Guild Wars 2

I’m a bit confused as why living story is the first topic up for discussion. While I haven’t taken the time to tally each response from the suggestion thread, a brief overview looked as if the majority of the responses were in relation to rng and rewards and grind.

kdose.5309:

TL;DR No active GW2 player with whom I interact in-game has ever complained about LW pacing being too fast.

Almost every active GW2 player with whom I interact in-game HAS complained about LW pacing being too fast. YMMV.

@bravoart

We are now moving to the discussion phase of this initiative. The topic with the most votes in this area of the game was Living World (Note: The topic tally was aggregated across all Community Forums per supported languages).

LS is the biggest topic worldwide… not just the english boards.

I’ll preface this by saying I don’t play half the LW content because I find it uninteresting, but I think the pacing is good. Two weeks is ample time to either do the achievements or experience the content (depending on what you care about). It’s not enough time to grind out a randomly dropped weapon skin nor is it enough time to grind out 250 Pristine Spore thingies. If anything, making it easier to get one of those skins might be a step in the right direction (250 is really a lot), but stretching out the content more would make it quite stale.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

It is great to see the discussion evolve. When i get some time i will be posting about the Living World cadence and entering that part of discussion with you all.

With time in mind i don’t think a week is long enough to discuss this topic so we will keep the close date open. At the end of the day i want to make sure we have enough time to discuss the topic with you and not feel rushed.

Chris

i don’t think this discussion thread is what I thought it would be . Where has the collaboration been I see only players bringing up points and the one anet employee who responded has simply explained his view on the situation. there hasn’t been any actual collaborative development. To help this discusion move further could you say what you mean by collaboration and if you think this thread has lived up to what you intended so far?

Sarika.3756:

kdose.5309:

TL;DR No active GW2 player with whom I interact in-game has ever complained about LW pacing being too fast.

Almost every active GW2 player with whom I interact in-game HAS complained about LW pacing being too fast. YMMV.

i think it was clarified earlier the 2 week releases are what people say is too fast the progress of the story arc is seen as too slow

gidorah.4960:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

It is great to see the discussion evolve. When i get some time i will be posting about the Living World cadence and entering that part of discussion with you all.

With time in mind i don’t think a week is long enough to discuss this topic so we will keep the close date open. At the end of the day i want to make sure we have enough time to discuss the topic with you and not feel rushed.

Chris

i don’t think this discussion thread is what I thought it would be . Where has the collaboration been I see only players bringing up points and the one anet employee who responded has simply explained his view on the situation. there hasn’t been any actual collaborative development. To help this discusion move further could you say what you mean by collaboration and if you think this thread has lived up to what you intended so far?

He’s all but said he hasnt had the time he wants to respond in this thread as much as he probably wants. He’s extending the “deadline” of the discussion to accomodate this. The OP has a disclaimer saying Anet response would likely be pretty sparse right now.

This thread was started in good faith… give em a chance.

EverythingXen.1835:

gidorah.4960:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

It is great to see the discussion evolve. When i get some time i will be posting about the Living World cadence and entering that part of discussion with you all.

With time in mind i don’t think a week is long enough to discuss this topic so we will keep the close date open. At the end of the day i want to make sure we have enough time to discuss the topic with you and not feel rushed.

Chris

i don’t think this discussion thread is what I thought it would be . Where has the collaboration been I see only players bringing up points and the one anet employee who responded has simply explained his view on the situation. there hasn’t been any actual collaborative development. To help this discusion move further could you say what you mean by collaboration and if you think this thread has lived up to what you intended so far?

He’s all but said he hasnt had the time he wants to respond in this thread as much as he probably wants. He’s extending the “deadline” of the discussion to accomodate this. The OP has a disclaimer saying Anet response would likely be pretty sparse right now.

This thread was started in good faith… give em a chance.

i am giving it a chance i’m not trying to be rude but a 1 sided discussion isn’t very collaborative at all do you think it would have been a better idea to start the discussion when they had the time to take part in it?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

When i get some time i will be posting about the Living World cadence and entering that part of discussion with you all.

Hey, thanks, Chris. I really appreciate the heads up. Looking forward to your contributions (and have appreciated Bobby’s contributions as well). Much appreciated. :-)

gidorah.4960:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

It is great to see the discussion evolve. When i get some time i will be posting about the Living World cadence and entering that part of discussion with you all.

With time in mind i don’t think a week is long enough to discuss this topic so we will keep the close date open. At the end of the day i want to make sure we have enough time to discuss the topic with you and not feel rushed.

Chris

i don’t think this discussion thread is what I thought it would be . Where has the collaboration been I see only players bringing up points and the one anet employee who responded has simply explained his view on the situation. there hasn’t been any actual collaborative development. To help this discusion move further could you say what you mean by collaboration and if you think this thread has lived up to what you intended so far?

I think I read they were collecting data for a few days open up a discussion then close it on Monday. This thread is so flooded though it should have its own dev tracker. Or program the last dev comment on a thread at the top of the topic.

kdose.5309:

<snip>

I had to add a voice to this thread to say that active players never say no to more stuff to do. We love it.

<snip>

This is simply not true. Your amended statement at the end referencing your own experience with players in game is much more on point. I am an active player, with a lot of time to spend in-game, and I am of the mind that this constant bombardment of “stuff” is excessive. I wouldn’t mind all the stuff if it was permanent, but this “two weeks and it’s gone forever(ish)!” model is tiresome.

I’m editing this to add that I am a fan of temporary content. I’d just prefer that it be more meaningful and therefore less common than the constant treadmill of intense, buggy and unpolished patches we currently have.

Amstel Steel.2058:

gidorah.4960:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

It is great to see the discussion evolve. When i get some time i will be posting about the Living World cadence and entering that part of discussion with you all.

With time in mind i don’t think a week is long enough to discuss this topic so we will keep the close date open. At the end of the day i want to make sure we have enough time to discuss the topic with you and not feel rushed.

Chris

i don’t think this discussion thread is what I thought it would be . Where has the collaboration been I see only players bringing up points and the one anet employee who responded has simply explained his view on the situation. there hasn’t been any actual collaborative development. To help this discusion move further could you say what you mean by collaboration and if you think this thread has lived up to what you intended so far?

I think I read they were collecting data for a few days open up a discussion then close it on Monday. This thread is so flooded though it should have its own dev tracker. Or program the last dev comment on a thread at the top of the topic.

the problem is what you describe isn’t a discussion or collaboration its a survey. This thread is flooded with players trying to have a discusion 1 writer explaining why thing are the way they are and a dev asking questions. If chris meant something different than a discussion or collaboration he should have said so but what we have so far is neither.

gidorah.4960:

Amstel Steel.2058:

gidorah.4960:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

It is great to see the discussion evolve. When i get some time i will be posting about the Living World cadence and entering that part of discussion with you all.

With time in mind i don’t think a week is long enough to discuss this topic so we will keep the close date open. At the end of the day i want to make sure we have enough time to discuss the topic with you and not feel rushed.

Chris

i don’t think this discussion thread is what I thought it would be . Where has the collaboration been I see only players bringing up points and the one anet employee who responded has simply explained his view on the situation. there hasn’t been any actual collaborative development. To help this discusion move further could you say what you mean by collaboration and if you think this thread has lived up to what you intended so far?

I think I read they were collecting data for a few days open up a discussion then close it on Monday. This thread is so flooded though it should have its own dev tracker. Or program the last dev comment on a thread at the top of the topic.

the problem is what you describe isn’t a discussion or collaboration its a survey. This thread is flooded with players trying to have a discusion 1 writer explaining why thing are the way they are and a dev asking questions. If chris meant something different than a discussion or collaboration he should have said so but what we have so far is neither.

That is because us players get to say so much more than official employees get to say even though I wish for them to fearlessly join the circle.

