Guild Wars 2

Elbegast.6970:

Okay, lets say I own a farm and have saved enough grateful NPCs around the world to hire some farm hands.

Would the supplies from the farm be able to influence the world in some other way rather than just creating events?

The discussion has mentioned having the servers compete with each other, this could be another way. Additionally, if a server does a lot of farming and the veggies make it to market perhaps it could influence the living story in some way, or provide supplies for the living world to make fortifications.

That farm that keeps getting attacked by bandits in Queensdale really needs a new fence.

Elbegast.6970:

For a Living World, we need:
Seasons
Better Weather Effects
Dark Nights (no, not Christian Bale)
Purchasable Real Estate
Player Owned Shops
Player Owned Farms (for Livestock and Produce)
Fishing, Hunting & Farming Professions
Player-Generated Dynamic Events

For a Living Story, we need:
An In-Game Calendar that lists recurring festival events and distinguishes them apart from the Living Story releases.
Shorter story arcs, more zone-by-zone storytelling and less focus on larger player-funneling zerg events.

Just chiming in to say evolving seasons/weather would make me explode with joy. And also that, while the two concepts intertwine in terms of implementation, it is important to distinguish somewhat between the living ~world~ and the living ~story~ as has been done here.

I see a lot of people posting ‘persistent world’ ideas that would involve armies of enemies taking over areas if events fail.

Keep in mind that on low-population servers (I know, I know, I constantly bring this up) these events will fail more often than succeed. I saw one person who posted that if these events fail, it would make these areas more difficult content (more champions, harder fights, etc)…I think this is a bad idea for the same reason, the servers that will fail at these events are the ones that could not get enough people to do the events, if you then make areas harder after the events, you will further encourage this disparity.

The amount of players that simply “play the game” are far far more numerous than the amount of players “looking for a challenge”. This is evidenced by Tequatl. It is a ghost town on most of the servers. Those servers that have the players who are “looking for a challenge” are precisely the ones who will win the event and thus not trigger the challenging content…sure, you might have a few of those permanently switch servers to get the challenging one, but you will have far more people switching servers to go back to “easy mode”…particularly if “easy mode” has +% to mf as suggested by the OP. Why do you think most people run champs instead of fighting Teq or Karka queen.

Instead, any events or LS that changes areas for the better or worse should be done not as a single server, but as an average of servers, similar to the way the votes for Kiel were tallied. This also makes it easier on developers (single code-base to work from). So if all of the servers combined only succeeded in pushing back 40% of the advancing enemy, then yes, the area should now be filled with SCALABLE events to keep trying to push it back (if they succeed, then it will go back to normal).

Everything in LS (and in GW2 in general) should utilize the scaling abilities they already have in the game. You have no idea how difficult some of this content has been to complete on low-pop servers (my server is mid and I can see this). Believe it or not, there are actually people who cannot get achievements (like killing the lich in mad-king laby) because there simply are not enough people doing that event to succeed at it. This trend of introducing boss’s that are ridiculously over-powered even when there are only 5 people on the map has got to stop. I miss being able to do Tequatl on my own server, with my own server’s people rather than with TTS, or guesting to a high-pop server. I miss going to southsun to just roam around killing Karka’s without being annihilated in the camps which are constantly over-run by so many Karka’s that a solo player cannot even run through them without death. And like I said, Borlis Pass is considered a “mid” server….I cannot imaging how bad this is on a truly low-pop server.

SCALING must be used in LS content…and continue after the LS is over with whatever is permanently left behind. Currently the LS has made my world smaller (no longer go to southsun or SW sparkfly) because of the LS. I want a world that grows, not shrinks.

Faowri.4159:

Just chiming in to say evolving seasons/weather would make me explode with joy. And also that, while the two concepts intertwine in terms of implementation, it is important to distinguish somewhat between the living ~world~ and the living ~story~ as has been done here.

I would love to see snow in Divinity’s Reach during the winter and not so much snow and more green paths in Hoelbreak during spring and summer.
It would be a lot of work, though, but if it could be implemented at least to the major cities that would be awesome.

Regarding these discussions about Personal Story and phasing, I was thinking… “This is my story”

That is, the Personal Story has always abstractly been a retelling of the player character’s personal story, which occurred in the past, to some unmentioned audience. What if that audience became an actual entity?

Say, after the initial sequence, you flash forward to the present, and you are relaying this information to a Priory researcher, so they can archive your expertise on fighting Zhaitan to use against the other Elder Dragons.

They have developed a device that augments your ability to recall events vividly, and can record the corresponding data. However, to function, it needs some base data to work with, so you still have to head out to find people, places, and things that have a strong link to those memories (more or less corresponding to the existing instance points, but perhaps with a marker or memorial of some sort). The PS rewards would officially be given by the Priory for collecting the data for them, and therefore don’t apply to repeat plays, but you can still redo the missions if you want.

The same device could also function with sites related to past LW content, letting the player enter little instances to catch up on the story. It would be clear even in-world that these are mediated, somewhat impressionist, retellings of past events, so slight deviations from the actual LS or the current state of the world would be irrelevant.

Done this way pretty much frees the devs to unlink PS and LW, so long as PS stuff is still accessible in some form.

Elbegast.6970:

For a Living World, we need:
Seasons
Better Weather Effects
Dark Nights (no, not Christian Bale)
I second these ideas, I would LOVE a world with seasons and better weather

Purchasable Real Estate
Player Owned Shops
Player Owned Farms (for Livestock and Produce)
Fishing, Hunting & Farming Professions
I disagree with these, I hated fishing, etc in WOW. And player owned items dotting up the landscape would just be dumb…and make it much harder on the LW team since now they have to worry about knocking down JIMBOB.8564’s farm in order to have the Margonites attack that area

Player-Generated Dynamic Events
I like this idea, but not sure how it would be implemented.

I would love to see a lot more long-chain events that can be started and continued by players leading to a world-boss, so that world-boss’s can be summoned almost at will….but would require some effort. Like:

1: escort Pact to area of frostgorge >
2: help them take back their camps >
3: help them gather resources to rebuild cannons >
4: have to fight dredge who are stealing resources >
5:fighting dredge causes dredge to attack camps so defend the camps >
6:The Jotun are massing to the north >
7:fight back the waves of Jotun >
8:try to stop the ritual that will turn a Jotun leader into a champion >
9:defeat the Jotun champion>
ALL leading to:
10:The claw of Jormag has sent the damaging crystals and finally >
11:defeat the claw of Jormag….who….at the end of his fight when he is defeated… The Claw lets loose a blast-wave that destroys the pact camps and cannons….which leads back to 1:
This would make the world seem a lot less “timed” and a lot more “living” by doing the right chain of events, you could make any boss appear. And people could join in at any part of the chain. Don’t do the chain, no world boss…

Make these chains for all the world boss’s and the world would seem a lot more dynamic and give PLAYERS more control of their world. Rather than having people yelling out in map “is SB in Window?” followed by “ten minutes” you would have people yelling out “Where are we with the SB chain?” followed by “we’re at the escort of the priory into the swamp to investigate the strange portals part”. This also aids in telling a story (like why does the shadow behemoth spawn…no one I have talked to seems to know), as well as getting younger players involved (they could join in on the chain as it unfolds and not just suddenly run down after people give them a way-point). As part of the dialogue of the npc’s you could even have the world boss tie in with your over-all story.

Long chain events just seem much more “living” in my mind than having the same “clear the spiders from the trees” events happening over and over. Why do the spiders come back? does she actually go and pick the apples? etc etc.

perilisk.1874:

Regarding these discussions about Personal Story and phasing, I was thinking… “This is my story”

That is, the Personal Story has always abstractly been a retelling of the player character’s personal story, which occurred in the past, to some unmentioned audience. What if that audience became an actual entity?

Say, after the initial sequence, you flash forward to the present, and you are relaying this information to a Priory researcher, so they can archive your expertise on fighting Zhaitan to use against the other Elder Dragons.

They have developed a device that augments your ability to recall events vividly, and can record the corresponding data. However, to function, it needs some base data to work with, so you still have to head out to find people, places, and things that have a strong link to those memories (more or less corresponding to the existing instance points, but perhaps with a marker or memorial of some sort). The PS rewards would officially be given by the Priory for collecting the data for them, and therefore don’t apply to repeat plays, but you can still redo the missions if you want.

The same device could also function with sites related to past LW content, letting the player enter little instances to catch up on the story. It would be clear even in-world that these are mediated, somewhat impressionist, retellings of past events, so slight deviations from the actual LS or the current state of the world would be irrelevant.

