Guild Wars 2

One of GW2’s biggest flaws is that alot of the content exists outside the game, and I’d like to see an overall reduction of how much content is created that never makes it into the game for seemingly no good reason.

One area of particular interest is the game trailers—you make one for each episode, as you have been doing since season one. However, I think the majority of the game population does not see them, because they are only briefly in the launcher (where people with autoplay won’t see it), or the forums, etc.

I suggest to retroactively add the trailers for each episode into the game itself at the end of each prior episode, similar to how you did with the Heart of Thorns announcement at the end of season 2. This way, each time a new player finishes an episode, they are greeted with a heart-pounding preview of the next episode, both improving immersion and making them more likely to buy it.

And you could do this going forward with future episodes too.

SPOILERS
I bring this up because the end of One Path Ends was extremely lackluster for me. We got a small cinematic of Balthazar and that was it, and i found myself wanting more. Now that the expansion announcement is over, if you were to retroactively put the PoF trailer to the end of One Path Ends, I feel like it would greatly increase the quality of life of that episode for those who play it in the future.

First….. [&BCcEAAA=] There is a Magister in LA who you can talk to get recaps. She should send you a mail after finishing Pact Tyria, since the LS1 Recap is the next story to activate in the list.

Second….. I see a problem with promoting the next chapter too early, given how the LS maps are meant to be the focus for at least a couple weeks before moving on. Advertising them at the end of the story mission (which is how you usually enter the maps) then puts all the community focus on the new chapter, instead of exploring the current one.

Third…. Ideally, the spacing of LS4 chapters should be shorter then previous seasons; enough to where adding a trailer would be unnecessary. I would rather they write the chapter breaks to connect smoother, so the story easily flows from previous one, and not try too hard to push cliff hangers. Building the teaser elements into the story builds mystery (which is fun). Slapping a trailer at the end of an episode, that just barely finished releasing tension, winds the audience back up into a hype frenzy (which is bad).

Cliff hangers and “Next time” teasers runs a high risk of burn out if you keep people amped up for too long without catharsis. Have you ever noticed how really popular shows are more prone to being “binge watched”, while some episodic series with large overarching plots (like later Southpark seasons) can be watched in sporadic bursts and not loose its appeal?

1 Week is roughly the perfect amount of lead time for an episode announcement. Its enough time to talk about it, but not so long that it drags out longer then the modern attention span allows for.

I’m talking about retroactively, as I stated in my post, not on current release. That means it would only be added to the game after the dust settles.