Before people start hijacking the post and making it a big argument amongst either players or players vs devs. There’s 14 pages of people who got the concept and are placing their feelings and views. This isn’t a twitter q & a, its a community response.

on that note – I posted earlier but another player bought up a good point, When i do login my first impression of every new content isn’t wow how cool – its “what achievements do i grind out now, what ones do i do later” is there a way to make achieves linked to things like the mini dungeon in hallo? first run through – 25 achieve, get elemental – 25 achieve, second dungeon done – 25 achieve. Rather than grind out 50 doors, eat 500 candy, smash 250 pinatas, kill 25 extremely slow spawning toxic champs. So more story following related achieves rather than just exercises in “do x y times” I’d rather enjoy the content and naturally fall over achieves than be forced into blitzing them all in a day.
Thanks again for your time ^^

My take on the Living Story:

I feel that there are 3 things that hold the LS back from being a rather great addition to the GW2 world.

1. Not sure how to put this into words, so please bear with me: While the story arc seems slow, the meta achievements for the LS are completed way too quickly. When Scarlett Invasions were “the” LS, the meta for defeating her was done in the first day or two, and the rest of the invasions were (and still are) completed only to the Aetherblade level and then the captains were (are) farmed. If someone wanted to complete (i.e. defeat Scarlett) after the first day or two, that’s just too bad. It’s not much different than any other LS. The meta is done very quickly, and the rest of the time things are farmed and not completed. Someone who is slower to complete is just out of luck.

2. the pacing is a bit too short. The “pros” are done in a couple days (if that long) and the folks who can only play for short periods of time have no chance (see item 1.) Not everyone can play 6 hours at a stretch. Unfortunately, I don’t see a solution to this. Make it too difficult, and the very people you try to give a chance are left out because they can’t properly prepare or get the prerequisites done in time.

3. (beating the dead horse) The rewards don’t match the effort. It is easier to farm (See item 1) than it is to complete, and much more lucrative. If the rewards for completing the LS “chapter” were better than one could get from farming the events, it would be completed more often.

I can look past a few bugs and even the fact that once it’s gone it’s gone, as long as it’s worth it to do them and I can do them in the time I am able to spend in Tyria…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

gidorah.4960:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

It is great to see the discussion evolve. When i get some time i will be posting about the Living World cadence and entering that part of discussion with you all.

With time in mind i don’t think a week is long enough to discuss this topic so we will keep the close date open. At the end of the day i want to make sure we have enough time to discuss the topic with you and not feel rushed.

Chris

i don’t think this discussion thread is what I thought it would be . Where has the collaboration been I see only players bringing up points and the one anet employee who responded has simply explained his view on the situation. there hasn’t been any actual collaborative development. To help this discusion move further could you say what you mean by collaboration and if you think this thread has lived up to what you intended so far?

Hi Gidorah,

The main focus of this initiative is to discuss design philosophies with the community as outlined here in the rules i set out for the topic discussion:

1: This initiative is all about discussion.
2: We will not be disclosing information pertaining to what is currently in development.
4: Together we will share and evolve design philosophies which will impact how we develop the game moving forward.

I also want to reiterate this rule:

6: The teams primary focus is work toward the development of GW2 and therefore posting of discussion and commentary may not be as frequent as you like. Please do understand that the initiative is taken very seriously by us all and that we will be reading the discussions and joining in as often as it is possible to do so.

Currently we are keeping up to date with the three threads and posting when we are able to. Bobby has posted in regard to story, Colin has posted in regard to vision and i will be posting about the Cadence of the releases. I am hoping we will be able to discuss many issues with the initiative and we are learning as we go along. One factor is clearly us having the time to post currently, and personally i am building out time to be able to enter the discussion appropriately. This is why i have extended the windows on the threads to ensure we give the discussions the respect they are due.

The intention of this plan is have mind share, to educate one another on our feelings and philosophies and ultimately together through these discussions impact the evolution of Guild Wars 2. We all want the best for the game and this is at the core of the plan.

I feel it is going pretty well currently. I think that the majority of the posts from the community show a clear understanding on the goals of the exercise and there has already been some great discussion and insights. I am looking forward to being able to enter the discussion soon and would say that i wish we had a little more time presently. With this in mind I certainly have some suggestions to tweaking the initiative moving forward which we can discuss after this phase.

I hope this answers your questions.

Chris

Thanks for the response. I think the player’s have been doing a great job at discussing idea’s and keeping things civil. I understand that you have other things to do than discuss things but don’t understand why you started this now instead of when you had the time to take it as seriously as you say you do. I appreciate that you extended it but anet’s lack of participation is starting to become a hindrance to moving the discussion forward. And you may want to pop into the wvw discussion and do some damage control as it looks like devon’s only post in it is about to turn the thread toxic.

In regards to Colin’s Question: What aspects of your favorite television shows would you think would be cool to see reflected in a game medium?

My favorite shows, not necessarily television as I primarily watch anime online, are characterized primarily by steady weekly releases that progress the story with a heavy focus on character development while staying loyal to the general rules of the worlds they take place in as they were introduced toward the beginning of their stories. I am often driven to re-watch certain episodes due to the amount of story progression present in the episodes and due to the use of cliffhangers, which drive me to want to know what happens next, so I seek to either spoil it for myself by reading how it happens, or watch the episode until I have a good feeling of what might happen.

Obviously, with the amount of resources that appear to be available, the prospect of weekly story progression would be madness (unless this is Sparta), and shouldn’t be expected by any means. However, the current amount of story that is given with each release seems to be on the scale of a chapter or two of a manga, rather than the four to six chapters that are typically covered in anime every two weeks (it does depend on the anime, though, as One Piece uses about one chapter an episode and is painfully slow if you’ve already read what happens)(so I guess I’m putting it more on the scale of something like Naruto). Increasing the amount of story in each release by increasing the amount of story content by four to six fold, would also be pretty ridiculous for the amount of apparent resources. However, it may be possible to give the illusion of more story content, without necessarily giving more story content on the main release. This would help to address the issue of the slow story pace, while keeping the current release pace and minimizing the use of resources for story content (maybe).

In many of the shows I watch, the story usually shifts around between different characters during chapters or episodes, without those characters necessarily having any direct involvement in the current primary action of the story. The actions happening with these background events focus on comedy, character development, or lead up to those characters joining in on the primary action of the current story arc. What I propose to simulate a similar effect with the living story, that would also help to generate the feeling of a living world with multiple events happening at once, would be to continue to have primary story releases using roughly the same amount of resources as they do now, but also make use of the NPCs that were created for the Living Story and that may re-appear in the Living Story in creating background stories. This would be similar to what was done with Braham and his love interest, but would make use of more of the characters to the ends of small stories that would be set up to develop the characters, lead up to new content (like what was done with Marjory and Lady Kasmeer in Kessex Hills during the Bloody Prince release), or resolve minor story elements (such as Mai Trin still saying the same thing in her cell, finding out more about Mendel and Marjory from someone like Logan, or Ellen Kiel’s actions after being elected and out of the limelight).

These small stories could be the place for the comedy, the references, and the deeper level character development that would serve to get the player more emotionally invested in the main players of the Living Story, while helping to make the Living Story segments feel larger or more significant. The minimalist approach to these small stories would be text conversations with the NPCs that change with every release, so that we can catch up with what they’re doing/planning, or moving the location of the NPC to show that they are doing something, or a combination of both. The extreme of this would be to have some mini “quest” like things that involve the character, but don’t take as much. Some examples of this would be helping out Braham around Cragstead with some “press F” actions, helping Rox with some collect-a-thon assignment that Rytlock gave her while making a reference to grinding in video games and having Rox state her worries about ever getting into Rytlock’s warband, helping out one of the NPCs by going out and doing a certain existing dynamic event, picking up some kind of item from Rata Sum that Ellen Kiel’s endeavor into the Thaumanova fractal needs, or some random drop from a certain task in game that when given to the right NPC will trigger some special dialogue. Stuff like that, if given a context that helps develop the character, would, I feel, really go a long way. It’s the little things that often go the furthest.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I agree Talissa. The topic discussion is going very well and we will have time to discuss enhancing the process for the initiative at the end of every topic phase and in so doing we will get better and better as we move forward.

My only concern thus far is that this hasn’t been a discussion. It’s fourteen pages of player comments and suggestions, with a few insertions of “we’ve thought about that,” or “don’t worry—we know and we have a reason for doing ______.”