Done this way pretty much frees the devs to unlink PS and LW, so long as PS stuff is still accessible in some form.

I LOVE this idea.

Elbegast.6970:

Seras.5702:

Elbegast.6970:

For a Living World, we need:
Seasons
Better Weather Effects
Dark Nights (no, not Christian Bale)

• yes to the above *

Purchasable Real Estate
Player Owned Shops
Player Owned Farms (for Livestock and Produce)
Fishing, Hunting & Farming Professions

• no to the above. this isn’t The Sims or an RTS *

Player-Generated Dynamic Events

• explain *

For the Player-Generated Dynamic Events, for example:

Okay, lets say I own a farm and have saved enough grateful NPCs around the world to hire some farm hands. How would my goods get to market?

From a drop-down menu or from a quick chat with my Farm Boss NPC, I send out some pack Dolyaks to carry my goods to town. This would start a scripted dynamic event. Other players could jump right in and help guard my caravan. If the goods make it to town, I get gold and the players get a standard reward of karma, xp, gold, random chest, etc. If the event fails, they get a little xp and I lose my goods to bandits.

^^This is THE answer to living world content (not living story). These player-generated dynamic events give the players a stake in how the event turns out.

To add on this I say remove the idea of player housing and create guild keeps within the zones (limit each zone to ~4). The guilds need to build the keeps using these player-generated dynamic events, but it takes time and significant resources, and you only build a little at a time (it could take a year to get close to the size of Vigil Keep). Meanwhile they get attacked by dynamic event chains (making it hard to build because things keep getting destroyed).

This also paves the way for…wait for it…GUILD WARS (can you have guilds warring in a game called Guild Wars 2?). You will need Specific siege times two nights a week where guilds can fight each other (no constant WvW war here), and smaller guilds can choose to ally with one of the large guilds on the map, stealing supplies, destroying the enemy keep, farms, etc. The goal is for a guild to get dominance of the map, so they can control the map, resources, whatever.

But even if you don’t like the guild battles idea, you can definitely do the player-generated Elbegast mentioned in some way.

BobbyStein.2315:

Einlanzer.1627:

Elbegast.6970:

For a Living World, we need:
Seasons
Better Weather Effects
Dark Nights (no, not Christian Bale)
Purchasable Real Estate
Player Owned Shops
Player Owned Farms (for Livestock and Produce)
Fishing, Hunting & Farming Professions
Player-Generated Dynamic Events

For a Living Story, we need:
An In-Game Calendar that lists recurring festival events and distinguishes them apart from the Living Story releases.
Shorter story arcs, more zone-by-zone storytelling and less focus on larger player-funneling zerg events.

I’m a fan of this post. This can all happen in conjunction with larger lore/world updates that are merged with the Personal Story and focused on expanding the world with new content rather than changing or disrupting it through alterations to existing content.

Yeah, these are some interesting ideas.

I’m really happy to see a positive response to that, because I think one of the best things you could do studio-wide to promote the feeling of a truly living world is to add more opportunities for player investment on a personal level. Things like housing, player-generated content, non-combat activities that require some involvement (fishing and farming/gardening) and the like are all things that have made me feel in other MMOs as though my character is really part of a world.

GW2 is, at present, a very combat-oriented game. That works well for people who are primarily interested in that sort of content, but I believe that a wider range of involved, expressive social activities would provide a great deal of needed depth and give players more variety in long-term goals.

As an example, crafting in GW2 is designed to be convenient, and it accomplishes that wonderfully. It’s important for it to be convenient, because it’s a necessary part of high-end gearing; if you want Ascended weapons or a Legendary, you need to level crafting. This puts crafting in a difficult place, because making it more complex or involved to increase the appeal for people who love crafting risks making it frustrating and annoying for people who don’t love crafting, but need to do it to get the gear they want. In contrast, activities like fishing and farming in other MMOs are often regarded as downtime hobbies rather than a necessary means to an end. By adding that sort of thing you would have the opportunity to layer in things that appeal to the “builder” class of players—people who gravitate toward activities like cultivating, pet raising, collecting and decorating—without disrupting the previously-established convenience of combat-crossover systems.

The key in this scenario, I think, would be to set out to design those new systems with the builder players in mind, and not to attempt to make them palatable or compulsory for people who simply don’t enjoy that type of play (very combat-oriented players often refer to fishing as “grindy” or “boring” in other MMOs, for example).

I hope that this isn’t too far off topic, but I strongly believe that creating niches and welcoming spaces for the builders, cultivators and roleplayers (the social class of player, essentially) would be extremely valuable in creating the feeling of a living world. They’re the people who will be there in the quiet spaces when nothing is attacking and we’re waiting on the next update. The election was an attempt to let players make their mark, but I think allowing people to do that on a more intimate scale is really key to keeping the world alive. That’s the sort of depth I’d love to see added to the core game.

It might sound strange, but recent 3DS games like Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Pokemon X and Y may be great places to look for inspiration. Some players will deride those as kiddie games and fluff, but they’re very popular with the type of gamer who delights in constructive activities and who will test a game thoroughly to see where it responds to their attempts to interact in positive ways. X and Y in particular earned great praise for the way the games reward players for exploration and emotional investment in their digital fluffballs.

It’s a personal opinion, but I’m just so against things like player housing and farms and fishing in a game like GW2. Just because it’s a Living World doesn’t mean we have to do all the menial things in the world. I’m supposed to be a hero, a slayer of beasts, defender of Tyria, commander of the Pact…and I’m going to manage a farm??!? I don’t want to be a shop keeper or farmer or zookeeper or fisherman. Am I retired? What’s next? Laundering my armor? Vacuuming my player housing? Entertaining small parties with hors d’oeuvres?

Personalization of the Home Instance is fine, if it shows my progression as a hero. But I don’t want to manage shops or go to market. That’s not what this game is about to me.

As for Player Initiated Events (PIE), I’m all for it. But I’d rather them be adventure based rather than defending a market-bound cart of radishes I grew. Can’t I challenge new hunters to a great hunt? Or spread the tale of a lurking evil in a cave? Or challenge others to a contest of _.

Moshari.8570:

I see a lot of people posting ‘persistent world’ ideas that would involve armies of enemies taking over areas if events fail.

Keep in mind that on low-population servers (I know, I know, I constantly bring this up) these events will fail more often than succeed. I saw one person who posted that if these events fail, it would make these areas more difficult content (more champions, harder fights, etc)…I think this is a bad idea for the same reason, the servers that will fail at these events are the ones that could not get enough people to do the events, if you then make areas harder after the events, you will further encourage this disparity.

The amount of players that simply “play the game” are far far more numerous than the amount of players “looking for a challenge”. This is evidenced by Tequatl. It is a ghost town on most of the servers. Those servers that have the players who are “looking for a challenge” are precisely the ones who will win the event and thus not trigger the challenging content…sure, you might have a few of those permanently switch servers to get the challenging one, but you will have far more people switching servers to go back to “easy mode”…particularly if “easy mode” has +% to mf as suggested by the OP. Why do you think most people run champs instead of fighting Teq or Karka queen.

Instead, any events or LS that changes areas for the better or worse should be done not as a single server, but as an average of servers, similar to the way the votes for Kiel were tallied. This also makes it easier on developers (single code-base to work from). So if all of the servers combined only succeeded in pushing back 40% of the advancing enemy, then yes, the area should now be filled with SCALABLE events to keep trying to push it back (if they succeed, then it will go back to normal).

Everything in LS (and in GW2 in general) should utilize the scaling abilities they already have in the game. You have no idea how difficult some of this content has been to complete on low-pop servers (my server is mid and I can see this). Believe it or not, there are actually people who cannot get achievements (like killing the lich in mad-king laby) because there simply are not enough people doing that event to succeed at it. This trend of introducing boss’s that are ridiculously over-powered even when there are only 5 people on the map has got to stop. I miss being able to do Tequatl on my own server, with my own server’s people rather than with TTS, or guesting to a high-pop server. I miss going to southsun to just roam around killing Karka’s without being annihilated in the camps which are constantly over-run by so many Karka’s that a solo player cannot even run through them without death. And like I said, Borlis Pass is considered a “mid” server….I cannot imaging how bad this is on a truly low-pop server.

SCALING must be used in LS content…and continue after the LS is over with whatever is permanently left behind. Currently the LS has made my world smaller (no longer go to southsun or SW sparkfly) because of the LS. I want a world that grows, not shrinks.

The solution is to improve the scaling that is already in the game. Low pop servers will need scaled down mobs and mob sizes, so even small servers can succeed (but still be able to fail). They could also scale up the ally NPCs on low pop servers. I still think fail conditions and consequences are crucial to a living world.

