Guild Wars 2

Chris Whiteside.6102:

videoboy.4162:

Chris,

What do you and the other Devs think about the idea of having a static server that people are transported to for their personal story? People could play on their main server with all of their friends and participate in the LS, while still being able to complete the personal story as intended. It would also give you guys the freedom to change the world as you see fit, without being anchored down by the Personal Story.

The switch could be something simple like the NPC is the Mad King’s Labyrinth, where talking to him transports you to the Inquisition or Clocktower.

I think this is an interesting idea. Let’s flesh it out some more. Can you give me some more details around your idea?

Chris

It’s an interesting thought, but I don’t think I’m too keen on it. Why? Because the payoff isn’t worth the work – what exactly would this do to fix the issue of the LW and PS feeling narratively disjointed and creating cognitive dissonance?

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?

That depends on the content. If something is changed and just removed, a player, who missed the chapter of LS, will not see anything “living”.

There are two main cases:
A) An additional new zone – that should remain, but can be altered
B) An incident in an existing zone, that touches the Personal Story

New zones (also LS-added zones like SouthSun-Cove) are easier to use for Living Story – they can und should be altered with permanent changes – I really like the idea written in “WANTED: PIONEERS!” above.

B) is more difficult. If you alter Kessex Hills, this touches the personal story and lore. Its not logical, that Centaurs and Humans keep their conflict when such a great opponent appears. It wouldn’t be logical either, when the tower of nightmare just vanish with an game-update leaving no traces. To be consistently “living story” the LS also has to alter the existing quests nearby.

Maybe there should be “CHAPTERS” in Living Story:
1) Prearrangement/Preparation (something secretly happens, like in Kessex Hills)
2) Announcement (a event is noticed through greater chances and by the npcs)
3) Occurrence (“the invasion begins” or something like that)
4) Conclusion (an event is “finished” and has his primary consequences)

5) Long-term Effect (changing of depending zones/quests/npcs as consequences in the whole world)

Untill now, steps 1-4 are solved with Living Story and Tower of Nightmares does 1-3 much better than any other before. But I think the long-term effect is missing yet. I’m very curious to see how Kessex Hills will develop afterwards and what will happen to nightmare-tower. Even if its destroyed, things can never be the same as before. If its not destroyed, who gains this fortress?
So the whole Kessex Hills have to alter – including the surrounding countryside with its population.
(All the necessary side-effects are much easier to handle in a zone, that isn’t related with the original personal story or many existing heart-quests.)

Another part of the long-term effect is, that Living Story has to keep the greater incidents recognized in Tyria in a lore-compatible way (ingame).

For logic, you have to remove content, which finally concluded, but you must not remove all traces and the memory about it.

I have not yet formed an opinion about making the LS playable afterwards with something like a “time-machine”. I think, “Living Story” is not only about new content, but about developing a player-community-game. So this will not work, if you replay it solo. On the other hand, some content as the holiday-events is already saisonal repeated.
Well, I would predict, that someday a bestof-collection from Living-Story-Quests is available through the store.

But quests probably are not the summary of “Living Story”, as in your vision? Are they?

Nike.2631:

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.

Just as you say there are clues to be had, our sense of commitment to the story sometimes relies on the smallest of flourishes.

In this case, I think just setting all the ambient (non-event) centaurs in the zone to neutral/yellow nameplates for the duration of the event would have a powerful impact on player perception of the importance of events.

I know if I were a Dev, I’d love to see a snippet of zone-chat saying:

“Why is this Centaur just standing here? He’s not attacking…”

“Did you not see the tower in the middle of the zone? Even the Centaurs see the threat! Centaurs (&*@#^&ing HATE US, and they’re playing it cool towards us for the duration of the crisis. That is SO AWESOME.”

This is really clever. Small things would work wonders. Changing the maps grey wildlife (in ToN case making them RED and attack players under a toxic state) is another sure fire way to get players noticing.

As for events, there has to be easy solutions for integrating with existing ones on the map. Alot of events could be changed very slightly, in alot of cases adding the appropriate enemy faction for a 3 way battle would show impact. In others simply changing the factions goal of the DE another… For example, Webb could have simply be looking for new toxic heirlooms, still would have made players go, “ah cool”. For metas, simply adding one or two more links into the chain at various stages would be enough for players to feel the world as a living one.

I mean, it would be alot more amazing if a new LS focused on expanding the desires and interests of a faction that currently resides in a particular map, and you completely updated the area and presence of other factions to reflect this.. But I guess the 2 week release schedule is there for a purpose and without hiring more designers to expand the LS design cycle it is limited by time spent on each release.

Are there any other developers currently working on other projects not related to LS that will eventually bring us new zones and/or dungeons, continents?
Will we be seeing bigger updates? I know you can’t probably answer this question, but could you perhaps confirm that there are teams working on “bigger” future content not related to LS? For example the Ring Of Fire islands, Crystal Desert.

At this moment, it seems everything goes into making LS and content related to LS.

Personally, I’m not heavily invested into GW2 lore, since it seems to be totally forgotten about GW1 lore I grew to love back in the days, therefore I really don’t care about this new Scarlet and invasions etc.
What happened to Livia? Where did Gods go? Where are the Mursat. Why can’t we access Dominion Of Winds.

i agree the living story main and only FOCUS shoud be expanding the world and the idea whit pioners its realy good and in my opinion that is how i imagine that the ls will work but it end up ……. sad place .
also new zones each 2 weeks u can give 10/20 % more of the zone whit the ls and the rest of the map can be closed or u just can’t go further and each 2 weeks we somehow push the resistance on that map and ending up whit some EPIC dungeon in the end and note i hate zerging content its bad for my eyes and pc :P .
Instead of meta events that going on in the new zones make those raid’s pls i know whit not having dedicated healer class its BILION times harder to balance things and epicly hard to do raids so u have 2 options add monk’s /ritalist back for the new content that can heal i wanna play healer so bad i enjoy that in each mmo or try to make the raid more team based like positioning if u do mistake wipes and so on and boses must be HUGE i hate small boses the biger it is dosent mather how stupid he looks the more epic feeling u have in your head :P

I was quite impressed with a number of posts in this thread.

Nike.2631’s Pioneer post was particularly brilliant. It covers a lot of issues with temporary content vs lasting impact. It’d also be nice to have more titles in this game as a reward for people putting in effort (in conjunction with the Pioneer Marker idea from Nike). A lot of the best titles in the game still come from GW1 (God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals).

I also really like the following ideas:
-separating out some of the achievement points
*casual players have more time to finish the meta
*bi-weekly AP + chest etc for hardcore / grinders

-motivating players to spread out throughout the world (similar to the Global Dominance idea)
*corrupting Champions, and then giving an achievement for killing them, wasn’t the best idea due to the fact that you want to discourage the Champion trains in Queensdale and Frostgorge. Too many LW events keep people in Queensdale.
With the ToN, I adventured out for a short while to complete Global Toxic Gardener, Krait Historian, and Krait bane, but then for the remainder of the achievements I was basically in Kessex and Queensdale.

