it was a good strategy to have it open further content when it was completed.

I very much agree. Vorpp’s achievement was fun, interesting, and easily doable.

Also, it wasn’t the only achievement set for that release. Two or more easily easier achievements would be better than one megalithic one.

cesmode.4257:

Actually, thats a cool idea. I hadn’t thought about a contribitution system like that, in addition to the structure I laid out. The only problem I would see is that if Im running around a low level zone like Queensdale or Kessex, Im not sure if I would want to be rewarded with low level mats. Id press onto a higher level zone.

The way I was thinking about it, outside of the initial investment, you’re just getting rewarded for it getting done, whether or not you do it, or even whether you’re logged in (but the rewards are balanced around the passive nature, and it could take 15 minutes to get a couple of mats. But multiply that across a hundred investment points, and it adds up).

Since over time most players will end up invested everywhere, it then becomes less about worrying about maintaining some specific area that gives a good reward (you can eliminate things that slow down the reward bar, but you can’t really force it to go faster), and more about keeping as many different areas cleared concurrently across the world as possible.

Sytherek.7689:

brittitude.1983:

Another thing I hope is addressed is the actual type of achievements that are involved. I liked how Emissary Vorpp’s achievements were designed in the Clockwork Chaos release. I felt that it led you through the story and you gained important information. I also thought it was a good strategy to have it open further content when it was completed.

I very much agree. Vorpp’s achievement was fun, interesting, and easily doable.

Also, it wasn’t the only achievement set for that release. Two or more easily easier achievements would be better than one megalithic one.

Am I the only one that thinks that a ‘story’ being driven by ‘achievements’ is bass ackwards?

Anthony.7219:

Sytherek.7689:

brittitude.1983:

Another thing I hope is addressed is the actual type of achievements that are involved. I liked how Emissary Vorpp’s achievements were designed in the Clockwork Chaos release. I felt that it led you through the story and you gained important information. I also thought it was a good strategy to have it open further content when it was completed.

I very much agree. Vorpp’s achievement was fun, interesting, and easily doable.

Also, it wasn’t the only achievement set for that release. Two or more easily easier achievements would be better than one megalithic one.

Am I the only one that thinks that a ‘story’ being driven by ‘achievements’ is bass ackwards?

I should have been more clear: by doing the content and following Vorpp, you completed the achievements related to him. It wasn’t meant to be the other way around. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

I think the APs should NOT drive the story, but by following the story they come naturally.

Anthony.7219:

Sytherek.7689:

brittitude.1983:

Another thing I hope is addressed is the actual type of achievements that are involved. I liked how Emissary Vorpp’s achievements were designed in the Clockwork Chaos release. I felt that it led you through the story and you gained important information. I also thought it was a good strategy to have it open further content when it was completed.

I very much agree. Vorpp’s achievement was fun, interesting, and easily doable.

Also, it wasn’t the only achievement set for that release. Two or more easily easier achievements would be better than one megalithic one.

Am I the only one that thinks that a ‘story’ being driven by ‘achievements’ is bass ackwards?

No, you are not. Achievements should flow from the story.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Another food for thought: Back when we invaded Southsun, we did a lot of “one time” events with the story content. Folks complained that one time wasn’t fair because they would miss it, so we extended the “story” style content so you now have 2-4 weeks to experience it. Does having it around this long take away from the sense of story progression, and make it feel like it should be permanent when it’s taken away? Or would simply having (using the TV analogy) something like TiVo that allows you to see the story you missed balance out this issue?

I still agree with the consensus that one-time events are not a good idea, for all of the reasons that made y’all move away from them months back.

I also think that you guys are the only ones who can determine what content should or shouldn’t remain permanent, as you know how it could affect future story arcs. But, my opinion is that as much content as possible should remain permanent so that the world does change, and that future story arcs should be what removes content, rather than it simply disappearing as a new patch arrives.

I honestly feel that the major issue with the two-week cycle is the pressure that the constant influx of achievements adds to the mix. Players feel like they need to get them all done before the content disappears, which can be psychologically painful.