P.S. guest on a high pop server to kill the Laby Champs.

Seras.5702:

It’s a personal opinion, but I’m just so against things like player housing and farms and fishing in a game like GW2. Just because it’s a Living World doesn’t mean we have to do all the menial things in the world. I’m supposed to be a hero, a slayer of beasts, defender of Tyria, commander of the Pact…and I’m going to manage a farm??!? I don’t want to be a shop keeper or farmer or zookeeper or fisherman. Am I retired? What’s next? Laundering my armor? Vacuuming my player housing? Entertaining small parties with hors d’oeuvres?

Personalization of the Home Instance is fine, if it shows my progression as a hero. But I don’t want to manage shops or go to market. That’s not what this game is about to me.

As for Player Initiated Events (PIE), I’m all for it. But I’d rather them be adventure based rather than defending a market-bound cart of radishes I grew. Can’t I challenge new hunters to a great hunt? Or spread the tale of a lurking evil in a cave? Or challenge others to a contest of _.

Just because that stuff is in the game doesn’t mean you are forced to do it. It just helps build a simulation style world which a lot of people really enjoy having in addition to being a hero within that world.

To be honest, right until the Scarlet introduction, I was okay with what the game has to offer. You have some stories about the interaction with the South Sun, the exploration of the Zephyr Sanctum, the evolving story with the charrs, norns, and the lion guards from the South Sun, etc. With Scarlet’s introduction, she brought in the Invasion Event and I think its potential is wasted for the likes of her. If anything, you guys could have made this with the Elder Dragons rather than pigeonholing that lore breaking sylvari into the event. The game also felt less immersive when the yellow text pop up saying that the Invasion is happening in X location while I was doing something like WvW or Fractal.

And while we are talking about the Living Story, for the love of god, stop making it a Scarlet Story. The Living Story stop feeling like a Living Story and more about a Saturday Morning Cartoon with Scarlet as the Villain. You guys could have use the Living Story to expand so many stuff that is already place ingame. You could have use it to tell a story about the Ebonhawke and focus on the Separatists/Charr Renegade plot and if the treaty was successful, you could have a gate to Lion’s Arch open in Ebonhawke. You could have expanded on the Centaurs in the Harathi Hinterlands and you could go as far as adding a dungeon there when you defeat Ulgoth in the final event. You could have expanded the history of the disappearance of the Dinosaurs in the Tarnished Coast and we get to discover how something as big as a T-Rex disappear after 250 years. You could explore the ruins of the Dwarf in the Shiverpeaks and learn about their whereabouts.

I could go on and on with what potential the Living Story have to offer in regards to telling a story with the base content provided by Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2. Tequatl, Zephyr Sanctum, South Sun, and the Holiday events was the right direction in this regard and I hope that it would come to your sense that the Scarlet Story should stop for the sake of it.

BobbyStein.2315:

Einlanzer.1627:

Elbegast.6970:

For a Living World, we need:
Seasons
Better Weather Effects
Dark Nights (no, not Christian Bale)
Purchasable Real Estate
Player Owned Shops
Player Owned Farms (for Livestock and Produce)
Fishing, Hunting & Farming Professions
Player-Generated Dynamic Events

For a Living Story, we need:
An In-Game Calendar that lists recurring festival events and distinguishes them apart from the Living Story releases.
Shorter story arcs, more zone-by-zone storytelling and less focus on larger player-funneling zerg events.

I’m a fan of this post. This can all happen in conjunction with larger lore/world updates that are merged with the Personal Story and focused on expanding the world with new content rather than changing or disrupting it through alterations to existing content.

Yeah, these are some interesting ideas.

I’m also a fan of the above post regarding ‘traditional’ open world systems (darker nights and weather related content is a big yes from me but ESPECIALLY sandbox features!!!!!) and I wanted to ask a fairly important question to you Bobby and your colleagues.

What are your thoughts on introducing more sandbox features into the living world? Is it something you are against or do you plan on looking into it once more pressing issues surrounding the LS are dealt with?

I think its very hard to play puppet master with a theme park game and succeed in creating a living, breathing, dynamic virtual world that people love to explore. Even the best D&D dms admit their own limitations in comparison to the group purely interacting, after all.
Look at EVE, or star wars galaxies (preNGE ofc). The reason why they have a dynamic sense of freedom is because the game merely provides tools for the players to create stories from. I think that philosophy can be utilised here as well, even if its just to expand the economy and endgame.

Seras.5702:

It’s a personal opinion, but I’m just so against things like player housing and farms and fishing in a game like GW2. Just because it’s a Living World doesn’t mean we have to do all the menial things in the world. I’m supposed to be a hero, a slayer of beasts, defender of Tyria, commander of the Pact…and I’m going to manage a farm??!? I don’t want to be a shop keeper or farmer or zookeeper or fisherman. Am I retired? What’s next? Laundering my armor? Vacuuming my player housing? Entertaining small parties with hors d’oeuvres?

Personalization of the Home Instance is fine, if it shows my progression as a hero. But I don’t want to manage shops or go to market. That’s not what this game is about to me.

As for Player Initiated Events (PIE), I’m all for it. But I’d rather them be adventure based rather than defending a market-bound cart of radishes I grew. Can’t I challenge new hunters to a great hunt? Or spread the tale of a lurking evil in a cave? Or challenge others to a contest of _.

This is a good example of how different activities appeal to different types of players. The goal of the sort of thing I outlined in my previous post would be to provide a range of gameplay types; even if they don’t appeal to you personally, they appeal to others. When you and other players with your taste in gameplay are between dragons to slay and wrongs to right and you take a break from the game for a few days, the people who do enjoy “menial things” might find the downtime enjoyable instead of boring because they always have things to tinker with. This keeps the activity level of players in the game relatively high instead of rolling in and out in waves without the developers needing to frantically push out content even faster than they do now.

Appealing to different types of players is an investment in the game’s health. I have little to no interest in sPvP, but I recognize that resources put into it to make people happy with it and keep them playing are not wasted.

Moshari.8570:

Elbegast.6970:

For a Living World, we need:
Seasons
Better Weather Effects
Dark Nights (no, not Christian Bale)
I second these ideas, I would LOVE a world with seasons and better weather

Purchasable Real Estate
Player Owned Shops
Player Owned Farms (for Livestock and Produce)
Fishing, Hunting & Farming Professions
I disagree with these, I hated fishing, etc in WOW. And player owned items dotting up the landscape would just be dumb…and make it much harder on the LW team since now they have to worry about knocking down JIMBOB.8564’s farm in order to have the Margonites attack that area

Player-Generated Dynamic Events
I like this idea, but not sure how it would be implemented.

I would love to see a lot more long-chain events that can be started and continued by players leading to a world-boss, so that world-boss’s can be summoned almost at will….but would require some effort. Like:

1: escort Pact to area of frostgorge >
2: help them take back their camps >
3: help them gather resources to rebuild cannons >
4: have to fight dredge who are stealing resources >
5:fighting dredge causes dredge to attack camps so defend the camps >
6:The Jotun are massing to the north >
7:fight back the waves of Jotun >
8:try to stop the ritual that will turn a Jotun leader into a champion >
9:defeat the Jotun champion>
ALL leading to:
10:The claw of Jormag has sent the damaging crystals and finally >
11:defeat the claw of Jormag….who….at the end of his fight when he is defeated… The Claw lets loose a blast-wave that destroys the pact camps and cannons….which leads back to 1:
This would make the world seem a lot less “timed” and a lot more “living” by doing the right chain of events, you could make any boss appear. And people could join in at any part of the chain. Don’t do the chain, no world boss…

Make these chains for all the world boss’s and the world would seem a lot more dynamic and give PLAYERS more control of their world. Rather than having people yelling out in map “is SB in Window?” followed by “ten minutes” you would have people yelling out “Where are we with the SB chain?” followed by “we’re at the escort of the priory into the swamp to investigate the strange portals part”. This also aids in telling a story (like why does the shadow behemoth spawn…no one I have talked to seems to know), as well as getting younger players involved (they could join in on the chain as it unfolds and not just suddenly run down after people give them a way-point). As part of the dialogue of the npc’s you could even have the world boss tie in with your over-all story.

Long chain events just seem much more “living” in my mind than having the same “clear the spiders from the trees” events happening over and over. Why do the spiders come back? does she actually go and pick the apples? etc etc.

I LOOOOVE this idea! Both longer chains of dynamic events, and giving players more control of the world at the same time! This is what I love about some of the events in Wayfarer ’s Foothills (like the World Boss event chain there), because it usually starts out with just a couple people at the kick-off NPC, but by the end of the chain enough people have gathered for the finale.