————————————————————————————————————

An issue that I would like to discuss more in future threads is the reward system vs the time and risk invested. I could apply this to anything in the game (dungeons, fractals etc for future discussions), but I’ll try make this as relevant as possible to the LW.

For bosses like Tequatl, I would suggest adding a token reward system similar to Pristine Fractal Relics, so that even when players with rubbish RNG luck only get junk greens and yellows, at least they get something worthwhile in the long run. This would be fairer than allowing 2/100 people to randomly receive some Ascended loot. I know that random “rare” drops add excitement to a game, so by all means keep the RNG loot in, but add a guaranteed reward to balance it out for other players.

Pristine Toxic Spore Samples are a decent “currency/material” with the current LW. Watchwork Sprockets didn’t really amount to anything special. There are much better skins out there.

I’m not saying a token system is the only way to reward effort, but it’s a possible way to go about it. Token systems do pose a risk of feeling “grindy,” but I’d say that grinding and farming will exist regardless. I’d prefer turning in some tokens from bosses and crazy LW events for some awesome rewards to just farming out champions or doing the same dungeons everyday. It would be Anet’s job to provide some balance between rewards that you can collect (through tokens, meta AP, etc) and rewards that you can attain from participating randomly in large scale events.

I wouldn’t call the actual items you receive tokens, but of course it would function in that sense. I would also suggest to create more than one type of token. One type should be account bound, and then the other could be bought and sold on the TP like with the Pristine Toxic Spore Samples. It goes without saying, but of course the account bound tokens should amount to better rewards than the tokens that can be bought.

I have never really enjoyed crafting in MMOs, but I know a lot of players who do. It’d be nice for me to have other ways of getting some nice gear without relying on crafting or my vast amount of gold. I can easily buy things from the TP, but that’s not very exciting.

RoyHarmon.5398:

How would you handle the differences in progress across servers?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

This is something for sure i would love you guys to discuss but not something i can comment on i am afraid in terms of straight answer.

It already happens… Allow me to direct your attention to WvWvW.

Every Server sees the events of their zone through a different lens of progress and presence. What keeps it from spiraling out of control is after a week it resets.

PIONEERS works similarly (in my head). Its a single closed zone and it has no calls into or out (like the temple/statue relationships in Orr). Because its enclosed its ok that for a time there are variations between the servers. Like we see with 1 week matches.

The Six Settlements are always secured in the same order. The end state – a new, permanent zone fully populated with hearts, vistas, PoI, skill points and DEs always resolves to the same condition. The only difference is the rate of progress. And that becomes the arena for competition between servers. Even then it’s simply friendly competition for bragging rights.

The minimum possible run-time for the campaign is 6 week. I’d be completely hands off in it’s management for probably 10 weeks. Then if there are servers still struggling I’d likely ramp down the minor events that suspend progress. Special mention has to be given to the Major events that can reverse progress – Failure costs 1 hour, but in all cases, I’d limit the event to no more than twice per day and it only launches at all if there were at least 6 hours of forward progress in the last 12 clock hours. If the minor events are bogging down progress worse than that, there is not reason to kick the Server in the junk further by making them sliding ever farther backwards. You can never take more than one step back for each six steps forward.

If after 12-16 weeks a server is still stuck, I think it could be automatically promoted to compete status, all servers are now realigned in the final state, and if Developer attention returns to that zone, its to a zone essentially uniform across all servers. Like starting a new WvWvW match. Clean reset.

And to reiterate about “the town population reflects the races on its Pioneer Marker” I would set those up as complete black boxes isolated from any other consideration. Each town will have 20 generic citizens – generic beyond the town has its own look up table for races matching the 20 player characters on the Marker. The end. They don’t talk, they don’t get involved in DEs in more than a generic way (run and hide, or similar). The don’t create an eternal nightmare for future development. They are a strictly cosmetic nod to the ‘winners’ for that town.

(And even then, I know that’s one of the most dangerous pieces of code I’d be calling for. Beady, watchful eyes on it for months to make sure it didn’t explode.)

I also wanted to say I can see a lot of existing WvW technology being used I this map during the event. Dolyak escorts, carrying supply. Helping to rebuild a town after a DE. There’s a lot of functionality that could be swiped and repurposed.

Finally, I think the many buffs WvWvW echoes out to the rest of the Server are an untapped resource in Living Story design. That was something I was drawing in with differentiating zone states in TIDES – I know harvesting crit exists as a potential buff because we get it from WvW .

I think one of the fundamental problems with the current model is an event-driven framework for emulating an evolving living world. The problem comes from the fact that it’s a bad model.

Consider the trans-continental railroad which was built in the USA in the 19th century. You can argue that it was an event and I’ll give you that one, perhaps a series of events. But, the key is that it didn’t come and go as, say, a concert would. It came, stayed, and forever changed the lives of many people. I’ll argue that that is how a living world evolves. There is continuous change, but a perception of permanence.

I think everyone agrees that an expansion satisfies the requirements of an evolved game world. A new major story emerges, new lands open up, the are new side stories, new characters, expanded old characters, etc., etc. I would really like to get away from the episodic TV, event-driven model for evolving a LW because it simply fails to model an evolving world. I would much prefer a model where the content of an expansion is delivered over time. Epic storytelling would then be possible in the context of evolutionary change that would engender anticipation rather than burn-out.

Oh, by the way… Your moderators in their insane zealotry just wiped the WANTED: PIONEERS! post and every post containing it off the thread.

And I got infraction points for it as added spice.

Evidently because I dared to use ALL CAPS in the first line as a formating tool.

Raine.1394:

I think one of the fundamental problems with the current model is an event-driven framework for emulating an evolving living world. The problem comes from the fact that it’s a bad model.

Consider, the trans-continental railroad which was built in the USA in the 19th century. You can argue that it was an event and I’ll give you that one, perhaps a series of events. But, the key is that it didn’t come and go as, say, a concert would. It came, stayed, and forever changed the lives of many people. I’ll argue that that is how a living world evolves. There is continuous change, but a perception of permanence.

I think everyone agrees that an expansion satisfies the requirements of an evolved game world. A new major story emerges, new lands open up, the are new side stories, new characters, expanded old characters, etc., etc. I would really like to get away from the episodic TV, event-driven model for evolving a LW because it simply fails to model an evolving world. I would much prefer a model where the content of an expansion is delivered over time. Epic storytelling would then be possible in the context of evolutionary change that would engender anticipation rather than burn-out.

I agree with most of this. I can’t shake the feeling that Anet is clinging to an idea that isn’t as sound as they want to believe it is. I will repeat what I said above here:

The LW should not be focused on disrupting the world, it should be focused on expanding it. I think that’s the key piece that keeps getting lost. Unite the Living World and the Personal Story into one upgraded Personal Story concept. Make new instances and dungeons permanent (including retroactively adding back ones that have been removed in some cases). Limit temporary content and alteration of existing content to special events that are disconnected from the larger plot of the game like holidays/festivals and the occasional side story.