So, my proposed solution would be for each two-week release to offer a limited number of achievements aligned to experiencing the story aspect of that release. An example of this would be the achievements we had for the intro and concluding Bloody Prince instances. At this point, there shouldn’t be any achievements requiring repeated participation whatsoever. For festivals, you might be able to make exceptions, but you need to find ways to present the achievement other than “carve X# pumpkins”. More on the repetitive achievements later.

Then, once that LS arc is done, and we see what content is going to remain in-game long term, give us non-time-gated achievements related to the content that is staying in the game to work toward at our own pace. This would be similar to the way Belcher’s Bluff was done. We had a few initial achievements during the arc itself, and then we got a set of permanent ones that people can now work through over the long term.

This gives people a few achievements that are time gated and related to participating in the actual LS release, but not enough to cause pressure. Then, it gives them total freedom with pursuing the permanent achievements as part of the overall game experience afterward. It also creates an immediate connection between the previous LS and the future game world.

Now, with regard to repetitive achievements, they need to be presented differently. There is a huge difference, for example, between the Marriner’s Plaques and the Master Carver achievement. One is grinding, and one is a scavenger hunt. If you put one carve-able pumpkin in each zone in the game and created a chain of clues (or bad jokes) leading the player to all of them, this would immediately reduce the feel of it being a grind. That’s just one idea. I’m sure there are lots of ways to reinvent this type of achievement.

Regarding reliving past LS content, I think you could create instance entrances where the temporary LS story content took place. These could be used for the cinematics, which I think some people would enjoy being able to re-live, they could be used for short dungeon instances like Canach’s Lair, and they could even be used for fractal-style small-scale recreations of whatever content the Living Story arc contained, in a location appropriate for that particular arc. For Tower of Nightmares, for example, there could be an instance entrance that allows a new player to participate in a flashback of a spore event. The instances would just need a banner saying “You are now reliving events as they previously occurred” (like we had in Nightfall’s initial missions) or something similar to make sure the player knows it is not current content. You could even reword the instance entry prompt to say “You are about to enter a flashback instance. Proceed?”

TL;DR: Time-gated achievements create “pressure.” The two-week LS arcs should only include a limited number of story-related achievements. More achievements can be added later based on what part of the LS arc is to remain permanent, so that players can work on the long-term achievements at their own pace. Repetitive achievements need to be presented in such a way that they are not perceived as grindy, such as scavenger hunts. Reliving past LS arcs should be possible through small-scale flashback instances located out in the game world where the LS arc actually took place.

Hello folks! What i’m about to write here is my opinion on two subjects: 1) Why many people loose interest in the LS updates/lore after a few days?And 2) A change that might get better results to keep people hooked in the game LS, and it’s Pros and Cons. Again, this is my opinion, it’s based on some information I’ve gathered over my script-writing and storytelling classes, but it’s still my opinion. My goal here is to provide Useful feedback to Arena Net for their future LS updates, story-wise!

So first topic: – Why do alot of people loose/have lost interest in the LS updates as far as the story is concerned?
- My answer would be that, first, the latest contents have either very few lore behind them or they LS updates with some lore behind them felt like they were put aside (like the Zephirites and Glint relation that never got explored or mentioned in-game) and people now just want activities so they can get Achievement points and the meta reward from those achievements. Secondly, this is caused by the fact that the LS updates are being created in a Procedural fashion.
What is Procedural you ask? It’s like a “case-of-the-week” story format that can be seen in TV shows like C.S.I. The Mentalist, House, etc; it doesn’t require you to follow every single episode. Wikipedia can give you a more in-depth knowledge about this subject at:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_drama?__hstc=162494947.567fb12f0f06ed499d03bdda3dbb1a3d.1382488354558.1383418260577.1383670467241.11&__hssc=162494947.5.1383670467241&__hsfp=1001135919]

On to the second topic: – What could be done to make the LS more appealing story-wise?
- Well, i’d suggest changing the LS formats to a more Serialized fashion. A Serial drama has a plot that, like the name says, continues to evolve from episode to episode through characters and events. Examples of this are: Game of Thrones, LOST, Battlestar Gallactica, etc.
This could get people to get “hooked” on the actual lore. However changes like, investing more heavily in the characters and events by giving them depth so they would be the driving force for the LS events and making the LS characters react more significantly to the player presence, would have to be made.