I also think it’s great that these kinds of chains start out as regular dynamic events (soloable), before slowly transitioning into Group Events. If you guys have the resources for this kind of production, I would love to see more of this in game (especially chains of like 10 dynamic events in a row, similar to Moshari’s example).

BobbyStein.2315:

Regarding GW1 lore in the game, I think it’d be really compelling to have in-game books or some other delivery device to allow players to immerse themselves in Tyria’s history.

THIS! Pretty please. I said it in my triple-post, we need lore. This was implemented in betas and we are lacking this kind of info in game really. Most of the lore is hidden in NPC conversations that are not exactly in face. I like that some of it would be there, but some of it should be more prominent and be clear that it contains lore.
If you talk with NPCs, 75% of the answers are just generic “I ´m this and have problem with that, goodbye”. I like to talk with NPCs and stuff, but there is too little chance of finding something useful so I found myself not talking to them at all (and that´s a shame). Anyway, we need something like books or any other means of getting lore. Really, when I found out months ago that this was in game (there were collectible books tab in the bank too) and I seen the footage, it made me cry. If anything, we need better lore implementation. I for one haven´t played GW1 and if I hadn´t make a research on lore beforehand, I really wouldn´t know some basic stuff (it´s hard to make an example, but there are some things that I realized was never explained. Only example that comes to mind is that the basic krait lore is in the game only now)

What I like about Living World:

1. I like the dynamic events, like the offshoot events going currently.
2. I like big events. Battles that feel epic. That’s what I like about Tequatl or the Scarlet events. Big is good.
3. I like the cut scenes that involve action like the one introducing the Dreamthistle and the ones for Halloween. I like that you are bringing back some of the good protagonists like Roxi and Braham.
4. New skins.

What I don’t like:

1. The dynamic events don’t feel like they mean anything. After the first time through, they just feel like grind.
2. I dislike how difficult content is put in the open world. No matter how much I want to beat the Scarlet/Tequatl event and no matter how much I tell people how they can help beat it in map chat, we lose. Every time.
3. I don’t really care. Why do I care about Kessex hills? I’m a charr. Why do I care about Scarlet Briar? She doesn’t care about me, the player. What she’s doing might hurt some npc somewhere, but doesn’t affect me.
4. The new skins (besides the backpacks) are too hard to get and too limited in time. Also, I only have one of them. So I just never use them and they sit in my bank because I can’t decide which alt to put it on.

What I think should be done:

1. Why not gate the next section of Living World on how many offshoots we stomp or how many story-related activities we fulfill? Even better, give rewards to servers who hit certain benchmarks. Make it a competition with a reward. That would give us a real reason to get involved rather than a backpack skin that can only be used once.
2. Difficult content should be instanced. Period.
3. This is my main point, so I’m going to split it.
A. I want to interact with the bad guy. And having Scarlet Briar talk at me through pre-recorded videos doesn’t count. I’m thinking Jon Irenicus in Baldurs Gate 2 or the Darth Malak from KOTOR. I want to know him and I want him to know me.
B. I want to have reasons to care. The only time in the entire Guild Wars 2 experience where I cared was with Tybalt. But by the time I actually got to fight Zhaitain, Tybalt was a distant memory. I also wish the stories could be linked in with GW1 and the dragons.
4. Make event items easier to get, especially if they are time-limited. I’ve farmed out a dozen sets of Elite armor and weapons, but farming for the Halloween skins (even though I liked a couple of them) was way beyond what I was willing to do. And the backpacks should be more like legacy skins so I can re-use them.

Thank you for reading and asking.

What I would really like to see for the Living Story, is for our personal story instance to play a bigger part. Currently I have to travel all the way over to a corner of Divinity’s Reach, just to harvest some nodes. It serves no other purpose, and it is quite out of the way. I wish it had more use, and was as easy to visit as the Hall of Monuments. In fact, bringing the two closer together is a change I would much welcome.

DOCTOR ORWEN’S THEATER OF THE AGES!
Two shows nightly. Additional performances by special arrangement!
Special Thanks to Professor Moto for technical support!
Bring the kids early to see Lady Kappa’s amazing dancing pygmy-moas!

Hear ye, hear ye! As a gesture of Councilor Kiel’s unending support for the cultural advancement of Lion’s Arch, the Captain’s Council is proud to announce the opening of the Stage of Marvels. This new facility offers entertainment and joy to the citizens of Lion’s Arch and its many esteemed visitors. Join us as GuildWars 2 raises the curtain on a new window in to the incredible richness that is the Lore of Tyria in this permanent Living World release!

TWO SHOWS NIGHTLY!
The Stage of Marvels is a masterpiece of theatrical production, using the latest in mini-pet production and holographic sets and special effect to bring you incredible recreations of moment’s in Tyria’s history. Twice each night the theater gives free live performance of up to 5 ‘acts’ run sequentially to educate and entertain you about recent events or Tyria’s most ancient struggles. During the day, the theater is available for special requests – pay just a few silver and see our talented mini-pet performers act out the slices of history. While mini-pets can’t talk, our expert crew of stage hands will hold up holo-banners throughout the presentation illuminating the action on stage. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, just don’t throw rotten fruit – the inner mechanism of these dedicated little automatons are delicate! Just interact with our Stage Master to select from a growing library of past events and fill the days of Lion’s Arch with lore!

Our scribes are always working to expand our portfolio of ‘acts’ so that you can stay in the know about the latest twists in the War against the Elder dragons or other up-to-the-moment happenings. Tell them about your own progress in the Personal Story to unlock additional shows you may then request for performance. Relive your favorite moments in miniature! Our squad of imbedded ‘field-playwrights’ can also be found all across Tyria. Leave the comforts of town behind and help them in their research into lost history to add even more choices to your library of shows!

FOR THE MORE DISTINGUISHING PATRON…
Not willing to rub elbows with the rough masses? Tired of jostling in line to request the next daytime showing? Feel the urge to put on a special presentation for your friends and guildmates? Look no further! Doctor Orwen’s theater troupe is yours to command! For a one-time contribution of only 5 gold coins, you can become a “Patron of the Stage”! In addition to this attractive title, showing your inestimable refinement and wit, you ALSO gain a permanent stage added to your Home instance, where the players of the Theater of the Ages will take your requests at your leisure and at no additional cost, ever. Make your neighborhood the place to go to look into the mysteries of GuildWars!

((Coming Soon to a game that brings lore to life! …Tiny, comedic life, but life all the same!))

((P.S. It still breaks my soul that I’d probably get banned for formatting this they way I’d like to. PLEASE consider ‘Rule #7’ and allow us to converse like adults.))

Parlourbeatflex.5970:

I think its very hard to play puppet master with a theme park game and succeed in creating a living, breathing, dynamic virtual world that people love to explore. Even the best D&D dms admit their own limitations in comparison to the group purely interacting, after all.
Look at EVE, or star wars galaxies (preNGE ofc). The reason why they have a dynamic sense of freedom is because the game merely provides tools for the players to create stories from. I think that philosophy can be utilised here as well, even if its just to expand the economy and endgame.

When I was a DM, I made a regular looking hallway that I spent hours putting lots of traps and stuff in it on the walls, that should have taken a little while for the players to figure out….After a perception check, they noticed the traps and tried to figure out a way past them. Then, the players had a really dumb idea of putting giant metal shields on both arms, and just running through the hallway. What took me hours to build was conquered in about 5 minutes. I didn’t see that one comming…

Also, If Anet ever makes Guild Halls, I would like to see a combination of Instanced Guild Halls, and Guild Halls that are out there in the game world.

• The Instanced ones are common guild halls that anyone would be able to purchase and customize.
• The Ones out there in all the game’s zones (and major cities), would be guild halls that the highest tier guilds can afford and build up, but also as a way to show off their influence to the rest of the server.
• All guild halls should have some sort of arena for Guild vs. Guild, 1v1, etc. battles though. They can be static, or the opposing guilds can wager influence and gold, the winner taking all!

Elbegast.6970:

For a Living World, we need:

Seasons
Graphical only or Game Effect? Personally, graphical is a nice-to-have but it’s got to be really far down the list. The Environmental Design artists in GW2 are inspired IMO but they could be much better used making new content rather than what amounts to pallet swaps.

If it’s game effect, then it’s the same amount of graphical work with a ton of programmatic work too. Presumably spawn changes, map mobility changes maybe, environmental effects on characters (you need to wear “winter clothing” to go to Frostgorge in mid-winter. All neat, all very simulationist in intent, but all very big tasks and the question is whether the effort is worth the rewards.