You ultimately gain little and lose much by changing what’s in place already versus just adding on to it. I don’t see any reason why you need to dramatically alter zones or dungeons to fit with new lore instead of just opening new zones and dungeons. It really doesn’t make much sense. The narrative of the game should be expanded by Anet, but not driven by them – that should fall to the player/character. Development driving the narrative just results in players becoming disengaged from the world and losing interest in the story through a lack of immersion

Chris can we talk about World Events for a second? I want to know your opinions on the following World Event types.

1) Random Spawning Events (e.g. Scarlet’s Clockwork invasion) – Mobs are randomly spawned all over the map. The players have to go around and around in circles to close down the spawn portals.

My personal opinion is this is a wild goose chase. Players often spent more time running around aimlessly than fighting. Organization is also very difficult without Teamspeak. Commanders often waypoint without letting the players following them know.

The worst part is the countdown timers. Players often fail when they run out of time. And the mobs after their victory simply disappears and doesn’t affect the world at all.

This event is great for champion train lovers who don’t care about event completion. Lots of loots for them. But for people who hates farming, don’t care about loots and actually want to finish events, these events offers them nothing.

Without major improvements to these types of events, I don’t like these events one bit.

2) Epic Boss Events (e.g. Teq) – These events focuses on one single boss in one single location.

I personally think these events are great if we can improve the queues and spawn time. I am sure you know that most of the complains are against the long queue times. I was on TC at the time, and tbh I never got into TC main map. TC was the best PvE server and so guests floods into TC to get it done there. I was always stuck on the overflow.

I was only able to kill Teq by joining a Teq killing guild that focus on killing Teq in the overflows.

Now let’s assume the queues (and lag) are fixed. The next problem people talk a lot about is the difficulty. TBH, I don’t found Teq that hard. It is a lot easier to complete than Scarlet’s invasion imo. And for most of the event players are at least trying to complete the event, instead of running around chase portals like Scarlet’s Invasion.

Of course, champion farmers won’t be happy with the likes of Teq. There isn’t enough champs to farm, unlike Scarlet’s Invasion.

I personally really enjoyed Epic Boss Events. You guys just got to look into the queue and lag problems.

3) Whole Map Invasion (e.g. Karka invades LA) – In these events an enemy force would be invading a map. The players have to defend it.

The problem with Karka was once again queues and lag. The mobs are also all in one spot, making the lag even worst.

What you guys should do is spread out of mob spawns, so the player base are forced to spread out. The mobs should come from multiple fixed spawn points, and attack the player in waves across the whole map.

e.g. pretend this is the whole map and each box is around 5 players and mobs
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Battle_of_Kosovo_plan.png

If any mob crosses to the other side and to the player’s base camp, the players losses. So the whole battle line must be held by the players. This will force them to spread out across the whole map and hence and reduce the lag.

4) Zone by Zone Invasion (no example in game right now) – The mobs will attack the map zone by zone (a zone is a part of the whole map). They would take over one zone, settle it, before moving onto the next.

This will once again spread out the players. They would need to spread out their one singular zerg into multiple smaller zergs and led by multiple commanders to defend/attack each zone.

Tactics and planning would be very important here. The mobs might cut off players in the front if they are not careful, which would cause their health to degen each second. If prolonged, this will force the players to retreat and a lost of the zone. Of course, the players can do the same to the mobs in return.

e.g. Company of Heroes
http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/9268/advancedtacmap.png

Chris, I look forward to your opinion on these different modes of World Events.

Nike.2631:

Oh, by the way… You moderators in their insane zealotry just wiped the WANTED: PIONEERS! post and every post containing it off the thread.

And I got infraction points for it as added spice.

Evidently because I dared to use ALL CAPS in the first line as a formating tool.

What the? Chris’ post, too? Hopefully you have it saved somewhere. That was good stuff.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

videoboy.4162:

Chris,

What do you and the other Devs think about the idea of having a static server that people are transported to for their personal story? People could play on their main server with all of their friends and participate in the LS, while still being able to complete the personal story as intended. It would also give you guys the freedom to change the world as you see fit, without being anchored down by the Personal Story.

The switch could be something simple like the NPC is the Mad King’s Labyrinth, where talking to him transports you to the Inquisition or Clocktower.

I think this is an interesting idea. Let’s flesh it out some more. Can you give me some more details around your idea?

Chris

I’m not videoboy, but this just sounds like another “game mode” which is essentially a sandboxed version of the existing maps.
Like how WvWvW resets weekly, I’d say this sandboxed version (call it something like WvE) should “reset” after an extended period of time (monthly or more, maybe?), and upon reset you add in the new content, which essentially just means new and/or different battle mechanics.
As I said before, this is essentially a PvE version of WvW (except more grand in terms of what’s allowed)

BobbyStein.2315:

Shiren.9532:

Now I’ve made a kittenumption here, but doesn’t it make most sense that when planning out the Living Story a year in advance, the story dictates the content? I might have misunderstood, but if the story is to go to to Southsun or to Divinity’s Reach, shouldn’t it be because the story team said that’s the next place the story they wrote takes place? Designers can create dungeons, zerg events or rewards for any area in the game, forcing a story into content seems backwards to me.

It’s actually not as simple as that. The process for outlining a year’s worth of content involves working with a number of different teams to realize the story vision while also addressing the needs of the game. Story and gameplay need to work together, and sometimes that means doing what is best for the game as a whole and adjusting the story to make it work.

I.e. it’s not as simple as just writing a story. It’s gotta be played out well, too. From a writer’s perspective I can’t imagine having to coordinate several teams to produce a single vision for the story and its manifestation in a gameworld. So when I hear, “It’s not that easy,” I fully buy it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

This is exactly the kind of thing the Living World platform was designed to do and every evolution of it gets us one step closer. Kudos to your sir for taking the time to think about our direction and what the constraints of the platform are in its infancy and what it will be able to do moving forward.

I was going to snip your section so i could reply properly but i don’t want the context to remain, therefore….cont

Seeing Nike’s amazing idea I would also like to express an idea I had on this matter and provide a “solution” if I could call it so to people who are asking how could something like this be possible with the different servers on the way. Well i believe the answer lies not with the players but with the villains. We recently saw that Scarlet has already, in a way, influenced even the mists, since in the WvW we can see spores. So I ask if Scarlet, or perhaps, any other villain be capable to reach the mists why not be able to reach other worlds/servers, too? We all know that, in this case Scarlet, doesn’t mean well so in case the races tried to expand in other parts of the worlds trying to defeat their enemies, the ones to thwart their plans would not only be the local inhabitants but the main villains, too, who could have crossed into different worlds to “stop” expedition progress. So the different worlds separately fight against the local inhabitants but, as a “combined” try to stop the villain. So in the end the result would be determined by the way different servers, as combined force, handled the main villain and thus the expedition could either succeed or fail in all servers. I hope I made myself clear on this. Also many bravo to Nike for the excellent idea

Thank you for the kind words .

It’s a good counterpoint to me sitting here seething at having my work vandalized.

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.

In the case of this content update:

The pollen can be seen in the air all the way across the zone, and there are offshoots in all bordering zones even. Yet the only people who care about the situation are those who were added this update.

