Guild Wars 2

Favorite Release: bazaar of the four winds. It was gorgeous! It was new! It was different! It was something I could brag about to friends that left the game as a way to entice them back! It was fun! I enjoyed the new skills, the jumping…the possibilities! I had really hoped this would have been expanded on and possibly give us eventually a new zephyrites skill tool in order to use the skills of the zephyrites that we learned in the sanctum in the rest of the world…The zephyrites themselves as a new people! The Zephyr Sanctum!! This release gave me so much hope for the future of LS, and it also dashed those hopes more than anything when it all disappeared….I was never so crushed as when that ended and went away…I thought for sure only the zephyr sanctum would leave and that the Bazaar was a permanent area….but no…even access to the bazaar ended….I was crushed…but that also shows how good the release was, that it crushed me when it left.

Least favorite release: Tequatl Rising: I was so excited for this release but in the end it was the worst one yet. There was no story, there was no reason given to Tequatl changing, He is not even the highest level dragon in the game, yet is now the toughest… the fight itself became the catalyst that tore apart many servers with more people getting angry at other people than I have ever seen anywhere previous…both in the world and here on the forums….People transferred servers from low-pop to high just because of this release (and the thoughts that this is the future of ANET releases)…which made the disparity even worse between servers…more griefing, more zerg combat, being forced to guest onto servers or cheat into an overflow in order to defeat him…Lack of scaling in the fight itself meant a whole part of the game (a whole dragon fight) was removed for many players…unless they guest or have a friend on TTS. In the end, I think this was the stupidest thing ANET did in the LS….it added absolutely nothing to the world as a whole and in fact removed something…the old tequatl fight was so easy it sucked, but it was accessible by everyone….

Where Bazaar made me hopeful for the future of LS and what could happen, Tequatl made me fearful of future LS content and which direction ANET was going with the game.

I think it’s great you guys are doing this, hope you’ll be engaging with the community in the future as well.

I also think GW2 is a great game with a lot of potential, and you folks are getting better with each new release. Hearing that we are on the same page about a lot of the issues makes me positive that this trend will continue.

So kudos, keep up the good work.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

P.S: I can’t wait for tomorrows event! There is going to be much pain, suffering and glory!

Chris

Oh, joy.. i can`t wait. I am kinda excited, even though i brought up some Scarlet hate here (like many others). I want to see where it is going and hopefully i will like what i see (and i want the gasmask for my engineer)

hopefully there is also some solo content in there. I like playing in groups (it`s an MMO, right?), but my guild kinda died over the last few releases.
However, this discussion here gave me a bit new hope. Let`s see where it goes. Keep at it. You are on the right way

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Shinzan.2908:

I think it’s great you guys are doing this, hope you’ll be engaging with the community in the future as well.

I also think GW2 is a great game with a lot of potential, and you folks are getting better with each new release. Hearing that we are on the same page about a lot of the issues makes me positive that this trend will continue.

So kudos, keep up the good work.

Thanks Shinzan i agree. The CDI is ongoing and i would expect the next call for topics to be in 1 to 2 weeks.

Chris

You’re not going to use the original call for topics each time? Why not just rank everything and go down that list instead of wasting a week to gather and calculate?

Guhracie.3419:

You’re not going to use the original call for topics each time? Why not just rank everything and go down that list instead of wasting a week to gather and calculate?

Because things might change?
And some topics that were listed before the first topic might have been addressed before the next topic would be selected and thus would no longer be relevant.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

P.S: I can’t wait for tomorrows event! There is going to be much pain, suffering and glory!

Chris

Excellent

MORE BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!

Chris, thanks for the summary. One thing I wanted to point out was the bit about zerging: I think zerging really took off during Queens Jub and Clockwork Chaos. You were correct that giving us different areas to work on in the open world at once, thus kind of fixing the “champ train”, if you will…this still encouraged and fostered the ‘zerg for profit’ mentality that is literally one of the only forms of open world PVE in the game right now.

There can be positives to zerging, but it is only happening on a small handfil of zones, people do not care for events outside of their train, and I feel this takes people out of other areas of the game.

I hope this becomes a large topic you guys discuss and encourage us to spread out into all of the zones, not just one or two. Giving a shameless plug to my Global Dominace system I laid out…it would be good to explore something like this to get us into all zones.

cesmode.4257:

Chris, thanks for the summary. One thing I wanted to point out was the bit about zerging: I think zerging really took off during Queens Jub and Clockwork Chaos. You were correct that giving us different areas to work on in the open world at once, thus kind of fixing the “champ train”, if you will…this still encouraged and fostered the ‘zerg for profit’ mentality that is literally one of the only forms of open world PVE in the game right now.

There can be positives to zerging, but it is only happening on a small handfil of zones, people do not care for events outside of their train, and I feel this takes people out of other areas of the game.

I hope this becomes a large topic you guys discuss and encourage us to spread out into all of the zones, not just one or two. Giving a shameless plug to my Global Dominace system I laid out…it would be good to explore something like this to get us into all zones.

Yep. I’d add this:

1) If at all possible, mindless zerging should not be the most profitable activity in the game. (Coordinated zerging a la Tequatl seems fine.)

2) If mindless zerging is going to be the most profitable activity in the game, it should be temporary and not a part of every patch.

3) It’d be better to buff rewards for doing solo/small group/difficult content than to nerf champ bags.

4) The only nerf I think you should consider is the Queensdale champ train and only because it creates such a huge opportunity to give a terrible impression of the game to new players.

Thanks again Chris! Can’t wait to hear from Bobby!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

P.S: I can’t wait for tomorrows event! There is going to be much pain, suffering and glory!

Chris

Good luck, hope everything will go smoothly. Actually I’m interested too, you guys said too much that the we should wait out the path the Scarlet story is taking so I’ll wait for a while.(I just don’t like the coming rewards, sorry, no offense, you can’t satisfy everyone and have no space to store them)

Single most favourite release: Shadow of the Mad King
A close contest, but SotMK was the complete package I feel:

> Definite escalation & arc – with a villain, no less.
> Storytelling with a side of lore.
> New mini-map.
> New mini-games.
> New JP (that I was less good at but my brother loved).
> Finale boss fight that was both PUG and duo-able-with-effort.
+ Items rare but with a few distribution channels.
+ Interesting quality-of-life improvements (e.g. open world achievements).

