Guild Wars 2

jheryn.8390:

I actually love the “concept” of the living world as it was presented to us, but it doesn’t feel as if the world is living and changing/growing. It feels like going to work actually. You go to work and you have different situations and projects, but it is still the same job. Not much changes about what most people do. This is how the LS feels to me. There is no permanent impact on the world, just more of the same with different players.

My personal top 10 things I would like to see in the LS are :

1. Permanent content introduced or permanent changes in landscape, people and creatures.
2. Content that impacts and develops existing content. Many have mentioned more with the dragons. I think it could be anything existing or from GW1. Maybe new NPC’s are introduced into the orders or we get to see other area’s of the different orders bases. Maybe the Mursaat make an appearance and it affects Orr in some way. Maybe risen from Droknar’s Forge start to appear in the water. Maybe another stone dwarf NPC can be introduced. Maybe the grove suffers a fire in part of the city and we can watch it progressively heal like any vegetative area would. Maybe address the Charr/Human uneasiness that still exists.
3. I would like to see lore from GW1 be introduced into the living story and have it be a significant impact upon current lore.
4. I would really like to see maybe an extended break from the LS in order to bring an expansion size LS content into the game. I miss the epic amount of places, things and creatures to discover and not be given to me piece meal.
5. New maps.
6. Explanations for things that are missing from GW1. Gargoyles, Hydra, weapon skins, etc.
7. Story lines that feel significant. Scarlet is funny and BSC, but she doesn’t feel threatening. More annoying than anything. The story lines just don’t feel as rich in GW2. The living story has done nothing to remedy that IMO.
8. New skills and traits. If the world is really evolving through the LS, shouldn’t those thing grow and expand as well?
9. Personal story progression.
10. I am sorry for repeating but most importantly, permanent content. I hate seeing the wonderful things you people work so kitten and that we really DO enjoy being taken away. The Molten Dungeon for example.

Having content that has permanence would break up the zerg in those events as well, once people move on to the newest thing. Areas with some major geographic change or tribe migration would also be quite cool, possibly making map completion less static, as once in a while the priory sends you out to map the recent changes and see if you can get up on that new vista.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

It’s a quote from a ways back, but it’s the best way to frame my response. I hope you don’t mind.

A good show must find a balance between building lore, establishing characters, indulging in instant gratification, and setting up long term investment. In many ways, a television show is an apt comparison to MMOs. They require an initial hook to get the player interested combined with long term reasons to get committed to regular viewing. In addition, they cater to many different individual’s personal tastes; viewers will get attached to certain characters, become invested in the plot, or simply enjoy the wit and banter to bring them back again and again. At the moment, however, the Living Story feels like a poor spinoff due to the overemphasis on the Saga of Scarlet. In order to achieve a solid viewing audience, the Living Story needs to find balance.

I have a thread over yonder where I go into more details, but here is a simple example of a Living Story arrangement designed to appeal to a wide audience. The idea is to reserve long term campaigns that take months of content for the most important things going on in Tyria (which are dragons, not redheaded Sylvari reverse engineering bloodstones). These fit into the January-to-May block very easily, since there are no holidays during that time frame. Meanwhile, the rest of the year is devoted to creature features, lore delves, one shot stories, and the introduction of new races in order to indulge a diverse audience. The combination of hardcore campaigns and whimsical/wonderful oneshots should satisfy the audience and keep them entertained for years to come.

If it is not to presumptuous, here is a hypothetical TV Guide To Tyria to demonstrate what the Living Story could be.

Brimwald.5894:

Chrispy.5641:

Time Is the secret sauce that makes our favorite TV shows great. Having Good writers and people working on the shows are good and all, but rushing something is still rushing something. And seriously, if the Queen’s Gauntlet had those same bugs, whether the team had 4 months or a whole year to work on it, then there is something very, very wrong.

Look at it another way….In fact, we will. Lets use food as an example… My Dad is an executive Chef in charge of a High end restaurant. One of his best menu items, are the ribs. You can’t just throw BBQ sauce on a rack of ribs, throw it in the oven for twenty minutes and call it a day. You have to take your time preparing those things. You have to put the sauce on the ribs in a way that doesn’t overpower the flavor of the meat. You have to be careful that when you smoke them, you use a certain of wood, so the flavor of the wood gets cooked into the meat. You can just use coal, or it will taste bad. And you can’t just turn the temperature up, and cook those things in 20 minutes. It takes several hours of love and attention to make those things as perfect as they can be. The amount of time you spend cooking the Ribs can mean the difference between something that tastes good, and something that tastes extraordinary.

Videogames are the same way. You can’t just spend a week on something and call it done. You have to take your time. You have to make sure the code is correct. You have to make sure that the cosmetic armors and weapons that go into the game match with the story and is the sauce that people want with their video games. The story has to make sense. But above all, that stuff takes time, and if you rush it, there will be very obvious bugs and graphical errors, plot holes, basically stuff that can make a game go from something people want to play, to something that sucks. The Amount of time you spend making a video game can mean the difference between something that is just good, and something that is extraordinary.

….and now I’m hungry for ribs….

Simple solution to the bug issue is a public test server.

They don’t spend a week working on the content. Bobby Stein already confirmed in an earlier post that they create these things some 4 months beforehand (how’s that for marinating?).

I wish you would have used a different example; my mouth is watering now.

Even though They spend four months working on the Living World releases, how much of that time is spent actually weeding out the bugs and other issues? Its obvious that 4 months isn’t enough time, because some Living World releases (Queen’s Jubilee for example) were filled with bugs. While many of those bugs were minor and no one cared much, they were still a major turn off to the people it affected. (I played the Secret World when it first released. It was spectacularly broken in parts of the game, and that turn off has kept me from trying it out again, even though a subscription is no longer required, and most of those bugs have been fixed now!)

Theres parts of Armor Sets and weapons missing. We already know why. Its tough to make it all in four months, bug test everything in 4 months, make all the graphical assets in 4 months. And how much of those 4 months was actually just concept and planning? How much of it was making the stuff? How much of it was quality and bug testing?

Yeah, I get it. Its hard to do. It takes time. There is probably a ridiculous schedule to keep, but, are you absolutely 100% freaking sure without a shadow of a doubt, that 4 months is enough time? So far, I am not convinced. I would rather Anet take a breather from time to time if everything isn’t ready, and make ALL of their releases the stuff of perfection, instead of having maybe two great releases, and the rest are,…‘Okay…’

That’s all my concern is. I don’t think 4 months is enough time. I was talking about Naruto earlier, and get this, the average amount of time it takes to make a single episode of an animated show can be as long as 9 months, and even with 9 months, some of those shows still suffer. Yeah, there’s different teams working on different stages of the show, as there are different teams at Anet working on different stages of any given Living World release, but, it still isn’t enough.

Eveliina.8619:

Sinope.5630:

First of all, reward bags from Dynamic Events should be come once a day / event / account. So it would not be worthwhile to run just 4 – 5 same Dynamic Events.

These rewards I would like to see from Dynamic Events if they are success:
- Random Precursor (very rarely, no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, only from Gold rewards)
- Ascended items ( very rarely, no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, only from Gold rewards)
- Exotic item (armor or weapon), (normal exotic weapon no precursor weapon) (rarely, no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, only from Gold rewards)
- Karma bottle (randomly no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Rare item ( randomly, no matter what level character is, but under lvl 25 no higher than level 25 rare item. When character is above lvl 25 higher rare items, lvl 1 – 80 areas Gold or Silver rewards )
- Masterwork item (mostly, no matter what level character is, level 1 – 80 areas, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Fine item (never)
- White item (never)
- kitten crafting materials ( always, depending characters level, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Gold (always, level 1 – 15 area 15 silvers, level 15 – 25 area 25 silvers, level 25 – 35 area 35 silvers, level 35 – 45 area 45 silvers, level kitten area 55 silvers, level 55 – 65 area 65 silvers, level 65 – 75 area 75 silvers, level 70 – 80 area 85 silver, level 80 area 1 gold, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- No extra rewards from Champion events, Champion Bags are reward itself.
- Fail, no bag

This is awesome suggestion. But only thing what I would change on this suggestion is money.

I would like to suggest that Dynamic Events loot bag would contain:

- Gold (always, level 1 – 15 area 150 silvers, level 15 – 25 area 250 silvers, level 25 – 35 area 350 silvers, level 35 – 45 area 450 silvers, level kitten area 550 silvers, level 55 – 65 area 650 silvers, level 65 – 75 area 750 silvers, level 70 – 80 area 850 silver, level 80 area 1 gold, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)

In that way it sounds more rewarding

Good work Sinope

WooW. 150 silvers for events in lvl 1 – 15 zones. This would make us RICH, RICHIE RICH I am sure you are not familiar with the currency exchange.
1 gold = 100 silvers = 10.000 copper
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Coin

But anyway, like said before, Sinope’s suggestion is quite good for making people running around the zones. once chest /event /account /day

Ronah.2869:

Eveliina.8619:

Sinope.5630:

First of all, reward bags from Dynamic Events should be come once a day / event / account. So it would not be worthwhile to run just 4 – 5 same Dynamic Events.