Better Weather Effects
Ditto to the above.

Dark Nights (no, not Christian Bale)
Why? Immersion? Roma Victor had nights so dark you couldn’t see without a torch. The players simply increased their gamma until they could see and carried on. I would confidently say more players would find this a hindrance than would say it’s cool.

Purchasable Real Estate
Meh. We already have the Personal Instance that is under utilized. Why not take the effort and put it there. Decorating and all that stuff that usually goes along with real estate could take place there. Any real estate would have to be instanced, so why the money sink?

Player Owned Shops
To sell what? The only reason a player would seek out a player-run shop instead of using the auction hall would be if player goods differed from each other. When everyone is building the exact same stuff there’s no reason not to aggregate it.

Player Owned Farms (for Livestock and Produce)
Unless it went deeply into farming as a mini-game I don’t see this one working out. Again going back to the Personal Instance, if players could designate their instance as a certain “type” it might lead to something.

For instance, your personal instance could be designated as a farm. Visually it would look different from mine (which could be a mine let’s say) but mechanically it would be similar to the quartz node or candy corn node – a personal source of some crafting good.

The interesting part would be that each account can only pick one kind of resource, thus necessitating trade and selling on the AH.

Fishing, Hunting & Farming Professions
Ditto to the above. Having it in the world is just another kind of mob farming. I’d rather see it in the Instance and have players run a Farm, Fishing Boat, Hunting Camp, etc.

Player-Generated Dynamic Events
Technically already in-game (player picks up shiney, DE starts) but not very impactful. I’m not sure I’d favour the exact types you outline (as they’re a little too far into “let’s build a completely different game than the one we have” for me) but the concept of player agency in Dynamic Events is definitely one of the topmost areas of concern for me.

For a Living Story, we need:
An In-Game Calendar that lists recurring festival events and distinguishes them apart from the Living Story releases.
The recurring events have to be part of the story in a technical sense or else you’re dividing player time intentionally. On-going world events need to be scheduled take a pause around Halloween, Christmas, Bazaar of the Four Winds, etc. or else players will be pulled in two directions by different content and dissatisfaction will ensue

The current cadence is great. Any player can wrap up the meta achievement in a few hours. The complaints people have about LS development relate to decisions made, not time spent. The illusion that they represent everyone, and the idea that things they don’t personally like are inherently bad, are things that I’m glad the devs are smart enough to see past.

That said, onward! My favorite LW release was Bazaar of the Four Winds—for reasons others have stated—but I know this isn’t a part of the LS arc. I disagree with erasing the Cliffs from the map just because the Sanctum itself has moved on.

Clockwork Chaos introduced some of the most promising permanent content, but Scarlet makes me cringe.

I passed on Last Stand at Southsun. It had such a small scope to its content, the release felt pointless. Don’t get me started on the annoyances of Dragon Bash.

Bonefield.9813:

This is a good example of how different activities appeal to different types of players. The goal of the sort of thing I outlined in my previous post would be to provide a range of gameplay types; even if they don’t appeal to you personally, they appeal to others. When you and other players with your taste in gameplay are between dragons to slay and wrongs to right and you take a break from the game for a few days, the people who do enjoy “menial things” might find the downtime enjoyable instead of boring because they always have things to tinker with. This keeps the activity level of players in the game relatively high instead of rolling in and out in waves without the developers needing to frantically push out content even faster than they do now.

Appealing to different types of players is an investment in the game’s health. I have little to no interest in sPvP, but I recognize that resources put into it to make people happy with it and keep them playing are not wasted.

The way I see it, this is an example of a game trying to be too much to everyone. The game is created, it has an identity, a playstyle, a focus. To introduce all of those ancillary things now would be to broaden the scope of the game to beyond its identity. It would cease to be GW2 and become GW2+v2.0, the new & improved fantasy steampunk virtual hero life simulator. We’re trying to nail down exactly how we think the LS should progress, how it can be presented, how it can improve. To add things like player farms would (in my opinion of course) cheapen the essence of the game, reducing it from an adventure game to a mundane way to spend every waking minute logged on to the game just because.

A game needs to be focused or it will just be a bunch of watered down things here & there. Too many mini-games and it becomes Fusion Frenzy with better graphics. Was that game fun? Sure, but that’s not why this game was created. Pick a focus, stick to it, make it the best ever. Don’t try to make a game that does everything.

Besides, if I need to take a break from the game, then shouldn’t I actually take a break from the game and enjoy real life rather than fish or farm avocado in-game? Just my $0.02

Seras.5702:

A game needs to be focused or it will just be a bunch of watered down things here & there.

I think there’s an important nuance to be had here~

A broad, main-stream game trying to maintain a massive playerbase needs to be partitioned effectively or it will just be a bunch of watered down things here & there.

I don’t play sPvP. I probably never will. But because it is so effectively hidden behind a single small icon on the UI, it doesn’t interfere with my enjoyment of what I see as the core game. It doesn’t tap me on the shoulder constantly ((gives the evil eye to the Personal Story flag I just CANNOT GET RID OF)).

The addition of more casual, hobby-style gameplay elements can and should be done in a way that its there for those that desire it without hassling those who don’t. And by having it, you build a stronger, more diverse playerbase that ensures everybody continues to get what they want in the long run.

BobbyStein.2315:

Regarding GW1 lore in the game, I think it’d be really compelling to have in-game books or some other delivery device to allow players to immerse themselves in Tyria’s history.

On the idea with the delivery service I just imagined getting something in the mail from an Arcanist from the Durmand Priory to start a Living World event based on Lore and collecting ancient records.

The Lost Arcanaeum

Overview:
“Greetings adventurer! The Durmand Priory, with help from the asura Deesa, have found a mysterious library in The Mists. What this library contains is a mystery even to us. We seek the help of adventurers willing to delve into this so called “Arcanaeum” to help us unlock the secrets within. Seek out your local Durmand Priory representive in each of the five capitol cities to receive more information. We sincerely hope you can help us as what is located in this Arcanaeum may shed the light on the mysteries of Tyria!

-Signed, Magister Matthias"

Delve into The Mists to uncover the secrets of the Lost Arcanaeum and discover the truth of past events in Tyria. Unlock the doors to this mysterious collection and help the human, Magister Matthias find ancient volumes on Tyria’s history. But be aware… there are those within that will fiercely protect the lore they hold sacred and will stop at nothing to keep it from being known.

Uncovering lost lore
Characters are brought into an instance that has them fight new enemies known as “Lorekeepers.” These Lorekeepers appear to be made up of the five races but with the ability to bring to life the books they hold dear. Once these waves are brought down by the combined efforts of the player character and the Durmand Priory they find a map shows five locations in Tyria, one in each of the five racial zones, where five pieces of the Arcanaeum Key are lost and must be found. The player must then overcome five puzzles to reach these keys which are guarded by a “Loremaster” a master lorekeeper. Each of these Loremasters hold a piece of the key and a book covering the culture of the race whose land they are in. When all five keys are combined the player may open the Lost Arcanaeum and discover the secrets inside.

Arcanaeum Awakened
The player must now fight through a dungeon filled with lorekeepers and loremasters who hold the secrets of Tyria with help of Magister Matthias. The five books the player holds now come to life and the player must delve inside to close them and end the Loremasters hold on the books. These five books contain a battle relating to the history of that race and the player must fight through each one and kill the Loremaster within in whatever order they choose to close them.
-Human Lore Battle: The player fights alongside Gwen and Kieran Thackeray as they fight through the charr to make it to the location of Ebonhawke.
-Charr Lore Battle: On the Plains of Golghein the High Legions of the Charr fight against their enemy, the Flame Legion. The player joins Kalla Scorchrazor as she fights against the Flame Legion with the rest of the charr.
-Norn Lore Battle: The Norn fought bravely against the Elder Dragon Jormag but the Spirits of The Wild led them away to safety as to prevent the extinction of the Norn race. The player joins Asgeir Dragonrender as he flees Jormag’s minions, just having removed the dragon’s tooth (NOTE: No elder dragon is seen in this )
-Asura Lore Battle: The player joins a group of Asura as they fight against the destroyers that have razed their homes, sending them above ground. The player witnesses the first settlers of Rata Sum before it became the city it is today.
-Sylvari Lore Battle: The player sees the planting of the seed of the pale tree. They battle alongside Ronan as he finds the seed of the Pale Tree and meets Ventari, the centaur who carved the Sylvari’s beloved tablet.