Single least favourite release: Tequatl Rising
Thankfully not as many contenders for this distinction – reasons much like a few posts back:

> No sense of escalation or story.
> No sense of peril or individual significance.
> Negligible non-cash-shop loot – ultra kablillion-to-one drops for farming guilds.
> Over-abundance of cash shop items (minus points for boombox & overpriced dye).
> Perm. content, but designed to offer minimal reward for most participation and become untenable as soon as interest shifts.

But most importantly it created that unpleasant “so this is what I do for fun, huh?” feeling right about 45 minutes into waiting in an instance, unwilling to leave for a probable no-hoper assignment, standing on one spot, while people chatted endlessly about standing on one spot & bidding that everyone stack…

That’s the kind of World I can see myself Living without.
(Though seriously; I won’t do that again even if Scarlet-empowered Claw of Jormag drops the key to a new map 0.00000000001% of the time.)

BobbyStein.2315:

Half Tooth.1867:

My experience of the LS can be summed up with: Everything feels random and meaningless. Events and villains come out of nowhere and then vanish into the ether. You don’t get time to get to know a character before they turn up so I literally don’t care about them, their life or their story.
They don’t linger either after the update so I feel no inclination to involve myself emotionally with the LS.

Part of the reason we’ve been including Scarlet in multiple releases is so we can build on her character. It’s kind of funny that we routinely get two types of feedback on the Living World story. From some people it’s, “Stuff feels random. I don’t know these characters.” From others it’s, “Stop using X character. I don’t like them.” So we’re presented with two competing bits of feedback (usually from different people but it’s hard to track opinions on a forum).

I do think we can do a better job at connecting the releases by having some characters stick around who have conversations, scenes, and maybe some tasks on them, kind of like what we’re trying with Marjory and Kasmeer at the camp this month. It’s something that we’ve been working to improve lately. Part of the issue here is that content that bleeds from one release to another doesn’t automatically have an “owner” in terms of which team builds it and/or maintains due to where it falls in the build schedule. That stated, Steven Waller, Angel, and I have been working with folks to bridge releases with this sort of lore-building stuff.

Expect more of that in the next few releases, and by all means I would encourage you and others to let us know how you feel about it.

My personal problem with Scarlet is that we dont know her. In my opinion this causes the players not to like her because she makes no sense to us and we get annoyed. So its not too different feedbacks, it is one causing the other. The very little we know about her makes no sense. She saw something in the mist and decided to try to burn the whole world. That is about as much information that we know about it and from a story stand point its really lame. It doesn’t answer anything about the character or the story, just raises more questions. I love questions, but leaving multiple questions unanswered for an entire year is a bit much. 2-3 months at most. The only questions you guys answer in the story are ones that you create in the same patch. Such as the alliances. They are introduced, questions about where they came from arise, answered always with Scarlet is behind it all. No answer to why she is doing it or what her motivation behind this entire living story is. So now its happened so often that the story has become easily predictable. New enemy?!? Probably an alliance with scarlet. How will it end!?!? Probably defeat her plan that made no sense from the players perspective and it will never be mentioned again. My entire guild is hoping she gets killed off this patch because of how boring and predictable she has caused the living story to become.

BobbyStein.2315:

Part of the reason we’ve been including Scarlet in multiple releases is so we can build on her character. It’s kind of funny that we routinely get two types of feedback on the Living World story. From some people it’s, “Stuff feels random. I don’t know these characters.” From others it’s, “Stop using X character. I don’t like them.” So we’re presented with two competing bits of feedback (usually from different people but it’s hard to track opinions on a forum).

Having a character stick around is only one part of the puzzle, in Scarlet’s case I’d say part of the issue is that even though she’s been around for several installments now we still don’t know anything significant about her, and the little we do know is not all that compelling, she’s barely a character at this point. It’s not her sticking around that’s the issue, being unlikable is.

On the other hand I did enjoy Roxx & Braham’s cameo during the royal pavilion, and Faren is always good for a laugh. Having reoccurring characters is the way to go in my opinion, if they are fun and interesting, or even of the love to hate variety, then I think their reappearance would be welcome.

I’ll even give Scarlet the benefit of the doubt for now, even though it won’t magically make up for the past, establishing her character and goals might make her more compelling going forward.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Seraph and Asuka had some awesome ideas relating to global token rewards from events that allowed users to receive items from across all of our current global reward paradigm unifying our currency in this area.

There is already a currency for that! It’s call karma. What is missing is not the currency but useful stuff to buy with the currency.

Right now it’s:

• legendary weapon crafting
• ascended weapon crafting
• some armor skins
• cooking ingredients

There might be a few other things but overall the list is very short.
Before you try to add another event currency do something about the existing one first.

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?

Give DEs a way to balance acquisition of ascended crafting materials.

For example, I have low amounts of Empyreal fragments compared to Dragonite Ore. All of the activities to get Empyreal fragments (Jumping puzzles, Explorer dungeons, Fractal Dungeons and pretty much everything on the list) are not activities I enjoy while I like the ones that give Dragonite Ore (World Bosses). I am stuck going off solo to get open-world chests for Empyreal fragments when I would rather be playing with other people in a dynamic event. I would very much like an option to get those components that I find less enjoyable to acquire.

Perhaps DE could give token to acquire such mats or exchange mats (Trading Dragonite for Empyreal or such).

Making people do every kind of content for ascended mats inevitably means that there will be activities that people will like less than others activities. I don’t have the metrics but it seems that dynamic events are one of those activities that most people would like to do. Connecting the DE rewards to ascended mats/acquisition would mean they would not be ignored.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We can discuss this in the CDI evolution topic which will go up soon. Our feeling was that the communities top topics will change from one week to another, hence doing another call for topics. We can decide in the next phase that will likely be posted at the end of this week.

Good point!