Why are there no folks hallucinating in Fort Salma? Garrenhoff? Claypool? Why do the centaurs and bandits just simply ignore the life-threatening… threat to them that’s not even a mile away?

These things break immersion. I hear you guys say something along the lines of “if we’re going to do something awesome, we don’t want to half-kitten it” (my own words but same meaning). But that is exactly what Tower of Nightmares feels. Nothing old currently feels affected by the content. It may or may not be when it’s done, but right now no one reacts but those added to react.

Not much was really needed. You could even use old VO in most cases – having civilians cough or scream in terror shouting about monsters, and attacking each other while calling them enemies. Hell, you can practically strip the VO straight from Into the Woods and it wouldn’t seem out of place.

But the only reaction we get is that NPCs – allied or not to the PC – will fight the Toxic Alliance if in aggro range.

Imagine how much more immersive the updates would feel if we get a single simple dialogue in Claypool about the giant tower seen in the distance to the south? Or how the air feels tainted? Imagine what it’d be like if the Champion Ancient Rotting Oakheart which is so close to one of the offshoot events is given a new model with new lines from an NPC talking about the Toxic Alliance’s spoors altering it? Or if we had Toxic Courtiers trying to negotiate with the Nightmare Court in Joy’s End or with the Sinister Triad? What if we could get idle dialogue between krait and NC – or krait and krait or NC and NC – about this alliance and why it was formed and what they think of it?

There is one living story complaint I have that’s only slightly related to the current conversation.

Can we please have a method/option to keep those heralds quiet? I could have nearly maxed out every current living story achievement and they still go off trying to tell me about it. And there are times when I talk with them and they’re like, “the current news? uhhh…. idk. Here’s some general info.”

My response to that, “…”

Konig Des Todes.2086:

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.

[…]

Imagine how much more immersive the updates would feel if we get a single simple dialogue in Claypool about the giant tower seen in the distance to the south? Or how the air feels tainted? Imagine what it’d be like if the Champion Ancient Rotting Oakheart which is so close to one of the offshoot events is given a new model with new lines from an NPC talking about the Toxic Alliance’s spoors altering it? Or if we had Toxic Courtiers trying to negotiate with the Nightmare Court in Joy’s End or with the Sinister Triad? What if we could get idle dialogue between krait and NC – or krait and krait or NC and NC – about this alliance and why it was formed and what they think of it?

If this is too much, at least disable the most Immersion-Breaking Events and add some dialogue options for NPCs living directly next to the zone (i.e. Fort Salma).

Jaken.6801:

Brimwald.5894:

Hey Jaken, why would you want a 6 month content release schedule?? They would lose too many players to other games. 2 weeks is great, though monthly would also be fine. This makes the players feel like the devs are constantly trying to update the game with new content. The content isn’t perfect, but it’s better than not getting new content for six months. Besides the whole company isn’t working on a single content release for two weeks; after the Halloween release that group (the holiday event team) probably started on the Wintersday content (that’s a 2 month content release).

That was not what i was implying.

I was saying that the “big content” that actually evolves the world. The big story parts, should only be released when the whole package is ready.

For that they should pull back their teams to focus on the big picture.
Right now they have four teams working at the same time on different projects under a deadline.

I never said that they should stop releasing content, but if they want to create this world changing events they should go with smaller “events” while creating a big one in the back.

The stand in releases don`t have to be massive, but should be able to advance the world and it`s narrative.

Okay, I agree with this Jaken, assuming they don’t already have another team working on the bigger stuff. I really hope this is what they are doing, and that the bigger stuff is just taking a lot more time than they thought it would.

Grimthagen.6019:

Brimwald.5894:

Hey Jaken, why would you want a 6 month content release schedule?? They would lose too many players to other games. 2 weeks is great, though monthly would also be fine. This makes the players feel like the devs are constantly trying to update the game with new content. The content isn’t perfect, but it’s better than not getting new content for six months. Besides the whole company isn’t working on a single content release for two weeks; after the Halloween release that group (the holiday event team) probably started on the Wintersday content (that’s a 2 month content release).

Most MMOs don’t release content patches much more than a few times a year. EVE Online for instance only does a Summer and a Winter release.

There are constant patches and changes and improvements between major patches, but the big ones only drop a few times a year.

There’s no reason other than philosophical that ArenaNet has to do releases at this pace.

You’re correct, most games don’t do content releases every two weeks. Most games release new content usually about 12 months apart, which is why I stop playing them because the current content alone is not enough. I usually don’t come back when the new content finally drops, or I come back and don’t play 80% of the new content.

ArenaNet is treading new ground here, and it’s obviously going to be a bit bumpy. New things always are. I am trying way more new content than every other game with the two week release schedule. I think in time we will see that this is the best method.

With two new MMOs and two new consoles coming out ArenaNet can’t let up on the gas now. This method has the possibility of giving them an edge over the competition (besides that no monthly sub thing).

SirMoogie.9263:

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).

This is pretty much exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of. I was keeping it generic and limited to a couple of specific examples in order to outline the general idea, but there’s a huge range of ways in which the PCs could influence a long-running campaign, including things that apply regardless of the opponent (training and arming NPCs, improving defenses, establishing siege weapons) and countermeasures specific to an opponent (your idea of reinforcing the floor against the dredge, looking for a way to provide infusion against Spectral Agony over an area if fighting the White Mantle). The sky’s the limit – especially if there are airships involved. :P

Nike.2631:

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.

Agreed. Part of my concern was that having improved resource nodes might encourage node farmers to want the region to stay in the Decay state. Players should have incentive to visit in either state, but since the meta-objective is to keep it in Vibrant state, the rewards for being present in Decay should be granted for making an effort to achieve a flip. Hence suggesting that Decay grant good rewards for participating in events contributing towards a flip – even if players might come to the conclusion that the map has better rewards in the Decay state, in order to benefit from those rewards they have to contribute towards flipping it back.

There’s also the element that most resource nodes are biological in nature – saplings and cooking ingredient nodes should be things that grow faster in Vibrant mode, while mineral nodes you could easily come up with justifications for them being less efficient to mine while in Decay (Are the Risen harvesting them themselves? Does the corruption extend to the minerals themselves, so ore harvested while in the Decay mode is of lower quality than ore harvested while Vibrant?)

Also, for the record, I also approve of the Settlers Wanted idea, although of course I like my own ideas for simulating a warzone too. Mind you, there’s room for both, and combinations of the two, and all sorts of things. I think the general consensus, though, is that there’s room for one-off events of a permanent nature – if the timescale they take place over is measured in days, weeks or months so that everyone gets a chance to make their mark, not at one specific time so that people who play in off-peak times never get an opportunity.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

videoboy.4162:

Chris,

What do you and the other Devs think about the idea of having a static server that people are transported to for their personal story? People could play on their main server with all of their friends and participate in the LS, while still being able to complete the personal story as intended. It would also give you guys the freedom to change the world as you see fit, without being anchored down by the Personal Story.

The switch could be something simple like the NPC is the Mad King’s Labyrinth, where talking to him transports you to the Inquisition or Clocktower.

