Guild Wars 2

BobbyStein.2315:

You just have to understand that catering to every taste and dropping everything that’s currently in progress in favor of a new idea just isn’t practical. But we can take that feedback, discuss it along with the rest of the lessons we’ve learned over the past year, and take it into consideration as we plan future releases.

From my understanding, that’s the purpose of this entire exercise, right? We’re not going to be implementing massive changes, but we will be effecting change in the overall sense of things.

BobbyStein.2315:

It’s more a matter of finishing what we started, implementing what we’ve already designed, and setting the game up for the next arc. I think it’s best that we try and give this story a satisfying conclusion rather than abandon it because some people aren’t fans of the villain.

If that is the case, at the very least, keep Scarlet OUT of Fractal or anything related to the Fractal. I purposely play Fractal to AVOID Scarlet and I would not be quite happy when I find out that the Thaumanova Reactor Fractal added Scarlet in it just because.

BobbyStein.2315:

I want to make it clear, though, that I’m not ignoring the opinions of people who don’t like elements of this Living World story. Folks such as yourself have made it pretty clear why you don’t like it. You just have to understand that catering to every taste and dropping everything that’s currently in progress in favor of a new idea just isn’t practical. But we can take that feedback, discuss it along with the rest of the lessons we’ve learned over the past year, and take it into consideration as we plan future releases.

A lot of people simply doesn’t like Scarlet. I personally want her retcon.

BobbyStein.2315:

It’s more a matter of finishing what we started, implementing what we’ve already designed, and setting the game up for the next arc. I think it’s best that we try and give this story a satisfying conclusion rather than abandon it because some people aren’t fans of the villain.

I want to make it clear, though, that I’m not ignoring the opinions of people who don’t like elements of this Living World story. Folks such as yourself have made it pretty clear why you don’t like it. You just have to understand that catering to every taste and dropping everything that’s currently in progress in favor of a new idea just isn’t practical. But we can take that feedback, discuss it along with the rest of the lessons we’ve learned over the past year, and take it into consideration as we plan future releases.

Thank you.

As a developer you need to make choices. Some like what you are doing and some don’t. In the end you want that most people like it. Not only from a commercial point of view but also cause you are artists. What if Picasso never sold his paintings but burned them?? some people would love if he did cuase they dislike it, and some would be really disappointing. You can’t please everyone, but it is a learning process.

also don’t forget, you are Artists (with a major capital A). you should listen to some extend to the people disagreeing, but the story hasn’t finished, it is in progress.

Lemme take us all back to gw1 (prophecy’s).
The first few missions we got Prince Rurik. He was annoying. He was a pain. He is the most hated NPC in the gw lore ever (still beating Trahearne AND Scarlet with a landslide). But also remember the moment he got killed. It was the only GW1 cutscene I would NEVER skip. I always was cheering when he got killed off. Then the story went ahead. At the end he reappeared. OW heaven. he is going to die again. OW EVEN BETTER!! I get to KILL him!!!

The hate off a character off a story in progress also means it might be the perfect villain, cause those who are now saying (with good reasons) how irritating she is, are prolly be very happy to kill her off.

She is supposed to be a villian you are going to like killing her

the only criticism bout it I have is that she is made too unlikable during the waiting game till that moment.

mercury ranique.2170:

The first few missions we got Prince Rurik. He was annoying. He was a pain. He is the most hated NPC in the gw lore ever (still beating Trahearne AND Scarlet with a landslide).

You hated Prince Rurik! Prince Rurik!?

Wow. He might have been petulant, but he was also right. But maybe I’m just sympathetic because I think my father is wrong about everything too.

This is going slightly off topic, but I think we need a separate achievement system for ‘actual’ achievements. We don’t have a system which distinguishes actual achievements from stuff like dailies, thus your AP doesn;t really mean anything other than you’ve been around for a while.

I suggest we introduce a new set of hardcore achievements under a Prestige system. your Prestige points will be displayed next to your AP in golden numbers, and the system should have its own list of rewards and titles so you can really show off how awesome you are.

Achievements on this list include thing such as:

1. Completing Arah P4 (post fixing all the exploits)
2. Getting level 80 in fractals
3. Soloing bosses such as Lupi (your party can watch but they can’t do any damage on the boss)
etc, etc.

How does that sound?

mercury ranique.2170:

She is supposed to be a villian you are going to like killing her

I actually don’t share this viewpoint. I didn’t play GW1, so I don’t know about Rurik, but I really don’t feel much of anything about Scarlet at this point, other than annoyance at her portrayal. She’s not a good villain, she’s like a five-year-old outwitting an entire country of people. I hope they can salvage her character and make her death worth celebrating, rather than it being simply a relief that she won’t be popping up anymore. It seems like they’re certainly hearing our issues about the depth of the character and how she has been presented in-game thus far. Now we just have to see what they do with that feedback.

For those who may not have experienced the joy of Rurik… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27w4rQg0yjs

Seras.5702:

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?

It’s worth noting that ArenaNet has more teams than we regularly see the work of doing things we haven’t gotten any information on. I do think resource allocation is an important consideration, but ideally the sort of living world content I’m advocating would be helpful in forestalling complaints of “nothing to do.” When I refer to it as an investment, I mean that content of that kind typically has a longer shelf life than a boss fight or dungeon, when done well; I won’t claim that people who enjoy it would never want to see updates to it once it’s in, but they’re things that tend to be a little bit fiddly and investment of time is part of the charm.

There are people who still play EverQuest II and Rift solely for the housing, and have spent months or years creating fantastic things with the tools they were given. During a dry spell between WoW expansions, I roleplayed and leveled up my fishing (a fairly difficult feat at the time) to tide me over. Long after I’d burned out on endgame in Final Fantasy XI, I gardened and raised chocobos and collected things for my house, and all of that maintained my love for those games and kept me in the community and let me find a social niche (as the Chocobo Information Guy, but c’est la vie). That’s why I think adding sandbox and player generated content elements to themepark games will catch on in the near future; when your players have at least a few tools to use to entertain themselves and each other, it gives developers a bit of breathing room.