There have been a lot of phenomenal points brought up, and I think the majority of the voices here would like some substantive interaction on the ideas. After all, that’s what collaboration is about. At least, that’s how this initiative was sold, and the impression I was under.

I dunno. Maybe I misunderstood. Either way, some concrete interaction would go a long way to making this initiative actually do what it was billed to do.

A few guild mates are starting to leave the game because it’s “boring”.
Sure, there are living stories released every 2 weeks but they’re boring. Zergs are boring. Farming is boring. Going around the world to press F on an object is boring. And when there’s something fun, it goes away after a couple weeks.

I’ve already said and I’ll say again: a living story every 2 weeks is too fast. You don’t have time to develop something really captivating and fun. All you do is churn out inconsequential content like you’re in a factory.

Please, do something. I don’t want my friends to leave.

Phenn.5167:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I agree Talissa. The topic discussion is going very well and we will have time to discuss enhancing the process for the initiative at the end of every topic phase and in so doing we will get better and better as we move forward.

My only concern thus far is that this hasn’t been a discussion. It’s fourteen pages of player comments and suggestions, with a few insertions of “we’ve thought about that,” or “don’t worry—we know and we have a reason for doing ______.”

There have been a lot of phenomenal points brought up, and I think the majority of the voices here would like some substantive interaction on the ideas. After all, that’s what collaboration is about. At least, that’s how this initiative was sold, and the impression I was under.

I dunno. Maybe I misunderstood. Either way, some concrete interaction would go a long way to making this initiative actually do what it was billed to do.

I have to generally agree with this. I can understand that the higher ups in ANet are likely busy, but the responses we have received so far do read like the above poster says. I can only hope that once the time for responses is found, we’ll get more actual answers and more actual communication.

Random questions here: how do we (the community) know that the devs are taking our thoughts seriously? And why haven’t they commented on ANY of our thoughts yet? At least show us a sign.

BobbyStein.2315:

One of the challenges of the semi-monthly release cycle is that we’re limited in how much content we can put inside each one. This can be a good thing if the story is very focused and doesn’t have a lot of moving parts. The problem we ran into is that we needed to develop a larger cast of non-player characters to account for every playable race, and then create the content in which to put them. That sort of build up takes time and incurs an amount of long-term development debt.

So then my question is:

Why are you sticking to the bi-weekly release schedule? If you know it hinders you, why keep at it? That makes no sense to me. I know you’re not the guy to set it, but I’m sure you know why it’s set there and who sets it and can explain to us this befuddlement – if not get the players’ opinion on it to the person or people who set the schedule.

BobbyStein.2315:

The end goal was to have multiple arcs going simultaneously like on more modern television shows, but where a weekly drama might have 20 – 40 minutes of character time to get things moving, we have maybe half that (or less). So after a few releases it started to feel like there were a lot of unresolved plot threads out there and you (the player) had no way of knowing which ones would be resumed.

Perhaps a better approach would have been to start and resolve each arc before introducing another.

Nein. The concept you had was good. The issue is that you didn’t go through with that concept. You had one arc, then you paused it and had another, then you paused that one and had another. That is not doing multiple arcs simultaneously.

On a side note, I keep seeing you (ArenaNet) compare the living story to television shows or books. The issue I am finding is that’s how you’re treating Guild Wars – like a novel or like a television show. But it isn’t. It’s a video game. And you write and make video games much differently. With TV and novels, you cannot show multiple scenes at once and instead have to show them back to back even if they occur at the same time. In video games, especially open world ones, this is not so – you can have multiple things happening simultaneously within a set timeframe, even if the players don’t always see this. E.g., when Flame and Frost: Retribution was going on, you had Super Adventure Box. That’s how you do multiple arcs simultaneously – having the content available to players at the same time. Not doing part of an arc, then part of another, then part of a third.

Doing one arc and then going to the next can work, but then it’s even less of a “living world” – it’s just a bunch of linear tales being told one after another. A living world has multiple places in the world evolving at once. See again, April 2013.

BobbyStein.2315:

Here’s where I think we could have done a better job with her.

I’ll be frank – and please excuse me if I’m too blunt here. I don’t care about “what could have been” – what I want to know is what will you do to fix the issue? And spoilers aren’t needed to be told for this. I’m talking about your plans for future exposition. And I’d like something more than the atypical “there is a story planned” and “it will all make sense in the future” because let’s face it, with the pacing of the story we might start to see what you see in, oh, 2015 maybe? At the rate I’m seeing, and I’ve been delving into it as much as I possibly could, that’s where I’m predicting things will finally start making sense.

So please, if you read this, inform us somehow about how you intend to improve your storytelling. Because as far as I see it, that is your numero uno issue.

(cont.)

BobbyStein.2315:

Dragons
Guild Wars 2 has a dragon on the box cover. The primary motivation for players on their 80-level journey is to kill a dragon. So yeah, giant, winged beasts are a part of Tyria, they’re core to the game, and we haven’t forgotten about them. That stated, I can’t say when we’ll return to them—only that we will. There is a plan in place.

I don’t think you need to “return to them” so much as increase their presence and focus. Tequatl was nice, but that was one boss update with next to no story revealed (even with promises of plot relevance) for over a year that focused on the Elder Dragons and their threat. I get there’s other threats but the Elder Dragons are supposed to be the “big looming threat” yet we get nothing on it.

Honestly, I think players would be satisfied, to varying degrees, if all we got was the Claw of Jormag now suddenly flying over Wayfarer’s Foothills and roaring; or the Shatterer making appearances along the Dragonbrand in Iron Marches and/or Fields of Ruin. No boss updates needed, just an exposure of something new related to the dragons. Do this every other or so month and you’ll help remind players that you haven’t forgotten them.

BobbyStein.2315:

With our current tech, the PC cannot speak outside of a cinematic conversation (which were featured inside the Personal Story at ship) or contextual chatter (crippled = “My leg!”). We intend to explore possible solutions in the somewhat near future.

Please do. Seeing my character respond to an event or instance dialogue outside of a cinematic would be a huge plus. I wouldn’t be surprised if the coding that allowed contextual chatter would result in that, since it ties to achievements and exploration as well as skill effects.

BobbyStein.2315:

Our revised cinematic technology does not currently support player voice variants (i.e. 10 different PC voices).

That sounds very odd to me, given Guild Wars 1 (even if then it was only 2 voice variants).

BobbyStein.2315:

We have a few things planned for upcoming releases that should make the player feel like more of a driver and less of a passenger, but please remember that it takes upwards of four months for content to go from concept to completion. Nothing I say here will happen immediately due to the nature of how we build things.

Which is why I began holding a “I’ll wait and see where we are going after 4 months” as of September since August really seemed to have sparked the criticism even among formerly liking figures like myself.

And honestly speaking, I wouldn’t mind it being 8 months if the releases got slowed by half (becoming quad-weekly rather than bi-weekly).

I always thought Living Story was a great idea, but there was apparent things holding it back.

I mean sure some things do change, but we never have any evidence that it was changed by us specifically. Which is why I think there needs to be more phasing done in some aspects of the game.

Also, some people have no idea who Lady Kasmeer or Lord Faren is. There needs to be more story telling going on outside of Living Story if these quests absolutely have to disappear. It quite frankly causes some confusion for returning and new players.

Maybe like a Living Story tutorial or something in the future to introduce the player to these characters. Otherwise I foresee people having no idea what is going on story-wise.

Also, is Living Story ever going to catch up with the player story? Because as far as timelines go, I see Living Story being between the start of time to who knows when. Maybe start adding dates in time to the game? Might help if done right.

Get back to GW1 lore. Tag team mashups are cute. But the old lore felt epic and meaningful.

The way you changed Kessex Hills, do that with Orr but in a restorative way. Clean up the undead in other areas while your not in personal story mode.

Here are some things i’d like to see more out of the living story.

1. More effect on the world. Currently things happen then disappear off the face of the earth. My favorite thing is telling players how I was there for the southsun assault. How I was there when that dreaded monster by the lava was killed. This rarely happens sadly because very few people ask why is that body there. Flame and Frost, bazaar, cuthroat politics, etc. These stories someone could never know have existed if not for the player armor rewards.