Chris

My feeling is that since you asked us for our top 3, it would be appealing symmetry to address the cumulative top 3 before attempting a new poll. At that point you’ll have at least addressed one “full list” worth of topics and spoken fully to the iconic ‘average user in the community’.

Chris and Colin, it’s good to see you guys talking with us, keep up the good work

mmh yeah I also agree with some system to replay Living Story content, because I almost never get out of the Mists but still consider interesting some content, but if I have to choose “doing new pve stuff OR going to the Mists…” well I always end up in the Mists.

What about some kind of “chained-progressive” Fractal of The Mists? you cut the story in some parts (chapters) and when you complete the first chapter you gain access to the next, with new cutscenes and such that exaplain what happened in the past…

Read u’r Question about TV-show, Colin….

Imagina Lrd oOf The Rings or Narnia. An ADVENTURE, New aresa (MAPS, not just tiny instances) as the adventure unfolds, New beings/races (both good and evil – enemies , NPC’s, Pets, big and small…), new things that happens (Learning skills etc), New things found or recieved as gifts on tethe way (rewards),…

Hero-feeling adventure that has a purpose Close related to the lore…

The areas revealed in the LS could, after that part of LS is “over” then be Another map with hearts, vistas, perhaps a dungeon, poi’s, and map-compleation reward.

BobbyStein.2315:

Part of the reason we’ve been including Scarlet in multiple releases is so we can build on her character. It’s kind of funny that we routinely get two types of feedback on the Living World story. From some people it’s, “Stuff feels random. I don’t know these characters.” From others it’s, “Stop using X character. I don’t like them.” So we’re presented with two competing bits of feedback (usually from different people but it’s hard to track opinions on a forum).
.

Chris, Bobby, there really is no conflict in the information you are getting back… “stuff feels random, I don’t know these characters” is EXACTLY the reason why “Stop using X character, I don’t like them” comes about.

I think the majority of the people who hate scarlet hate her for the same reason, that she seems to be a “mary sue.” A character that is all-powerful with no reason behind being all-powerful. The lack of story surrounding her the “why” directly contributes to a hate of Scarlet…

Whenever there is a question about why…the answer seems to be “Scarlet.” With no answer to “why Scarlet?” As an example: Why did the Aetherblades attack Lion’s Arch? Answer: Scarlet told them to. Follow up question is: Why did Scarlet tell them to? no real answer… Why did the Molten Alliance form? Answer: Scarlet. How did she get them to corporate….why would they listen to a Sylvari?? Again…no answer. Why is the Nightmare court working with the Aetherblades? Answer: Scarlet… why would the Aetherblades work with the nightmare court and why would either of them listen to a little Sylvari that they could eat as a salad? Again, no answer….

And so…people hate Scarlet…because she is the answer to why everything is attacking and forming alliances…but there has never been a reason WHY everyone listens to her and forms these alliances….so she feels like a half-baked character…someone who is able to accomplish great things just because…she’s Scarlet.

A good villain needs a back-story…and more than just simple “she saw something in a vision that may or may not have been entirely in her head”. A good villain needs to have a reason why everyone fears, or needs her to lead them. So what if she learned a bunch of stuff from different races….why the heck would a Char Warband listen to a piece of Salad? HOW did she get the flame legion to follow her… HOW did she get the Aetherblades to follow her… HOW did she get the nightmare court to give her the time of day…she is NOT firstborne, she doesn’t speak for the Pale Tree….they don’t listen to Caithe, why would they listen to her?

This is why people say the same things: “Stuff feels random” (Scarlet did it…there is no why or how, just Scarlet), AND “I don’t know this character” (Scarlet mostly), AND “I hate X character” (Scarlet, because of the other two). She could have been a good villain. With a little fleshing out of her story….so we could understand her motivations, as well as the motivations of every other group that has joined her…right now it just all feels so random! Scarlet did it!

BobbyStein.2315:

Part of the issue here is that content that bleeds from one release to another doesn’t automatically have an “owner” in terms of which team builds it and/or maintains due to where it falls in the build schedule. That stated, Steven Waller, Angel, and I have been working with folks to bridge releases with this sort of lore-building stuff.

Expect more of that in the next few releases, and by all means I would encourage you and others to let us know how you feel about it.

Part of the problem is that we have been hearing that things are going to be revealed for such a long time. There have been promises for months that things in the story would be revealed. Flame and Frost started in January, we are finally learning that Scarlet was behind that and we still haven’t learned how she was behind it, how she got the alliances to do what she wants and why she is doing it.

We should have learned about Scarlet’s involvement months ago rather than having her spring up out of nowhere, much like the Eye and Mouth of Zhaitan PS bosses who we never hear anything about until right before we’re supposed to fight them. A good villain needs time to be developed and there has been too much time spent in the LS being mysterious, rather than telling the story.

Players like mysteries but there is a point where it starts to feel like things are being strung along. We past that point in the LS a while ago IMO. Things need to be explained because as long as everything is a mystery there is no development in the story. It’s just a black box throwing out seemingly disconnected and random events that are making players complain.

Some big upcoming reveal that explains everything will not make up for nearly a year of being strung along. If anything such a reveal will seem overly abrupt and quick, just like Scarlet’s appearance, just like the appearance of the Eye and Mouth of Zhaitan. Tell the players the story rather than hiding it from them.

As for continuity, it was nice to see Majory and Lady Kasmeer show up again. NPCs like these and Rox and Braham are really a good way to provide a sense of connection between updates. (I kind of want to see what happens to Braham’s love life lol)

Just make certain that the NPCs do not start to outshine the player characters. The NPCs should always be the ones in need of help or advice or assistance not just ordering players around to do a bunch of tasks. The lore/story should alwaysbe emphasizing that the player characters are not throw-away minions that could be just as easily replaced by someone else (which is difficult since that is how an MMO does function).

Another way to put it would be to think what would happen if the players just gave up and didn’t help the NPCs. Is there a sense that things would fail (even though we all know it won’t)? Or is the sense that the NPCs could do the job fine without them.