These rewards I would like to see from Dynamic Events if they are success:
- Random Precursor (very rarely, no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, only from Gold rewards)
- Ascended items ( very rarely, no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, only from Gold rewards)
- Exotic item (armor or weapon), (normal exotic weapon no precursor weapon) (rarely, no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, only from Gold rewards)
- Karma bottle (randomly no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Rare item ( randomly, no matter what level character is, but under lvl 25 no higher than level 25 rare item. When character is above lvl 25 higher rare items, lvl 1 – 80 areas Gold or Silver rewards )
- Masterwork item (mostly, no matter what level character is, level 1 – 80 areas, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Fine item (never)
- White item (never)
- kitten crafting materials ( always, depending characters level, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Gold (always, level 1 – 15 area 15 silvers, level 15 – 25 area 25 silvers, level 25 – 35 area 35 silvers, level 35 – 45 area 45 silvers, level kitten area 55 silvers, level 55 – 65 area 65 silvers, level 65 – 75 area 75 silvers, level 70 – 80 area 85 silver, level 80 area 1 gold, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- No extra rewards from Champion events, Champion Bags are reward itself.
- Fail, no bag

This is awesome suggestion. But only thing what I would change on this suggestion is money.

I would like to suggest that Dynamic Events loot bag would contain:

- Gold (always, level 1 – 15 area 150 silvers, level 15 – 25 area 250 silvers, level 25 – 35 area 350 silvers, level 35 – 45 area 450 silvers, level kitten area 550 silvers, level 55 – 65 area 650 silvers, level 65 – 75 area 750 silvers, level 70 – 80 area 850 silver, level 80 area 1 gold, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)

In that way it sounds more rewarding

Good work Sinope

WooW. 150 silvers for events in lvl 1 – 15 zones. This would make us RICH, RICHIE RICH I am sure you are not familiar with the currency exchange.
1 gold = 100 silvers = 10.000 copper
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Coin

But anyway, like said before, Sinope’s suggestion is quite good for making people running around the zones. once chest /event /account /day

Oh no!

Now I feel so embarrassed. What was I thinking? I think I was thinking Copper rewards, not silvers. I will take this suggestion back I don’t want to ruin economy of this game, no way! What sinope has put in there sounds good

Now, what I would add her list is this:
- Black Lion Chest Keys (Rarely, no matter what level character is, level 1 – 80 areas, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Random Skin from Living stories (Very rarely, no matter what level character is, level 1 – 80 areas, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)

Ummm, I hope this sounds better

Eveliina.8619:

Ronah.2869:

Eveliina.8619:

Sinope.5630:

First of all, reward bags from Dynamic Events should be come once a day / event / account. So it would not be worthwhile to run just 4 – 5 same Dynamic Events.

These rewards I would like to see from Dynamic Events if they are success:
- Random Precursor (very rarely, no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, only from Gold rewards)
- Ascended items ( very rarely, no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, only from Gold rewards)
- Exotic item (armor or weapon), (normal exotic weapon no precursor weapon) (rarely, no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, only from Gold rewards)
- Karma bottle (randomly no matter what level character is, lvl 1 – 80 areas, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Rare item ( randomly, no matter what level character is, but under lvl 25 no higher than level 25 rare item. When character is above lvl 25 higher rare items, lvl 1 – 80 areas Gold or Silver rewards )
- Masterwork item (mostly, no matter what level character is, level 1 – 80 areas, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Fine item (never)
- White item (never)
- kitten crafting materials ( always, depending characters level, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Gold (always, level 1 – 15 area 15 silvers, level 15 – 25 area 25 silvers, level 25 – 35 area 35 silvers, level 35 – 45 area 45 silvers, level kitten area 55 silvers, level 55 – 65 area 65 silvers, level 65 – 75 area 75 silvers, level 70 – 80 area 85 silver, level 80 area 1 gold, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- No extra rewards from Champion events, Champion Bags are reward itself.
- Fail, no bag

This is awesome suggestion. But only thing what I would change on this suggestion is money.

I would like to suggest that Dynamic Events loot bag would contain:

- Gold (always, level 1 – 15 area 150 silvers, level 15 – 25 area 250 silvers, level 25 – 35 area 350 silvers, level 35 – 45 area 450 silvers, level kitten area 550 silvers, level 55 – 65 area 650 silvers, level 65 – 75 area 750 silvers, level 70 – 80 area 850 silver, level 80 area 1 gold, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)

In that way it sounds more rewarding

Good work Sinope

WooW. 150 silvers for events in lvl 1 – 15 zones. This would make us RICH, RICHIE RICH I am sure you are not familiar with the currency exchange.
1 gold = 100 silvers = 10.000 copper
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Coin

But anyway, like said before, Sinope’s suggestion is quite good for making people running around the zones. once chest /event /account /day

Oh no!

Now I feel so embarrassed. What was I thinking? I think I was thinking Copper rewards, not silvers. I will take this suggestion back I don’t want to ruin economy of this game, no way! What sinope has put in there sounds good

Now, what I would add her list is this:
- Black Lion Chest Keys (Rarely, no matter what level character is, level 1 – 80 areas, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)
- Random Skin from Living stories (Very rarely, no matter what level character is, level 1 – 80 areas, Gold, Silver or Bronze rewards)

Ummm, I hope this sounds better

yes, keys and skins from LS are good. Actually I remember they dropped in the Karka island – those living weapon skin – and also in the dragon festival – the dragon weapon skins.
Some people wondered why they took this possibility away but implementing it in the event reward chests will be much better then random drops.

Actually to put it short, the idea is to use the same mechanic as in Wold bosses where you get a reward chest for each event you do which contains various good things. You want more chests? You go around the zones to find events.

There are no timers like for the Dragons, so people will either announce them in the chat or they will just roam mindlessly.

A server chat will be great to have too so people can announce what events are starting and where. It happens now in big guilds but those other players without guilds or in small guild are not well informed.

ColinJohanson.2394:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

One idea I can think of to make people go out and play events around the world is to add item reward to events based on how long ago the event last had a success. The longer a event hasn’t been completed successfully the better the rewards get. People would most likely start going into zones to find events that havent been done in a while, and they might also start guesting onto lower pop servers for the same reason; making the worlds seems more alive. As a added bonus you could make skins that you can only get from events that happen in certain areas.
On a down side to this, you would have to disable this reward idea in overflows to prevent exploitation.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

Yes please. It would be great if you guys could come up with a way for people to get “The story so far” and also tie in a way to replay cutscenes, cinematics, and instances that have happened in the past. There a many different ways you could do this from the Scrying Pool in the hall of monuments, to the book tech that I remember reading somewhere that you wanted to get into the game but run out of time, or even as simple cinematics that are just images with voice overs. You guys have stated that there is many limits to how you can do this from text character limits, costs, development time, etc, but you know we are most likely going to keep annoying you with this until it happens. Adding this in would mean that content that was temporary which you guys put so much hard work into making would now be counted as permanent content (minus some of the rewards that should be time gated for when it was new).

Might as well put my opinion on other things while I am here.

Release time frame:
While I get all the achievements quickly, and finish all that temp content, I know people that don’t manage to get it done in time for one reason or another. It would be nice if you slowed the down the release from the current 2 weeks to a 3 week system. I can’t remember where I read it but I remember reading that you guys changed to 2 week system based on the stats that most people finished the content in that time frame, and that seems a little bit flawed; you should always make sure there is a buffer, and that is why I think 3 weeks is a better time frame. (sorry if I seemed a little rude there)

Living story skins:
Would be nice if you guys moved the skins to the summary window that has other achivement skins. They tend to take up space if you don’t have any plans for them yet.

BobbyStein.2315:

Regarding GW1 lore in Living World and beyond, let’s just say we’re looking at all GW lore right now and picking out threads that we’d like to tie up. Ideas are welcome, as always.

I would love to know what happend to Evennia.

I’d like the story to eventually return to the elder dragons. There’s 4 or 5 more of them that need to be taken down and I wouldn’t want them to just become background fluff while the story revolves around a new threat each time. When the southsun invasion happened I was sure it would lead to a reveal of bubbles, while Flame and Frost had me hoping Primordus is involved…

Drawing from GW1 and GW2 lore more would be appreciated too, I wouldn’t mind seeing Charr made progress towards clearing Ascalon, learn more about the origin of a certain sylvari from the living story, or find out what the heck Livia has been up to since getting the scepter, retaking Elona or allying with Palawa Joko would also awesome. New enemy factions like the Aether blade or smashups like the Molten alliance just don’t hold quite as much interest with me since I feel there’s enough established plot lines and story ties to go with instead. Going with the TV show analogy again, they feel like monster of the week episodes when I’d rather see established story arcs or stories centered about the big bad.

I would like to see a really mean villan, Scarlett is well somewhat unpredictable but then agin shes not what i would precent as really threatning or truly fearsome. I really loved Dhuum in guild wars one due to the fact that hes truly horrific and looks really fearsome and ofcoures an army of the dead is never wrong to have (really loved when he banned players too… best day ever when he first appeared… ahh good times).

I have read in the “few” pages before me that people like the ideas of dragons doing permanent changes to the map and makes there mark on the world and I have to agree they are a force that can be truly evil why not use it more.

I would like to see in a pve inviorment something like a wvw feeling, for instance a dragon devouers an known map and leaves a “general” behind to control the area then your server have to put up supplie camps and guard the routes between guard posts and camps defend against the dragons minions and slowly working from one side of the map towards the main event that is kiling the general. Before getting there you the player will have to take down many of the generals second in command types of foes and certain keeps. I would really like to see the cursed shore to be somewhet remade for that kind of playstyle but i know the character story might not be as easy to move or change.