2. More connected to the world. Right now the personal story and the living world story seem like they’re in two totally different worlds. I LOVE in this LS you are using the pact more.

3. Less achievement/Website for lore focus. The lore is a bit disjointed. I’d like to be rewarded more for doing stuff in the story rather than I push F 40 times. The achievement where you have to do a offshoot of the toxic thingy in each map is amazing. No grinding and it is rewarding you for some what reason objectives. Currently it seems like the LS is 90% achievements, 10% story. I’d like to see it more along the lines of 50%+ story, 40% or less achievements.

If the living world also includes dynamic events then the following pertain to that

1. Dyanmic events interacting with one another and the world more often. Most of the time events invovle gathering or killing something. Then in 2 mins it redoes it self. I’d like to see longer chains, more metas, and more areas unlocked by doing events. When I go into a map I don’t feel like im accomplishing or doing anything. If not for the small exp/gold/karma gains. I don’t feel like im doing any good in the world because I see no change in it. I don’t feel like I’m accomplishing anything when I do a event.

2. Dynamic Events being harder+ more focused in the endgame. I love the DE and open world. I think it is a thousand times better. I’m really hoping for more open world encounters that are harder and challenge the players ability to think, problem solve, and fight while rewarding them accordingly.

3. Map specific rewards. You know how each dungeon has a vendor with dungeon specific armors, weapons, and other things? Do this, but for each map. This could help get players back into the world. Sadly the open world is insanely easy, so you’re gonna have to either re adjust or put in new content that is heavily tied into the map vendor for new armors that is actually tough.

I agree with some of the things said earlier.
Scarlet is, by far, one of the worst villains I’ve encountered in a game.
Then there is the stuff thats just not happening. Constant reports from the pact.
Pact progress in Orr! This would be a living world! Since the Karka rolled over Lions Arch, Zhaitan is officially dead. With that, we should see progress in Orr, nature and people pushing back onto the land, driving the undead (who get decimated largely and ultimatly replaced with new dangerous flora and fauna!) back and exterminating them.
There should be more reports coming from Cantha now, too, since the undead hordes are no longer effectively blocking sea-routes. Even if Cantha isolated itself, some traders or smugglers have to have the ambition to cross the sea.
With Orr finally cleansed – (Temples still active, gaining a new power source from natural sources, incorporating the new wildlife) – the pact could finally focus on the next threat, Jormag, Kralkatorrik or Bubbles, pushing borders towards Elona and Palawa as well as north, reclaiming Norn territory.
There is so much life in the GW Lore now already, Scarlet is just annoyingly distracting.
Perhaps if we could modify the device she used, turn this experience into a Instance: Storymode: due to the massive impact of the vision, the devices flow and graps of the eternal alchemy may only be viewed with 5 people with connectet brains. (Players free the pale Tree from the thornbramble – or at least get to see a wonderful episode while floating in the alchemy!)
Exploration Mode: Disturb Scarlets encounters and hinder her forming her alliances – just like the fractals, lets get rid of her in this manner, avoiding all the fuss she made! (Yay, Time paradoxes inbound!)
Then, please push our story further.
Not Scarlets. Not Malorys. Not Kasmeers. They can appear. But not as Main Charakters.

“This is my story.” ~Irravel Sails (Introductury cutscene, right after creation)

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?

For me, a good TV show has either a main story going on for the whole of the season or a background storyline with a main plot driving the different episodes for a season finale. It needs some sense of continuity between the different episodes up to the end. Also, each episode in itself requires to be a whole. Meaning that there should be a cool sub plot for each episode — if not, maybe a sub plot per 2-3 contiguous episodes. (I’m stressing contiguous here.) All in all, it needs to feel complete and fun as a whole and complete and fun as each episode separately.

In relation to GW2, I think that putting festival releases in-between real LS releases is a problem. It screws the pacing of the story. I think each arc should be resolved in-between each festival. Per example, if you release Halloween on 15/10, all the releases from 29/10 up to, let’s say, 10/12 should be about the same story arc (or multiple arcs but each with closure) so that once the Wintersday release hits on 17/12, we’re not left hanging without finality to the ongoing LS until somewhere in January.

BobbyStein.2315:

Perhaps a better approach would have been to start and resolve each arc before introducing another.

Yes, I think that would be a better approach. Chasing multiple rabbits at once isn’t often a rewarding endeavour.

However, I guess that your multiple rotating teams structure for creating content led naturally to such a design decision. With that type of team structure and the apparent probable need to deliver more continuity in the story, it’ll be hard to get the wheel turning until some time probably. Simply because content from team A needs to have some kind of closure before the introduction of the content from team B. So team A needs to churn out a certain number of releases in a row right off the bat. So that would require piling up finished content made by team B up until it’s time to release it to the players once team A’s done.

If such a venture is planned to be tackled, it’d be wise to make a transition with one team in the background by starting to pile up their created content as soon as possible.

Keep in mind that it doesn’t prevent the release of content from different team simultaneously either. I’m sure players won’t mind having two different stories going on at the same time, as long as there’s not a lengthy pause between the different parts of each respective arc. It can be accomplished if each story doesn’t overlap. (per example, Kraits in Kessex Hills and Pact cleansing Orr)

BobbyStein.2315:

So yeah, giant, winged beasts are a part of Tyria, they’re core to the game, and we haven’t forgotten about them. That stated, I can’t say when we’ll return to them—only that we will. There is a plan in place.

Looking forward to this.

Honestly i feel the living story is pretty much garbage in all honestly. i feel the living stroy isnt really a “living story” its more of a go here and do stoff. so ill post in bullet points about what is bad of the living story. cause saying what is good isnt going to fix the issues of what is bad. its like saying this car has good gas millage but it stalls out every time you put it in drive.

1. no new maps.
what you guys do is use existing maps and configure then to what the living story tells Nightmare tower Kessics hills secrets of south sun re polishing lost shores.

2. achievement grind
every new living story update that comes in i immediately hit H and figure out what achievement i can get throw and finish quickly. witch one achievements i can take my time on and enjoy (not very many). and what makes me mad is hiding achievement progression under daily so if i miss out in the 2 weeks its available i will not be able to get reward for meta because i missed out on 3 or 4 daily’s. Halloween is a perfect example as you need 13 to get mini and unlock 2 other achievement points. you only have 9 that you can complete.

3. Lore
ok this one may just be for my end but honestly i really don’t want to half to go throw guildwars2.com and look for the lore of what the living story is talking about. also i do not want to read dialog and dialog s of context from various NPC to get an understanding of what is happening. i would much rather be in an instance like with the new living story of the tower of them showing me what is happening and why this is bad.

4. no way to rewind the living story.
this isn’t much of an issue for me but various guild mates keep asking me what happened in last weeks living story Twilight assault going backwards. their is no way they can relive that story and have a further understanding of what is happening in the world of Tyra. because they don’t understand they wont understand what is happening now. and if they cant be able to relive it or be able to play what happened before then why play the game now?

5. once a year holidays (Halloween)
this ties under living story because its a story. but honestly i feel Halloween has fallen flat on their face because of 2 week living story here is a few pointers
1. not being able to repeat shadow of mad king achevement points (pumpkin carving is still there and they haven’t moved them.)
2. ascent into madness
ok yes where is it? i remember fighting the mad king and pushing him back because he was trying to break into Tyra, he broke out of the lions arch fountain for crying out loud!. where did it go? and why did they gave up on it??
3. not being able to get weapon skins from shadow of mad king.

6. dragons?
yes i said it dragons dear lord lol. but as the living story evolves we have no idea what is happening to dragons like jormegh exct. we keep getting these alliances but we are forgetting what is actually on the box art the number 2 that is a dragon people. now tea was a amazing update and really made me realize dragons are creatures that can be, will and should be a threat. a giant structure to me isn’t much of a threat. but however to much of dragon power will make a dead zone (low teir servers because tea dosnt scale down easly) so i don’t expect my Mesmer to destroy tea by himself ( i tried it dosnt work) but some scaling of some sort would be nice.