After beating all five books, the player must destroy the head Loremaster, clearing the Arcanaeum of the Lorekeepers’ prescence. The five books that the player fights through fuse into one book that the player can access to see a cinematic scene about the event they witnessed in the fight. Magister Matthias rewards the player character with access to the Arcanaeum through a personal portal in the player’s home instance. Inside the cleared Arcanaeum the player can read books on various lore subjects and talk to the shades of the dead characters from history. Since Deesa was involved with the discovery, she finds out that the Arcanaeum has also become a Fractal in the Fractals of the Mists (with the players fighting through only one of the books chosen at random)

Rewards For The Event
-Players would receive the Tyrian History Volume 1 Book that allows them to see a cinematic of the events they battled through. (I say volume one because we all know it could be expanded.)
-Each player would be able to choose a Loremaster Weapon skin after beating the dungeon (Soulbound on Acquire) These weapons would have a visual effect of runes and letters of the various Tyrian languages floating into the weapon as if it is collecting the knowledge.
-The gem store could sell Lorekeeper Armor Skins for the three armor types.
-As the player experiences their personal story a mysterious pedestal appears in the explorable Arcanaeum that allows them to witness their history (like the personal story book) through the cutscenes the player saw throughout their personal story based on the choices they made. This book would be called Biography of Character Name and would grow as the character completes the personal story and living story with each stories scenes appearing in their own “chapters.”

This is what I would add to the game to make the lore accessible ((Sorry for the Double Post! It wouldnt fit in one!))

Zachary Haas.9803:

The Lost Arcanaeum

My brother in arms, right there.

Elbegast.6970

For a Living World, we need:
Seasons
Better Weather Effects
Dark Nights (no, not Christian Bale)
Purchasable Real Estate
Player Owned Shops
Player Owned Farms (for Livestock and Produce)
Fishing, Hunting & Farming Professions
Player-Generated Dynamic Events

For a Living Story, we need:
An In-Game Calendar that lists recurring festival events and distinguishes them apart from the Living Story releases.
Shorter story arcs, more zone-by-zone storytelling and less focus on larger player-funneling zerg events.

I like that ALL, but some things may be harder to make them fit with the existing system. (especially the very usefull ingame-calendar, which collides with the Personal-Story-Quests).

Maybe some features need a careful scaling. Its no great thing to put a gardening-pot into the home instance (and for my sylvari-characters I wonder why it doesn’t exist yet) and should be lore-compatible to have a “commander of the pact” to have at least a front-door of an appartment with a mail-box with his name on it in his home instance. But to build up real personal housing is some greater deal.

Some of the bigger things like farms or estates are to much to be owned for a single person. You can’t keep a farm on yourself. That would be something for guild with more people – like a guild estate. So guilds would become more important again. It possibly has to be instanced.

I DISAGREE with the people that doesn’t want such ressources like housing, gardening or fishing in the game. I’m doing this game not for zergs and mass-destruction only, but to be a hero, what for my purposes means, to explore and TO BUILD UP something personally dedicated to my character or to my guild. The constructive aspect should be Living Story too. I don’t just want to be ordered to fight against a new invasion of XY every two weeks.

To have CHANGING WEATHER in Tyria would be a very interesting completition of Living Story. I remember last Wintersday there was a zone with snow-storms, so you got frozen and died if you kept to long in. New weather-related events could be blizzards, thunderstorms, sandstorms an floodings. Maybe such “elemental” storms could be a new random element of Living Story. Some of its components (like tornados) already exist in the game. A bridge could be broken by a flooding instead of bandits in future, with seams to be more “natural”. On a sunny day, there maybe sprouting more plants.

Regarding some in game mechanism for players to catch up with missed Living Story releases, could you use something like the PvP system’s observer mode? Stick a new NPC in Lion’s Arch. This character would be a ‘hero’ in the vein of player characters—they have been participating in the LS elements all along, and boy are they full of themselves. Really love boasting and telling stories. However, instead of a wall of text to read about each encounter, how about some combination of relevant cut scenes and observer mode views of events? The cut scenes can provide background just as they did for the story when it was live in game, and the observer mode gives the player watching a taste of what happened. (possibly while throwing in flavor text—Marjory could NEVER have found the Aetherblade Retreat without me!)

Obviously not all the older LS events would be able to be repeated this way (and I don’t want to repeat the Karka Queen, in all honesty), but things like Canach’s lair and such should be pretty easy to record bits of a run through.

All of this would be framed as the recollection of an NPC, so I think that would fit in pretty seamlessly. And whatever point in the LS you decide you can do this, that’s the time the NPC started ‘playing’. It would probably get unwieldy to have one player recount all stories eventually anyway, so one of the ways to incorporate this could be to co-opt the patrons of one of those bars in LA, give each a few stories to tell.

Seras.5702:

The way I see it, this is an example of a game trying to be too much to everyone. The game is created, it has an identity, a playstyle, a focus. To introduce all of those ancillary things now would be to broaden the scope of the game to beyond its identity. It would cease to be GW2 and become GW2+v2.0, the new & improved fantasy steampunk virtual hero life simulator. We’re trying to nail down exactly how we think the LS should progress, how it can be presented, how it can improve. To add things like player farms would (in my opinion of course) cheapen the essence of the game, reducing it from an adventure game to a mundane way to spend every waking minute logged on to the game just because.

A game needs to be focused or it will just be a bunch of watered down things here & there. Too many mini-games and it becomes Fusion Frenzy with better graphics. Was that game fun? Sure, but that’s not why this game was created. Pick a focus, stick to it, make it the best ever. Don’t try to make a game that does everything.

Besides, if I need to take a break from the game, then shouldn’t I actually take a break from the game and enjoy real life rather than fish or farm avocado in-game? Just my $0.02

These are good points, but it depends on how they present it. There are, I think, several games out on the market which strike a good balance, and I want to make it clear that I’m not talking about taking GW2 and making it into some kind of pure sandbox where these sorts of activities are the primary thrust of gameplay. GW2 is and will probably always be about players being big darn heroes, and that’s not a bad thing.

However, the developers have several goals for the game that they’ve clearly stated. They have tried to add long-term activities to help give people things to do; most of these have been combat-oriented (Ascended gear, achievements) and while they certainly have their good points, the reaction has been mixed. They want to create the feeling of a world instead of just a game as well, and I think that there’s only so much you can do in that area by presenting players with things to kill. I don’t dislike combat at all, but when it’s one of the only options it really drives home the impression that we’re playing a game. There are things they can do which involve combat that can make the world feel more alive, and many great suggestions have been offered already. Things like housing and other downtime activities, however, encourage a sense of persistence, ownership and relaxation in people who enjoy them.

Of course you should take a break from the game if you get bored. What I mean by the builders maintaining the population of the game during downtime is illustrated by one of the stated purposes behind the two-week content cadence: ArenaNet discovered that players log in more frequently when they’re excited for upcoming content or when it’s new to us. They wanted to maintain that level of excitement more frequently. However, I would say that they’re pretty much at the peak of what they can do in terms of update frequency, and even at this point some players have expressed a desire for more downtime and a sense of burnout from the flurry of activity.

Not trying to make the game all things to all people is a valid point as well, but Guild Wars 2 has made some interesting overtures toward expanding the depth and breadth of gameplay out in the world, and I think that it could benefit from adding more variety. That’s not synonymous with homogenizing gameplay to appeal to all people; I see that more as something where a neat feature or some complexity is stripped out or discarded because it might not have totally universal appeal.

In short, having a focus of some kind is good. Having too narrow a focus—to the point where one style of gameplay drives most content additions—is not desirable, I don’t think. Games like WoW and FFXIV and Rift and EverQuest have all benefited by offering some variety beyond “You’re the hero, so go fight things!” From my own perspective, I have more fun in games where my options for interaction with the game world are more complex than “fight things,” because it increases the joy of discovery and can be an adventure in itself. I’m in no way suggesting that GW2 become a farming or interior decoration simulator, but instead that ArenaNet revisit some of the ideas they’ve had in the past about interactive objects and player agency and experiment with making them richer and giving players more of a sense of ownership.

Moshari.8570:

I see a lot of people posting ‘persistent world’ ideas that would involve armies of enemies taking over areas if events fail.

Keep in mind that on low-population servers (I know, I know, I constantly bring this up) these events will fail more often than succeed. I saw one person who posted that if these events fail, it would make these areas more difficult content (more champions, harder fights, etc)…I think this is a bad idea for the same reason, the servers that will fail at these events are the ones that could not get enough people to do the events, if you then make areas harder after the events, you will further encourage this disparity.