Rox and Braham were particularly good in this role being novices. Queen Jennah is usually so deep in problems that she works well in this regard too.

It would be nice for the other world leaders to directly enlist the aid of the players in the LS. Rytlock is fine but why haven’t we talked to Smodur the Unflinching (and earned his debt of gratitude by now) or been contacted by the Asuran Council? These well-known NPCs have been established by the lore and they should be used to approach the player characters with whatever desperate needs they have which only the characters can help to solve.

Part of the reason we’ve been including Scarlet in multiple releases is so we can build on her character. It’s kind of funny that we routinely get two types of feedback on the Living World story. From some people it’s, “Stuff feels random. I don’t know these characters.” From others it’s, “Stop using X character. I don’t like them.” So we’re presented with two competing bits of feedback (usually from different people but it’s hard to track opinions on a forum).

It’s not actually conflicting advice. It’s saying, in summation, “stop using characters we don’t like, but continue using characters that we do to tell a cohesive story.” I don’t personally have a problem with Scarlet, but it is tough to consider her a worthy character to build a year of stories around, at least as she’s been presented.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

BobbyStein.2315:

Part of the issue here is that content that bleeds from one release to another doesn’t automatically have an “owner” in terms of which team builds it and/or maintains due to where it falls in the build schedule. That stated, Steven Waller, Angel, and I have been working with folks to bridge releases with this sort of lore-building stuff.

Expect more of that in the next few releases, and by all means I would encourage you and others to let us know how you feel about it.

Part of the problem is that we have been hearing that things are going to be revealed for such a long time. There have been promises for months that things in the story would be revealed. Flame and Frost started in January, we are finally learning that Scarlet was behind that and we still haven’t learned how she was behind it, how she got the alliances to do what she wants and why she is doing it.

Im pretty sure they got stuff going on, such as improving the lore maybe adding new events and new bosses, the problem is the company, NCsoft… these guys have other MMOs to fund and a new one upcoming next year, im pretty sure they cutting funds from here to fund their other games, and that COULD i repeat COULD BE a reason why the quality and the quantity is not satisfying and on top that this might be the reason why all these things they promised have not yet been released in Gw2… The ANet Devs look really interested in improving their game and LS/LW, obviously, but ANet is not the only factor…. :/

OT-
Scarlet do is terrible for real, and for a lot of reasons, btw.
-OT

Seras.5702

An unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on who you’re talking to) result of the current LS design is zergs. If you release temporary content in a concentrated location, you will inevitably have zergs mobbing the zone. Examples: Scarlet Invasions, Mad King Labyrinth, Grand Pavilion, Toxic Offshoots in Kessex.

New LS releases need to figure out a way to not discourage zergs so much as promote small groups spread out. The Scarlet Invasions were a step to that end, creating multiple rifts throughout the map simultaneously. But of course, they were exploited and eventually zergs just mapped from one champ location to the next for max loots.

The last events conditioned people to zerg, so you need something to teach people working together.

How would it be to introduce a new type of event with greater groups, not with killing champs etc, but solving an event where players have to coordinate only to win, something like a GIANT SEESAW which have to be balanced/equilibrated by many players to open a door for next level or to fire a special asura-weapon, or a “magic letter on floor” build up by a specific FORMATION of 20+ players sorted by asura/norn etc. characters?

Immensus.9732:

Im pretty sure they got stuff going on, such as improving the lore maybe adding new events and new bosses, the problem is the company, NCsoft… these guys have other MMOs to fund and a new one upcoming next year, im pretty sure they cutting funds from here to fund their other games, and that COULD i repeat COULD BE a reason why the quality and the quantity is not satisfying and on top that this might be the reason why all these things they promised have not yet been released in Gw2… The ANet Devs look really interested in improving their game and LS/LW, obviously, but ANet is not the only factor…. :/

I am not suggesting ArenaNet adds more content, only that they rework how they are telling the story. Flame and Frost could have had the Molten Alliance openly talking about the ‘crazy sylvari’ who they owe a debt. When we went into the dungeon that wonderfully fun weapon testing arena could have been intended as a trap for this unnamed sylvari only the players come in and ruin things (while also taking out the faction of the Alliance that wanted to backstab this sylvari).

Scarlet could have been first been openly mentioned to the players by Canach during the Secret of Southsun arc. We could have been told that Canach met a talented sylvari genius named Scarlet and tried to enlist her help only that help backfired and resulted in the disaster the players had to clean up.

By the time of the Aetherblade attack, Scarlet could have been clearly connected to it by Majory. Majory could have given the player characters more info on Scarlet showing off her investigational skills.

Instead we get a single passing mention of ‘S’ at the end of the dungeon that I personally believe a number of players never reached because of the difficulty of it (and the lack of a Story mode).

The changes text and dialog would not have been done in addition to the existing content, rather in place of it.

I wholly agree that there are always issues of resources when it comes to keeping an MMO running. I am very happy with the amazing pace of the content being released for GW2. I am suggesting that the storyline needs to revealed more with that content rather than being kept a mystery for so long.

Edit – Another idea but this would actually require more content for dialog – what if a mysterious, laughing voice at the end of the Molten Faciilty dungeon had directed the party to safety as thanks for their unintentional help? What if Scarlet had then been revealed during Southsun as a friend to the players to take down Canach? What if the LS made us think Scarlet was a humorous and trusted ally? And then what if the LS had her backstabbing the players in the Aetherblade event and revealing she was using the players all along.

_ It was just a thought, but it seems to me that building that kind of trust then betraying it would really induce in players a desire to take an NPC down compared to having the NPC just appear out of nowhere announcing they are criminal mastermind. _

It may come around a bit harsh, but I wonder where the story is you guys are writing on. I’m not sure if I’ve missed something, but if I remember correctly, the “story” we experienced in the game was a few lines, that’s it. Or do you spend all the time working on the blogposts / the background story for the releases?

as an example I will take the latest release. I can only remember this dialogues:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Thunder_Ridge_Camp

Is there something I’m not seeing?