7. what is happning to Cantha and Elona.
the living story should be talking about what is actually living around the world of tyra not just what is around the content. and i feel their should be more investment into Cantha or elona ( ill even dish out 50-100 dollars now for those contents and expansions.) there is not much to talk about becasue their is not much on this topic from any developers or any develepers that are working on this.

8. temporaty content= temporary players
why go throw the hassle of updating logging in and playing the game if part of the game is only temporary. examples of this issue is the AR dungeon the MF dungeon and weapon that are only available for that living story. and must i forget Super Adventure box.

these are what i find to be Honorable or lacking in the living story and i thank you for reading this post from me. and i hope a dev has read this post and really thought about what i said and how i feel about it i would rather have Elona or cantha expansion that i pay for rather than a “living story sheet”

For me, there are a couple things I’d really like to see done that would really make living story a lot better.

1. Attention to details – Right now most of the living story has tried to have an impact on a zone, and in some cases (FnF) the impact was really well seen all over. This latest update, was gearing up to be great as well, having all the trees chopped down, the village dismantled, the impact could be seen all over the zone. Then with this last update, it kinda dropped the ball. There is this giant tower spewing poison all over and the centaurs have Krait inside their base attacking them, and yet they act as if they don’t even exist. Then we have Scarlet who as a character I’m fine with. Its the details surrounding her that are really poorly though out in my opinion. I get we don’t know the whole story with her, but what we do know seems like it would have caused a lot of ripples that have been ignored or are taking forever to get to.

2. Pacing – In real life, these things are happening every two weeks, in game I have no idea what the time frame for everything happening is. It is really disorienting not knowing if the time between two patches is one day or 3-4 months. Maybe a subtle way to fix this would be to put a date on the compass when we are in an instance so we can keep track of the time these events are suppose to be happening?

3. Consequences – This is what made the low level personal story so great. Save your friend or save the city? I also think it is the reason for almost all the of hate on a certain green leader. Towards the end of the personal story, we got to make decisions, but we never really got to feel any impact from them. It was “Here are your order, do it way 1, 2, or 3.” Our decision went from having a huge impact on those around us to flavor of the week. I understand living world is trying to focus mainly on the over world, and the players can only have so much impact on it. But given the amount of instances that are used I still feel like we can still have a large impact on living story, though in a more contained fashion. Just keep things contained to each chapter, and based off of personal stats and achievements of the character. That way the events can still have effected the world, but the player will feel like they controlled how things played out.

Master Yi.6129:

Random questions here: how do we (the community) know that the devs are taking our thoughts seriously? And why haven’t they commented on ANY of our thoughts yet? At least show us a sign.

While I’m personally still perched on the fence wondering if anything will come of this initiative, it’s not fair to say they haven’t commented on our thoughts. Yes, the comments so far have been rather weaksauce and not overly promising, but three different members from the GW2 team have spoken here and responded at least to a limited degree.

I figured I’d wait until I had an opportunity to try out the new content before offering my input. Although I am pleased with many of the features implemented in GW2, both at release and updates, there is still room for improvement. My apologies in advance if any of the following comes off as harsh. That’s not my intention, I’m just honest to a fault and don’t like seeing potential being wasted.

As far as the story format goes, I would have to say that it plays out more like a typical children’s show than shows of a more serious nature. Most seem to have no connection (at least before Scarlet’s advent, but I’ll get to her later) and any conflict is largely resolved with the very same update. Then, with the next update, we have the next villain of the week/evil army of doom rear its ugly head.

I’m not arrogant enough to claim I speak for the entire player-base, but personally I think each update should be a part of a LS arc lasting 2-4 months in most cases. Various festivals, a certain glorified jumping puzzle, and arcs of a more dangerous or imposing nature being notable exceptions of course. This offers more time to show a gradual change, introduce characters, develop characters, etc. I would also prefer updates to lead characters to multiple zones (without using the entire map in most cases) rather than send the zerg into a single zone for a good portion of the two weeks.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with many players who claim that Scarlet comes across as a villain sue. At the same time, she still doesn’t manage to come off as a threat to me. I am Zhaitan’s Bane, Commander of the Pact, Slayer of the Ancient Karka, the Defender of countless innocents across Tyria, Vanquisher of tens of thousands of hostile creatures, and former crab-wrangler. This deranged cabbage is going to have to try much harder if she wants to get under my skin. While I did notice the foreshadowing from Flame and Frost and Mai Trin’s outright use of her name, I get the feeling that is too subtle for most of the player-base. In my opinion, what she needs now is a deeper motive than “Burn! Destroy! Die!”. I find that hidden motives only work well for a character that is strongly implied to have/outright stated that they have them, a character that is largely mysterious, or a character that is largely detached from events either to observe or pull strings behind the scenes as needed.

I would like to see many of the more powerful minions receive more development as well. With the new path of TA, we get a scene with three of her top henchmen in a short story. Those minions are a fairly transparent “the boss said kill them, and she’s strong, so we should kill them without question”. I know you’re capable of better character development for more minor characters, I’ve seen it in both GW and much of the PS of GW2, not to mention a few characters involved with events/event chains. Where are the characters who follow out of a sense of actual loyalty? An urge to fulfill their own goals in the process? A promise made by the big bad in exchange for their service? A lie on part of the big bad in which they would defect if they knew the truth or given the right conditions? Or even reluctantly because they have no other choice?
In short, many just seem flat. I would prefer to face foes I have a little history with, some I can empathize with, or even some that would even make me regret having to kill them, or would upset me if they died to help me against their master.

As far as actual content of a patch goes, I think a reasonable standard (Mind you I don’t know all the specifics of everything involved, so feel free to enlighten us if that is indeed the case. A status update/clarification/explanation is always preferred over not knowing anything/being seemingly ignored in my book.) would be to have say three quests/instances of the arc currently being released (or perhaps a single larger dungeon/dungeon-type instance, the F&F one would be a good example), seeing minor changes in regards to past arcs/future arcs (even freakishly subtle ones), minor skill balances, some bug fixes, and a few quality of life type of changes. Any new zones, skills, events, gear, etc. would always be a welcome addition of course. In regards to the instances, they should be sufficient to provide some character introduction/development. Perhaps even end the arc with a fight against a major henchman only to have them escape and warn you about their master. Ideally each update would end with some resolution, while still leaving you anticipating what is to come.

(Continued)

In regards to the cut scenes, I am largely pleased with how they have been executed. I do think they should all be subtitled, and I’ve noticed what you’ve said on the matter in another thread.

With the impact of the PC, I would have to agree that this a weaker point of the LS. In my opinion, we seem to come off as the hired muscle in most cases. I think a better alternative would be the following types of reactions from an NPC: “Oh [insert exclamation/expletive of choice], this is worse than I thought. Call [character name]”. or perhaps “Good think you were here/came along [character name]. [insert problem here]. Please help us!” As far as actual direct character involvement goes, I personally have no objections to playing a silent protagonist, even in cut scenes that require the PC to speak to NPC’s (think Dragon Age). Further utilizing the personality system in this would just be gravy.

As far as rewards go; the minis, nodes, and titles seem reasonable to me. The skins on the other hand, I feel need some work. Perhaps introduce an NPC like the festival hat guy from GW or a place to put all LS specific items in a designated storage (think pvp locker).

I look forward to seeing what you come up and what you’re truly capable of.

Edit: A few minor points I forgot to mention:
1. I think it would be nice if the LS helped wrap up some of the loose ends from GW lore. Lazarus the Dire is a perfect example.
2. I’m kinda sick of fighting Aetherblades. Scaling back how much Scarlet uses them or having them spam less annoying (not difficult to overcome, just annoying) skills would be greatly appreciated. I’m especially looking at you, packs of Aetherblade Strikers which spam Shocking Aura.
3. It seems like the LS is too reliant on Steampunk-style technology.

Most of my ideas has already been posted in this thread here. Please read mine and other players ideas here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/How-would-you-make-LS-better

I would like to expand on the idea of “World Events”. Teq is the first World Event ever created in GW2. TBH, it was poorly implemented. Players had to face massive queues. And the spawn rate of Teq was way too slow, forcing players to queue up for hours before the event.

Many also view Teq as too hard. Players on those healing cannons don’t know what they are doing. Players didn’t protect cannons to they got destroyed.