The amount of players that simply “play the game” are far far more numerous than the amount of players “looking for a challenge”. This is evidenced by Tequatl. It is a ghost town on most of the servers. Those servers that have the players who are “looking for a challenge” are precisely the ones who will win the event and thus not trigger the challenging content…sure, you might have a few of those permanently switch servers to get the challenging one, but you will have far more people switching servers to go back to “easy mode”…particularly if “easy mode” has +% to mf as suggested by the OP. Why do you think most people run champs instead of fighting Teq or Karka queen.

Instead, any events or LS that changes areas for the better or worse should be done not as a single server, but as an average of servers, similar to the way the votes for Kiel were tallied. This also makes it easier on developers (single code-base to work from). So if all of the servers combined only succeeded in pushing back 40% of the advancing enemy, then yes, the area should now be filled with SCALABLE events to keep trying to push it back (if they succeed, then it will go back to normal).

Everything in LS (and in GW2 in general) should utilize the scaling abilities they already have in the game. You have no idea how difficult some of this content has been to complete on low-pop servers (my server is mid and I can see this). Believe it or not, there are actually people who cannot get achievements (like killing the lich in mad-king laby) because there simply are not enough people doing that event to succeed at it. This trend of introducing boss’s that are ridiculously over-powered even when there are only 5 people on the map has got to stop. I miss being able to do Tequatl on my own server, with my own server’s people rather than with TTS, or guesting to a high-pop server. I miss going to southsun to just roam around killing Karka’s without being annihilated in the camps which are constantly over-run by so many Karka’s that a solo player cannot even run through them without death. And like I said, Borlis Pass is considered a “mid” server….I cannot imaging how bad this is on a truly low-pop server.

SCALING must be used in LS content…and continue after the LS is over with whatever is permanently left behind. Currently the LS has made my world smaller (no longer go to southsun or SW sparkfly) because of the LS. I want a world that grows, not shrinks.

I agree. I don’t think Anet should have different stories for each server. I believe that the story must be universal across all servers. Let’s say 10/30 servers succeeds, and 20/30 servers fails, well too bad the story will go the “failure” route.

This will also encourage population balance during events. To succeed, the players have to guest (not transfer) to low population servers to help them succeed.

I also think World Events need to happen on a separate map, just like Mad King’s Labyrinth. For example Kraka Invasion of LA. Why not make a separate LA map that players have to talk to an NPC to enter? Inside that LA, the devs can make any change they want because its not the real LA. And players that have no interest in the event can still access LA just fine.

BobbyStein.2315:

If some folks “won’t listen or care about anything related to her” then they’ve already made up their minds. For the rest of the people playing the game, I would imagine that they’re curious as to where her story is going because we haven’t revealed as much as people have wanted. The truth of the matter is that we’ve been planning an epic conclusion to Scarlet’s story for a while now. I really wish I could say more but that would spoil what’s to come.

That seems a bit unfair. It’s like saying “the devs won’t listen & just drop her for something better because they’ve already decided she’s a good character”. I think many people won’t pay attention to her story because it’s been annoying so far. That’s not unfair. A story needs to earn the viewers attention & investment. I think most people will see what the story brings & accept it for good or bad. But I think that it’s extremely unfair to pre-lable people who are probably going to find her just as stupid as they do now. So far, every time you’ve explain more, it’s actually made her character more painful.

I feel like it’s a matter of quit-while-you’re-ahead. I’m surprised that the team quit adding DEs because there “wasn’t much fanfare” but when a character is so despised out of annoyance, lore-breaking ,meh visual design & wierdness, the team just sticks with her. I don’t get it.

I think I can sum up a lot of the fears of the future of Scarlet by saying: If you explain to me in harrowing detail why a character is annoying & groan-worthy, in the end they will still be annoying & groan-worthy. I’m not sure how that is a non-valid viewpoint.

Seras.5702:

It’s a personal opinion, but I’m just so against things like player housing and farms and fishing in a game like GW2. Just because it’s a Living World doesn’t mean we have to do all the menial things in the world. I’m supposed to be a hero, a slayer of beasts, defender of Tyria, commander of the Pact…and I’m going to manage a farm??!? I don’t want to be a shop keeper or farmer or zookeeper or fisherman. Am I retired? What’s next? Laundering my armor? Vacuuming my player housing? Entertaining small parties with hors d’oeuvres?

Personalization of the Home Instance is fine, if it shows my progression as a hero. But I don’t want to manage shops or go to market. That’s not what this game is about to me.

As for Player Initiated Events (PIE), I’m all for it. But I’d rather them be adventure based rather than defending a market-bound cart of radishes I grew. Can’t I challenge new hunters to a great hunt? Or spread the tale of a lurking evil in a cave? Or challenge others to a contest of _.

I agree, the game design lends itself to certain things more than others, and ArenaNet only has limited resources to commit to things that won’t serve the greatest part of their playerbase. They already have WvW, personal story, sPvP, PvE, Dungeons, Crafting, and the living world/story. I’m not saying these things wouldn’t be nice, but they need to focus resources on what will make the world feel like it’s actually changing and not…fishing.

But I do like the idea of player driven events and weather that affects maps. Those can go a long way in making the world feel like it’s living. But as long as there are no consequences, it will never truely feel alive.

I think it is very important for the story writers to keep one thing in mind: What exactly is at stake here?

To get a quick understanding, please listen to this song from Dragonforce called Heart Of The Storm. It summarize the requirements of an epic fantasy story very well.

So what are some themes here?

Past:
-Revenge for something long forgotten.
-Scars of the past.
-Thousands died in the past.
-Painful memories.
-Long way from victory.
-Fulfilling what the heroes of the past has failed to do.

Present:
-Endless destruction in our land.
-Legions of darkness killing everyone.
-We will fight though the whirlwind of doom.
-The price for victory would be heavy.

And it is these kind of things that drove heroes to fight. Everything is at stake.

It is very important to establish a past and present to the story. In Scarlet’s case, her past is absolutely zero. She was only like 15 years old. And her past is almost non-existing. And there is no explanation as to why she is smarter than all Asura and why she is so powerful. There is no explanation as to why, with her show off and unyielding personality, everyone she met loved her and cannot wait to pass their knowledge to her.

A character without a past is a weak character. There is nothing at stake in her past. And since the heroes only recently found out about her, the heroes also have no stake in her.

Let’s talk about present. Why did Scarlet fail as a villain? Because from her, there is nothing at stake for us at all. Scarlet win her little Clockwork Invasion? Nothing happens to us or our loved ones. We heroes failed to take down her airship factory? Nothing happens to us or our loved ones.

A character without anything at stake in the present is a weak character. Scarlet isn’t worth our time because she isn’t doing anything anyways. And the people she harms are just no name civilians that we know nothing about.

Why was The Searing so powerful back in GW1? Because our characters met those NPCs. Those NPCs were alive! They were going about their own lives. Some were farming. Some were merchants. Some were getting bee honey. Some were taking down apples.

These NPCs that died were people that we once knew! That’s why it was powerful.

I will concede that the game can broaden itself if properly implemented, not trying to be everything to everyone but simply offering a wider range of tasks other than “go forth hero & slay stuff!” However, a primary concern I have (and Brimwald touched on it) is Anet’s resource allocation. They have a finite number of man-hours and dollars to work with, and broadening the scope of the game too much (subjective, I know) could water down the time and money spent on each facet of the game. Every 2 week releases is quite fast, but if a large chunk of Anet’s available resources are allocated for player housing and the like, then will balance, traits, new gear, LS events, new zones, gem store get less attention as a result? Will we see balance/skill/trait updates less often? Will we see LS patches every 4 weeks because the other weeks are reserved for updating the array of vegetables to plant in your farm?

ColinJohanson.2394:

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.

I would like to see the spores stick around and act like a virus. Every once in a while a spore will touch down and start an event where the players have to purge the area. If the players fail the spores spawn one of those mini towers that we’ve been cutting down and depending on how the story plays out the toxic alliance or corrupted versions of local inhabitants will protect it. If the players fight and win the mini tower goes away. If the players fail to down the tower it spits out another spore and starts the process again in another part of the zone. Perhaps the mini tower eventually dies but the corrupted natives or toxic alliance stick around.

On a completely different note Bobby said something earlier in the thread that’s been really bugging me. Essentially he said the the personal story is getting in the way of the living world; static story vs living world. Have you guys ever thought about moving the personal story entrances to the personal instance? It already reads like a background story anyway just emphasize that point and put a “travel point” in the personal instance so you guys can free yourselves from requirement to keep parts of the world static?

I think a good example of the frustration the community has had with the story meandering for so long is what is coming up in the next update.