When it comes to minions there is one thing i truly have to just put out there i dont like hiting the same foe for to long unless its something special like veteran, champ or ledgendary boss. Regular minions should in my oppinion never be to hard to kill this has nothing to do whit loot but the feeling of being heroic. What i like is to take on 10 vs 1 or lets say 20 vs 1 those kinds of odds makes it so the player feels truly powerful something i dont get when im hitting the same regular foe over and over. (Anyone who have played starcraft 2 and has a protoss or terran army vs an zerg hoard knows what im talking about if you make it that is.).

Some mechanics i really dont like for instance the one shot kills especialy when its in a larger group bigger then the dungeon 5 man team. those kinds of areas are somewhat hard to see stuff when 80+ players whit there partical effects dances infront of your face. Conditions vs bosses Íve allways like the condition concept however I dont know if its worth it vs an boss due to the cap of lets say 25 bleeds that can be applied. I would like to know that the boss will take the damage from me aswell as my teammate if we both do a condition build.

Shriketalon.1937:

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

It’s a quote from a ways back, but it’s the best way to frame my response. I hope you don’t mind.

A good show must find a balance between building lore, establishing characters, indulging in instant gratification, and setting up long term investment. In many ways, a television show is an apt comparison to MMOs. They require an initial hook to get the player interested combined with long term reasons to get committed to regular viewing. In addition, they cater to many different individual’s personal tastes; viewers will get attached to certain characters, become invested in the plot, or simply enjoy the wit and banter to bring them back again and again. At the moment, however, the Living Story feels like a poor spinoff due to the overemphasis on the Saga of Scarlet. In order to achieve a solid viewing audience, the Living Story needs to find balance.

I have a thread over yonder where I go into more details, but here is a simple example of a Living Story arrangement designed to appeal to a wide audience. The idea is to reserve long term campaigns that take months of content for the most important things going on in Tyria (which are dragons, not redheaded Sylvari reverse engineering bloodstones). These fit into the January-to-May block very easily, since there are no holidays during that time frame. Meanwhile, the rest of the year is devoted to creature features, lore delves, one shot stories, and the introduction of new races in order to indulge a diverse audience. The combination of hardcore campaigns and whimsical/wonderful oneshots should satisfy the audience and keep them entertained for years to come.

If it is not to presumptuous, here is a hypothetical TV Guide To Tyria to demonstrate what the Living Story could be.

THIS! This TV Guide is so awesome, I’d love to see that, great ideas!

In a game promoted around dragons we rarely see them around and for a new player they don’t even seem like a threat to the world. The road to reach them is long and boring so many heroes quit the journey and satisfy their fighting needs killing the trolls and boars and occasionally some grawls or Sons of swanirs

let the Dragons be the main actors let them threaten the world everywhere and without a dragon timer

Ronah.2869:

In a game promoted around dragons we rarely see them around and for a new player they don’t even seem like a threat to the world. The road to reach them is long and boring so many heroes quit the journey and satisfy their fighting needs killing the trolls and boars and occasionally some grawls or Sons of swanirs

let the Dragons be the main actors let them threaten the world everywhere and without a dragon timer

What he said!!!! The problem is i dont think we gonna ever see something like that or similar to that…

You can see the dragons everywhere. Both the Claw and Shatteree can be seen flying overhead commanding their armies until you take them down. And I think there’s enough Risen in the game.

The problem is that the LS went on a complete tangent and decided a crazy salad would be the perfect antagonist and just forgot about the dragons.

Immensus.9732:

Ronah.2869:

In a game promoted around dragons we rarely see them around and for a new player they don’t even seem like a threat to the world. The road to reach them is long and boring so many heroes quit the journey and satisfy their fighting needs killing the trolls and boars and occasionally some grawls or Sons of swanirs

let the Dragons be the main actors let them threaten the world everywhere and without a dragon timer

What he said!!!! The problem is i dont think we gonna ever see something like that or similar to that…

There is another game about dragons – Dragon’s Prophet – which was marketed as taming 300 dragons and when the game started players could only have 3 dragons in their box. The forum has changed that so now they can have as many dragons as they want but will need to buy the slots for storing them.
So, I guess, we may change A-Nets opinion on what the dragons should be in the game. maybe some good and bad dragons coukld bring new possibilities to the game as long as they want to release the game in China where the dragons are viewed as good ones

Thought of an analogy that shows what went wrong with Living story in my opinion: We started with GW2 – Rise of the Elder dragons – the movie. What we got now is the GW2 TV series – the Saturday morning cartoon adaptation.

Shriketalon.1937:

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

It’s a quote from a ways back, but it’s the best way to frame my response. I hope you don’t mind.

A good show must find a balance between building lore, establishing characters, indulging in instant gratification, and setting up long term investment. In many ways, a television show is an apt comparison to MMOs. They require an initial hook to get the player interested combined with long term reasons to get committed to regular viewing. In addition, they cater to many different individual’s personal tastes; viewers will get attached to certain characters, become invested in the plot, or simply enjoy the wit and banter to bring them back again and again. At the moment, however, the Living Story feels like a poor spinoff due to the overemphasis on the Saga of Scarlet. In order to achieve a solid viewing audience, the Living Story needs to find balance.

I have a thread over yonder where I go into more details, but here is a simple example of a Living Story arrangement designed to appeal to a wide audience. The idea is to reserve long term campaigns that take months of content for the most important things going on in Tyria (which are dragons, not redheaded Sylvari reverse engineering bloodstones). These fit into the January-to-May block very easily, since there are no holidays during that time frame. Meanwhile, the rest of the year is devoted to creature features, lore delves, one shot stories, and the introduction of new races in order to indulge a diverse audience. The combination of hardcore campaigns and whimsical/wonderful oneshots should satisfy the audience and keep them entertained for years to come.

If it is not to presumptuous, here is a hypothetical TV Guide To Tyria to demonstrate what the Living Story could be.

This is some seriously epic stuff, though I would work on it a little here and there, but it’s more than a good start. Don’t want to be rude, but this puts the current LS into shame. Actually, I want to see this happen. Though, we have to look at the technical side of the things, it would be a lot of hard work to implement new maps, themes, armors,weapons,npc…etc. in that time rate, but possible, I hope they show that post to everyone inside their studio, it’s really epic.

ColinJohanson.2394:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

I thin that there is no need to adding new rewards, just making the existing ones (karma) more viable. Now, karma has almost no use. Sure, you can buy obsidian shard and exotic gear. But: exotic gear can be easily crafted, bought on TP or bought with Badges of Honor in WvW. Obsidian shards can be also obtained via Fractals and are useful only to people going after legendaries or crafting ascended. We need viable rewards for karma.
Example: Ascended gear is gained only via crafting or luck (super-rare drops). What about vendor that is selling ascended for great amounts of karma. Or food and other consumables for 80s, crafting materials (you never get right amount for leveling up crafting anyway), or new and exclusive armor/weapon/backpack/whatever skins.
Another thing is that after we don´t get so many karma from jugs for dailies/monthlies, karma is harder to come by, but still useless while we have nothing to buy for it. And after hearing you can tweak rewards for lvl 1-79 and lvl 80, maybe you can raise event karma gain for lvl 80s? So if said ascended for karma would cos, lets say 100k or some other insane ammount, it would not be years-worth grind for new players.

BobbyStein.2315:

So you’d like the game to react to you on a more personal level, such that people, places, etc. respond differently depending on your accomplishments, decisions, and so on?

Yes, yes we would like that. I know it´s hard to do, but it was told that we could have impact on the world. Only impact was the elections (and we hadn´t heard of Ellen since). I know you can´t do two different forms of release for two different outcomes of player reactions, but maybe try to add at least the little things. There should be different potential outcomes of some stories and we should see them when it happens, not in 4 months (or more).
An example that comes to mind: When Molten Facility dungeon came out, the “Molten facility strenght” bar would move automatically in time and didn´t mean anything. Instead, it could in fact count how many players have “destroyed” that facility. At the end, if we wouldn´t made it to a certain treshold, we would beat the Molten Aliance and the story could continue considering them “gone” like it did (even though, as we see now, they are not – see Scarlet invasions), but there could be events with Molten forces would try to attack from some “remaining” weapon facilities and stad their ground (ofc, for logical reasons we would not go in, just defeat them outside)
On the other hand, if we would meet that treshold, there could be events where some Molten forces would try to reestablished the destroyed facilities or something like that (so there would be equality of content).
And best thing would be if each server could have different outcome (for example on Riverside they would not meet the treshold, but on Piken they would) – that way the resources would not be wasted.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Shinzan.2908:

I’m more convinced turning to a traditional content release concept rather doing this episodic thing would be better for GW2. The instances with Roxx and Braham, Scarlet’s playhouse etc could have been triggered after one finishes their living story as the next chapters so people can do them at their own pace and experience a personalized story. Doing it that way would allow for things like recognition from NPC’s or slight alterations based on our characters past choices.

Meanwhile the Molten Facility or Aetherblade retreat would have been better as new permanent dungeons, with explorable paths as well as their own rewards and armor.

In my opinion a game just shouldn’t try be a TV show.

I’m not sure the two need to be mutually exclusive. What if every X amount of time that seemed reasonable, the story simply kept being expanded in the way you’re discussing rather than be released in one big chunk?

But if you’re not up to that point in the story arc, you can play it when ever you get there.