Now for the Cons this change could bring.
- Missing a LS update would be like missing one episode of a TV show (like the ones i mentioned on the previous paragraph)
- People who can’t spare the time to invest in the story would be feel left out of the loop. (Which is why i think Arena Net choose this Episodic format for the LS, however they have to realized that a majority of their player base isn’t happy with it.)

I very much believe that Arena Net choose to release the LS updates in this Procedural fashion to try and please the the most casual of casual players. Which is fine, but one thing that both A.Net and those players have to realize is: MMO is a time-consuming genre in the game industry for the players and the developers. If you don’t have time to “get invested in the story and keep up with it every two weeks” then i’d suggest Arena Net to put an NPC on the Home Instance that let’s you replay key-points of the past LS and not worry so much about the it’s initial concept of living world; it will still feel alive A.Net.
Now, everyone, including A.Net, have to realize that developers have to create appropriate content for their player base and GW2 has different player bases with different needs.
So, my suggestion is: change the LS format to a more Serialized and character-invested format. It won’t go against the Pillars of GW2, i don’t think so, no. It will help make the game more enjoyable for everyone.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I feel this needs to be said. I had posted this originaly on the Living World section but got pointed here and this is definetly a better section to post this on.

Cheers!

I think we are again guilty of all or nothing thinking.

The idea of temporary content is not really the problem. I think it can easily exist, so long as some parts become more permanent, thus creating a change in the world.

In Lost Shores, the DE’s creating everything in Southsun as we went rolling through were great. Many people, however, were unable to be there at the exact time. Why not have the event chain repeat for a day or two every few hours. Every few hours, the Karka would attach Lion’s Arch and begin the chain to go to southsun. This would allow people for an entire day or two go through and experience this content.

Once that roll out is done, however, I don’t think we can realistically expect the roll out to happen again or for any truly expanded time, like for a week or a month or anytime longer. Instead, it would now become a part of Lore and would live on there, as well as the fact that we now have access to a new area.

A few other things that have sparked my interest…..

PS Modification: To allow Orr and the rest of the world to expand and continue, the change and grow, I think once we get to Fort Trinity, instead of moving on through Orr, why not have all of the personal stories be activated from Fort Trinity and take place in their current instance? Even the Gates of Arah might need to be activated this way then. As time goes on, the new players would be able to participate in the PS and then after, they could go into Orr and see the new, changed Orr and recognize places that they visited in the corrupted version, which would be cool as well.

I really like the Idea of having skins being added to the achievements tab to be added and changed as you wish, even adding a karma cost to do it. I currently have a Gemstore skin that I like on my ele and so I don’t want to buy another cause I’ll loose my skin. If it were in the achievement tab, then I could change outfits whenever I wanted to! I’d love that.

Lore is great in this game, but it seems that Anet only does one part of the equation. Every answer should spawn more questions, and that is fine, but we need to get answers to somethings as well. right now, it feels like we are getting nothing but questions. We want to know why, not just how. We want to progress instead of just standing here scratching our heads. Case in point: With the Krait, thus far we have found out some great Lore bits with ToN and they suggest lots of things. If the Prophets return, how will the act? How with the Krait act to their return? Could the Prophets tell the Krait they have to work with the other races to regain their home depths? If they do, does this perhaps cause a civil war among the Krait? Could we end up expanding storyline to help the Krait recapture their home, thus opening up lots of all water zones?…..and that is just one potential future. Every step adds new questions, which is good, but of late we have been adding questions without answering any of the old ones. If never answered, questions get boring.

~~<@> Gany

Anthony.7219:

Sytherek.7689:

brittitude.1983:

Another thing I hope is addressed is the actual type of achievements that are involved. I liked how Emissary Vorpp’s achievements were designed in the Clockwork Chaos release. I felt that it led you through the story and you gained important information. I also thought it was a good strategy to have it open further content when it was completed.

I very much agree. Vorpp’s achievement was fun, interesting, and easily doable.

Also, it wasn’t the only achievement set for that release. Two or more easily easier achievements would be better than one megalithic one.

Am I the only one that thinks that a ‘story’ being driven by ‘achievements’ is bass ackwards?