You can see where ArenaNet has taken steps to give themselves that breathing room when it comes to combat-oriented players. They’re developing ways to keep that type of player engaged over longer-periods of time without having to constantly throw exhaustible content at them. I personally could not be less interested in Ascended gear, but for some people that was apparently exactly what they needed to stay engaged. Similarly, the fact that my attention can be held by repeatedly pretending to cast a line is going to sound nuts to pure power gamers, but it works.

The final thing I’d like to make note of is that this variety wouldn’t be nearly as important if there weren’t crossover between fans of fighting dragons and fans of smelling the virtual roses. I’m very much in favor of fighting dragons, and running dungeons, and being a hero on an epic adventure. I also find it very engaging to have places for my hero to kick back and simply do something interactive and gentle while enjoying the lovely scenery. Having both extends the life of gameplay for people who fall under varied gaming types.

I’d class jumping puzzles as an example of non-combat gameplay activities that make the world richer and more three-dimensional, actually; they’re not required, and their appeal is somewhat specialized, but the people who love them really love them and it increases their affection for this particular game world.

Edit: oops, quick edit – wrong prince.

I loved Prince Edrik- but not at first.

In my first encounter with him in the instance, I was sighing and hanging my head a little at this overblown, pompous snot…

…Then I got into the Labyrinth and started to listen. Ok, right off, Mad King Thorn is my hands down favorite piece of voice work in the game. So to have ‘Eddy’ and him practically spitting invective at each other was priceless from the first second on. Then when you really listen to it… Wow. That kid is MESSED UP.

You made me sympathetic to someone who just tried to kill me (not very successfully, but he did try…). Usually when people try to kill me I consider that instant and permanent suspension of their breathing rights. Eddy actually conviced me he was doing it more out of duress (and distress) than any real urge to be “The Bloody Prince – muhuwahahah!”

When I moved on to the climax instance, It was a lot less “I am SO gonna put you down!” and a lot more “Alright, Edrik. Just get back in the box. It’s better for everybody this way…”

Nike.2631:

timmyf.1490:

mercury ranique.2170:

The first few missions we got Prince Rurik. He was annoying. He was a pain. He is the most hated NPC in the gw lore ever (still beating Trahearne AND Scarlet with a landslide).

You hated Prince Rurik! Prince Rurik!?

Wow. He might have been petulant, but he was also right. But maybe I’m just sympathetic because I think my father is wrong about everything too.

I loved Prince Rurik- but not at first.

In my first encounter with him in the instance, I was sighing and hanging my head a little at this overblown, pompous snot…

…Then I got into the Labyrinth and started to listen. Ok, right off, Mad King Thorn is my hands down favorite piece of voice work in the game. So to have Rurik and him practically spitting invective at each other was priceless from the first second on. Then when you really listen to it… Wow. That kid is MESSED UP.

You made me sympathetic to someone who just tried to kill me (not very successfully, but he did try…). Usually when people try to kill me I consider that instant and permanent suspension of their breathing rights. Rurik actually conviced me he was doing it more out of duress (and distress) than any real urge to be “The Bloody Prince – muhuwahahah!”

When I moved on to the climax instance, It was a lot less “I am SO gonna put you down!” and a lot more “Alright, Rurik. Just get back in the box. It’s better for everybody this way…”

I think you’re thinking of Prince Edrick. Prince Rurik was a character from Guild Wars 1, although he also had a difficult relationship with his father.

Wrong Prince, Nike. You’re thinking of Edrick Thorn. We’re talking about Rurik, son of Adelbern.

timmyf.1490:

Wrong Prince, Nike. You’re thinking of Edrick Thorn. We’re talking about Rurik, son of Adelbern.

Yeah – caught that when I started watching the linked video… just not fast enough .

Carry on!

mercury ranique.2170:

The hate off a character off a story in progress also means it might be the perfect villain, cause those who are now saying (with good reasons) how irritating she is, are prolly be very happy to kill her off.

She is supposed to be a villian you are going to like killing her

the only criticism bout it I have is that she is made too unlikable during the waiting game till that moment.

Be VERY CLEAR on this: When people hate the writing of a character its a failure to connect with them. When people hate a character, that’s a brilliant success of communication.

The desire to kill off a badly written character isn’t the product of good storytelling – its working out your frustrations with the author-via-their-proxy. The least spiteful interaction you can hope for is they’re trying to kill the character simply to move it off the playing field so they don’t have to endure it any longer.

I mentioned earlier, I don’t want to kill Scarlet, I want to shatter her presentation as an untouchable mastermind. I want the writers to show us they aren’t so enamored with their creation and themselves that they’ll upend the current narrative and give us a the satisfaction of turning the tables and the further satisfaction of Scarlet having to live with defeat at our hands.

Ultimately, I want them to concede that player characters are more important than theirs.

BobbyStein.2315:

DarksunG.9537:

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.

It’s more a matter of finishing what we started, implementing what we’ve already designed, and setting the game up for the next arc. I think it’s best that we try and give this story a satisfying conclusion rather than abandon it because some people aren’t fans of the villain.

I want to make it clear, though, that I’m not ignoring the opinions of people who don’t like elements of this Living World story. Folks such as yourself have made it pretty clear why you don’t like it. You just have to understand that catering to every taste and dropping everything that’s currently in progress in favor of a new idea just isn’t practical. But we can take that feedback, discuss it along with the rest of the lessons we’ve learned over the past year, and take it into consideration as we plan future releases.

I’m glad, because I would be disappointed if Scarlet’s story were dropped. I find the character herself less interesting than the implications of her existence, but I’d really like to know what she found when she peered into the void and I’m very interested in finding out where and what is on the other side of her portals. Maybe I find her interesting because I’m hopeful that her story is a doorway to big ideas, in the same way that Varesh’s story was a setup for revealing the extent of Abaddon’s influence on the story of GW1.

I think she might have the potential to be a useful storytelling device because she’s hinted to have insight into huge secrets the general population of Tyria has no clue about, and no reason to keep those things secret in the long term. The most fascinating thing to me about her short story was the Pale Tree appealing to her and Scarlet refusing to listen; there are long-buried things in Tyria that are probably better off left hidden (but great for the story if they’re uncovered). Scarlet is a character who would, I imagine, happily reveal those secrets—but she also strikes me as the type who would lead the PCs to discovering those truths for ourselves rather than stating them outright, if only for her own amusement.