This is basicaly what the problem is and what many people has already said – we need something to replay story so far, if we´ve missed it. The world may be in the state of the current story, but maybe dealing the LS simirally to the PS – have a tab that tracks your progress where you can check in what you did and give new players option to experience story from the start.
Since I´m playing since BWEs, there is hard to realise that there are actually new players comming in who didn´t experience the LS so far not due to them not playing, but due to them not owning the game. They come hee and have no idea who´s this Scarlet and what´s up with this Tower, since they just logged in for the first time.
What about to do it like a PS in the way you could continue where you last ended with a story (I didn´t play Rox´s instance – there would be golden star in Rytlocks office, UI interface would tell me about going there too (something like experience the pas, go to Rytlock) and I could go through the story instances as I´d in the case of PS until I reach Tower of Nightmares). It could be this, or something else, but you need to allow new players (or players that simply don´t have enough time) to experience the story.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Shinzan.2908:

I’m more convinced turning to a traditional content release concept rather doing this episodic thing would be better for GW2. The instances with Roxx and Braham, Scarlet’s playhouse etc could have been triggered after one finishes their living story as the next chapters so people can do them at their own pace and experience a personalized story. Doing it that way would allow for things like recognition from NPC’s or slight alterations based on our characters past choices.

Meanwhile the Molten Facility or Aetherblade retreat would have been better as new permanent dungeons, with explorable paths as well as their own rewards and armor.

In my opinion a game just shouldn’t try be a TV show.

I’m not sure the two need to be mutually exclusive. What if every X amount of time that seemed reasonable, the story simply kept being expanded in the way you’re discussing rather than be released in one big chunk?

But if you’re not up to that point in the story arc, you can play it when ever you get there.

Hi Colin, I agree with you that they do not have to be mutually exclusive either. However, TV shows show decisions, actions, themes, etc. in episodes later in the series. I believe that ANet can definitely exceed in this living story if you were to tweak a few mechanics and ideas regarding the LW.

For one, the living world should have permanent or semi-permanent impacts on the world. The way the LS is set up currently, the world seems like an instance (even though it is the open world). This is because the content leaves no lasting impression on the environment – or the players. I’ll give you a couple examples of what I mean:

• For the current living story, what if the lake in which the tower of nightmares is located is altered permanently? What if the waters have been tainted and mutate or create permanent toxic enemies in the lake and on the shores? You maybe can see some remnants of the tower sticking out of the water, and underwater, you find more tower ruins. Now, new players may not understand why the tower is here, or the toxic enemies are here. I’ll get to how you can deal with that later.

• Another example, the Flame and Frost (my favorite by far) and the Molten Alliance could have wrecked devastation in the Shiverpeaks. Some of the houses around the event could have been permanently or semi-permanently destroyed. Players would be able to see these amazing snow-covered ruins. And refugees could have maybe established a new shop or home in LA.

• Maybe in another LS, we only focus on expanding! The humans want to build into centaur lands! Players need to fend off attacks while NPC build a new village for a week or so. (This has no destruction really). Or maybe players do something of this nature when you decide to do a full blown expansion (if you do). Then players will not even realize what they just contributed to! The players just built a dock and ship for a sailor (so what!), but maybe that sailor knows a passage to Cantha or Elona. I know I for one would be amazed to what I just helped accomplish!

Okay, so there are a few examples. Now how do we make these Living Stories more alive? Well, one way I believe to do that is something you guys often do. I know that many people do not like heart quests that say to gather X amount of whatever. But that is what I am suggesting. But here is the catch!

So you have all this destruction caused by the current or passed LS right? Houses destroyed, bridges burned, farm fields ruined, and lives destroyed. You get the picture. Now every server has to come together to help these poor people. All of this would be server based, and take a few days or weeks to fully complete. For example:

• Maybe the people of wherever (does not matter) want 5,000 elder log planks to make a fortification to defend from invaders of the current LS. (Now a server can easily do that maybe, so you can mess with numbers.) BUT, only say 0% of the fortifications can be built each day. So that takes 5 days to build. Everyday at reset time (or another set time) once the NPC receives the daily quota (1000) they will build a section of this fortification. Players will have to help fend off attackers while half a dozen NPC frantically work for 20 minutes or so. Now this event is not the only event that is happening concurrently in this LS. Maybe another NPC needs 10,000 hard wood planks and 5,000 platinum bars to rebuild their house. This happens over x amount of days as well. The NPC rebuilds his house, even better than before!

Okay, so you kind of get the point. Multiple events happening in the world at once. Players get to help rebuild and repair the world around them slowly. Maybe they helped a farmer by gathering tons of food ingredients and rebuilt his windmill. Now he gives x amount of random food ingredients to the players daily. These NPC’s won’t forget the players helped them. They will be thankful.

AND, players have a sense of achievement. They can say they contributed to the world. They rebuilt something. They made it even better than before. And all that they have built stays in the world. Months later when players walk by and see that little fort they helped build, they will get a sense of nostalgia. Maybe ANet let the fort fall into ruins now 3 months after the events or whatever. Maybe the fort has some NPCs living in it now. That doesn’t matter! What does is the players think back to that epic fight with their guild members and love this game a little bit more.

Now for the new players… It’s not fair they don’t get rewards for doing the LS that happened a month ago, right? Well, I don’t think they should get the little Candy Corn Node or the Krait Shard Obelisk. So I am suggesting that EVERYONE who does those certain achievements maybe gets a rare loot bag as well (or something of that nature). So, if you did the LS when it was actually going on, you got the unique item and a rare loot bag. If you didn’t do it when it was out, you get the loot bag.

The issue for repeating LS if you haven’t done it? You guys can place a LS historian or something of that nature in LA and all the other main cities. Players can talk to them and relive the events that they missed. Or maybe they are in the location of the event…and they meet a storyteller who remembers the events that took place. That NPC whose house everyone rebuilt two months ago? He’s here to retell that story! Players who missed out can talk with NPC’s like that in the zone to relive LS content as well.

So in summary:

• LS has permanent and semi-permanent destruction. The permanent is, well, permanent. The semi-permanent is rebuilt by players over time (and better than before maybe!) And other structures built will maybe stay as well (like the fort). THIS is a living world.

• Allow for players to earn loot or something similar for doing the LS that the missed. However, they do not get the unique nodes and other rewards that players who helped when that LS was the current one. (Maybe they can still save up the trophies to get the unique weapon/armor skins though?) This is only fair.

• Have historians and storytellers in Tyria that allow players who missed content to catch up or be filled in. An easy solution guys, come on.

timmyf.1490:

DiogoSilva.7089:

One of the things that I didn’t like in the personal story instances, is the fact that content can be forever skipped. The fact that by choosing between a noble human or not, or all the personal story instances where I had to choose to go either to point A or point B. I hated that, because I felt that the story was more immersing when I could experience the whole of it, and not just part of it. In fact, having replayed the human’s story with three different characters made me enjoy it a lot more than with just one, because it made Divinity’s Reach feel richer and more layered in complexity. And even then, there have been instances that I didn’t have the opportunity to ver try, and that I’ll probably never see them ever, unless you somehow revamp that system and allow us to replay every single instance.

I think the idea in Guild Wars 2 is that you’d play the Personal Story of other players in order to see all the different story lines, etc. This is complicated by two things:

1) Unlike in Guild Wars 1 (where missions and most quests required other players – unless you wanted to risk it with henchmen… and prior to the introduction of Heroes), you had to party up with people to play content. This made the content more social. Because the PS can be completed almost in its entirety as a solo venture, there’s really no reason to attempt to party up with others. I’ve tried using LFG to find folks to play PS with me, but I’ve never once had anybody join.

2) The rewards for completing the PS of others are pretty low given the time investment…

I’d also like to point out that players are actually discouraged from helping others with their personal stories due to what most would consider a bug. If I am Vigil, and I help you out with your Whispers story, certain story chapters can actually cause me to no longer be Vigil and I will instead be forcibly changed to being in the Order of Whispers just because I helped you with your Whispers story chapter.

Why should my chosen Order, and all of my efforts and chosen paths in My Story, be overwritten and forever disjointed simply because I helped someone else with their Story Chapter of a different Order? My Story will then make absolutely no sense and any future chapters in My Story are related to the new Order I was forced into instead of the chapters I should have had with my chosen Order.

Many have reported this huge issue…without reply.

Issues with living content:

- Events don’t scale to the number of players playing the event, the second week of a event some content can’t be completed because most players have already moved on.
This also leads to burn out, because you must do the event when it comes out or risk not being able to finish it.

- Time limited achievements (events that only last one or two days), miss them and your screwed, you may not be able to complete the Living World Event.

- Doesn’t really add much, once a Living World Event ends, it really didn’t add much of anything to game.

- Too much content hidden by Living World Events (home nodes, crafting, etc.) Didn’t do the event tough, your out of luck!

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think where the failure is lies in the rewards. You don’t get nowhere near enough rewards for doing DEs compared to other things, because karma is not very useful. Also, doing something extremely short and simple like killing a champion gives the same if not more rewards than a long DE like escorting someone, so no one does the escorts.

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

It could be like buying food in the supermarket. You tend to always buy the same stuff over and over again until someone suggests or wishes a specific item you also enjoy but would not normally buy.

Living world = breaking stuff up.
So many skill spamming and no damage at all to the environment makes the world still

ColinJohanson.2394:

cesmode.4257:

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

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

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

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

Thoughts?

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

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

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

That’s fine with how dynamic events and the open world works, since the world moves forward without you needing to be there. Someone else can complete the event you ignored, and the story will progress.