I have to agree.

We need to stop suplementing “archievments” for “storyprogression.”

While in theory Vorps archievment were better ones, since they actually had a narrative, they were dreadfull, since you still needed to grind for 5 hours the archievements to complete it.
Furthermore, it actually blocked you from progressing the story and resuming the new activities and events that were still active from the patch before, the queens jubilee.
As long as you didn`t finished at least five invasions, you weren`t able to kick Scarlet out of the arena and enjoy the jubilee again.

the little narrative for context just felt like a bit of flavour text to play the otherwise short “clockwork chaos”.

We had the same again with the “Bloody Madness” helloween right now.
Story progession, blocked by archievments.

Archievments should enhance the experience, give you extra goals to strive for. Let you look for hidden stuff (secrets). Give you an insentive to explore the content more aside from the mainstory you are presented.

In the past, where no archievments were involved in the industrie, we made our goals ourself. We looked for hidden stuff and were excited if we found something hidden.

However the modern gaming mind is going a step backwards. Archievements took over and now work as a checklist.
I don`t mind. It has a guiding role for less versed player. For the casual.
however it should not be a neccity to enjoy content.
It should pop up while you play, giving you the tingle that you have done something right, something special.
You found a hidden room, a hidden message, or better, all of them.
You completed the backstory of the Toxic Alliance, because you finished your own little obelisc with the shards you gathered…

We aren`t quite there yet. We bounce back from good to bad archievements.

For all i can say:
- grind archievements —> bad
- story blocking archievements —> bad
- rewarding players for finding hidden stuff —> good
- for completing an the whole event —> good
- to complete a difficult secondary step —> good

They should feel natural, not “brainless”, or “just for the heck of it” because we need them.

ColinJohanson.2394:

cesmode.4257:

ColinJohanson.2394:

I think this raises an interesting question, what do you consider to be “temporary” content, and what qualifies (in your mind) as content that occurs and drives the living story forward it makes sense to have go away, vs. that which remains?

Hi Colin,
I wanted to quickly respond to this, then I will read the rest of your post. Have you guys considered using phasing? Keep the content in the game for everyone and use phasing to phase the world into the different changes that the Living Story dictates.

For people that are playing alts, if they have unlocked the last, or most current phase, of the Living Story with a previous character, they have a choice to kick off the LS from the beginning or at the current point in the story.

Are there technical difficulties to this to wihch GW2 and Phasing don’t mix? This would seem to solve your problem of content that should be temporary and content that could stay. It would also fix the problems that are in the game, such as undead in Orr still chanting Zhaitans name when he has been defeated by many.

Thoughts?

Our take on phasing, and why we never did it to begin with is: the world isn’t progressing, it’s just fake progressing for you and the person next to you isn’t seeing it progress simultaneously. One of the biggest things we wanted to accomplish with Gw2 is that the things that happen do matter, they happen for everyone, and everyone experiences them together. This is really putting the social aspect of the game and immersion, above the personal aspect.

That doesn’t make phasing wrong, but if you judge by the above pillar it makes phasing wrong for Gw2. Each design decision we make takes that into account as one of the games core pillars. When something in the open world happens, it needs to happen for everyone, and we gauge everything that way.

Edited to add: This specifically applies to experiences in the open world, and doesn’t mean we couldn’t do things like letting you see moments in time in the past, or experience living world instanced (or “phased”) moments on their own timeline.

Fair enough. Good reasons and I definately agree with them. I viewed phasing as a tool to solve the problem of a zone being outdated by the progress of the game, or fitting perfectly with living story, possibly (barring some other hurdles to cross). But if you feel that it negates the spirit of GW2, as a game where you experience things together, then thats good enough for me.

Back to the drawing board to figure out the problem of allowing folks to go back to living story content they have missed.

ColinJohanson.2394:

cesmode.4257:

ColinJohanson.2394:

I think this raises an interesting question, what do you consider to be “temporary” content, and what qualifies (in your mind) as content that occurs and drives the living story forward it makes sense to have go away, vs. that which remains?

Hi Colin,
I wanted to quickly respond to this, then I will read the rest of your post. Have you guys considered using phasing? Keep the content in the game for everyone and use phasing to phase the world into the different changes that the Living Story dictates.