Gulesave.5073:

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.

Consider the demographics. People posting in forums are generally going to fall into two basic categories – the people who have enough time and dedication to post in forums as well as playing, and the people who are considering leaving (or have left) but are invested enough in the game that they want to give the reasons why (with varying degrees of (im)politeness). I’ve seen a lot of people throw around the line that the forum isn’t representative of the entire community, generally with the implication that the silent majority agrees with their position and the forum-goers are just a vocal minority, but while it has to be conceded that the forums aren’t representative, you have to consider how they’re non-representative.

Namely, the people who visit the forums for a game are probably disproportionately those that have a greater investment in the game. If the message from them is that they’re being stressed out trying to keep up, chances are that’s even worse for the people who aren’t visiting the forum. In this case, the non-representative nature of the forum quite possibly means that the problem is actually worse than you’d think looking at the forum responses.

Personally, I think maintaining the frequency but increasing the duration of events is a compromise that’s definitely worth trying. People who like the current cadence lose nothing, people who are struggling to keep up have a little more wiggle room to do so.

mercury ranique.2170:

Lemme take us all back to gw1 (prophecy’s).
The first few missions we got Prince Rurik. He was annoying. He was a pain. He is the most hated NPC in the gw lore ever (still beating Trahearne AND Scarlet with a landslide). But also remember the moment he got killed. It was the only GW1 cutscene I would NEVER skip. I always was cheering when he got killed off. Then the story went ahead. At the end he reappeared. OW heaven. he is going to die again. OW EVEN BETTER!! I get to KILL him!!!

Were you the person who keeps throwing “don’t speak on behalf of the whole player base” at the Scarlet-haters?

See, from my experience in the community, including moderating and leading a lore forum, I’d strongly disagree with the claim that Rurik was even closest to the most hated NPC in Guild Wars lore. In fact, few people dislike him for his character – most of the hatred directed at him is largely based on his Leeroyesque AI in missions causing the mission to fail (which happens to a lesser extent to Togo and Mhenlo in Factions). Essentially, most Rurik-hatred is essentially a proxy for hating escort missions where the escortee has neither the sense to stay in a safe location nor the durability to survive what they’ve jumped in to.

Among the parts of the community I’ve interacted with, there just isn’t the concentrated vitriol for Rurik that there is, deserved or not, for Scarlet, Kormir and Trahearne. A lot of the ribbing on Rurik has more of the character of the good-natured teasing of a friend who has a propensity to make mistakes – there’s certainly nothing I’ve seen on Rurik that is even close to being as vicious as this. (And, to put it in context, on a YouTube search for “kormir guild wars” that’s the top of the list, while a similar search on Rurik reveals nothing so obviously lampooning in the first couple of pages, and even a few tribute videos.)

The death of your character’s liege, whom you’ve fought beside since Prophecies and possibly gone gift-hunting on behalf of, followed by having to kill him yourself is supposed to be a tragic moment inspiring the player to avenge his death(s), not one you cheer over. That you had that response is an indication that, in your case, the Prophecies team failed to achieve their objectives. Just like, as loathe as I am to continue pruning the dead plant when Chris Whiteside has already acknowledged the problems with Scarlet’s story so far, the number of people hating Scarlet for all the wrong reasons are signs that, for them, ArenaNet has (so far) failed to achieve their desired objective with Scarlet.

You shouldn’t hate a character that is supposed to be your friend and ally so much that you’re glad when they die. And a villain should be a character you look forward to thwarting, not one you’d prefer to be retconned completely out of existence like a number of people have requested.

Xae Isareth.1364:

This is going slightly off topic, but I think we need a separate achievement system for ‘actual’ achievements. We don’t have a system which distinguishes actual achievements from stuff like dailies, thus your AP doesn;t really mean anything other than you’ve been around for a while.

I suggest we introduce a new set of hardcore achievements under a Prestige system. your Prestige points will be displayed next to your AP in golden numbers, and the system should have its own list of rewards and titles so you can really show off how awesome you are.

Achievements on this list include thing such as:

1. Completing Arah P4 (post fixing all the exploits)
2. Getting level 80 in fractals
3. Soloing bosses such as Lupi (your party can watch but they can’t do any damage on the boss)
etc, etc.

How does that sound?

Indeed this is a bit off topic, but a good idea. AP you would normally get from dallies, grinding out an LS achievement, etc..things that anyone can get if they invest enough time should be seperate of true achievements such as solo’ing a boss, or whatever… things that take actual skill and competence.

timmyf.1490:

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.

I too love the books, also I’ve had my characters read the in-game books about Ebonhawke. Yeah having just text wouldn’t be optimal, but we’re at a disadvantage with the UI as is.

mercury ranique.2170:

The first few missions we got Prince Rurik. He was annoying. He was a pain. He is the most hated NPC in the gw lore ever

I don’t remember anyone’s hate for Rurik being based on anything more than AI Leroying. That’s it. Story wise I liked him. He tried to do what was right for his people, he was a bit obsessed & petulant, but his character wasn’t annoying. It was nice to see him stand up to his father & to sacrifice himself.

BobbyStein.2315:

It’s more a matter of finishing what we started, implementing what we’ve already designed, and setting the game up for the next arc. I think it’s best that we try and give this story a satisfying conclusion rather than abandon it because some people aren’t fans of the villain.

I want to make it clear, though, that I’m not ignoring the opinions of people who don’t like elements of this Living World story. Folks such as yourself have made it pretty clear why you don’t like it. You just have to understand that catering to every taste and dropping everything that’s currently in progress in favor of a new idea just isn’t practical. But we can take that feedback, discuss it along with the rest of the lessons we’ve learned over the past year, and take it into consideration as we plan future releases.

Well. I understand finishing what you started. You can’t just keep swapping from one thing to another. that’s true. but it’s hard to square with something like the decision to drop (just as quickly) expanding the number of DEs. So we see that kind of just-move-on decision making there. why not with a reviled character arc? I guess it’s hard from a player perspective to deal with it, because every time I’m reminded that Scarlet is a major player in a game I’ve loved for almost a decade just kills the story for me. Also, I feel like the player response is significantly downplayed when it’s said that some people might not like her. Or implying that people that don’t have just arbitrarily made up their minds. I think it would be more accurate to say that _most _ people don’t like her.