However, there’ two important things that don’t match this, because they aren’t world-locked, they are player-locked. These are:

• Renown Hearts
• Personal Story
• Living World (Longest of the three)

Renown Hearts: When you complete a renown heart, phasing should happen to show completion. Just removing enemies or disabling heart stuff isn’t good. The world should change somehow, just a bit, and only for those who have completed it. Pretty much what happens with some hearts, where you rebuild stuff and unlock new gossip and vendors, but phased for players who have completed the heart.

Personal Story: The Personal Story feels very disconnected, for many reasons I’ve already linked at reddit some pages ago. But in this particular case, I could say the same I’ve said for Renown Hearts. The Personal Story is very important to the lore, and it has zero impact in the open world, which is very sad. Maybe adding non-instanced stuff between the personal story would help (Like completing X hearts to unlock next mission, or requiring for a temple to be captured to access the mission).

Continues next post…

Continues from previous post…

Living World: This is the most important feature, because it’s still growing unlike the other two. This will be a bit long, but I’ll try to analyze its main problem properly.

You need to realize something, and soon. You can’t progress story keeping the instances without killing previous story. That’s why there should always be a Cursed Shore where the Pact is invading and Zhaitan is still alive. The Personal Story needs it. The new players need it. What if tomorrow we decide to cleanse Orr? Use a new zone. Have 2 timeline versions of the same locations.

Lion’s Arch lighthouse… Ok, it’s a small change (I’d still prefer if it appeared intact during the Personal Story), but when we get bigger changes, it’s going to become a mess. I really think stuff like what’s going on in Kessex should be a different zone. Take the area around Viathan Lake (No need to take eastern Kessex Hills), and duplicate it in another instance. The old one remains as it always did, so the lore there isn’t lost.

Then, in the new zone, you can nuke all the dynamic events of the old zone. It’s storybreaking to see centaurs fighting humans like if they weren’t on the shadow of the Tower of Nightmares. To progress story properly, that situation should be gone, and it can’t be gone without breaking the entire game’s story flow if we don’t separate both timeline stances.

For example, let’s fastforward to a future expansion, where you release many new zones. Imagine if we visited one of those zones at level 30. The zone has a light storyline with the locals and whatever. We complete it and leave. Then, at level 60, we return to the zone, and it’s changed! It’s now a battlefield, lots of towns destroyed, trenches replacing forests, the enemy armies have invaded it and destroyed our previous efforts. I think it would be great to see this situation arise, and to be able to experience both time stances when we wanted.

In the end, what I want to say is that zones should be time-locked, and it’s not bad. The “living” should be on how we play and interact each time we get to that zone, how our actions affect the world, but in specific moments and through dynamic events, not permanent changes that try to move the story forward, but that feel poor because of the limits, and that in the long term will make things confusing,

And if you really want to move the story forward? Make a copy of the zone, and CHANGE it as much as you want. Imagine if right now, we had 2 versions of Wayfarer Foothills, one as we do now, and another where the Molten Alliance is assaulting. That’s the way to go, in my opinion.

Both the limits on how much you can modify current zones, and how the old lore is getting screwed, really cheapen the experience of the Living World. Separate them for good.

Navigating between both of them could be confusing? Well, I’m sure there’s a solution. For example, add special waypoints that switch the time stance.

What about splitting the playerbase? That’s a problem, but having many zones isn’t what originates it. Adding new content that makes you travel around would fix it. Daily achievements focused on those zones could help, but I think the real solution would come through a new mechanic. Something like guild missions, but for single player or small parties. How could it work? Each day each player gets to a NPC, and gets assigned a random mission. This system would divide the playerbase by segments, and make them go to old zones, find whoever else got the same mission and join to complete it, fixing the main problem which isn’t fragmentation, it’s everyone being in the same place.

Summarized: Make copies of the zones when you want to progress story, and then have complete freedom to create and destroy without fearing old lore getting destroyed. Making the world progress shouldn’t mean destroying previous material, and trying to “collage” advancing story with old story in the same locations is too confusing. The living should be in the content and how we play it, on the moment and the different consequences each time.

That’s all, hope it helps. I really think how the world grows and progresses needs to be looked into, and adapted to a stable model that makes sense for everyone, doesn’t leave a confusing scenario in later years, doesn’t punish new players and let’s us experience the entire story, no matter it’s supposed to have already happened.

(New post unrelated to above)

HOME INSTANCE AND COLLECTING PLAYED STORYLINES

I really think all the Living Story (From The Lost Shores) should be compilled into instanced content, just like the Personal Story. Also, make them both replayable.

Then just access them from your home instance.

Your home instance is pretty empty, isn’kitten Why not add some sort of library, or display cabinets, where you have this item or painting of each story. Example:

So, right now, I arrive at my home. I have one big shelf, with a a space for each chapter of the Personal Story. Interacting with them opens my hero panel, in the story tab, but adds an extra option to replay them.

Also, I have other shelves, including other storylines. One for Southsun Cove, with the two storylines. Then another for Scarlet’s minions and their releases.

As you complete each storyline, the spaces get filled with paintings or other trophies to remember each chapter.

Unfortunately, not all the release stuff was instanced. No problem! Molten Alliance chapter? We can take a chunk of Diessa Plateau, instance it, add a few classic events and make you complete some. Even the Ancient Karka could be replayable with this idea, in a softer way, of course. For those events that stay, just make you go and complete them in the open world before continuing the story.

With examples, in case you don’t understand it:

Live release:

During a live release you have 3 things you usually need to participate in:

• Temporary events (open world).
• Permanent events (open world).
• Instanced stuff (instanced).

Archived release:

This is how they would translate:

• Temporary events need to be removed (I’m talking about stuff like Toxic Alliance appearing across the world, repairing sign posts during the Molten Alliance incident, finding and defeating Canach during The Lost Shores, etc). So we save them into new instances, so you can “experience” the story, in a softer way (instanced).
• Permanent events, they remain unaltered, so just send the players to complete them in a step of the archived story before unlocking the next one (open world).
• The instanced stuff remains the same instead of getting removed. (instanced).

So for example, how would we bring Secret of Southsun back? We have the 3 things in this case:

• Temporary: Settler fights, camps getting attacked with us discovering one settler was behind it. => We do instances for a few of these things.
• Permanent: Crazy karka, Karka Queen. => Send players to do this in the open world.
• Instanced: Canach’s Lair, Kiel blowing up the ship. => Bring back the original instances.

I think everything would be viable this way. It’s a quick draft, but I’ll try to improve and explain the idea better when I get to touch more topics later.

I agree we should be able to replay story instances, but I don’t think redoing open world content is realistic to implement. I made a similar Suggestion earlier this year.

Lonami.2987:

(New post unrelated to above)

HOME INSTANCE AND COLLECTING PLAYED STORYLINES

I really think all the Living Story (From The Lost Shores) should be compilled into instanced content, just like the Personal Story. Also, make them both replayable.

Then just access them from your home instance.

Your home instance is pretty empty, isn’kitten Why not add some sort of library, or display cabinets, where you have this item or painting of each story. Example:

So, right now, I arrive at my home. I have one big shelf, with a a space for each chapter of the Personal Story. Interacting with them opens my hero panel, in the story tab, but adds an extra option to replay them.

Also, I have other shelves, including other storylines. One for Southsun Cove, with the two storylines. Then another for Scarlet’s minions and their releases.

As you complete each storyline, the spaces get filled with paintings or other trophies to remember each chapter.

Unfortunately, not all the release stuff was instanced. No problem! Molten Alliance chapter? We can take a chunk of Diessa Plateau, instance it, add a few classic events and make you complete some. Even the Ancient Karka could be replayable with this idea, in a softer way, of course. For those events that stay, just make you go and complete them in the open world before continuing the story.

With examples, in case you don’t understand it:

---

Live release:

During a live release you have 3 things you usually need to participate in:

• Temporary events (open world).
• Permanent events (open world).
• Instanced stuff (instanced).

---

Archived release:

This is how they would translate:

• Temporary events need to be removed (I’m talking about stuff like Toxic Alliance appearing across the world, repairing sign posts during the Molten Alliance incident, finding and defeating Canach during The Lost Shores, etc). So we save them into new instances, so you can “experience” the story, in a softer way (instanced).
• Permanent events, they remain unaltered, so just send the players to complete them in a step of the archived story before unlocking the next one (open world).
• The instanced stuff remains the same instead of getting removed. (instanced).

---

So for example, how would we bring Secret of Southsun back? We have the 3 things in this case:

• Temporary: Settler fights, camps getting attacked with us discovering one settler was behind it. => We do instances for a few of these things.
• Permanent: Crazy karka, Karka Queen. => Send players to do this in the open world.
• Instanced: Canach’s Lair, Kiel blowing up the ship. => Bring back the original instances.

---

I think everything would be viable this way. It’s a quick draft, but I’ll try to improve and explain the idea better when I get to touch more topics later.

This is more or less what I advocate. They can retool a lot of the content that was in the game temporarily over the last year and reintroduce it as permanent expansions to the Personal Story along with enhancements to the PS centered around utilizing your home instance more and being able to replay story events. Suddenly, with very little effort, there’d be a good deal more content in the game that people can enjoy and you may bring back players that abandoned the game due to not feeling like they could keep up with the Living World.

This would include many things that people complained about being temporary (and that were always silly to make temporary) like the MWF and AR dungeons and most of the instanced content.