In response to Chris Whiteside asking about favorite/least favorite releases:

Favorite release – Bazaar of the Four Winds
It felt like I was entering a whole new part of the world, and exploring and independence were really encourage. The biggest grind-y achieve (finding all the crystals) was fun and rewarding because a lot of them presented a problem-solving challenge (which of the three skills to use where). The release introduced some lovely armor skins and awesome new possible gear stats, and it really felt like my character was participating in something like a living world.

Least favorite release – Blood and Madness
I wasn’t here for the Halloween release last year (joined this past January), but this particular release felt dead to me. I liked the story parts, and I played the last part daily for a while. Whoever writes your scripts should get a pat on the back. It was the open world content that seemed to die quickly. Three days in, there was almost no one in the labyrinth on my server for most of the day, and my guildies who only play on weekends really struggled with the meta because of it. The clocktower was fine, but I didn’t like the long waits between times that I could jump in that really buggy room where I heard the same dialogues over and over again. It felt like the re-play value for this release was a lot lower than similar releases in the past.

First of all I would like to congratulate the Devs for hearing out the community. From my point of view, this is the perfect way to perfect the game. Sadly, very few companies take this approach.

My two cents regarding the Living Story updates as follows (even though most of them have already been said):

• Less characters, but with richer background stories. If I learned anything from playing RPG-s is that the more fully developed the character is, the more I tend to have an emotional response towards him – and I think the perfect examples for this are the supporting heroes from Planescape: Torment. I’m not saying that a little mystery hurts, quite the opposite. But giving only tiny, shallow snippets of info does not help. For example, everyone seems to be complaining about Scarlet. At first, i didn’t like her either, but after reading her story on gw2wiki i became mildly interested in her development.

• More skills. I was really psyched when I saw the last LS update included a new skill and then kind of disappointed when I found out it was a heal skill. I know that skill balancing is one of the toughest jobs for a MMO developer, but after playing gw1 since 2005 and gw2 since last November, I can say that there is nothing that I miss more (skill-wise) than the breadth of skills/elite skills present in gw1.

• Using the lore from GW1 as a building block for the evolution of the game. Two of my favorite moments in gw2 were when I saw that the Fountain from the Henge of Denravi still existed coupled with the fact that there is a event-chain which ends with the killing of the Demagogue (I remember having to do Aurora Glade again and again so that I could finish the bonus objective – this was before the introduction of heroes). The second favorite moment was when I swam through the ruins of Old Lion’s Arch. I believe that these little not so hidden gems made many gw1 veterans really happy. What I am trying to emphasize is the fact that you need to make more connections to the world of gw1. The basic building blocks are already there. The lore from the first game is fantastic. Using this lore more and more can lead to a win-win situation, with veterans wanting to relive certain moments from gw1 again (which can mark an increase in the decreasing player base of gw1) and players who haven’t played gw1 will start to get interested more and more in the lore and the characters from the first game. This can improve the game’s coherence drastically. My opinion is that this is maybe the biggest aspect that needs to improve in the current gw2 game, content wise. For example, these connections can be made using the existing orders in the world, and with this I mean creating story arcs involving the vigil, priory and order of whispers.

• Arcs with epic quests and achievements that naturally flow with those quests. What I observed is that giving the player the opportunity to embark on a truly big quest can get the player to be more involved and can trigger a more powerful emotional response, rather than using simple and small events/quests. This can be even further improved by making achievement points tied to the progress of the arc. Something like you did with the new dungeon path from TA. Not forcing the player to redo the same content over and over for some of the achievements, like the current LS update (and here I am referring to the buffed champ farm). If 70% of the achievement points could be gained by completing the quest the first time, I think most of the players would be happy. The rest who would want the last 30% could repeat parts of the quest or they could try finishing the quest by other means, or respecting different restrictions during the quests’ gameplay.

• Environment changing. I do not want to delve into this subject more than it is necessary, but I think that further updates should address the fact that Zhaitan is dead and Orr is cleansed. What I mean with this is that probably nobody would complain if Orr received subtle, positive improvements regarding the way it looks.

Also, the idea of a Historian NPC sounds really good.

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?

I neglected to formally answer to this question so i would like to give a detailed answer to this question before the topic closes. I would like to see….

• Player Housing/Guild Hall?Polymock Items(when these things are released hopefully)

• Minis- I think it would be nice to have a DE set of minis that can only be acquired through dynamic events

• Boosted Guild Influence- Why not allow guild leaders to select 3 maps that change daily/weekly and doing events gives more influence then normal?

• Home Instance Items- Personal resource nodes for the non event resources like mithril ore and orichulum ore might be good.

• Cool Looking Skins for armor and weapons

• Black Lion Chest Keys

I haven’t been following this thread, but I thought I would drop in to share my thoughts on what I feel are the strengths and weaknesses of the current story.

Right now the game has a lot of really interesting characters with some really great potential plot lines and none of them are being used to their full potential. To understand what I mean we’d have to go to basics and look at what makes any story a great story.

Firstly, the audience, or in this case, the player needs a character, or a group of characters they can relate to and develop a personal bond with. This is usually done in novels through a series of introductory events that showcase the main characters and their personalities. This helps the reader to develop a much more intimate understanding of the people involved in this story. The same is true with movies. With games you get the best of both worlds. You have the ability to access the meta information that novels provide, while showing a visual story as movies provide.

Personal story and dynamic events are a great way to introduce and build on characters so the players can develop a deeper connection to the storyline and the events happening in the world. There’s a very strong disconnect from the characters and the players though. When I log in and I see the next part of this story, my first thought is, “Who is this, and why should I care?” That shouldn’t be the case if proper story telling mechanics are implemented.

Secondly, the voice actors you have are great with a lot of potential, however their written dialog needs a lot of work. Written dialog versus spoken dialog are two different animals. You need to write their scripts in a way that feels natural when spoken. I don’t talk the way I write and that is true for a lot of people in the world. Keep that in mind. More natural dialog will help a lot in allowing players to form a bond with the characters. If the dialog delivered doesn’t come in a manner that feels fluid like someone standing in the room having a normal, believable conversation, you’ll see an increased experience of disconnect from the story. A great way to rehearse this and practice this is simply to read the lines out loud to fellow team members and ask yourself, “Did it feel natural to read that? Was that something I would say in a normal conversation if I were in this situation?”