For people that are playing alts, if they have unlocked the last, or most current phase, of the Living Story with a previous character, they have a choice to kick off the LS from the beginning or at the current point in the story.

Are there technical difficulties to this to wihch GW2 and Phasing don’t mix? This would seem to solve your problem of content that should be temporary and content that could stay. It would also fix the problems that are in the game, such as undead in Orr still chanting Zhaitans name when he has been defeated by many.

Thoughts?

Our take on phasing, and why we never did it to begin with is: the world isn’t progressing, it’s just fake progressing for you and the person next to you isn’t seeing it progress simultaneously. One of the biggest things we wanted to accomplish with Gw2 is that the things that happen do matter, they happen for everyone, and everyone experiences them together. This is really putting the social aspect of the game and immersion, above the personal aspect.

That doesn’t make phasing wrong, but if you judge by the above pillar it makes phasing wrong for Gw2. Each design decision we make takes that into account as one of the games core pillars. When something in the open world happens, it needs to happen for everyone, and we gauge everything that way.

Edited to add: This specifically applies to experiences in the open world, and doesn’t mean we couldn’t do things like letting you see moments in time in the past, or experience living world instanced (or “phased”) moments on their own timeline.

I have 0 problem with the open world progressing if some of the other issues are properly taken care of. Let me know what happened, let me re-live the instanced story missions, maybe the dungeons, maybe tweak the rewards system, etc.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Conner.4702:

To me none of the LV felt like it truly impacted the WORLD. Sure zones got changed, but the world stayed the same. Just look at the current LV there is a huge tower in the middle of a lake, but the humans and centaurs still have their petty land disputes..

So how would you try and solve this? And a second question is how far would you like to see the impact of say a tower in Kessex be felt content wise? The balance here is of course total volume of work for those involved, to literally have the entire world react to what’s going on would take us 6+ months to build, which at that point isn’t actually meeting our goals of a regularly changing and evolving world.

Change the dynamic events in the region to reflect whats going on. Instead of centaurs simply battling with humans, have each side switch their focus to what is going on at the center of the lake. New DEs…Humans and Centaurs are vying for resources..spin something off of that.

Touching on your second point about work volume and keeping a schedule: This is what we are all harping on. The quality of your content and story is at stake if you keep to the release schedule. If you truly want to have a world that changes seemlessly, with new content evolving and reacting to what is going on in your story, then you might just have to re-think your release schedule.

Or, and this would be a kittene to swallow and not one I am currently advocating despite my reservations on Living Story…Maybe, just maybe, living story won’t work out perfectly and you can scrap it. If we can’t find the fix to having the world react to the story, and having the characters on the map, friendly and enemy NPC, react to a big tower in the middle of the map without loads of dev time…then we are left with mediocre ties, and old ‘fueds’ between NPCs that have nothing to do with the LS.

You might just end up with trying to fit a square peg into a round hole here. It might not work. You might not be able to have your cake and eat it too, sort of thing…

cesmode.4257:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Conner.4702:

To me none of the LV felt like it truly impacted the WORLD. Sure zones got changed, but the world stayed the same. Just look at the current LV there is a huge tower in the middle of a lake, but the humans and centaurs still have their petty land disputes..

So how would you try and solve this? And a second question is how far would you like to see the impact of say a tower in Kessex be felt content wise? The balance here is of course total volume of work for those involved, to literally have the entire world react to what’s going on would take us 6+ months to build, which at that point isn’t actually meeting our goals of a regularly changing and evolving world.

Change the dynamic events in the region to reflect whats going on. Instead of centaurs simply battling with humans, have each side switch their focus to what is going on at the center of the lake. New DEs…Humans and Centaurs are vying for resources..spin something off of that.

I haven’t had a ton of time in game, but aren’t the centaurs fighting the spores when they’re nearby in this release? That’s a step in the right direction IMO.

Jaken.6801:

Anthony.7219:

Sytherek.7689:

brittitude.1983:

Another thing I hope is addressed is the actual type of achievements that are involved. I liked how Emissary Vorpp’s achievements were designed in the Clockwork Chaos release. I felt that it led you through the story and you gained important information. I also thought it was a good strategy to have it open further content when it was completed.