I think this is an interesting idea. Let’s flesh it out some more. Can you give me some more details around your idea?

Chris

Hi Chris,

Well, first off, I’m not the most technologically gifted person, so hopefully I don’t make this sound super hard to accomplish. LOL

I was thinking that we could do something similar to Guild Wars 1, where you guys had a Pre-Searing and Post-Searing. However, seeing as to how Guild Wars 2 is much longer, I thought there could be a separate server for the Personal Story, that left the map unchanged.

During “regular” play, the players would play on their home server (let’s say, Ehmry Bay) and participate in Events, World Bosses, and Living Story events along with everyone else.

Then, whenever people wanted to work on their Personal Story, they could speak to an NPC in one of the cities, and be transported (along with their party) to a separate server reserved entirely for Personal Story (similar to the way WvW is done), up until Zhaitan’s defeat. Orr would remain “dead”, all the main NPCs would remain alive, etc. Whenever they were tired of doing story, they could use the NPC to go back to Ehmry to play with the rest of the server.

Then, on the Ehmry Bay server, you could move your living story forward in whatever way you choose. Your story calls for Queen Jennah the Shoeless to be assassinated? Go ahead, because she’s still alive on the Personal Story server. You want to show the results of Trahearne cleansing Orr and the Pact rebuilding? It’s cool, because it’s still dead on the PS Server.

This idea would basically server everyone. The new players have an untouched world to complete their stories in, hardcore players can finally see the fruits of their labor in map changes/expansion, and the Devs get the shackles of the PS removed to allow a greater flow of creativity.

Hopefully, I did a better job of elaborating on this idea. Any questions, just ask and I’ll try to do better.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

videoboy.4162:

Chris,

What do you and the other Devs think about the idea of having a static server that people are transported to for their personal story? People could play on their main server with all of their friends and participate in the LS, while still being able to complete the personal story as intended. It would also give you guys the freedom to change the world as you see fit, without being anchored down by the Personal Story.

The switch could be something simple like the NPC is the Mad King’s Labyrinth, where talking to him transports you to the Inquisition or Clocktower.

I think this is an interesting idea. Let’s flesh it out some more. Can you give me some more details around your idea?

Chris

I’m not videoboy either, but here are my thoughts on it (EDIT: Ninja’d by the videoboy himself, looks like. :P ):

Should, for whatever reason, the Living Story call for a change to a particular map which renders it incompatible with Personal Story instances on that map, it gets split off into the present day version and the historical version, which represents the map at the time of the relevant Personal Story instances. Depending on demand, these historical maps could be purely overflow-styled servers (to keep the population from being spread out too much between servers) or treated simply as ordinary maps with a different means of arrival where servers are concerned

Videoboy suggested transitioning via NPC, which isn’t a bad idea, but I’d propose another: Through the Personal Story tab, give players a toggle between three default states: always use historical states, always use modern states, or use a mix of historical and modern states depending on progress through the Personal Story (so, for instance, in this mode, the starter zones would switch to the modern form early in the Personal Story once the PC has done with them, but Orr would not flip until the personal story is completed). When a player enters a zone that is split, the game checks their toggle, and automatically puts them in the appropriate zone (although the player can, any time they’re not in combat, change the toggle to put themselves in the other version of the map)

Essentially, it’s kinda like phasing, especially if the player chooses the option to have the maps they’re placed in dependent on Personal Story. However, since a player always has the option to go forward or backward in time by using the ‘always modern’ or ‘always historical’ options, it doesn’t split the player base any more than a new map would – players will always have the option to jump forward or backwards in time to help each other out or revisit events that are no longer part of the present-day environment.

Another area this might help with is map completion – if map completion is tracked on the historical version of the map, that would mean that the present-day maps could be changed in ways that would otherwise significantly alter the difficulty of achieving map completion without worrying about the impact it will have on people seeking map completion.

Nike.2631:

Oh, by the way… Your moderators in their insane zealotry just wiped the WANTED: PIONEERS! post and every post containing it off the thread.

And I got infraction points for it as added spice.

Evidently because I dared to use ALL CAPS in the first line as a formating tool.

You have GOT to be kidding me. How ridiculous.

I seriously believe the moderation team should have to post under their own individual forum names to encourage some accountability for their actions, rather than allowing them to hide behind an anonymous “moderator” tag.

minbariguy.7504:

You have GOT to be kidding me. How ridiculous.

I’ve been lead to believe the matter is being corrected. The central post has been restored (if somewhat the worse for rough handling). I am hopeful the related ones will likewise be repaired.

For now it’s best to let it go as we move forward.

Einlanzer.1627:

Raine.1394:

I think one of the fundamental problems with the current model is an event-driven framework for emulating an evolving living world. The problem comes from the fact that it’s a bad model.

Consider, the trans-continental railroad which was built in the USA in the 19th century. You can argue that it was an event and I’ll give you that one, perhaps a series of events. But, the key is that it didn’t come and go as, say, a concert would. It came, stayed, and forever changed the lives of many people. I’ll argue that that is how a living world evolves. There is continuous change, but a perception of permanence.

I think everyone agrees that an expansion satisfies the requirements of an evolved game world. A new major story emerges, new lands open up, the are new side stories, new characters, expanded old characters, etc., etc. I would really like to get away from the episodic TV, event-driven model for evolving a LW because it simply fails to model an evolving world. I would much prefer a model where the content of an expansion is delivered over time. Epic storytelling would then be possible in the context of evolutionary change that would engender anticipation rather than burn-out.

I agree with most of this. I can’t shake the feeling that Anet is clinging to an idea that isn’t as sound as they want to believe it is. I will repeat what I said above here:

The LW should not be focused on disrupting the world, it should be focused on expanding it. I think that’s the key piece that keeps getting lost. Unite the Living World and the Personal Story into one upgraded Personal Story concept. Make new instances and dungeons permanent (including retroactively adding back ones that have been removed in some cases). Limit temporary content and alteration of existing content to special events that are disconnected from the larger plot of the game like holidays/festivals and the occasional side story.

You ultimately gain little and lose much by changing what’s in place already versus just adding on to it. I don’t see any reason why you need to dramatically alter zones or dungeons to fit with new lore instead of just opening new zones and dungeons. It really doesn’t make much sense. The narrative of the game should be expanded by Anet, but not driven by them – that should fall to the player/character. Development driving the narrative just results in players becoming disengaged from the world and losing interest in the story through a lack of immersion

Both these posts resonate with me. Raine’s analogy is fitting for the “temporary” LW issue. There will always be a mixture of temporary changes and permanence in a real LW, but Anet seems to be taking more of a “concert in town” approach, where once the band has finished playing, the concert hall is changed back to the way it was before, and the hardcore fans and groupies carry on out of town along with the tour. No one stays behind (the NPCs related to that LW all go). The town’s folk move on and don’t talk about it (except for the occasional nostalgic reference by players). Some garbage from the partying is left behind for cleanup duty (continuance of Scarlet invasions in random zones at a lesser frequency). I think this is fine with holiday events like Halloween, but for the rest of the LW, the pioneer concept is ideal. I hope Nike saved the text within his post.

since the topic is “living story” i wanna give some feedback regarding the current living story achievements:

many of them are too grindy.
the bad kind of grind.

especially the “kill 25 spore infested creatures” …

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?