But I cannot stress one point enough. PLAYERS DO NOT HATE WORLD EVENTS!!!

Nope, they do not. They hate Teq because it was poorly implemented.

Firstly, you guys in Anet have to fix the queue problem. And then you have to increase the spawn rate of Teq (or other world events). This is a technical side that I cannot help much with.

Now let’s talk about the gameplay in World Event itself. This I can help.

Firstly, world events must have an affect on the existing world. If they don’t, then this world isn’t living. Having a world that actually changes is the core concept of world events. I am glad to see this new Tower of Nightmares actually changing the world. Hopefully we get more of this in the future.

Secondly, when players talk about World Events, they are not talking about Teq. They are talking about this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

What’s the common theme here?

War.

Yes, its war. Players want war when they talk about World Events. They want wars that will change the history; Change Tyria, Elona and Cantha forever.

And war is what you guys in Anet should give us players. Not Teq. Triumphing over 1,000s of enemies is much sweeter than killing one dragon underling.

Of course, when the battle scales so large, friendly NPCs would need to help in some of the battles. For example the players are placed on the left flank, and that’s all they need to worry about. The allied NPCs would take care of center and right flank.

Xarathos The Judge.7592:

As far as actual direct character involvement goes, I personally have no objections to playing a silent protagonist, even in cut scenes that require the PC to speak to NPC’s (think Dragon Age). Further utilizing the personality system in this would just be gravy.

I think this is a point that bears reinforcing. Having the character be unvoiced (but choosing dialogue options from a tree) is a fairly well-established solution to the problem of allowing a PC to communicate with voiced NPCs without needing to get voice actors for the wide range of possible voices the PC might have. It’s generally regarded as an acceptable shortcut, and some players may even prefer it as it allows them to imagine their character saying it in the voice they imagined for the character, which may be very different to the voice actor.

draxynnic.3719:

Xarathos The Judge.7592:

As far as actual direct character involvement goes, I personally have no objections to playing a silent protagonist, even in cut scenes that require the PC to speak to NPC’s (think Dragon Age). Further utilizing the personality system in this would just be gravy.

I think this is a point that bears reinforcing. Having the character be unvoiced (but choosing dialogue options from a tree) is a fairly well-established solution to the problem of allowing a PC to communicate with voiced NPCs without needing to get voice actors for the wide range of possible voices the PC might have. It’s generally regarded as an acceptable shortcut, and some players may even prefer it as it allows them to imagine their character saying it in the voice they imagined for the character, which may be very different to the voice actor.

Hoping this is not off-topic:

One of the early (and on-going) issues I have had with this game was the voice acting of my character breaking immersion for me.

I understand in combat, that the audio alerts (poison, bleed, cripple, etcetera) are extremely helpful.

However, the other chatter, and acting within stories have often negatively impacted my ability to “connect” with the character I am playing. They rarely fully feel like they are my creations or my characters because there is so much “personality” imbued in them via the voice acting. “Personalities” that are shared with every other player using the same gender/race. They are not “my voice.” It’s also odd to hear my character’s “voice” coming from a guildmate’s character or someone in a zerg during an event.

There are certain races I stopped playing for a while because I could not tolerate the constant “grunts” or “rude behavior”. And yet, I’m sure those are probably things other players enjoy.

I would have absolutely no problem with a well written story with depth being absolutely voice free. It would add to the feel that it IS a story (something normally read).

I realize this also, like trying to insert TV into an MMO, is a vision call by the developer. I am merely sharing my emotional reaction, having struggled for over a year (and 45 alts), to finally try and narrow down to 1 or 2 mains. I have to have more than one, because after a while, I find that the constant comments and sounds my characters make begin to annoy me. And I need to alternate to get some “relief”.

My big problem with the living story right now is that it does not interest or captivate me at all.

I do not feel any kind of engagement or attachment to the characters, and when there is something that interests me I am unable to sink my teeth into the content, it is always broken up and locked away between events.

But generally I find the living story characters to really lack the development of the personal story characters, and I find my player character as more of a spectator than a participant.

I’ve also grown frustrated with the living story mechanics, the pve down system for enemy npc’s is nothing but frustration. In zergs it is non existant, but solo it does not add depth as much as annoyance to me.

But I might not be the best judge of things. I do not particularly like any of the lore or back story of the game anyone.

The only aspect that ever interested me was the Dwarfs, and since they have been deleted to try to build a different brand of fantasy I do not really feel all that motivated to even try anymore.

Oh what I would give for playable dwarfs …, and a meat story line filled with loss, anguish, a slimmer of hope for rebuilding what has been lost.

I think the main issue with Scarlet vs. Dragons is that (while technically they haven’t really done too much after emerging), they are each supposed to be capable of presenting an existential threat to life on Tyria. Players stopping their war on the dragons is like Batman bailing out of the Justice League during a long campaign against five alien empires bent on conquering or destroying earth so he can fight the Joker. There might be a rational explanation, but it’s implausible enough to damage suspension of disbelief.

Not that it ever really made sense — the Orders lead the fight against the dragons, the nations of Tyria don’t really do much at all. But realistically, which actually has the resources for such a fight? It’s not like the Pact has a tax base. It would have made more sense as an XCOM situation (especially after the creation of the Pact) — the nations provide funding and elite soldiers, and the Pact fights the aliens… err… Dragon minions.

But as of today, I came up with a theory about Scarlet that might let me accept (moreso, anyway) her actions, her power and ability to persuade and deceive, and her obsession with creating alliances by twisting pairs of groups up together. Not to get too into it, the theory assumes her arc canonically follows the end of the Personal Story, and involves Kormir and Abaddon, a Risen Priestess of Lyssa, the illusory aspects of the experiment that drove Scarlet mad, and the powerful mesmer magic that veiled the Tower of Nightmares.

Lore / Meaning:
The original mad king event was great. There was a ton of lore packed in to not too many text NPCs. I don’t see any reason there shouldn’t be similar “lore scavenger hunts” in each release. For people who don’t care, it’s an easy achievement by following Dulfy’s inevitable guide. For people trying to piece together the story, it would indicate and give some good foreshadowing as to the significance of events.

Less disposable characters:
I was really happy the adventure with Rox and Braham again, to see how their relationship had changed and how they’d grown a little as characters. Similarly, it’s been interesting to watch Ellen Kiel rise from simple inspector to captain (Though she’s kind of tiresome as a permanently invincible authority figure) but then you’ve got all of these one-offs like Mai Trin, the market, the leaders of the various alliances, etc. That are either suspiciously absent in order to just bow down to Scarlet, or show up from and are dealt with in the same breath. I would have been thrilled to see zero scarlet and in stead have Mai Trin, Horrik, Spur, whoever is ACTUALLY in charge of the molten alliance, whoever is ACTUALLY in charge of the Toxic alliance, etc, operating as autonamous entities. I feel like a lot of opportunities have been missed for storytelling under the sweeping excuse of “scarlet did it” and that so many of these minor villains are just more interesting characters with more relatable and believable motives. There is no rule that says that if you don’t add new characters and enemy factions every three patches that it will be a failure. You have a wide enough cast now that you could introduce zero new characters for the entirety of next year, and still have plenty of time to tell stories about them, the world, and our relationship with both.

No new enemy groups!
We have SO many enemy factions in the game that adding new armies every few updates seems wasteful. What are the sons of Svanir up to while we screw about with the aetherblades? How about those pesky centaurs? Nightmare court? We have a lot of great enemy factions with established lore that already own a big chunk of the map. You mean to tell me they’ve spent an entire year just sitting on their hands? Less time spent designing more groups means more time adding breath and depth to the existing ones, which is, in my opinion, a much more natural path for the living story. Operate on things we are already familiar with and it seems less like things get made up on the spot. If you DO invent an army, stick with it, and give it substance rather than just tossing it away or baking it in to a greater coalition of evil like the molten alliance, aetherblades, clockwork, the new toxic alliance, etc. Imagine if all of the updates to this point had been centered around the story of the molten alliance, and JUST the molten alliance or the aetherblades. They’d be much more belivable as an enemy faction because we would have had the time to get to know them. In stead we got the aether blades unceremoniously dumped on us with little explanation, and then suddenly Scarlet shows up and owns both groups for no apparent reason. Also, clockwork. All of a sudden clockwork because she apperantly doesn’t have enough minions. Then repeat a fourth time with the Toxic alliance. It’s too much too fast and it results in nobody giving a crap who these factions are or what motivates them.