I’m interested to see what is supposed to make her a so much better villain, but don’t know how that will change what she’s been so far. As I said, knowing why a character is unsatisfying doesn’t make them satisfying. Maybe it would be best to give that majority of the players something else in the story to look towards?

Nike.2631:

Zachary Haas.9803:

The Lost Arcanaeum

My brother in arms, right there.

Thanks! I liked your ideas as well!

I guess I’ll start with the negative, I’m not sure if this has been said already, but my biggest problem with LW was what happened after the election. There was all of this excitement around the election, but after the voting was done and the winner decided, that was it. I got a letter saying Kiel won and life kept going. Unless I missed something, I was just expecting some sort of fanfare in-game. It just felt like all that build up was for nothing.
I’m all for this constant update thing, but I kind of cringe when you say ‘think of it like your favorite tv show’ because that just makes me think that all of this is just filler until that one episode that has actual story progression shows up. This just feels like the 383rd episode of Naruto filler where some random bad guy gets made up so they can beat him up just to have another episode.
What I really liked was the Tequatl revamp, that was really fun and awesome. Just playing that I felt like this was the Guild Wars I spent all of this time waiting for. Here was a crazy challenging boss fight where so many people had to work together to beat, and it was just so epic! The stakes felt high because of the timer and the fact that no one had beat him yet, there was just a rush of excitement. Also it kinda felt like it mattered because Tequatl is a lieutenant of Zhaitan, and this was rooted in existing content, so it made it feel like it mattered more I guess. I’m not saying new characters shouldn’t be thrown in, I’m just saying these story lines just don’t seem to be rooted in the Guild Wars world enough. Just introducing a new character and telling us to go kill it doesn’t feel very compelling. And giving us the power to vote on something but quickly brush it aside when it’s over isn’t very good either.
Perhaps if new characters are made that use existing lore, such as exploring the whole Khan-ur storyline, or someone getting their hands on a mysterious Orrian artifact, and then that produces a sequence of events with real consequences that make the players feel a real sense of urgency and duty, that makes the world feel more alive and gives us something to relate to.

Hope this helps

SilverSteele.6519:

I guess I’ll start with the negative, I’m not sure if this has been said already, but my biggest problem with LW was what happened after the election. There was all of this excitement around the election, but after the voting was done and the winner decided, that was it. I got a letter saying Kiel won and life kept going. Unless I missed something, I was just expecting some sort of fanfare in-game. It just felt like all that build up was for nothing.

To be fair, with the four-month lead-in time, it’s probably not reasonable to expect any major effect from the election to kick in before December at the earliest, in order to give time for new content to be designed with the new councillor in mind.

That said, I am certainly hoping that we start seeing some effects from the election in the coming months. There were basically two permanent effects linked to the election – the fractal choice, and the question of who the voter wanted to influence the Living Story for future installments. For some, these aligned, or they were sufficiently apathetic about one that the other didn’t really matter. For others, this was a hard choice – I would have preferred the Abaddon fractal, myself, but my judgement was that most of my characters would either support Kiel over Gnashblade (or just not care at all) and distributed my votes accordingly.

If it turns out – as some of the Evon supporters claimed at the time – that the fractal really was the only meaningful choice to be made, I will be quite disappointed, and I’m probably not the only one.

(Frankly, I was a little annoyed that they were combined into one vote as it was – IMO, it really should have been separated between the IC vote regarding the Captain’s Council and the largely OOC vote regarding the fractal. If it turns out that the only part of the vote that really mattered was the part that made the Kiel win bittersweet… then that’s going to be like salt in the wound.)

Yes I am the one who is very strong against speaking on the behalf of the community. I’m perfectly ok to express myselfand I don’t take people who say ‘The community wants this or that so do it Anet’ serious at all. Speak for yourself.

I also see I hit a serious nerf when I compared Scarlet with Rurik off a lot of people taking in half arguments. All I’m saying is that The devs here have said they heard your voices bout Scarlet. They are going to take it into account. But the story now has to be told and finished. I also truly think that many people will think different bout her when the story is been told.

The problem with the living story, specially compared to a regular story, in my opinion is that people have a lot off time to reflect on it and make an opinion bout it due to the time it takes to tell the story. This makes reactions and thoughts about it stronger then it would be if the story was told more linear like the personal story. or the missions in GW1. Also the introduction off the main villain should be done less fragmented. Those are important lessons.

I think that the living story should be set like the harry potter books are. In book 1 the main villain is introduced and set perfectly, He has killed the heroes parents. It is very clear that he is the bad guy and it is very clear why he is the bad guy.

In all the books that story develops, but the main storyline for each book can sidestep (the hero must flee an evil escaped prisoner thats after him, compete in a tournament or deal with a mean teacher). So each book has a story thats started and finished within that book.

So while I love the personality off Scarlet and the way she is in the world, and even though I don’t mind the ‘fragmented’ storytelling, I can understand how it doesnt work in some other peoples mind. And I do agree that in the future Anet should tell the story less fragmented. Make a clear introduction for the overarching story where it is clear what we are dealing with. Also make sure that each smaller arch (the 4 weeks) have a clear substory with a clear beginning and end.

My view on what they need to be doing is in line with Nike’s suggestions.

The personal story is in instances and therefore they can simply leave this as a (from the past thing) and change the world around it. I know jarring but this is a game not a book or a tv show, if I can just push a button to enter the mists I can just push a button to enter the past.

In having living world content available to future player; as it happened on a time line it could be tacked on to the personal story. The content could be reworked (after it has ended) to make it solo able and it could be sold at the gem story as additional content (if need be), I would expect it to be cheap.

I know that there will be people that don’t like the idea of purchasing it, but solves the problem of people wanting to relive the event without it causing continuing disruption.

As to what to keep as permanent and what to remove; it could be that there is a voting mechanism in game.

The current event could resolve (i.e. scarlet dies) but the tower remains spewing forth toxic alliance (make something up so this works). Then in game there could be a vote as to whether the government remove the tower and restore the zone or saves the money and leaves it there.

Nice player interaction on the decision making.

Please remember this is a game and not a tv show or book and therefore sometimes consistency can be broken to make a better game.