This is an excellent question, Colin. As I see it, everybody’s going to have a different idea on what should be temporary content and what should be permanent. In my view, the following are things that should stay permanent, and how it could be accomplished:

- Story instances. Examples include Braham’s attempt to retake Cragstead from the Molten Alliance, the Queen’s Speech (during which Scarlet attempted to kidnap Jennah).
- Dungeons/Mini-dungeons. Examples include the Molten Facility, the Aetherblade Retreat and the Ascent to Madness.
- Rewards/titles linked to the above.

Story instances and dungeons could remain permanently in the world even after the Living Story has moved on, but are only accessible via a “flashback” NPC that stays in your Home Instance (or in Lion’s Arch). Players can then form a party, talk to the NPC, and choose an option like “Tell me the story of how Braham and Rox destroyed the Molten Facility”, which then launches the party into an instance where they can replay the old content. This ties in nicely with the way the Personal Story is done, which also runs alongside the open world; it’s understood by the player that the Personal Story is something that does not necessarily correlate with the current status of the open world.

At the same time, titles/rewards that were available through these old content can still be completed by players, making it easier for players who missed out to still have a chance at getting them.

The following are content that should be recurring:

- Holiday/festival content. Examples include Wintersday, Halloween and Dragon Bash.
- New maps/zones linked to specific events, such as the Crown Pavilion, the Labyrinthine Cliffs or the Super Adventure Box.
- Rewards/titles linked to the above.

Having holiday content remain year-round would just feel out of place, so I agree they need to disappear outside of season. This does not, however, mean that content from previous years can’t come back at all. I feel that Halloween 2013 was a wasted opportunity in that many activities that players looked forward to from 2012, such as Reaper’s Rumble, the scavenger hunt, or carving pumpkins, could have been brought back with a minimum of story conflict. (The biggest concern, the scavenger hunt, could again have been handled by a “flashback NPC” telling newer players what happened in previous years, then saying they could go and visit the ghosts in the open world as they’d likely returned during Halloween.)

While I personally don’t mind having areas like Labyrinthine Cliffs or the Super Adventure Box remaining available year round, I understand that, like the festivals, having them disappear for a period of time allows players to build up anticipation for them and enjoy them when they do return. As with permanent content, recurring content should allow players to complete past content for rewards/titles that they missed out on last time, the way that SAB: Back to School handled it.

Content that should not return:

- Content in the open world that alter the open world in a manner inconsistent with the Living Story’s progress. For example, after we defeated the Molten Alliance, sonic periscopes and Molten Alliance events stopped spawning in Diessa Plateau and Wayfarer Foothills. This is as it should be, as the power of the Alliance has been broken. Having periscopes continue to spawn everywhere would contradict the Living Story, not to mention proving extremely annoying to newer players. (Of course, there’s nothing stopping periscopes from spawning within specific replay instances should players opt to do them.)

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 was one of the players who complained that true “one time” events was highly unfair, and I’m very grateful that all subsequent Living Story releases have stayed away from this model. Please do not change that.

With regards to the second half of your paragraph, I believe your TiVo analogy matches up nicely with the “flashback NPC” idea I mentioned before. Like the Personal Story, it allows players to catch up with the Living Story and replay past favourites at their leisure. It doesn’t affect any players in the open world either, so it’s really the best of both worlds.

On a somewhat related note, I would like to take the opportunity to make a personal request and urge for the return of the old Twilight Arbor dungeon. Since dungeons are largely self-contained story instances, there’s really no reason why the new Aetherblade path could not coexist beside the 3 old paths. Simply give the NPC outside the dungeon a new dialogue option that reads, “We’re here in response to Lionguard Turma’s request for help.” that, when chosen, launches the party into a unique dungeon instance. This also allows the dungeon to remain valid lore-wise going forward, for once we’ve defeated Scarlet and closed her storyline, having the Lionguard constantly agitating about avenging Theo Ashford when entering Twilight Arbor would make very little sense.

This mechanic could also be expanded on to create Elite Dungeon Paths that serve as a vehicle for future dungeon upgrades, allowing you guys to create new content in old maps without removing old content.

In closing, thank you again for taking the time to listen to us and gather feedback, Colin. It’s very heartwarming to know that our concerns are being heard.

I haven’t reviewed all of the responses to this issue, though what I’ve read so far is encouraging, innovative, validating, and humanizing. I always knew a good number of people had issues with the Living Story, but the extent to which people are willing to offer carefully thought out ideas exhibits a special kind of love for the core idea behind it.

Supposing that the two week update schedule continues as part of a bid to keep players on board, a lot of other people have made points that I think most players would agree with— namely Narrative Coherence, Cause & Effect, Empathy, and Permanence.

What I generally read is an agreement that it is difficult to develop content that establishes these four elements if said content is designed as prepackaged fast food intended to be consumed and digested quickly, its packaging and legacy crumpled up and tossed away.

To solve this, someone suggested that each Living Story update should be part of a long arc. This is already the case, yet not the case. The main gripe is that Living Story updates form arcs, but these arcs seldom logically connect to one another. I imagine this as a symptom of a high-pressure update schedule combined with the rigors of coordinating multiple teams.

If the Living Story is to improve in the eyes of the players while adhering to a two-week schedule there need to be longer arcs. Instead of a month dedicated to a select story, two or even three could be set aside for the purpose. Here’s how it would work, in an 8-12 week schedule:

Phase 1 (weeks 1&2): Foreshadowing

Corresponding with the end of a previous Living Story arc, unannounced content creeps in. New NPCs, changes to the world, and so on could offer the attentive clues about what is coming down the road. We’ve already seen one notable example of this- the change to Auld Red Dwarf leading up to the beginning of the current arc. This is ‘showing, not telling’, a bit of numina that by its very existence generates some gossip. What is shown at this phase should be engineered to hint at what’s to come without giving things away.

Phase 2 (weeks 3&4): Reporting & Mobilization

Two weeks in, word is now circulating in the game itself about what is going on. The content is officially announced on the website. We become acquainted with the NPCs that will soon become important to the storyline. This shouldn’t simply consist of scavenger hunts and menial duties, as was the problem with some content in Flame & Frost. Dynamic events and combat instances here should reflect the game world’s recognition that there is a crisis that people need to mobilize for, but that there isn’t a full awareness of the crisis’ magnitude or a clear solution to it.

Phase 3 (Weeks 5&6): Epiphany

This is the critical point where the mystery unravels and a clear line is established between allies and adversaries. Many players feel like this has thus far been handled in a clumsy way- a new breed of enemy appears out of nowhere without any clear motivation. This contributes to the unflattering label of ‘Saturday Morning Villains’ . If, however, enemies arise from NPCs we have already met and talked with, perhaps even invested in, we can start to feel more involved in a struggle. This is where see just how severe the crisis really is.