The Toxic alliance ALONE would have been a pitch perfect faction for scarlet. She offers something neither has (engineering) and has logical connections with one and logical leverage with the other. They’re also thematically appropriate for her character design, and have a solid and belivable grounding in existing lore without the feeling of being made up on the spot and then mysteriously subjugated for no reason.

Enough with the Achievement grinds
Getting achievements, rewards, and titles for the content is great. Using the achievements as the primary motivator is not. Each LS patch I log in and go straight for the achievements list. This is before i even open the mail. This is poorly designed. Achievements should be a side effect of playing content, not the other way around. You’ve already added in the daily systems to make them feel less grindy, now lets complete that process by making them actually be less grindy. Lets offer variant rewards for variant pieces of content. Hand out one thing as an instance reward, one thing as a token turn in, and the rest of the achievements as logical steps in doing both of the above. For the meta reward? Lets get back to titles. They’re extremely development light (It’s a string and a UID in most cases I’ve worked with such things) and are unique without being so high impact that people feel overly forced to go after them.

Thanks for doing this, I feel like later discussions with other members of the team will be invaluable for both the studio and the players!

The biggest “flaw” I have with the living story content is the lack of “re-playability.” If I miss an event chain due to real life circumstances, I have no way of filling in the gap. I could read the forums and attempt to understand what new characters were involved, how they interacted and what destruction they caused, however I do not feel the personal connection to future releases.

I am not asking to physically replay the event, I just want to watch a newsreel (>5 min) of sorts that highlights the main event and characters so I am not completely lost when I join in the next living world content. When I want to watch my favorite TV series a nice intro is incorporated to fill in the details and provides a nice refresher for this week’s episode.

Other than that, even though I am lost of most of the events I am very intrigued by this new tower. I feel like this is a very solid story driven update.

Thank you again! Can’t wait to see what the future holds.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

BobbyStein.2315:

Dragons
Guild Wars 2 has a dragon on the box cover. The primary motivation for players on their 80-level journey is to kill a dragon. So yeah, giant, winged beasts are a part of Tyria, they’re core to the game, and we haven’t forgotten about them. That stated, I can’t say when we’ll return to them—only that we will. There is a plan in place.

I don’t think you need to “return to them” so much as increase their presence and focus. Tequatl was nice, but that was one boss update with next to no story revealed (even with promises of plot relevance) for over a year that focused on the Elder Dragons and their threat. I get there’s other threats but the Elder Dragons are supposed to be the “big looming threat” yet we get nothing on it.

Honestly, I think players would be satisfied, to varying degrees, if all we got was the Claw of Jormag now suddenly flying over Wayfarer’s Foothills and roaring; or the Shatterer making appearances along the Dragonbrand in Iron Marches and/or Fields of Ruin. No boss updates needed, just an exposure of something new related to the dragons. Do this every other or so month and you’ll help remind players that you haven’t forgotten them.

I agree. But I would push it even further. When I first read about game, there was a feeling that world is falling apart because of dragons.
But the world doesn’t feel this way. Peoples in Divinit’s reach are all happy and more concerned about centaurs or or some other local stuff. Everything looking quite happy and normal.
It’s video game. You can’t have feeling of world ending and danger if you just write it, or speak it and make it passive.

Dragons should be present in game. They should span across all zones, create zone invasions with dragon’s minions (improve the scarlet invasions idea, but replace everything with dragons, and push it evern further). What I mean:
1. Dragons invasions have permament impact. The are not timed. If dragons minions came to the zone, they are here to stay until they are driven out.
2. This would create real impact on the world. We would achieve both living world (an really living world), and make an honor the basic idea of dragons.
3. In other words make all zones contested and make players fight to keep them.

The same with big dragons (Shatterer, Jormag). They don’t have any impact on zone. They just spawn on single and stay here for X amount of time to be killed.
Spwaning of such creature should trigger entire zone invasions of dragon specific minions. Make entire zone contested. Here is an example idea of meta-event for Jormag:
1. Jormag spawns in random place over map. Key word. Random. Random place is essential to make it work.
2. Jormag is immune to normal player damage. Players simply can’t kill using their own abilities. It’s also key to make this event work.
3. All camps and waypoints are contested except the ones near zone entertance.
4. Players must retake camps and map.
5. If camp is retaked, it starts another event. Weapon resource gathering. Players must gather resource for weapon build.
6. After that is done there is another event. Caravan Escort. Caravan will head up to the Jormag position. If event fail we back to point 5.
7. Caravan arrived. Players must build weapon (yes build, it won’t appear magically builded by NPC). And defend the building site.
8. Now they can start attacking Jormag using builded weapons.
9. In meant time, dragon minions constantly attacking already camps already captured by players. Those minions also randomly roam across zone killing everything in sight. It’s to force zerg split across the map.
10. No loot, only winning event reward.

That is Living World (or at least as close as you can get using existing tech in GW2).

It would be so great if such events were present in every zone. It would be really epic effort, to kill big creature. Not just spawn in near waypoint, go to boss, kill him, loot him and forgot.

I feel the same way about “Living World” as I do about how Dynamic Events were sold.

The players have no real influence on the immediate world. Much of the time things are too small in scope and anti climactic.

The first living story I remember was pulling items off dead bodies and lighting fires. I remember saying to myself “that’s it?” and logging off.

Little things such as having players pick up supplies and building semi-permanent things (like in WvWvW) could go a long way as previously stated.

For the Living World concept to become what it can be, I think there should be more ‘Living’ and more ‘World’ to the content we already have.

‘Living’
A large part of ‘living’ is the players having an impact on the world. The difficulty here is the 4 months we have to wait for new content to be developed conform our choices. Remember we elected Ellen Kiel? That feels like a long time ago, and we should be seeing her again next month. I hope we can find a way to make players impact the world in a direct way, perhaps a way that isn’t dependent on a completely new batch of content. For example, when we finally get to discover the Crystal Desert, let the players actually build the first outpost in that area. There would be escorts of supplies, protecting the build site, maybe a raid on an enemy’s lair to lessen the attacks for a while. The building would only continue if there are enough supplies and the build site and if it isn’t overrun by enemies (enemies could even destroy what we already have built). This would fill a progress bar, which could even take weeks to complete. Sounds familiar? Yeah, that’s right, WvW elements in PvE! 
If the real necessary stuff would already been given, the next update could expend on exploring the region, independent of the progress of building the outpost. Perhaps the local inhabitants don’t like us being there and will launch an offensive, making completing the outpost even harder, ‘punishing’ us for not completing the outpost faster.

‘World’
Right now, I don’t think the world feels like a dangerous world but more like a playground. Any place in the world can be reached within minutes and any mob or event can be ignored. Want to go somewhere? Take a waypoint and run no more than 5 minutes. Bridge collapsed? There is probably a way to get to the other side, usually right next to the bridge. A mob in your way? Well, just walk right past it. Waypoint contested? Travel to the one next to it. 
To be honest, I don’t have any realistic idea how to fix these issues. Removing over 90% of the waypoints is not something I think we’ll see happening. Perhaps a return to the ‘Ress shrines’ from GW1 would be something to consider. Another element from GW1 that might help: more larger mobs that actually patrol the area, making it more difficult to just mindlessly run past them. It might be a start looking into these things, although I don’t think it will be enough.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Copy/Pasted from another thread.

After playing this game for over a year I would like to give an example of what I believe a true living world should be.

First and foremost it NEEDS REAL consequences for failure. If you have centaurs taking over a town when you fail, why must they end there? If given long enough the centaurs can and should take the whole kitten map, enslaving and forcing the npc’s within the areas to be hostile to the PC’s (similar to a flipped keep in WvW). Waypoints, once the map is taken, should all be contested, making the trip to that map impossible save for entering through a nearby map. And why stop there, if the centaurs form an alliance with the dredge they could start controlling even more of the maps. If however they are at odds with the dredge we could form a temporary alliance with one side to defeat the other or at very least see then openly at war with one another.