Then, they can shift their focus to gradually ‘growing’ the world and story instead of spending so many resources on removing and replacing content (destroying the feeling of growth and expansion that all MMOs need). On the ‘Living World’ side, we should just simply see a lot more focus on the DE content within each zone along with aesthetic improvements to the world like seasonal weather.

I´d also like to add a thing about events, it´s very likely it was mentioned but: please, disable or edit existing events where they don´t make sense where the LS is. It´s really funny. There is this big tower swarming with krait and NC, but there is this guy that goes finding lost heirlooms. Or centaurs are just going their buisness, totally ignoring it.
Or, when there is Scarlet invasion, there is Scarlet events and other, completely illogical events happening at the same place. And worst thing with Scarlet invasions- other mobs don´t attack Scarlet minions and Scarlet minions don´t attack normal mobs. It makes world not living, but static. Maybe when Scarlet is happening, disable other events to spawn at least or something? It makes no sense

Illi.3647:

I´d also like to add a thing about events, it´s very likely it was mentioned but: please, disable or edit existing events where they don´t make sense where the LS is. It´s really funny. There is this big tower swarming with krait and NC, but there is this guy that goes finding lost heirlooms. Or centaurs are just going their buisness, totally ignoring it.
Or, when there is Scarlet invasion, there is Scarlet events and other, completely illogical events happening at the same place. And worst thing with Scarlet invasions- other mobs don´t attack Scarlet minions and Scarlet minions don´t attack normal mobs. It makes world not living, but static. Maybe when Scarlet is happening, disable other events to spawn at least or something? It makes no sense

In addition to disabling events, it’s a small thing but could the yellow mobs run away from these creatures? It’s odd to see something like a horde of twisted creatures and deer and moas calming walking thru them. Particularly in the middle of a fight with a zerg of people. The yellow mobs should be fleeing the area, not admiring the scenery. I’m not one to worry much about immersion but this looks unnatural.

Astral Projections.7320:

Illi.3647:

I´d also like to add a thing about events, it´s very likely it was mentioned but: please, disable or edit existing events where they don´t make sense where the LS is. It´s really funny. There is this big tower swarming with krait and NC, but there is this guy that goes finding lost heirlooms. Or centaurs are just going their buisness, totally ignoring it.
Or, when there is Scarlet invasion, there is Scarlet events and other, completely illogical events happening at the same place. And worst thing with Scarlet invasions- other mobs don´t attack Scarlet minions and Scarlet minions don´t attack normal mobs. It makes world not living, but static. Maybe when Scarlet is happening, disable other events to spawn at least or something? It makes no sense

In addition to disabling events, it’s a small thing but could the yellow mobs run away from these creatures? It’s odd to see something like a horde of twisted creatures and deer and moas calming walking thru them. Particularly in the middle of a fight with a zerg of people. The yellow mobs should be fleeing the area, not admiring the scenery. I’m not one to worry much about immersion but this looks unnatural.

I couldn’t agree more.
If friendly npcs could also temporarily move away from the affected areas, that would be great. I mean, look at Moogooloo. The quaggans shouldn’t be there. They could have temporarily moved to the camp where Kasmeer, Jory and the other npcs are at the moment. Maybe a text box could have been added to reflect the change (“Foo! Moogooloo is no good for quaggans anymore!”). The heart could still be there and active, no problem, we can complete it by killing toxic krait. The problem is, the quaggan village of Moogooloo is now trapped between the land and the tower, full of toxins and with no escape by water. It simply makes no sense for the quaggans to stay there.

well as you can see in this thread ive done many comments which mean im following it from the first day, so i think is time to make this hard question for me and for everyone else thats im pretty sure wants to know… Dear Anet Devs you got more than plenty of ideas here, once you start putting all these ideas in an order, how long it will probably take you to start adding them in the game? because from this thread i think you can easily have half year or even more worth of content, if you delay it might be a bit late when you finally add this content simply because the players wont care about this game anymore… maybe.

To me the biggest thing about LW is that we don’t have much time to become invested in a character before they fade off to some mission and we don’t see them until their next time in the spot light of a patch.

It would help immersion and for us to come to love these characters if we were able to follow them thru tyria. Each patch even if not part of the current patch story all the main friendly LW characters should be updated with new text as to what they have been up to, potentially even foreshadowing and causing a stir with cryptic comments about needing to investigate x near location y.

This hunting as a community to find where they have moved to and what they have been up to help. It doesn’t have to be as central like rox attending the jubilee but it would be nice to find rox out in the field and she tells you she can’t talk now rytlock has her checking out a rumor and she will let you know later how it pans out.

These additional potential inactions would help flesh out the living world and is characters without it feeling like they only matter occasionally

Looks like there’s been a lot of discussion here about the event structure and their rewards. On reading through the replies in the last few pages, here are my thoughts:

Start making new events again!

I can understand the disappointment of introducing a bunch of new events for them to receive little fanfare, but that early in the game, a lot of people were still in the “exploring” phase. At the time, coming across a new event you hadn’t seen before could have been a new event, or it could simply have been one that hadn’t had the right circumstances to trigger the first few times you came through.

Nowadays, though, new events are that much more likely to be recognised as being new – and, as has been said, increasing the variety of things that can happen rather than just having the same thing happen over and over again will serve to make the world feel more truly alive.

Increase reward based on time since the event was last completed

This, I think, is probably one of the best ideas for encouraging people to try out a greater range of events. For an event that persists until completed (the giant in Nageling, say) have the rewards slowly ramp up the longer it goes until it’s completed (ideally, with no breakpoints that encourage people to let it linger on purpose – the idea should be that the most efficient thing to do on any event you come across should be to just go ahead and do it, but that if you can pull off an event other players have been avoiding, bully for you). Events with fail conditions, by contrast, could have bonus rewards for each time the event failed – although again, it’s better to just succeed the first time. This would allow the possibility to apply something similar to supply/demand economics to events – the more an event is avoided the more potentially lucrative it may be, and thus the more incentive people have to do it.

Events need to be more accurately sorted between solo and group events, particularly if group events start receiving special rewards.

Whether because they require defending multiple locations or because the enemies being faced have been buffed since release, there are a number of events that are still being regarded as solo events by the game, but in practice require groups to have a reasonable chance at succeeding. Meanwhile, there are group events in the game that most definitely can be soloed by a player who knows what they are doing (most events consisting of a single champion count in this category, for instance, particularly if the champion’s attacks can be reasonably easily kited and/or dodged). Now, there’s no problem with a particularly skilled player being able to solo a group event, but I think there are a number of events in the game that are currently regarded as solo events, which can probably benefit from being upgraded so players that complete them can be appropriately rewarded.

Perhaps an ideal solution might be to split events into three or more categories – events designed to be reasonable for a solo player, events that are intended for small groups but which a single good player could pull off, and events that really mean it when they say they’re group events. A fourth category might encompass meta-events that are intended to collect a large proportion of the map’s population together.

I have some thoughts regarding tokens as well, but that’ll probably break the character limit, so I’ll put them in a second post.

On Tokens:

A poster a couple of pages ago suggested rewarding dungeon tokens in exchange for completing appropriate events, albeit with the requirement that you complete all paths of a particular dungeon before you can use those tokens at the dungeon vendor (although you may be able to redeem them for other purposes at other vendors). Personally, I think this is a great idea – one of my major complaints about dungeon tokens is that to get a full set of dungeon armour out of it, you’re looking at a total of about 20 runs. Strictly speaking, since lorewise most paths only run once (and some dungeon explorables, such as TA pre-TAssault and and CoE, can only happen once among all three paths – the different paths were just different ways of achieving the same objective), theoretically nobody currently should be able to have completed a full set of armour from one dungeon.

While token rewards should probably be calibrated so explorable dungeons remain by a considerable margin the most efficient means of collecting them, I think there is room to provide means for players to work towards dungeon vendor items through other means. As a possible structure of who would award what tokens, I would propose the following (with some lore explanations for some of the less intuitive connections):

Tears of Ascalon: How these appear in the possession of adventurers has yet to be clearly explained, although legend has it that the centuries of warfare and destruction has caused the land of Ascalon itself to weep, and its crystallised tears appear as a reward to those who work to undo the damage of the past and restore peace to the land. Tears of Ascalon are rewarded for events that involve putting Foefire ghosts to rest, promoting peace, and removing Branded and warlike factions from the land.

Royal Seals: Replacing Seals of Beetleton as a reflection of the wider focus of the tokens, Royal Seals are awarded for events whose completion contributes to the security and prosperity of Kryta.

Pale Blooms: Again replacing the Toxic Blooms of the Nightmare Court, these flowers of the Pale Tree are grown not for the purpose of reproduction as with other plants, but as a symbol of the Pale Tree’s appreciation of those who have performed heroic deeds on behalf of her sylvari children.

Manifesto of the Moleteriate: Trophies of the despotic regime that has subverted the dredge revolution, these manifestos can be collected by disrupting dredge operations and aiding the dredge rebels.

Flame Legion Charr Carvings: As well as being taken as trophies directly from the Flame Legion, the charr hierarchy has taken to issuing them as tokens of gratitude to those who assist the charr war effort in general.

Bear Symbols: While the kodan and the shamans of Bear do not always see eye to eye, they agree on the need to reward heroes for acts taken to push back the followers of Jormag and promote balance in the Shiverpeaks.

Knowledge Crystals: These crystals used by the asura for storing information can be collected through foiling the activities of the Inquest, or received as rewards from assisting other asura.