Phase 4 (weeks 7 & 8 ): War

Having established allies and adversaries, hopefully with the allies at a bit of a disadvantage, this is where the players and key NPC allies frantically try to find a solution to the crisis. The intensity of the action could seem to give the enemies an advantage, making victory that much more pressing.

[cont’d in part 2]

[cont’d from part 1]

Phase 5 (weeks 9&10): Climax and Resolution

The players play a part in finding and enabling a solution to the crisis, a series of sequential events that culminate in a definitive climax. Putting the lid on a cataclysmic sequence of events shouldn’t feel like janitorial work— it should contribute to a sense of accomplishment and finality. This should be reflected by some permanent alteration to the game world.

Phase 6 (weeks 11 & 12): Epilogue

This wraps up the loose ends of the story arc, allows players to bid farewell to NPC allies, offers latecomers a chance to catch up on limited-time content, and shows a restoration of some damaged or devastated parts of the game world to their former functionality, or perhaps a new functionality. It also functions as a period where the Foreshadowing phase begins for a new, separate story arc. Because it arguably requires the least demands for new content, the epilogue also represents a period of time where the next arc can be tweaked and polished.

These ideas aren’t terribly detailed, mainly representing a strategy of sorts. In many ways this structure already resembles what already exists in the Living Story, which is why I think it can be made to work. Some might argue that a 12-week schedule is too long, but it is an alternative to the disjointed 2-4 week schedule that currently exists.

YeeHaa.3819:

[cont’d from part 1]

Phase 5 (weeks 9&10): Climax and Resolution

The players play a part in finding and enabling a solution to the crisis, a series of sequential events that culminate in a definitive climax. Putting the lid on a cataclysmic sequence of events shouldn’t feel like janitorial work— it should contribute to a sense of accomplishment and finality. This should be reflected by some permanent alteration to the game world.

Phase 6 (weeks 11 & 12): Epilogue

This wraps up the loose ends of the story arc, allows players to bid farewell to NPC allies, offers latecomers a chance to catch up on limited-time content, and shows a restoration of some damaged or devastated parts of the game world to their former functionality, or perhaps a new functionality. It also functions as a period where the Foreshadowing phase begins for a new, separate story arc. Because it arguably requires the least demands for new content, the epilogue also represents a period of time where the next arc can be tweaked and polished.

These ideas aren’t terribly detailed, mainly representing a strategy of sorts. In many ways this structure already resembles what already exists in the Living Story, which is why I think it can be made to work. Some might argue that a 12-week schedule is too long, but it is an alternative to the disjointed 2-4 week schedule that currently exists.

Thats a very intelligent way to keep players interested and also keep them log in at least every week to see whats next… Is quite similar to what happened with the tower of nightmares but in a more precise way and focused in the lore even more… In addition to that it would be good to see the actions of the players from the previous phase has an impact to the next one….

Colin / Chris / Powers that Be,

At the beginning of this thread, some thirty pages ago (my how time flies), there was a list of rules laid out to provide a framework for our discussion and to guide our expectations.

I would like to see an additional rule added~

7: So long as it serves to advance mature discussion or illustrate a creative point, the usual forum restrictions on the use of complex formatting will be suspended. This is a privilege. Do not squander it.

At its heart, this thread and the other Collaborative Discussions are about the philosophies and processes that underlie making art. For us as posters to contribute, one of our most powerful tools is to make art and use it as a demonstration of the philosophies and process we try to highlight and share.

I am a writer. I paint with words. But I also paint with rhythm, with inflection, with the visual appearance of those words on the page. This forum is equipped with POWERFUL TOOLS that help me keep one of my 1,000+ word proposals from dissolving into a monolithic unreadable wall of blah, blah, blah.

I have had one of my posts redacted (since reinstated) and my account infracted (still true) for wanting to give the best, most engaging, and most enlivening presentation of my thoughts that I could. My offense: knowing how to make a title line look better when leading into a massive proposal. My crime was using paint when talking about painting.

Please extend us a little latitude as we go forward together. You won’t be sorry you did.

Thank you

Conflict creates an interesting world. Where does conflict come from? People. If you want something to be “living” you need to have real people in conflict. But how do you do this in PvE content you ask…

Transform already existing zones into Dragon Conflict Areas (no new zones necessary…yet). These zones already have small outposts and keeps built, so the designers will not need to add to them. Turn keeps into capture points, introduce WvW siege and supply mechanics, then let the dragon minions loose.

The dragons turn people into their minions, so why not let players be the minions and work against the players trying to free the map? BUT you can’t have players from the same server working against each other since that would go against ArenaNet’s design philosophy to have players work together. So you bring in a limited number of players from the WvW match-up to be a thorn in the other server’s side. Give those players some special powers and loose them to capture points.

WIN CONDITION: Retake the map, allowing players to kill the dragon champ, and giving them access to a dungeon that they can’t otherwise access. That dungeon is a huge story dungeon that brings forth the next story arc. (of course players must continue their vigilance like the lionguard, or the map may be invaded again)

LOSE CONDITION: The map is locked out (that’s right, l-o-c-k-e-d). The dragon minions then proceed to the next map and start a huge invasion. Eventually this can lead to taking cities from players (new players would get a sliver of the city, but unless they take back both the city and the starter map they can’t access their personal story or the normal quests).

To Summarize:
-A map gets turned into a “Dragon Conflict Zone”. Insert Living Story here.
-Players must start reinforcing choke points and keeps with supply and siege.
-A small amount of players from WvW match-up come to the map as dragon minions.
-Dragon champs are locked out until the players beat back most of the minions.
-Dungeon unlocks at the end where another story moment happens.
-Losing locks the map until players can retake it.

This idea is only the start because a living world will need to change the landscape, the races that inhabit the area, the way players interact with the region and other players.

This idea also has the added benefit of being super fun.

RoyHarmon.5398:

How would you handle the differences in progress across servers?

There are two possibilities:
1. Servers are actually diffrent, and there is no reason to handle anything. It would increase longevity of the game, as you could discover new thing o each server every time.
2. Merge all servers togather and create single server with discrits.

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.

No Colin, it wasn’t so much that they missed the event itself.
It was that the reward for that event was potentially huge and they were missing out on that.

It was compounded by the event itself being around for an incredibly short period of time, yet it was riddled with bugs and connection issues. This meant that even if you were online at the time, you may not have been able to connect to the event, and if you did, it was a miserable experience because of the bugs.

If the reward had been inconsequential, people wouldn’t have felt they were missing out on much.
As it stood, because so many precursors were dished out during that event, every player who missed it felt like they’d missed out on one. Note, not a “Chance” at one. Even though it was completely random whether you’d actually get one or not, if people were prevented from experiencing that event, they believed that they would have received a precursor for certain if they’d only been able to play.

THAT’S where all the bad blood surrounding that event comes from.
Simple greed.
And that’s the game’s fault. If it really were more about content than the reward, I’m sure feedback in general would be a lot more positive.

cesmode.4257:

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…

is it though? imagine if you’re a player who took 1 year break. that puts you 24 releases back. how many players on a single server would be 24 releases back? only a handful meaning you’ll probably not see a single person ever ingame until you do all 24 releases.