So we’ve covered the voice acting and the relationship with the characters in the story, but now we need to think about how to present trials. Every great story has the same formula. There is a main character, that character faces a trial, the character either succeeds or fails. For dramatic effect, a failure can enhance the story and draw the audience into feeling more emotionally attached to the struggles of that character. While struggle is important though, it can’t be all failure. There have to be triumphs to counter balance. Yet, don’t be afraid to do something dramatic with the story! Look at Game of Thrones. Love it, or hate it, the dramatic effect of killing off a character people have grown to love has a huge impact on involvement in the story and keeping people guessing at what’s going to happen next. Even when people are offended by it, they can’t get enough of it.

So let’s run through an example of how we could tell a better story. Introduce me to a character. Have this character become a close companion that I interact with frequently, that I see often in my exploration. Give me a reason to care about that character. Get emotional, touch on some deeper subjects. Lace it with story elements that touch on real issues, social and otherwise because players will be able to relate to it on a personal level. Make your characters believable. Throw in some drama, make me wonder if this character I’ve grown to love and care about will survive the next update.

Use existing plots in the game to tie the story to relevant pieces we’ve already seen and explored. Don’t invent random new ideas that are so far removed and detached from existing plots that I can’t connect the dots or understand how these new characters being introduced fit into the overall plot. If you plan to be introducing a lot of random characters, look at examples from comic book heroes like Batman and Superman. There is still a consistent element of there being characters the reader has a deeper association with. There’s already an established connection to how those new adversaries fit into the overall plot BECAUSE of that connection. It is absolutely vital to establish that first, otherwise any character you introduce will fall flat.

I had to post this in two parts due to length limitations.

Here’s a plot outline of how a story could be told relating to GW2.

Crystal Dragon

• Introduce a character from the Priory who has been studying the events surrounding the crystal dragon.
• Players adventure with this character to uncover deeper plots surrounding the events that led up to the return of the dragons and the assault that led to the scar.
• Through the adventures, players learn more about this new priory character, their past, their struggles, who they are, their personality, where they came from. Give us something to care about, to relate to. Maybe the priory looks down on them, they refuse to acknowledge their findings or accept the claims. Maybe they’re an outcast of sorts, etc.
• The new discoveries lead to internal feuding with the Priory and as a result, our new friend finds themselves in danger due to extremist opposition and those who would rather suppress the ideas being proposed. As a result, players are put in a position where they need to protect this character, or act as an escort to get them to safety. Perhaps along the way we’re assaulted and lose our new friend, they’re a prisoner, etc, then we start to launch a rescue mission.
  **Alternate branch, the friend is killed, but we find new discoveries in their research left behind that lead us to a new character that had been operating in the shadows?
• Investigations continue, etc etc… and we haven’t even gotten to hunting down the crystal dragon in the desert…

BobbyStein

Ohoni.6057:

Part of the reason we’ve been including Scarlet in multiple releases is so we can build on her character. It’s kind of funny that we routinely get two types of feedback on the Living World story. From some people it’s, “Stuff feels random. I don’t know these characters.” From others it’s, “Stop using X character. I don’t like them.” So we’re presented with two competing bits of feedback (usually from different people but it’s hard to track opinions on a forum).

It’s not actually conflicting advice. It’s saying, in summation, “stop using characters we don’t like, but continue using characters that we do to tell a cohesive story.” I don’t personally have a problem with Scarlet, but it is tough to consider her a worthy character to build a year of stories around, at least as she’s been presented.

Understood. Thanks for clarifying.

I think villains exist to be hated by the players, as long as they have no deeper tragic in themselves, like for example Snape in Harry Potter, which allows to compassionate with them. Villains can be curious/strange too, maybe thats one reason why they are going postal.

The provocative in Scarlet is that she seems to have no weaknesses and to be undefeatable, ubiquitous, and in some way almighty by the constantly repeated invasions showing no progress in story. That is maybe not a matter of her character, but of her technical presentation by LS – so that is important for any other villain in Living Story too.

Zaitan and Caudecus in Personal Story acted indirectly and in a more devious way, that offered more substance for both, storytelling and implementation. If there are repeating events (except Arah), the villain itself isn’t directly opposed.

One of the best ways introducing a “dark force” is to keep the true villain anonymously as long as possible. So I’m excited what follows.

IMO – the biggest problem with Scarlett (and by extension the whole living story to date) is not her characterization or her storyline, but instead it’s the position she occupies.

Guild Wars 2 was sold on the story of the Elder Dragons. They loom large in the pre-release material and in the Personal Story. They are a huge threat that believably requires the assembling of legions of heroes to face.

Next to that, the machinations of any one mortal being just seems pale and lackluster. Moreover, focusing on those machinations for nearly a year seems like a side-show attraction when everyone is looking forward to the main event.

This is the main problem I have with Scarlett. She’s a distraction.

If the Living Story as written was tightened up and Scarlett split open after her first appearance to reveal she was a pawn / servant of Mordremoth, players may have been more accepting. Tie story to Elder Dragons and it seems like progress. Tie story to random mortal and it seems like distraction and I start asking “when are we getting back to the real plotline?”

There are 5 Elder Dragons active (6 if you decide to bring Zhaitan back for a less disappointing send-off). Even if you do one epic arc per year dealing with the machinations and final defeat of each dragon (which is by no means a necessary schedule) that’s still 5 years from now. Very few MMOs survive for 6 years and counting with anything remotely approaching relevance, and even if GW2 is one of the rare ones – if you aren’t confident that the story team can’t come up with an epic follow on arc, firmly grounded in the rich lore of Tyria, in 5 YEARS then I don’t think longevity should be the primary concern here.

IMO, the take-away from the Scarlett episode should not be “we can do a better job of creating and explaining villains in future”, it should be “we should probably focus more tightly on the epic story we already established rather than dropping in other distracting side-lines”.