The main problem with the LS is that we don’t feel that there’s an overarching plot happening. With the HP books, you always feel Voldemort’s presence in the plot and you knew what he was trying to do (even if that was simple as just trying to take over the world) and you can tell how he’s going about achieving it.

In GW2 you don’t have a clue what Scarlet’s up to or what she’s trying to accomplish. She just jumps in and ‘does’ things and even the Artherblade themselves don’t have a clue what yhey’re actually doing. What results us a Tyrian version of the EastEnders where bad neighbour Scarlet is up to no good again in each episode.

Also, the story can’t actually ever be told right in the first place, because if you’re a new player, you’ve just jumped straight into the middle of the plot and now you’ve no clue who everyone is and how the plot got there. We need a way to replay previous LSs.

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??!?

You see it just like me, but in the end there are those who would like to have that in game.
I wont agree there should be big priority for this, but it is a possibility that might show in and if it does it’s good. The key is to address those thoughts that have the most people backing them so most of players would be satisfied.

And it has to be balanced gold-wise in game – no easy money for shops vs players who farm on they own

Although I would just love to see the nature in GW2 taken to next level like day and night, seasons, fog, moon phases and all that good stuff.

The Queen’s Pavilion REDUX

I discussed this in the lore forum, about how a lot of characters are constantly thrown the idiotball in the Living Story, and it really bothers me. For those of you who don’t know this term, the “idiotball” refers to characters deliberately acting dumb, in order to allow the villain to execute his/her plan.

Before the opening of the Queen’s Pavilion, Scarlet widely announced that she would disrupt the festivities, in the form of a cryptic poem. Now we already knew she had airships, yet Queen Jennah took no preventive measures. No extra bodyguards, no extra security, no siege equipment to… you know… take out possible airships.

Here is where I would have done this differently:

Server specific choices

Queen Jennah asks the player for advise on how to prevent an attack from Scarlet. If Airships attack Divinity’s Reach, they may need reinforcements from nearby Lion’s Arch. Logan Thackery rightfully points out that pulling too many guards to the pavilion would leave other crucial points of both cities unguarded. And Countess Anise points out that firing siege equipment that close to the city, could cause civilian casualties if one of those ships were to crash into the audience.

Players are allowed to choose between two strategies, and the combined choices of all players on that server, decide the most popular strategy (much like Evon vs Ellen). The events then play out accordingly on that server. Perhaps Scarlet is blown out of the air by siege equipment. Perhaps Scarlet attacks another part of the city instead, and steals a valuable item. Or maybe she attacks Lion’s Arch instead, and springs Mai Trin from jail in a clever twist. Either way, the outcome can be different on each server, and none of the npc’s act like idiots.

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.

this is very nice stuff

This is probably a good moment to remind people of my idea for player housing:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Portable-door-Player-housing/first#post3167424

I’d love to know from the devs if an idea like this is technically feasible in GW2.

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.

These are some awesome and very player-friendly ideas..!!

On giving a very basic overview over what transpired in the Living World:

I absolutely loved the ‘overview’ over the backstory/primary conflict of Destiny’s Edge we are given in that lvl 30 story instance in Lion’s Arch by those NPC children.
Couldn’t we have something similar in our home instances for the Living story, with different groups of NPC (somehow related to or somehow recognizable as belonging to) the different LS chapters?
That way, we would both be able to hear about what happened ingame and had something interesting to see and hear in our home instances Also, it wouldn’t add to the noise already present in the major cities and would be easily reachable for every player.

Achievement Guides

One thing I wanted to talk about was achievement guides. Oddly, this is something that I don’t think has been mentioned even once in this thread. It is no secret that with each LS release, sites like Dulfy receive information prior to the release of the content it seems. She has everything mapped out, tells you where to go, what to do, what to expect, etc.

—TLDR— Sites like Dulfy seem to acquire all of the ‘know-how’ information about an LS patch before it goes live. I am against this, as it takes some of the immersion out of the living story since everyone will flock to these sites as it makes the content border-line trivially easy. What are your thoughts on sites like this that are able to acquire the knowledge before any of us in order to create guides that are available before the patch releases?

I am curious what everyone thinks about sites like these that have achievement guides that have information up before the patch is even released or day of patch release when everyone is just logging in.

I for one am against it. If we are trying to create a living world here, I am a firm believer in exploring and finding things for ourselves. Why are sites like this allowed to possess information prior to the release? Not to mention, does it not kill the sense of exploration and/or achievement when you simply follow the guide, go to the places, click on items, etc etc…I mean, at this point, are you even following the story anymore? Are you reading the story? Are you reading what NPCs have to say?

When an NPC would tell you in text, for example, “Go to XYZ area, defeat the ABC monsters there and retrieve the <insert name here> Book. Return this to me. In doing so will allow me to begin preperations for the ritua” or something like that, we would simply rather go to Dulfy and she’ll say “For this achievement, go here and get this item”. It takes you out of the story, removes some of the immersion.

Yes, guides like this make it super easy to do the achievements and man, I would be lost if I didnt go to Dulfy to find the guide. But don’t you think this sort of behavior is wrong? Yes, its ones choice. But why give them the choice to begin with? If your writing team has spent hours and dev resources to writing NPC dialogue, and your programming and design teams have invested the same in building these events, missions, etc for you to find and have fun doing so…why undercut all of that with a guide that is available to you on Day 1?

I am not against guides existing. I am against guides that exist prior to the release of the patch or guides that have all of the information on the day of the patch, since I am not sure its humanly possible to acquire all of the knowledge on your own on the day of the patch, and then put it on a website on the day of the patch…I am OK with guides existing a few days after the patch to help out, and it is ones choice whether or not to use them, but day of? Thats a bit much.

Thoughts? Comments?

ColinJohanson.2394:

techjunkey.8253:

Wow, a lot of content in this thread already…

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

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

There is a thin-line between content that drives the story forward, which if it lasts forever feels like the story never really progresses, vs. content that all goes away and ends up feeling like the world never actually progresses.

…

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?

For a cohesive feeling that the world has changed and progressed, the overworld should reflect that change and what’s come to pass. There are things that have happened during the story are done, the world has moved on and it wouldn’t make sense for them to be there still in the overworld eg. if the initial Southsun invasion kept playing in the overworld. The wreckage of the lasers at the fight scene and the desolate carcass of the defeated Karka by the lava pool hint at the epic struggle fought there.