Not just that but if the whole point of this exercise is so people can slow down we can expect that a big chunk of the player base will hover in the last 3 – 5 releases which means that all player base is now split into 3-5 chunks drastically reducing players for everyone to play with.

I dont think phasing is a good idea to solve this, I more agree with others who suggested making episodes replayable through some npc in the mists that way you dont segregate players.

Nike.2631:

Or, in less flowery language. I thing we could see another Southsun Cove style zone event, but by stretching it out to weeks rather than hours, you create a process where one disconnection because EVERYONE IN THE GAME is in the zone with you doesn’t crash the script.

I also think there is REAL potential in creating a rally race through a sequence of distinct stages that allows servers to compete with each other. And the guesting system ensures players can guest to other servers either to ‘peek ahead’ or lend a helping hand on servers that are struggling.

Really love this idea… you could also make it so everyone gets some content they enjoy. I mean imagine that claiming a new land would involve a bit of everyone.So we’re building the new outpost. That involves materials which gathers can get. Tools and objects like windows and doors which crafters can craft. (there would be gathers asking for a ridiculous amount of these things so lots of players would need to contribute) Combat people can have events to fend off attackers and do raids of their own to deter further raids. You could have jumping puzzles and hidden areas for explorers. Love that very much.

Ohh and taking this a step further wouldnt it be awesome if we got a sort of hall of monuments in our home instance and we’d get a little model over every outpost / zone we helped create / conquer ? Tons of potential there.

Dear Colin,

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.

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.

Thats basically true.
We really need permanent changes to the world and new maps.

Some of us know (cause out of passion we looked around) that there were a lot of maps in progress that never made to release.
http://i3.minus.com/iktSpBjeZ10NJ.jpg
This article shows around 10 maps that were or were supposed to be in development:
http://thatshaman.blogspot.com/2013/04/so-much-room-for-expansions-guide-to.html

The feeling I have is that you squeeze us in 30+ maps instead of making a real changes to existing world. (It was even worse when you forced me to go again and again through all the mini dungeons and jumping puzzles I already compleeted on some LS but thats gladly over).

Knowing that there is a base to future expanding the world makes me even more mad for months. When after more than a year you don’t even want to address the problem of constant reusing existing world that makes me feel like you don’t even care and there are people in this thread that feel that way also.
I said before explored in over 600% on my 9 characters i really need more zones. (why did you removed Bazaar map instead of removing the ship and some NPCs so we can jump around?)

Maps should have also been added to World Completion and none of the was (Southsun Cove or Bazaar map).

It would be OK if you said there will be an expansion or some kind of major patch that will have new maps in half of 2014 or something. Yet literally NO ONE want to answer why can’t the world really progress (new zones + permanent changes to existing ones).

We finally see big changes in this patch and I really hope we will see them stay forever in some way. I still love the fact that when I go for Ori Ore to Southsun I see dead Karka at the bottom of the cave. Thats really amazing for me and I want to feel like that again. Its like “I was here, I shaped this part of the world with ANet and other players” kind of feeling. Its great for me.

I said about the world progression now for the story itself.

I also agree that Southsun was great in many things. We got new place. We got a lot of new lore and fight although way to long and laggy, but was epic for me and the story had conclusion.

We have nice stories now at least half of them is decent or good for me, but we often miss a lot of lore. I know that you have everything set and there are logical ties between many things, but you do it kinda wrong. You don’t explain them well or hide key parts so they feel unattached. You forget often that for people to who play we don’t see it as TV series. I can wait for next episode for a week at best to see the conclusion.

I love Star Gate series. You should watch it. Each episode (sometimes 2 episodes) had a conclusion. Those were small one episode stories that formed great story through entire season and the seasons formed another even greater stories. Thats the way you GW2 story should be as I see it. I know it can be hard but please have it in mind. Don’t deny us outcomes and don’t make some never ending stories like Scarlet invasions that won’t ever stop… We want to see outcomes. We defended Tyria (some parts or it) and thats it (I know that it was out of need for permanent content, but I explained it in first part.)

You also tend to miss all the lore from GW1 and for me its just so grave mistake. I and many more people in here spent a lot of time in GW1. I liked it and I was so sure that I knew the world of Tyria. Now you made GW2 based on GW1, but now all the suddenly you try to make a new world?
Instead of making world that progressed from GW1 and have it’s roots in there. You tend to sever the roots and try to say it’s a new plant. Thats really sad. You could easily explan basics of lore to new players and use the sentiment of people like me for GW1 and use old lore at least 50% of the time. Instead aside from Halloween I don’t really recall any LS that based in GW1 lore. That saddens me greatly.

(Its another topic but please make exotic recrafting to ascended possible as help for us multi character users that suffer really now I will gladly write more details if you want.)

At the end I want to say I really love your work. I hope the world will expand and evolve and I hope I will be able to stay playing and have fun with you for a long time.

cesmode.4257:

Lore Book (or Story Book)

As a temporary measure, if other plans are in place to help people who have missed part of the story, could arenanet post some story pages detailing what exactly has gone on during the living story, in a story format?

It would be great and adding the option to go in as in instance mode to parts of those stories, even maps would be great way to work.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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.

How about making instance out of LS for player or party to relive it.
It could be entire zone as far as I think or you can make part of it (similar to story instance in Tower of Nightmares). You could just cut of part of the zone for an instance and allow people explore as a sample how it was. You can downscale it a bit to allow one player to kill foes (remove champ etc) if you add story instances to it it could work as “here is what you missed” remainder.

I have to add this shouldn’t be a lot of work, but it would be just great.

You can add that for everyone of make an option to run instance from achievements panel of people who people who were in there when LS was in there (meta achievement would mean you did) and those people could invite to party others and let them relive their “memories”.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I will however try be more direct in terms of our actions. Also bear in mind that i don’t make an decisions in isolation. None of us do. Therefore evolutions in design philosophy will be communicated over time.

I hope this helps?

Chris

It helps but sadly for me I hoped for another answer.
Thank you thou for your answer.

Could you please ask your colleges if you could give some detailed information to this question: What is the status of maps planned for GW2 release but didn’t go live up to now?
Here is the hint: http://thatshaman.blogspot.com/2013/04/so-much-room-for-expansions-guide-to.html

I would really like to know if those are even in progress.

Mungrul.9358:

THAT’S where all the bad blood surrounding that event comes from.
Simple greed.
And that’s the game’s fault. If it really were more about content than the reward, I’m sure feedback in general would be a lot more positive.

Ummm…no. That might be true for some people, maybe even a lot of people, but not for all people.

What upset me about the event is that I missed it, and couldn’t get a clear answer on just what the hell had happened during it. All I got (at the time, mind you) was a confused mess of answers that had me feeling very left out. Did I want the reward? Well, sure, but “missed reward” was hardly on my radar at the time. I wanted the story, I wanted to see what everyone else had seen. There’s always another chance at a reward from something else, but I was to NEVER get to be in that part of the story, and that sucked.