For the record – the occasional side-line or distraction is fine. Take Mad King Thorn for instance. Great character, great acting, great storyline. Here for a short while and then put back in his box for a year. Theoretically the same could be done with Scarlett or whoever – as long as they get swatted back down in a short period and we Heroes of Tyria get back to the important stuff of saving the world from the Big Bad.

Oh – and if we’re going to keep using the (IMO wholly inappropriate) analogy of TV and movies as examples of storyline, please never forget that there are quite literally thousands of heroes in Tyria. The storytelling structure has to be closer to something like X-men, Justice League, or some other group of powerful beings. Having a single opposing villain of anything less than cosmic power is wholly unbelievable on the face of it. Several hundred top-level Elementalists should have leveled Scarlett by now and as long as she’s just another mortal, there’s no reason it wouldn’t have happened. Elder Dragons – sure, like Galactus or Darkseid they can take on boat loads of heroes without breaking stride. Generally though you don’t see Lex Luthor taking on the Justice League as a whole single-handedly or even with a small army of thugs, he needs a group around him just as strong as the JLA to serve a believable role as a threat.

All I can really say is that you, ANet, shouldn’t be afraid to introduce new areas because of a potential pop spreading.
The fact is that most areas are already fairly deserted. If you add a new one, you should not fear to delete or physically merge an old region.
And let’s be real, the current areas are rather boring from both a gameplay standpoint (event chains that are just defeat X waves and don’t matter, and yes, lack of actual quests) and from a graphical point of view (lack of biomes other than jungle, mountains and temperate woods/pastures; enemies extremely samey. You fight Skelk or Flame Legion or Earth Elementals from Level 2 to 78, for example).

You might also rethink the philosophy that maps should be homogenous difficulty wise (and the general philosophy that overworld = casual, dungeons = hardcore, the latter of which didn’t materialize). Why not an ominous corner of a map, or a whole zone even, that is exceedingly more difficult, with mobs 5 or more levels above you? Things like that enhance the thrill of exploration. It keeps you on your toes.
Everyone is always talking about UW or FoW when they mean that, but no need to look at those dedicated raids for an example. I got the same feeling from fighting through the insanely strong overworld-mobs in the Realm of Torment in Nightfall. Or the War of Kryta, remember? It was awesome.
Actually, what is probably the most talked about piece of overworld content (outside Orr)? The Fort full of level 80 mobs in Brisban Wildlands. Do something with that.

Last but not least, I do hope you will add Cantha and eventually Elona. You should push to open up one big new region per year. 2014 perhaps we’d get the Isle of Janthir and Northern Shiverpeaks, 2015 maybe Cantha, 2016 Elona and the Crystal Desert, etc.
If you do that, one map at a time would be horrible horrible horrible. Please listen to that.
Take your time. Do batches of subregions at a time. They have to “flow” into each other, to harmonize. People don’t want a hundred bread sticks, they want one big roast beef. That doesn’t stop you from continuing your bi-weekly Living Story events within those sub-regions.

Despite my late reply, I hope it still is given some thought to.

Khisanth.2948

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Seraph and Asuka had some awesome ideas relating to global token rewards from events that allowed users to receive items from across all of our current global reward paradigm unifying our currency in this area.

There is already a currency for that! It’s call karma. What is missing is not the currency but useful stuff to buy with the currency.

Right now it’s:

legendary weapon crafting
ascended weapon crafting
some armor skins
cooking ingredients

There might be a few other things but overall the list is very short.
Before you try to add another event currency do something about the existing one first.

YES.

Karma could be a solution for some zerging-problems, too.
You should get karma for solving quests only, not for killing champs.

And we need more opportunities to use karma in a usefull way. There should be much more specialized karma-traders.

And karma should be used not only for buying things, but as a source of esteem from npcs. Some of the none-karma merchants should generally only trade with you, if your karma-level is high enough, or they change their prices if your karma-level is very high or too low.

Maybe some Asura-Waypoints cost karma, not money. If waypoints cost karma and zerging does not gather it in, that would be the end of zerg-trains.

Just wanted to add, besides a huge thankyou for this approach that there are some out there that do identify themself with the villian (know who she is) and do like that character. Although I’m a minority, I have expressed both my personal thoughts as well as trying to compromise with the other (bigger groups). But hope you don’t forget that some actually like Scarlet. Specially cause, many times, the people who like things often dont take time to express that on a forum (not saying that the complaints here arent valuable, as well).

My comments about the Living Story.

I totally understand what ANet is trying to accomplish: create a living world. To some extend it does happen. My ‘issue’ is with the story we have been presented. The story has gotten better and better over the course of the year, Scarlet is a decent villain, but not every time was the story written properly. This is no new feedback however. Personally I think having story arcs like this are fine from time to time, but I personally would like to see new regions be added and the current story continued. There’s so much to work with: the Norn and their quest to reclaim their homeland and defeat Jormag and the Sons of Svanir. The Charr and their ongoing battle with both the Flame Legion and the Ghosts of Ascalon, also a bit of a political drama going on. The cleansing of Orr?

There’s a lot of existing lore to work with and expand upon and I personally would like to see that happen, perhaps with some filler arcs here and there like Scarlet.

BobbyStein.2315:

Half Tooth.1867:

My experience of the LS can be summed up with: Everything feels random and meaningless. Events and villains come out of nowhere and then vanish into the ether. You don’t get time to get to know a character before they turn up so I literally don’t care about them, their life or their story.
They don’t linger either after the update so I feel no inclination to involve myself emotionally with the LS.

Part of the reason we’ve been including Scarlet in multiple releases is so we can build on her character. It’s kind of funny that we routinely get two types of feedback on the Living World story. From some people it’s, “Stuff feels random. I don’t know these characters.” From others it’s, “Stop using X character. I don’t like them.” So we’re presented with two competing bits of feedback (usually from different people but it’s hard to track opinions on a forum).