That said, having some way to replay these events shouldn’t break the sense of a history progressing if it’s made clear that these things happened in the past (and GW1 incorporated ways this was achieved, as others have pointed out). At the very least, instanced story content could remain accessible permanently in some form and it would not break a sense of world progression.

The time an ‘episode’ of content persists, two or four weeks, or whatever timescale is appropriate for that content (some say, could persist for an entire arc and overlap) does not affect the feeling of whether content should be permanent or not if that content is then accessible in a way that isn’t impacting the current course of events. I.e. replaying the past. I just don’t see how content being made permanent is mutually exclusive with the concept of a progressing, changing world.

Dulfy is quite handy. She’s gotten me through some more complicated walkthroughs and directed me to locations around Tyria that are sometimes to bothersome to hunt down. But I don’t look at any guides until after I’ve played through the content a bit because I too hate spoilers. I want to immerse myself in the story that Anet has released and only go to guides if needed. Patch guides are good, but not on day 1.

Also, I liked Rurick. The dynamic of a father/son fight over what’s best for the kingdom is evocative. It’s easy to side yourself with one or the other, either thinking of Rurick as petulant and cowardly for running away or having foresight and being brave for leading people on a exodus. Every character is flawed, good or bad. To have a shining white knight is boring. To have a soulless dark evil is sometimes boring too. Gotta have flaws, weaknesses, strengths, complexities, nuances, and passion.

I liked Eldrick too. More father/son issues, though admittedly, his are much worse. And like mentioned above, when it came time to take him down, it wasn’t with a burning hunger for vengeance but rather a go quietly and nobody gets too hurt man, just get in the box.

Seras.5702:

Dulfy is quite handy. She’s gotten me through some more complicated walkthroughs and directed me to locations around Tyria that are sometimes to bothersome to hunt down. But I don’t look at any guides until after I’ve played through the content a bit because I too hate spoilers. I want to immerse myself in the story that Anet has released and only go to guides if needed. Patch guides are good, but not on day 1.

Also, I liked Rurick. The dynamic of a father/son fight over what’s best for the kingdom is evocative. It’s easy to side yourself with one or the other, either thinking of Rurick as petulant and cowardly for running away or having foresight and being brave for leading people on a exodus. Every character is flawed, good or bad. To have a shining white knight is boring. To have a soulless dark evil is sometimes boring too. Gotta have flaws, weaknesses, strengths, complexities, nuances, and passion.

I liked Eldrick too. More father/son issues, though admittedly, his are much worse. And like mentioned above, when it came time to take him down, it wasn’t with a burning hunger for vengeance but rather a go quietly and nobody gets too hurt man, just get in the box.

I agree, that Sites like Dulfy help. And Im a hippocrate in this regard, I use it too from time to time. Honestly, thinking about it now, the only time I use her guides are several days after the release, when I have a bunch of tha achievements already done and now Im looking to complete a few more that I otherwise could not do by following the masses and there is no direction from Arenanet as to where to find some of these.

I still am against sites like this being given information before any of us.

I think that guys defined what I was think. Thanks!

"

Honestly, Scarlet is a very weak villain, her story was dropped on us out of nowhere and it has dragged on for far too long. We have a background story for her on the website with a hilariously over powered origin that ended up being partially contradicted by a German interview. She’s been getting help from the evil races of Tyria, even the ones that specifically don’t work with outsiders, she has an entire world full of expendable pirates and tries to randomly invade zones around the world with basically no point except to ‘cause chaos’ or something.

Please, end the Scarlet part of the LS, there is no reason it should have lasted any longer than a couple months. Do something with the dragons, they’re actually interesting."

Wild idea…what if the dragons could talk? I dont know if they do or not with GW2 lore, but what if they could talk?…Skyrim comes to mind!

Dovakhinnnnnn!!!!

But seriously. How does Zhaitan commune with his minions to attack specific areas?

Jennalee.2906:

ColinJohanson.2394:

techjunkey.8253:

Wow, a lot of content in this thread already…

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

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

There is a thin-line between content that drives the story forward, which if it lasts forever feels like the story never really progresses, vs. content that all goes away and ends up feeling like the world never actually progresses.

…

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?

For a cohesive feeling that the world has changed and progressed, the overworld should reflect that change and what’s come to pass. There are things that have happened during the story are done, the world has moved on and it wouldn’t make sense for them to be there still in the overworld eg. if the initial Southsun invasion kept playing in the overworld. The wreckage of the lasers at the fight scene and the desolate carcass of the defeated Karka by the lava pool hint at the epic struggle fought there.

That said, having some way to replay these events shouldn’t break the sense of a history progressing if it’s made clear that these things happened in the past (and GW1 incorporated ways this was achieved, as others have pointed out). At the very least, instanced story content could remain accessible permanently in some form and it would not break a sense of world progression.

The time an ‘episode’ of content persists, two or four weeks, or whatever timescale is appropriate for that content (some say, could persist for an entire arc and overlap) does not affect the feeling of whether content should be permanent or not if that content is then accessible in a way that isn’t impacting the current course of events. I.e. replaying the past.

I think a question which needs to be asked is if there’s actually any point in changing and progressing the world. Does it enhance the gameplay experience of the players? Does making content a one-time only feature and not letting players do it again no matter how much they crave for it make the game fun?

Also I think being able to replay past content is absolutely essential to being able to build a meaningful story. There’s no good book which one can start from page 204 and get the same quality if experience as reading from page 1.

The reader won’t experience the build up, they won’t have a clue who all the characters are and certainly won’t grow to like or hate them. The only kind of tale which one can just pick up from the middle is that of caper comic books, the really shallow kind.

cesmode.4257:

But seriously. How does Zhaitan commune with his minions to attack specific areas?

There’s probably some magical/psychic communication with a familiar human or humanoid who talks for him, or maybe the creature can interpret the dragon mutters and roars into our language.

Then again I’m using Shadowrun as a reference in my mind.

Elbegast.6970:

Shorter story arcs, more zone-by-zone storytelling and less focus on larger player-funneling zerg events.