Large scale invasions like scarlet should be epic in scope (destroying maps/npcs) until rebuilt/defended by the PCs for an extended length of time. Supply runs similar to what we see in Cursed Shore would be a good start, but much more widespread. IF these rebuild actions are not taken by the PCs then they should just lay there rotting (needing more supply runs in the process to repair) until they are done!

I guess my whole point to this post is that without real meaningful consequences we may as well be furniture. Devs please take a page from the way some things in WvW are handled; leaving WvW to the enemies will leave you having to ACTUALLY WORK to regain your ground, and IMO it should be the same in the PvE world. Until it is done in a way that we can and do get hooped for letting things fail, we are no better than bystanders in your game.

Great idea and a good way to implement endgame, if possible. This could even be somehow tied to some LS stuff with a krait campaign, a centaur campaign, some undead lord campaign ect. “Don’t let them take all of kryta or we will get back the monstrous XYZ villain again” sounds like somethin fun to do. Great Idea. The real stories should be tied to real expansions and some sideplots put into real changing parts of the game. You could even make ascalon, kryta, maguuma, shiverpeaks special campaigns so that some parts will always be accessable for new character to progress normally.

That would be true living story which does not feal weird next to some festival stuff like halloween pumpkins next to a new mystic tower of some krait witches.

iniside.4736:

Dragons should be present in game. They should span across all zones, create zone invasions with dragon’s minions (improve the scarlet invasions idea, but replace everything with dragons, and push it evern further). What I mean:
1. Dragons invasions have permament impact. The are not timed. If dragons minions came to the zone, they are here to stay until they are driven out.
2. This would create real impact on the world. We would achieve both living world (an really living world), and make an honor the basic idea of dragons.
3. In other words make all zones contested and make players fight to keep them.

Good one, could fit to all above nicely. And mix it up with:

… For example, when we finally get to discover the Crystal Desert, let the players actually build the first outpost in that area. There would be escorts of supplies, protecting the build site, maybe a raid on an enemy’s lair to lessen the attacks for a while. The building would only continue if there are enough supplies and the build site and if it isn’t overrun by enemies (enemies could even destroy what we already have built). This would fill a progress bar, which could even take weeks to complete. Sounds familiar? Yeah, that’s right, WvW elements in PvE!
If the real necessary stuff would already been given, the next update could expend on exploring the region, independent of the progress of building the outpost. Perhaps the local inhabitants don’t like us being there and will launch an offensive, making completing the outpost even harder, ‘punishing’ us for not completing the outpost faster.

Replace Crystal Desert with any (possibly) contested zone and you have a truly epic game, where you perhaps 4-6 week long compaign changes where to go and what to do out of the normal PvE. If you have all mechanics in place you only need one team to focus on some change and all other people of the LS teams can work on real expansion stuff, on new dynamic events everywhere in the world, on other cosmetic stuff like Kasmeer Meade fabulous new staff, to buy them of the shop.

That would be a living world.

My thoughts on living story/world.

The idea to have updates every two weeks is great, I liked that from the start, but over the last few months I got the feeling that this is just too much for developers to handle in terms of update amount. I personally would prefer to wait a bit longer for updates and have more content. This actual story about krait tower, I blasted through it first evening a few hours and it was fun. But now I am done and all there is left is farming events, which I find boring. So seeing that GW2 is now out for more than a year and there were now news about some big update (or expansion), I thinks living story should be slowed a bit in favor for something big coming.

This brings me to my next point. Permanent content. Most of the living story we have seen so far was not permanent, which is annoying. For example just because we destroyed some Molten Alliance facilities they are now nowhere around anymore? Makes no sense to me. I really hope that this changes with the current update and that Kessex Hills will be changed permanently (of course of we destroy lots of these Kraits/Nightmare Court guys, their population will be reduced, but seeing Landscape change back would just be like nothing ever happened there. So I really hope some changes will be permanent and that we will see more permanent changes in the futere. (Btw we killed Zhaitan and cleansed Orr, can’t Orr begin to change to be a bit nicer please? )

Then there is the story of the living world. I read that you want to improve this and I really hope you find some good ways soon, to introduce more story into the game (and not hidden NPCs with some dialog that almost no one will notice). I know mails are limited in space, but could not the talking window be expended? I would not mind to read more of the story, of course having it spoken would also be nice but probably more work for you

So last the rewards and achievements. I agree with some others here that the achievements should be more story or fun related and not “kill x mobs” “do y events”. I mean for example the krait obelisk shard achievement could have been so cool instead of boring if the obelisk hat offered real informations to us (which could have also helped to give us players more story). And for fun achievement I mean things like you did for the twilight arbor path with scarlet. Trying to get not shocked in the platform room, or running around in the end doing some extra objectives.
For rewards I must say, I hope you will change away from giving kitten many backpiece skins. Sure in the begining there were almost no backpiece skins, but now I have so many in my bank (since I am a collector), that I don’t know what to do with them anymore, most of my characters have two backpieces with them, which I am changing just to use part of all these skins. I would propose to give other skins (I don’t know how much time it would take to do some armor part skins or weapon skins compared to backpiece) or of course I am always fine with minipets, or some more fun items like the balloon etc.
And lastly, I know you want to keep economy balanced, but please don’t bring this into living story, like you did with halloween. Perhaps I am wrong with thinking the prince minipet requires so much candy corn because you want to get a huge amount of it out of the market. Regardless why this was done, this totally ruined halloween for me, since I don’t have the time to farm this much candy corn (and it is grinding, which you told us GW2 should not be about) and since I always spent mony on minipets and different amors for characters I am always broke, so buying candy corn for this is not an option. So please reconsider doing something like this in the future.

First, a thank you is in order. I appreciate what the development team is doing with the community and this collaboration. For y’all read through some of these posts and respond is a testament to the commitment to collaborate with the community, I’ve only been skimming through some of this thread myself, but I’m also blown away at how much thought and time some members of the community are posting.

onto business…

Some thoughts*+
to consider%

I saw Colin’s post about T.V. shows, and I think that’s a great median to compare to in regard to story telling, it’s likely the most popular medium for telling a story. There are some great things about modern TV that Gen Y and other generations have come to expect about TV:

1. DVR
Being able to jump to different parts of a story and watch at our convenience, and go back and watch the story again. This is not a main feature of the living story, I’ve been out of the loop for a while, so I’m not sure if this exists at all currently, but it didn’t when I paying closer attention to the living story. This also doesn’t exist for the personal story, but that’s a separate issue.
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2. On demand
Being able to view whatever story we want whenever we want. This has challenges with the combination of having on demand temporary content and a persisting world, because that combination does not mesh well together. Without putting in much thought, there are a couple of options to resolve this, but the development effort seems huge:

A. Create Party Instances for “On demand” content (previous 2 week content releases)
B. Create separate persistent versions of areas players can join
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3. The best T.V. Shows provide context
This may be easier to accomplish now that these living story filler stories going on with the main storylines have created their own context. However, having more cutscenes and dialogue to properly introduce characters and story components, or summarize previous happenings in the stories would be extremely helpful. When a new content release happens, sometimes this lost feeling comes over me, and things seem disjointed.
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These are high level things, and likely require A LOT of work, but I really feel like they are important to the demographic that is playing your game, which is likely largely Gen Y and Gen Z. A big reason I stuck around so long in GW2 after even with the issues I had with the game is because in my experience with GW1 those three ideas above were executed pretty well, I fell in love the characters and stories of Tyria through Guild Wars and stuck around because 1) you already had me, and I trusted you as a company, but 2) I had context during the personal story (the Dragon’s from Guild Wars: Eye of the North were awakening and going to destroy the races, organizations, and cities of tyria I had fallen in love with). So it would be my job to repay Primordus in full for the struggles he inflicted to tyria and my HoM honored hero (furture achievement maybe? defeat Primordus with HoM armor). I wanted to fight an unfrozen Drakkar, and turn Kralkatorrik back into some harmless scenery while avenging Glint, and seeing what her Baby Dragon has been up to.