Shards of Victory: Crafted in imitation of trophies taken from Zhaitan’s greatest champions, Shards of Victory are granted to those who participates in Pact operations against Zhaitan and its followers and to secure Orr. (It might even be possible to trade 50-100 of them for a Pact Victory Token, should anyone want more Pact weapons than they could gain from PS completion alone.)

Between those eight, that covers most events that don’t involve the Lionguard. I’m unsure of what to do for Lionguard events – I’m unsure of what to provide for those. Without introducing new currencies, the best options may be badges of honor, gems, or just simply providing extra gold.

TL;DR version: I’d like the living story to feel a little more personal. Have little linear scenarios that can happen in parallel with what is happening in the open world, and create a few story missions that tell the story to the character, a little like how the personal story did it. Not everyone likes to do dungeons, and the open world is not immersive enough to tell the story with the chat and the zergs.
*

Hopefully I’m not too late for the party.

In the Living Story content, could we have more solo story missions? I’d like the living story to feel a little more like the personal story. I’d like to feel more personally involved in what happens.

For the Toxic Alliance, here’s how I would see that done.

1- Tower appears in Kessex Hills and you get your first story missions. The game is currently like that.
2- After the mission, you’re sent to collect some spores in the open world for analysis.
3- Once you have your spores, you’re eligible to another story mission that progresses your story with the tower event.
4- After the mission, you could get a choice to either collect some crystals or kill a few champions to allow the researchers to get the crystals themselves.
5- Once that’s done: final story mission of the patch. Scarlet abducts someone and you have to choose whether to send a call to your racial hero (Eir, Logan, etc.) for assistance or ask the Durand Priori to start researching for a way to defeat the tower’s magical defenses. In both cases it will take some time and we have to wait until November 12th.

So basically it ends with you wondering what will happen next, if you made the right decision, etc. It makes the player more involved in the story. The events between the story missions look like your typical quests in old MMOs but it’s just to keep players from doing all 3 missions in a row and then running out of stuff to do after 2 hours. It also forces them to explore the open world where other things are happening.

And then on November 12th, the next patch comes and you get to see the outcome of your choice and do the last 2-3 missions. If you missed any previous story missions, the game assumes that you made either one of the two choices in your final story mission and you get a letter telling you what happened and summoning you into the action.

Whatever choice you make doesn’t affect the greater outcome of the story, but it does have a few effects in how your character deals with the event, and makes it a little more personal.

The personal story is a feature of the game I was really excited about, but turned out to be a little disappointing to me. (Not just because of Trehearne, mind you.) With the living story, I think you could really rectify that and bring a little bit of role-playing. And with the factor of time playing, you could do like TV series and end on a suspense, leaving the player to wonder what will happen next. Like in my example, the player makes a choice but has to wait to see the consequence. You could also bring back old choices that we made several patches ago or in the personal story. Say you upset someone 4 months ago, then new patch hits and “Holy crap! This guy still hates me? Alright, I’m going to a) Add another scar on his face (+ Ferocity) b) Calm him.”

Also, I don’t really care if my character can’t talk in living story cutscenes due to budget limitations. You could turn that into an advantage by giving us more choices of answer in the written dialogs, like a charm answer, a dignity answer and a ferocity answer without having to go through the costly process of voicing them. (Think of Bioware games…) Of course, you’d have to find a point to the RP stats. (What about armor skins? Brutes get barbarian-like armor, nobles get knightly armor (if heavy) and charmers get skimpy armor. Hint, hint…)

You could bring back Trehearne in a Living Story event and give us a few noble/charm/ferocity lines to throw at him. With all the people saying that he takes over our personal story, wouldn’t it be awesome to return at him and throw him two or three “Ferocity” lines? No need for consequences as long as the dialog changes.

Lastly, could the game react a little more to who my character is? For example, my character is a human and charrs hate humans, so when meeting a charr character, I think it would be nice if once in a while the introduction lines were a bit different. Or you introduce a charming guy who starts hitting on female characters. Or a player character meetting a NPC from his order he has already met getting a “nice to see you again!” kind of introduction. Just little things that make the story more personal.

The problem with Scarlet’s story

To me the biggest problem with Scarlet, is that her plot is not gradually revealed to us. We get a lot of fairly enjoyable new content, but not any new information to allow us to speculate on her motivations. And I think I’m not alone in expecting the pay off to come out of nowhere. Like any mystery plot, I like there to be clues along the way, so I can second guess the plot. I also like having some twists and turns, and for the pay off to contradict my expectations. To be honest, currently my expectations of this pay off are turned way down, and I expect a cliche villainy reason that doesn’t make much sense at all. Kind of like the average plot of a villain on a classic Saturday morning cartoon. I completely expect Scarlet’s reasons to just be suddenly revealed to us, with no room for speculation what so ever.

I think this could be improved by having some new undocumented npc’s all over Tyria provide further clues, and then constantly building up to twists. Or perhaps simply static objects in the world that can be investigated. For example, maybe after the attack on the Captain’s Council, a piece of one of the airships can be found in the canals of Lion’s Arch, which yields further clues. None of this should be on dulfy, or tied to an achievement, for that would spoil the mystery entirely. And maybe we can find a piece of Krait technology hidden somewhere in Kessex Peak, or an ancient tablet underwater in one of the zones. Just don’t tell us about it, and allow us to puzzle a bit. Allow room for wild speculation on the forums.

I love this thread, so many great contributions! I started writing this yesterday, but I see that the discussion has progressed and most points here have been addressed already. Nevertheless, these points are very important to me, so I’ll just share my perspective here.

First, to the discussion on DE: The short cycles of many DEs make them feel like nothing more than the old kill ten rats quests. One person comes along, does it, and only a few minutes later the very same event starts again. In one case I saw one event starting again before it even had finished on the other end. This is the main thing that keeps me from doing DEs I run across. Only a few days ago, when I was in Kessex Hills: Feeling sorry for the victims, I freed the prisoners from the Krait. I move on, do one or two of those spore DEs, and happen to pass the same area again. The same DE is active again. This just made me feel stupid for caring in the first place. I almost felt punished. To top it off, the rewards given were meager. Had I spent the same time on a champion, I would have gotten better rewards and yet I would have done the same meager impact on the world. (The rewards are already being discussed here by people with more and better ideas than me, so I won’t talk about it in this post). It’s all about the illusion of making a difference, and currently it’s shattered way too easily.

The exact same problem exists in the Living Story, also in Kessex Hills, and is one of the reasons why the LS feel so temporary and meaningless to me. The spores pop up, people bring it down, repeat. It won’t make a difference whether it’s brought down or not. It’s just another farming spot. This applies to almost all LS releases. (I don’t have any problem with the Halloween doors though, they aren’t meant to have any impact, since they’re just there for some trick-or-treating. They make sense context-wise.)

The solution to this problem is simple. Make longer DE chains, instead of more separate DEs. In the case of the Kessex Hills LS, it would feel more meaningful to fight the spores if it meant gaining land and pushing forward with other players to perhaps place a (temporary) barrier of some sort around the lake or the obelisk to keep the krait contained there until either the krait break through again or enough players/troops have been rallied to raid the tower. Not just a short fight to get down a spore that will pop up again, but a fight for every inch of land, where everyone has to push from all sides at once (anti-zerg, I hope ;P). Basically, an active fight against the enemy. The current state of the map then influences the rewards, either map-wide or world-wide, for example in terms of gold and magic find, availability of merchants and resources etc..

A third related problem in KH, which reinforced the feeling of the LS being just a temporary, meaningless event: The centaurs and humans still quarreled over a bridge, completely ignoring the fact that there’s a huge krait obelisk in the lake and glowworms- er, krait everywhere! I’d rather see these DEs slightly altered or even removed, because this is very, very immersion-breaking.

Finally, I just want to add that I wholeheartedly support the idea of accessing older LS through the home instance and that completing certain parts of the (or the whole) LS gets you a reward to place there, much like the nodes now.
That’s all for now.

You make some good points Linnea. The rate at which Dynamic Events reset is exactly what the GW2 Manifesto said would be addressed, yet we got exactly the opposite of what was promised. DE’s do not care what we do, they reset almost instantly.

I want DE’s to have longer chains, leading up to an epic conclusion. There should be an epic boss at the end, with good loot (not just some blues, greens, and just maybe a gold). A lot of the events around Kessex Hills or Queensdale are a perfect example. They all reset really quickly. And lets not forget that lab at Sparkfly, near where Tequatl spawns. That frickin’ lab gets attacked by krait almost every 10 minutes, and there’s a wave of undead nearby that also resets just as fast. No one even bothers to defend it anymore.

I want DE’s to progress through a long chain, and becoming more epic along the way. And it should all conclude with a finale that requires some effort, and promises excitement and great rewards. Currently joining a champion chain is far more lucrative than doing any of the dynamic events… and we kind of warned you this would happen. Hate to say I told you so, but we did told you so when champion rewards were improved.

I may not have the right to comment about the living world as i stopped playing just before it was added but i figured that it would not hurt to add one thing

one of the major reasons why i will not come back and play guild wars 2 is because there is no way for me to see or do living world content that is already over.

For me its not about gear its about being able to do content at my pace.

So i was reading this http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_summary, if you could just animate all this story every time you release it it would already be an improvement, just saying…

Only thing what I have found bottleneck to enjoyment from this game and from living world (which is whole Tyria, with all maps and areas) is, players do not get rich just by playing.