This ties in with the longer event chains I brought up several pages ago, although I think it looks in a slightly different direction. When I originally posted my “longer event chains” post I left it wishing there could be a week-long event chain.

This could be the answer. Each zone could have it’s own story which takes around a week (or as long as it takes) to tell. This way the zone is a little different every day we log in.

Does anyone have any ideas for a story in a zone?

Atlas.9704:

cesmode.4257:

But seriously. How does Zhaitan commune with his minions to attack specific areas?

There’s probably some magical/psychic communication with a familiar human or humanoid who talks for him, or maybe the creature can interpret the dragon mutters and roars into our language.

Then again I’m using Shadowrun as a reference in my mind.

Actually, he has a facebook and twitter account. Go figure

Atlas.9704:

cesmode.4257:

But seriously. How does Zhaitan commune with his minions to attack specific areas?

There’s probably some magical/psychic communication with a familiar human or humanoid who talks for him, or maybe the creature can interpret the dragon mutters and roars into our language.

Then again I’m using Shadowrun as a reference in my mind.

In Dragon Age: Origins, the dragon also communicated to it’s minions of the darkspawn where to go and what to do in terms of leading at attack. I’m sure that was more of a telepathic/psychic/hivemind collective with the dragon being the queen bee.

Favourite release: Bazaar of the Four Winds
The Labyrinthine Cliffs were magical. I stepped foot in the area and five hours flew by without me even realising with a grin plastered over my face the entire time. The area was new, interesting, beautiful and refreshing and a change of pace from the rest of the game world. The ambience was wonderful – the soft golden light, creak of the bamboo and music which was reminiscent of Cantha for someone who played GW1. You could easily absorb yourself in the scavenger hunt while slowly ascending the cliffs to the Zephyr Sanctum, and watch others doing that as well. I’d fall off the area around the middle of the ascent trying to get to some of the crystals (water was later patched in here which was a very nice touch) and usually get ressed. This release also tied in with the GW1 lore.

Least favourite release: Boss Week
I didn’t get much of a sense of story; Rox made a token appearance to try and advance her goals to join Rytlock’s warband. The achievement objectives seemed to exist only to pad out that living story chapter and felt meaningless. Dragon leavings mysteriously appeared with few clues as to how to find them, and just as mysteriously disappeared after the event.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Jennalee.2906:

ColinJohanson.2394:

techjunkey.8253:

Wow, a lot of content in this thread already…

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

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

There is a thin-line between content that drives the story forward, which if it lasts forever feels like the story never really progresses, vs. content that all goes away and ends up feeling like the world never actually progresses.

…

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?

For a cohesive feeling that the world has changed and progressed, the overworld should reflect that change and what’s come to pass. There are things that have happened during the story are done, the world has moved on and it wouldn’t make sense for them to be there still in the overworld eg. if the initial Southsun invasion kept playing in the overworld. The wreckage of the lasers at the fight scene and the desolate carcass of the defeated Karka by the lava pool hint at the epic struggle fought there.

That said, having some way to replay these events shouldn’t break the sense of a history progressing if it’s made clear that these things happened in the past (and GW1 incorporated ways this was achieved, as others have pointed out). At the very least, instanced story content could remain accessible permanently in some form and it would not break a sense of world progression.

The time an ‘episode’ of content persists, two or four weeks, or whatever timescale is appropriate for that content (some say, could persist for an entire arc and overlap) does not affect the feeling of whether content should be permanent or not if that content is then accessible in a way that isn’t impacting the current course of events. I.e. replaying the past.

I think a question which needs to be asked is if there’s actually any point in changing and progressing the world. Does it enhance the gameplay experience of the players? Does making content a one-time only feature and not letting players do it again no matter how much they crave for it make the game fun?

Also I think being able to replay past content is absolutely essential to being able to build a meaningful story. There’s no good book which one can start from page 204 and get the same quality if experience as reading from page 1.

The reader won’t experience the build up, they won’t have a clue who all the characters are and certainly won’t grow to like or hate them. The only kind of tale which one can just pick up from the middle is that of caper comic books, the really shallow kind.

Progressing and changing the world does serve a point. It does to some extent give the feeling that the world is ‘living’ and emulates some the ephemeral nature of RL where things change, as opposed to the static frozen-in-time snapshots that never change. As well, as a player, I’m part of that story and journey (although how involved we may feel depends on how it’s done).

As I’ve tried to hint at I don’t feel that this concept necessarily means content needs to be a one-time, unreplayable and later inaccessible and could quite easily be permanent and replayable without disrupting a living world concept. If everything could be replayed and as much as possible, everything still be attainable in some way later which does not enforce ‘limited-time-only’ restrictions on players then most of the grief and complaints over the system would be resolved.

I think the only negative about living story is the limited time to complete achievements. Achievement hunting can be a great long term goal for those not interested in legendaries, but limiting the window to 2-4 weeks to get these achievements can feel very pressured, which is something that can distress an achievement hunter.

Other than that I really enjoy the Living Story aspect of GW2. I like how it offers a variety of content, a variety of difficulty levels and continually changes the game. Keep up the good work!

I love the fact that you guys mitigate the most grindy aspects of your meta achievements by making dailies count towards the total. It’s a genius move.

But there still are these super grindy things to do in game – is that something you feel has to be in place for a certain segment of players? Cuz man .. some of those grinds are less optional.

BobbyStein.2315:

It’s more a matter of finishing what we started, implementing what we’ve already designed, and setting the game up for the next arc…

Why couldn’t the design team have this attitude when they attempted and failed to expand on the event system? I swear it seems like they barely even tried…

Handalf.1894:

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.

Wow. This guy has really thought this out. Some would be relatively easy, and other parts would be much more difficult, but I think it is the direction the living story should take.

Revamping the story mode dungeon path would be the easiest part (they’ve done this for dungeon paths before). Zhaitan now knocks the airships out of the air. Zhaitan is hurt from the cannons, and now the heroic players need to finish him (with Traherne helping) after crash landing. We triumph, but the pact is severely weakened and incapable of fighting any other dragons. Inspired and afraid, citizens of the kingdoms force their leaders to confront the dragons.

As for separating the personal story from the world; it can be done, but there will be risks and trade-offs. That would be a big decision for ArenaNet. But I would like to see an integrated living story in a changing world while still maintaining the ability to go into an instance and enjoy what I’ve missed.