I do think we can do a better job at connecting the releases by having some characters stick around who have conversations, scenes, and maybe some tasks on them, kind of like what we’re trying with Marjory and Kasmeer at the camp this month. It’s something that we’ve been working to improve lately. Part of the issue here is that content that bleeds from one release to another doesn’t automatically have an “owner” in terms of which team builds it and/or maintains due to where it falls in the build schedule. That stated, Steven Waller, Angel, and I have been working with folks to bridge releases with this sort of lore-building stuff.

Expect more of that in the next few releases, and by all means I would encourage you and others to let us know how you feel about it.

responding to the bolded part specifically…

the reason i feel no connection to characters in the living story, and why it feels so random… is that i’ve missed at least every other LS update. mostly because i’m not interested in holiday stuff, and i’ve misinterpreted updates in the past, thinking they were mainly holiday festivity like. and i wasn’t playing for about 5-6 months due to other endeavers. other reasons i missed LS updates was because i was levelling, and it didn’t feel right to do living story content before completing my personal story, and before i reached level 80. especially considering that southsun cove was level 80 content. (uplevelling characters still broke the immersion… my character wasn’t level 80 yet)

i came back and didn’t know what was going on. because all the story instances from the previous LS updates had been deleted. imagine playing your personal story, and the level 40-50 personal story instances were deleted before you could play them. so you ended up playing 1-40, and then skipped ahead to 50-60, and then 60-70 were deleted, and then you picked p again at 70-80. the story wouldn’t make any sense!

that’s the problem i have with the living story. there are instanced story segments that should be permanent, so we can follow the story. i know scarlett interrupted the queen’s jubilee, but if i missed that update, i wouldn’t have a clue about it.

speaking of Queen’s Jubilee…. the events down in the pit could have been permanent. the tournament content could have been permanent, as the next instance in the story after scarlett crashed the party.

right now… i don’t know who Marjory is. i don’t know her connection with scarlett. i really don’t know if she was introduced in a prior LS update, or if this is her first appearance. because all the previous LS content (except Southsun Cove) has been deleted.

i do appreciate that Marjory and Kasmeer are visible on landscape. it gives me a chance to get to know them a little better. so far all i know of Scarlett is that she’s a rather condescending tease.

What would help bringing people out in the world is the feeling of having the chance to find something unique.

At the moment I know for sure that there is not a single piece of unique item hidden anywhere. At best I will find a chest which contains some green items and maybe (rarely) a yellow. There is no urge to delve deeper into those caves because there isn’t anything worth in there. No ancient dwarfen artifacts, no lost Jotun heirloom…

Generic rewards have their advantages, but imagine how awesome it would feel to find an ascended ring deep in a cave-system with a bit of lore attached to it. No one says that these items should be easy to find. These could have spawn-windows in enough places at random times so that guides won’t really be helpful at all.

Even it it would only be a permanent environmental weapon (like the fire elemental you can buy from one of the heart npcs)… it would feel pretty epic to find something unique while exploring.

+ spawn some named Elite-mobs in the world, which have a chance to drop unique skins and wander around like the guild-bounties. In WoW I hunted those down, it felt like being a bountyhunter on a mission. They WERE rare, but the chance to get something when defeated was pretty good compared to the champion lootbags and its unique skins.

Grimthagen.6019:

IMO – the biggest problem with Scarlett (and by extension the whole living story to date) is not her characterization or her storyline, but instead it’s the position she occupies.

Guild Wars 2 was sold on the story of the Elder Dragons. They loom large in the pre-release material and in the Personal Story. They are a huge threat that believably requires the assembling of legions of heroes to face.

Next to that, the machinations of any one mortal being just seems pale and lackluster. Moreover, focusing on those machinations for nearly a year seems like a side-show attraction when everyone is looking forward to the main event.

This is the main problem I have with Scarlett. She’s a distraction.

If the Living Story as written was tightened up and Scarlett split open after her first appearance to reveal she was a pawn / servant of Mordremoth, players may have been more accepting. Tie story to Elder Dragons and it seems like progress. Tie story to random mortal and it seems like distraction and I start asking “when are we getting back to the real plotline?”

I agree with this 100% i wanna see more on the elder dragons. Alternatively, following up on gw1 stuff would also be good. I do wanna see the crystal desert,cantha and elona again and see gw1 loose ends tied up. Scarlet just pales in comparison to this stuff.

@ANET

Thanks for taking the time to post in this thread. It really felt like a true collaboration. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing some of the outcomes.

On another note, maybe some of you could come over to the WvW collaboration thread. We’d definitely like to begin the collaboration effort on that topic as well. So many ideas have been discussed and it would be nice to see some increased ANET presence there.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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.

I would love for it to be that way – more like Guild Wars 1, in terms of story progression. I guess the best GW1 analog for the Living World would be the Guild Wars Beyond content, which anyone can still go back and do, if I’m not mistaken. I mean, I know that it can’t be just like that since the first game was all instanced, but I feel like the first game had a rather relaxed pace to it that this game is increasingly getting away from.

Don’t forget about those GW1 Zaishen Missions, either. That was a brilliant way to give people a way to find groups for specific content that maybe most people would otherwise not generally be interested in doing anymore.

Really, as others have pointed out, the problem is that we haven’t seen enough of her backstory in the actual game. The Flame and Frost thing is a good example, she was apparently behind that, but we know that only through vague comments here and there. What we need is the “what really happened” flashback so common in film and television, where the villain/hero gets away with something seemingly impossible and the viewer is like “how’d that happen?!” but then they do a Flashback showing each step along the way where the character did this and that and brought the whole heist together. We need to get some sort of proper flashback to show Scarlet introducing herself to the Flame Legion and Dredge and how she convinced them to work together. It wouldn’t have to be a super long scene.

If I were doing this, the way I would do it is have Majory send the players on a quest. The quest would involve traveling to numerous soloable locations throughout Tyria, in this case to places like Dredgehaunt Cliffs and Fireheart Rise, and then you sweep a Very Old Energy Detector over a hot spot and a short holographic cutscene plays out, using green ghosts of Scarlett meeting the various emissaries involved and sending you to the next location.

This would carry you through the understory of the last year, showing prologues and/or epilogues to each biweekly chapter’s story, showing how she set each event up and how she reacted to our involvement at each step.