Players can not enjoy whole game and it’s all aspects if they do not have decent weapon or armor. I am talking in here Exotic level 80 armor and weapon.
- Players do not get enough Karma by playing this game, when they hit level 80 they do not have enough Karma for Orr Exotic Armor
- Players do not have enough money to craft some Exotic armor or Exotic Weapon
- Players do not have enough money to buy those Exotic armors or weapons from TP
- And just for running same stupid Dungeon day after day after day, will definetly take their enjoyment from the game, just for getting enough tokens to get Dungeon armor or weapon

- Solution for this is very simple. Players should earn enough money or Karma just by playing game, so they could get their first decent armor when they have reach the level 80.
- It should be more profitable just play the game not playing with TP or doing same mindless dungeon runs.

The DE timers are definitely too fast in most cases, along with mob respawn rates. They need to generally be on a much longer timer and have their rewards increased to compensate. It’s a major de-motivator to do these things and one of the reasons that champ farming in lowbie zones is very popular while Orr stays barren and useless. The rewards aren’t worth the effort and on top of you’re disincentivized to bother due to how little difference it makes

They need to implement a scaling system where the population of a zone affects the event timers, and then also modify the rewards for how long it’s been since the event was last completed.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

You want players to do the events in the world? this is a joke as doing all hearts and events on the way can only earn you 10g at maximum which barely you can buy a little more100 gems with them
When the game started, 100 gems were 21 silvers now they are almost 7 golds
and again… you want players to play the other events?
What a sadistic request from you guys.

Make the rewards so the player has 100g when he has finished all the maps and then probably some people will see it as a profitable way but not before that. Even the karma is insufficient to buy an exotic gear when you finally get to Orr

> People are getting about 2 golds/h doing the 4-5 evets – aka QD champ train. So playing about 70h to get to lvl 80 ( or even less) will earn you 140 golds.

> Playing the same 70h doing all hearts and events in the way, repairing armor pretty often will earn you 7-10 golds.

No sane person will choose the second path no matter how interesting the events are, except probably the new players who have missed out on the train chatter in the map or they are playing their first and only character

Remember these phrases a new player always asks:
- what is the fastest way to level?
- what is the easiest way to make money?
- what is the simplest way to get max gear?

Any other affirmations like
- how nice and intelligent way to combine skills
- how cool animations the characters have
- what a beautiful world to explore
etc
are purely a beautiful dream from each gaming company.

This may seem a bit off-topic but I believe it could tie in well with living story rewards…

Is it at all possible to rework the ‘Dye Interface’ and the achievement chest reward skins into more of an all-in-one ‘Appearance Interface’? It would also be nice to do away with one-time use skins and add (unlock) all weapon/armor skins to the above-stated appearance interface for use as many times as you wish.

P.S. Weapon Dyes. ; )
Good day.

AikunFelcis.7258:

Shriketalon.1937:

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

It’s a quote from a ways back, but it’s the best way to frame my response. I hope you don’t mind.

A good show must find a balance between building lore, establishing characters, indulging in instant gratification, and setting up long term investment. In many ways, a television show is an apt comparison to MMOs. They require an initial hook to get the player interested combined with long term reasons to get committed to regular viewing. In addition, they cater to many different individual’s personal tastes; viewers will get attached to certain characters, become invested in the plot, or simply enjoy the wit and banter to bring them back again and again. At the moment, however, the Living Story feels like a poor spinoff due to the overemphasis on the Saga of Scarlet. In order to achieve a solid viewing audience, the Living Story needs to find balance.

I have a thread over yonder where I go into more details, but here is a simple example of a Living Story arrangement designed to appeal to a wide audience. The idea is to reserve long term campaigns that take months of content for the most important things going on in Tyria (which are dragons, not redheaded Sylvari reverse engineering bloodstones). These fit into the January-to-May block very easily, since there are no holidays during that time frame. Meanwhile, the rest of the year is devoted to creature features, lore delves, one shot stories, and the introduction of new races in order to indulge a diverse audience. The combination of hardcore campaigns and whimsical/wonderful oneshots should satisfy the audience and keep them entertained for years to come.

If it is not to presumptuous, here is a hypothetical TV Guide To Tyria to demonstrate what the Living Story could be.

THIS! This TV Guide is so awesome, I’d love to see that, great ideas!

Agreed, these look great. See pics on op that is being replied to.

Shinzan.2908:

Thought of an analogy that shows what went wrong with Living story in my opinion: We started with GW2 – Rise of the Elder dragons – the movie. What we got now is the GW2 TV series – the Saturday morning cartoon adaptation.

This is a good comparison of the Personal and Living stories. The PS we had at launch was like a movie and the LS feels like a bad TV show created to make cheap-money from the success of the movie.

One thing the LW would be great for (and was sadly underused so far) was expanding on allready introduced story and lore points. Right now it is mostly stacking and mashing things together, instead of allowing existing stuff to be flashed out.

One thing that alwars bothered me since it`s introduction into the PS was the role of the orders after the PS.
While they make an appearence here and there (F&F hat the OoW, rest had mostly the Priory.. well the Virgil was off fighting dragons of course) you as a member of them was never directly called to action.

Even though you are now part of the pact and they have more or less merged, you are still (a much to quickly risen) high ranked officer of one of them.

So i propose one update idea: THE ORDERS OF TYRIA

As the fight against the dragons is still going on, the orders of Tyria need your help throughout the lands. As a cappable member of their ranks they call upon you to support their efforts to protect the people.

JOIN A SPECIAL UNIT…
… of your order. As you are allready high ranked, you are introduced into a specialized part of your group. Here you start from bellow and as you complete your given tasks you can rise here as well.

GAIN ACCESS TO YOUR ORDERS SECRETS
As you rise in rank, more and more of your order becomes known to you. Uncover new parts within the headquatres. Gain more knowledge about the inner workings of Tyria and earn the rights to wear the elite equipment of the groups.

(on top of the usual equipment, the special group inside your order you are joing allows you to use “elite” equipment. This consist of special designed armor and weapons (think elite versions like in GW1))

WEEKLY MISSIONS
To show your worth, the orders offer you a mission to fullfill every week. Completing these tasks prove you worthy of their knowledge and deeper trust. What kind of objectives you have to fullfill are unique to your choosen order.
Examples:
Order of whisper
- Deliver a message in a certain amount of time from one hideout to the next (cross country run without tepelorts and special events on the way)
- Steal some secrets from a certain location (sneak into a location with the help of an order of whisper disguise)
- decifer the hidden messages (brain teaser. Scrambled text, where you can use your brain or a decoder ingame)

Priory:
- Help uncover some artifacts (protect and find digging sites)
- discover hidden parts of known land (find ways to open new parts of established ruins, like the dwarfen ruins south of hoelbark)

Virgil:
- Protect the land (hold of dragon minions)
- Kill the leader (kill mission. Defeat a certain Enemy)

As these missions are weekly, new ones can be added with each patch, which allows the devs to prepare more variety and maybe use them in conjunction with LS elements (like have the OoW gather information, or the Virgil break through enemy forces)

ORDER ARCHIEVMENTS
Alongside your rank, you can fullfill order specific archievments. These are reflecting the workings and philosophies.
Examples:
Order of Whispers:
- Find every hidden order hideout
- Find hidden messages of the order

Virgil:
- Help recruiting new soldiers
- Help fighting the dragon minions

Priory:
- Uncover hidden ruins
- Protect the artifacts

Something along these lines would actually give meaning to something allready established in game. make players more connected to their choices and the weekly missions would allow every player to participate in them. using twinks players could fullfill all the archievments laid out for them.

The living world is a cool idea. The ever changing world is something that could introduce something fresh every x weeks.

The problem, I feel, is that we are kind of disregarding the rest of the world with this. We have different races in this game, but other than aesthatic value and a different starting personal story, they don’t offer that much. We have these factions, the vigil, the order of whispers and the durmand priory, but outside of the personal story, we don’t do much with them. We also have this personality bar (charming, fierce, dignified), but I don’t notice the effects from this. You put so much work into these things, so it’s such a waste to do nothing with it. Isn’t there some way to incorporate these things in the living world?

I really like the idea of the krait and nightmare teaming up to ruin to world or whatever they’re trying to achieve. This has sprouted up an idea for me. Every race has their enemies, such as the inquest, nightmare, krait, ghosts, flame legion, dredge and so on. Why don’t we use them for the living world, kind of how you did now, except a bit different.

We should like make some frontier against these enemies, where there is an everlasting war against them. We could make some (random) rotation on which one or more enemies break trough invading territory. This is the living world element. The players should then push them back from map to map to their frontier, and then help fighting the war giving and edge and pushing them back making them need time to recover from their blow.

Some people like to zerg, so we could let them zerg and hold off an incredable amount of enemies or destroy bases. They would be the main attack force. Others like to play more tactically in smaller teams. You could make certain missions, which require them to venture into enemy lands and sabotage their camps or assassinate important enemies. This could be in the form of the more deep you venture, the more risk you take, the stronger the enemies become, the more coordinated your team needs to be, but the greater the rewards.

It would be nice if we could incorporate the vigil, priory and whispers into all of this.

It’s kind of what happens now with the living story, but it has a returning element. After a certain period the enemy has recovered from their blow and will launch another attack.

It’s just an idea, but perhaps you could do something with it. I really like how you are trying to keep the game fresh and appreciate the effort.

edit: @the guy above me, holy crap, we were thinking along the same lines