I very much agree. Vorpp’s achievement was fun, interesting, and easily doable.

Also, it wasn’t the only achievement set for that release. Two or more easily easier achievements would be better than one megalithic one.

Am I the only one that thinks that a ‘story’ being driven by ‘achievements’ is bass ackwards?

I have to agree.

We need to stop suplementing “archievments” for “storyprogression.”

While in theory Vorps archievment were better ones, since they actually had a narrative, they were dreadfull, since you still needed to grind for 5 hours the archievements to complete it.
Furthermore, it actually blocked you from progressing the story and resuming the new activities and events that were still active from the patch before, the queens jubilee.
As long as you didn`t finished at least five invasions, you weren`t able to kick Scarlet out of the arena and enjoy the jubilee again.

the little narrative for context just felt like a bit of flavour text to play the otherwise short “clockwork chaos”.

We had the same again with the “Bloody Madness” helloween right now.
Story progession, blocked by archievments.

Archievments should enhance the experience, give you extra goals to strive for. Let you look for hidden stuff (secrets). Give you an insentive to explore the content more aside from the mainstory you are presented.

In the past, where no archievments were involved in the industrie, we made our goals ourself. We looked for hidden stuff and were excited if we found something hidden.

However the modern gaming mind is going a step backwards. Archievements took over and now work as a checklist.
I don`t mind. It has a guiding role for less versed player. For the casual.
however it should not be a neccity to enjoy content.
It should pop up while you play, giving you the tingle that you have done something right, something special.
You found a hidden room, a hidden message, or better, all of them.
You completed the backstory of the Toxic Alliance, because you finished your own little obelisc with the shards you gathered…

We aren`t quite there yet. We bounce back from good to bad archievements.

For all i can say:
- grind archievements —> bad
- story blocking archievements --> bad
- rewarding players for finding hidden stuff —> good
- for completing an the whole event --> good
- to complete a difficult secondary step —> good

They should feel natural, not “brainless”, or “just for the heck of it” because we need them.

Completely agree with this.

cesmode.4257:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Conner.4702:

To me none of the LV felt like it truly impacted the WORLD. Sure zones got changed, but the world stayed the same. Just look at the current LV there is a huge tower in the middle of a lake, but the humans and centaurs still have their petty land disputes..

So how would you try and solve this? And a second question is how far would you like to see the impact of say a tower in Kessex be felt content wise? The balance here is of course total volume of work for those involved, to literally have the entire world react to what’s going on would take us 6+ months to build, which at that point isn’t actually meeting our goals of a regularly changing and evolving world.

Change the dynamic events in the region to reflect whats going on. Instead of centaurs simply battling with humans, have each side switch their focus to what is going on at the center of the lake. New DEs…Humans and Centaurs are vying for resources..spin something off of that.

cesmode makes sense here. I actually laughed out loud at the fact that, for all intents and purposes, the NPCs in Kessex go on with life as usual despite the presence of the Seafood Salad Alliance.

Specific to Colin’s question, I described it in this post here

Essentially, a prolonged series of DEs that push the story as they are completed server-wide.

After it’s all done, I fully expect to see the husk of the tower as a permanent installation in Kessex. Or, better yet, it being repurposed by the Seraph as a new base of sorts. That would be a living world.

I still not sure why every content has to be 2 weeks though. It should last as long as it needs to progress the story.

For eg, flame and frost was good example of building a story. It was too long, largely because the Content was so threadbare, but a 2 week schedule wpuld have been worse as it would be unbelievable that the operation was in place so quickly.

Towers is the same. The mystery of the Tower risks being quashed too soon by going in so suddenly. It needs time to develop, whether it is one month, 6 weeks, 3 months etc. In between, we could have ever changing DE chains which build up to us getting access to the Tower. All we have is the same repetitve tasks for DEs which run out of steam too soon.

The morale from my perspective is dont feel you have to stick to a rigid schedule. Play to what the story needs and the time your players need to soak it up. Build tension, build mystery. Things feel temporary because they dont have time to outlast their usefulness to the world you are building.