That guy has a lot of good ideas though. I hope everyone takes a look.

Brimwald.5894:

Handalf.1894:

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.

Wow. This guy has really thought this out. Some would be relatively easy, and other parts would be much more difficult, but I think it is the direction the living story should take.

Revamping the story mode dungeon path would be the easiest part (they’ve done this for dungeon paths before). Zhaitan now knocks the airships out of the air. Zhaitan is hurt from the cannons, and now the heroic players need to finish him (with Traherne helping) after crash landing. We triumph, but the pact is severely weakened and incapable of fighting any other dragons. Inspired and afraid, citizens of the kingdoms force their leaders to confront the dragons.

As for separating the personal story from the world; it can be done, but there will be risks and trade-offs. That would be a big decision for ArenaNet. But I would like to see an integrated living story in a changing world while still maintaining the ability to go into an instance and enjoy what I’ve missed.

That guy has a lot of good ideas though. I hope everyone takes a look.

I am wholly in favor of that person’s ideas, and have even suggested (with less detail) that breaking the LW into mini-stories and festival events as temporary/recurring content and larger stories as permanent expansions to the PS is exactly what they should do.

edited to reiterate: The thing I find disheartening about this thread is that I don’t think there is enough serious scrutinizing of the basic concepts underlying the “Living World”. People seem to just be blowing smoke and talking about how to improve its delivery when we should be critiquing the concepts underpinning it. In particular, the idea that a Living World is created by having temporary content or frequent changes to existing content.

The fact is- that’s a bad idea, and always has been, period. You lose a lot more than you gain by constantly removing content to make the world feel “living” (which doesn’t work anyway). A living world is created simply by the addition of new content involving new storylines that the players can immerse themselves in. Not only is it unnecessary to remove or dramatically change previous content to get that, it is more detrimental to the game than it is beneficial.

Anet gave us all already within GW1 access to the past by the introduction of the BMP
People, who really want to have access to lore/living world content of the past, should be able to buy “Chronicles of the Past”

Reusable BOOKS which either should make it possible for the player to play some content of the GW/GW2 lore in GW2.
Like for example playing as one of the Characters from the Guild Wars Novels and replaying their stories of those books actually.

I would so kittening love it to be able to play the lore content of the GW Novels in the game and see what happened in the past IN MOTION, see their emotions and what happened to those characters in those stories in the past.

I want to replay these books in the game. I’d buy that even also, like I did buy for me the BMP in the past for my GW1 account.

The same feature could be used for all kinds of living world story content to make the “past” replayable, so that every player won’t miss out on them and if you miss something, then you still have to option to buy somewhen later the Chronicle of the past of that event to replay the content whenever it fits to your own pace of playing the game, even if that would mean to have to spare up some gems to be able to do so..

But do you know what ANet ?? Hell, it would be WORTH IT, people would buy it, if its a simple and easy implementable way of having not to miss anythign anymore, especially if those chronicles come together with some cool llitle aditions like the BMP Books had all their cool little interesting extra goodie by giving the player the option to receive through them some unique new weapon set skins that were only receiveable through the BMP, which were all designed after the themes of the book’s stories.

Ghosts of Ascalon could for example provide a Weapon Set, special animated Spirit Weapons.

Edge of Destiny could for example provide a Weapon Set, special animated Destiny/Heroic Weapons
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For Living Story: (Example)

Chronicles of Flames and Frost
If you use it, you’ll land in the Realm of Memories, a special mental reality that lets you revisit parts from theTyrian Hstory. By using this Chronicles, by looking into the Mirror of Memories in your mind, you’ll revisit either alone or as a group of 5 players a chosen random instanced Map that was part of the past’s history of this Chronicle.
In this instance, you’ll be able to replay the content of that 3 part story step by step.
You can gain in that instance all the achievements, as if you would have participated on that living story, when it was just live in the game running.
If you fulfill all of the goals of the Chronicles, you’ll will get rewarded with a Token Item.
The completed version of the said Chronicles.
These completed Chronicles, that work as Tokens can be used then for following rewards:

A) Speak to a Historian NPC, who will reward you completed books for a large amount of ExP, Karma, Gold and some Laurels

B) Exchange the Completed Chronicles in return for a new empty book anda chosen Weapon from that Chronicles’ history theme.

C) Use the Completed Books somewhen later in the future as Decoration Item for the Housing Feature, putting them into a shelf, or place them on a desk, however you like to decorate your Home…. to make your Home unique

Use please more of the cool and good features that GW1 had and revamp/improve them for GW2 Anet !!
This would not only put alot more nostalgics into the Game, it would solve also this problem and it would make alot of old GW1 veterans super happy to see more good features from GW1 being reused and improved for GW2 in a way, how they fit for the game. You would simply said hit multiple birds with one stone, if you would reintroduce into GW2 a GW1 Feature like real Books, usable items, that let appear if you use them really a book, that you can open up and read several different pages in them by movign the pages from side to side, seeign in them also cool nice to look at illustrations (what could be sure some nice job for your artists to make these books look cool and trustworthy, like they were in GW1)

Those books in GW1 were for me one of the best visual improvements of EotN and the BMP in general for the whole game. They give the game IMMERSION, that your character really actually reads something, showing the player the opened up books, as if you are in the moment your character, that’s reading his/her book right now.
Adds back also some kind of Roleplay Factor too to the MMO*RPG* you know…

Handalf.1894:

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 .

I must admit that I expected the link above to be a poorly hidden attempt of someone using an alternate account to bring a self-serving light to some piece of ill-inspired “Look at my idea” tripe… Boy, was I wrong.

I have been reading thru 34+ pages of player inspiration and I have been pleasantly pleased with the incite and forward thinking that is emerging from this thread.

A shining star of colour and brilliance that I have been enjoying so far has been the well thought out, in-depth experience by story-master: Nike.xxxx (in case positive call outs are bad too, in my defense, I didn’t include the actual .xxxx so it could be anyone right?)

But move over on your pedestal Nike. It looks like Shriketalon.xxxx is looking to give you a run for your money. A bit of friendly competition of the enlightened just keeps everyone on their toes. Well done folks.