We are going into the tower. Just like we went into the Pavilion. The story hasn’t moved all that much in terms of what she is doing and we are repeating the same play style in the tower as in the Pavilion, but with a twist here and there I assume.

When we are told we are getting “an expansion’s worth of content”, I feel like the little details are missing:

1.) Armor vendors for those dungeons/Dungeons staying in the world.

2.) A story we can complete at our pace.

3.) The story progressing in a concise manner before we repeat a play style again. i.e. How much exposition have we really gotten from the Pavilion to the Tower next week. I don’t feel like much has changed in terms of an actual story.

4.) The weapon updates have been AMAZING (didn’t want it to all be critical) You guys rock, but I don’t think me just telling you that actually gets the creative juices flowing.

5.) Brand new areas.

6.) New skills.

I know a lot of this is coming down the pipe. My main concern is the little details. I have to say this doesn’t feel like an expansion’s worth of content even though I know that it was a TON of stuff you guys did this year. It’s just missing so many of the little things that add up to a LOT of stuff when you buy a boxed expansion. I also have a feeling if I was able to go back and watch all of the cutscenes I could glean what was going on, but even then I think the story is thin.

I hope all of that was constructive. I really love this game. I enjoy the heck out of it. I just hope that with these two week updates content doesn’t get skimped on and quality diminished from what would have been in a full boxed expansion.

As to how far would I like to see the impact of the Tower, I think the answer is (and applies to all future LS content) to put in the game what seems most likely if it were real. If this happened in Pennsylvania for instance, the effects would be felt throughout the state, the entire country would watch with fear, travelers would spread it throughout the nation, and the world would watch and comment. Likewise, the surrounding zones should be wary of it and be effected by it, the whole of Tyria should acknowledge it. In Ascalon you should hear 2 Charr saying “hey, did you hear about that tower in Kryta? Woa man…glad the krait aren’t around here.” In Timberline Falls you should see people getting sick, wondering if the Krait witch is to blame or if they should close borders to travelers so prevent the toxin’s spread. Since The Orders are so prevelant in the personal story, so too should they be everywhere else. The Priory should always researching what’s happened after each event. The Vigil should send back-up or battle plan for any eventuality. And the Order should be information gathering during each event, possibly being the source of new information during the events.

Some ideas for a Living World beyond combat:

- occasional changing weather events (storms, floodings, fog …)
- astronomic changes / phases of the moon
- ingame calendar-system with feasts and anniversaries of LS
- name-scheme for all npcs (no anonymous “citizens”)
- (only) once a week a farmer’s market in some smaller villages with special merchants
- a travelling circus moving through Tyria
- vagabonds & moving caravans
- a scripted newspaper, posters or advertising columns for the events (one day before)
- a theatre or puppet show for children telling the great LS-History-Chapters
- more seasonal bards / moving artists in cities
- occasional “musician groups” on “live-tour” in Tyria playing LS-Songs
- occasional birth, weddings, cases of death of npc-people over time
- occasional family celebrations of npcs dedicated to the above
- occasional random personal quests, starting in home instance
- changing vegetation: seasonal flowers, sprouting or dying plants
- some more unforseen little changes in landscape to round up the setting

Elbegast.6970:

…

For a Living Story, we need:…
Shorter story arcs, more zone-by-zone storytelling …

Just thought this was a very interesting idea. There is no reason that the the Living Story has to focus on big huge events. It might be interesting to see how the regular everyday people cope with the changing world. In fact it would be easier to feel like a hero in a smaller story.

I really like the scenarios described by Nike.2631, and would like to direct your attention to the also brilliant ideas developed by Shriketalon.1937 in his thread To Merge the Personal and Living Stories .

Read it before he is infracted for putting his text into JPGs :-)
It’s really good.

I notice a lot of people discussing personal housing, and I find myself wondering: Would it be simpler to turn the Hall of Monuments into said housing? It’s already huge and instanced, with plenty of room for decoration. It’s also big enough to accommodate most accounts.

BobbyStein.2315:

cesmode.4257:

Palador.2170:

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.

This is why we need a better mechanism to re-tell the story of missed LS events. I had suggested either in an in-game or out of game Lore Book that details not only the history of LS, but of Guild Wars as well. This will also help players who never played GW1 understand the original lore.

But this story telling can’t simply be one paragraph for each LS. I don’t want to see one paragraph introduce roxx during flame and frost and then explain what happened in a few short sentences within the paragraph. The explanation must be drawn out enough so that nothing is left to the imagination, other than trying to recreate the story in my mind from the words written by Arenanet.

Bobbystein, what do you think of this?

It’s a great idea that’s very similar to the ones that we’ve been discussing internally for months now. Here’s the catch: we’re limited in how much room we have to display text inside a UI element, unless we want to allow scrolling. Also, the more words we put in there the less likely most players will read it to the end, and the more expensive it will be to localize once we scale up the feature to include all Living World releases (and whatever other content we decide to reference with it). We have to find that sweet spot where players get the information they need while also conforming to our technical and budgetary constraints. That’s not always easy.

So while I think it’s entirely possible that we can implement such a feature we are limited in how much historical text we can display. But if players are able to “fill in the gaps” somehow, then I think they’ll get what they need out of it. I wish I could say more because I think our current designs are pretty exciting, but we’re just not ready to discuss them in detail just yet.

Regarding GW1 lore in the game, I think it’d be really compelling to have in-game books or some other delivery device to allow players to immerse themselves in Tyria’s history.

Well I just read this and an idea came to mind.

The ways of delivering said story that I know of would be:

NPC Dialogue: really small and requires pressing “Next” button to contain a whole text.

Chat/Voice video: Both require voice actors which to my understanding is rather expensive. And if you miss something it’s hard to get back to that small tiny part.

Mail: Can contain long walls of text but there is currently no way of making people get them unless you want to through it out to every player in the game.

My thought would be to implement a archive/history NPC in all mayor cities or at least LA. When talking to this NPC you will get options in the Dialogue for things such as story arcs, characters, places etc. By clicking i.e. Characters and then Rox the NPC would ask you if you want more information about Rox and upon pressing “Yes” you will be delivered a mail with some overall information about her which you can read at your own pace.

This is probably not the optional way of solving it. But maybe something similair where you can get an option to have an informatic mail sent to you about previous living story.

Someone recommended a Lore section for the site, that is a good first step.
From there maybe we could have in game books contain snippets like the Priory Library did or Ebonhawke.

First try it out with a few topics like the Living Story Flame and Frost, Southsun, and Scarlet. Small sentences, maybe a paragraph at the most, with “Flip next page” or “Put book down” as the choices.

From there, if it works well, move onto some of the GW1 Lore. Hopefully by then in development there will be a change to the UI which allows a better implementation.

I wouldn’t be opposed to a small scavenger hunt achievement like in Ebonhawke for multiple parts of a topic. Something like “Flameseeker Fan” because I found all 10 book parts pertaining to the original Flameseeker Prophecies story, just thinking off the top of my head.

As somebody who knows a little about the lore and would love to know more, I can’t think of a much worse way to introduce people to past stories than “Read once sentence at a time.”

Having a better UI for reading text would help, but it’s still a bandaid.

I’d rank a few possibilities for doing it, from best to worst:

Playable version of the events. (You get to walk around and be a part of the lore.)
Cinematics.
Voice-acted discussion of the events.
Text you can read.

There are (obviously) other options, but as much as possible, I’d love to see ArenaNet shoot for the top of the list.

Edit: I should mention that I don’t have anything against reading: I’ve read all three books! (I even bought extra signed copies of Sea of Sorrows for my guild officers!) I just think it’s better to really bring the world to life. I still want more lore in text form than we have now, I just think there are better options available.

Regarding Living Story… I would like to propose that when a character chooses charm/heart, dignity/crown, or ferocity/fist that the game not only compiles it as a statistic, but uses it to determine new, ongoing personal story for the character, perhaps coupled with a player’s Order to offer a variety of possibilities. When each of us created a character, we made some choices and the game expanded upon that. Now, though, there are a lot of L80s out there who’ve completed their personal stories, but surely the Orders have many activities besides the ultimate dragon fights— or maybe new personal stories could continue to ferret information, discover lore with dragons’ weaknesses, or build new weapons for combating dragons. We, as players, want things to be somewhat changeable in creation of a Living Story, and we want to take part in that. This could be one way to do that.

I would also like to see players’ choices compiled for each race and then make those choices have an effect on the world somehow. How the characters of the world behave should at least effect a race’s city zones via NPC behaviors, but I would like to see something farther-reaching. In this way, all characters’ choices would have some meaning and contribute to the Living World as a whole.